Compare that to the Calc1 course from MIT on EdX as well. The algebra course engages you, helps you think through problems, and offers a customized learning path with a virtual tutor. The MIT course is just lecture and reading materials, it's not interactive, and it doesn't help you to discover the topics on your own in the same way that School Yourself does.
I desperately want to see a focused study program from an entity like EdX that takes a person from algebra to discrete mathematics using the model of School Yourself. I also want to see a similar course path for physics and chemistry.
Being a liberal arts major I wouldn't be where I am in technology today if it wasn't for friends, IRC, and places like EdX. I was willing to literally sift through hundreds of hours of content to get here though. Not everyone has that kind of time or interest, we need to make it easier for everyone to learn.
If we can just have a single platform that really focuses on bringing value to the individual and giving them a strong base to work from piece by piece, then we would have so many more mathematicians, physicists, engineers, programmers, etc.., all without crushing student debt. Imagine the innovation that we could realize!
I think MOOCs are the future based on my own experience. They allow the best teachers to scale their reach. Instead of aristotle giving a lecture to a room it allows an unlimited audience who can also rewind and pause if they don't understand something.
I've been able to learn machine learning and deep learning from Andrew Ng, one of the best AI researchers in the world, among other world class researchers, for free. It's incredible when you think about it, probably one of the most significant things in human history. I've been able to learn how to code by picking and choosing the best classes from MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc without spending a penny. Why settle for mediocre teachers at state universities when these options are available?
The major thing we need to do is find some other way to grade people other than using a college degree as a benchmark.
Very much this. I think a large issue with MOOCs is that they're too focused on emulating the structure of a university class - focus on lectures, community built around specific classes, focusing on the metric of course completion rather than on attaining skills, etc. People who successfully teach themselves things (and right now, there are many people using the internet to teach themselves things) often have a very different approach.
It's interesting that so many people have trouble even considering that there might be other ways to approach education.
The old model of education is a cathedral, and DIY is the bazaar, and each approach has its weaknesses.
MOOC is about as silly as "horseless carriage". The old model of education similar to a mathematical proof, with technical lemmas built up progressively until there is a macroscopically interesting result. That has a lot of value. Linear algebra is useful in so many fields, and learning it when you have the time, because you have to, gets it out of the way so you can progress to the fields you actually care about (machine learning, signal processing, physical sciences).
I think the new model will be graph-based and open like Wikipedia, but it will have to be aggressively curated for correctness, quality, and coherence. In 10 years, one should be able to take a query like "I want to be employable as a data scientist in 3 years" and turn that into a spanning tree of the relevant subgraph.
There'll also be a need for an offline/online hybrid approach like Meetup.com and dating sites-- some interaction offline, some in person-- and that part of it won't fulfill the dream of squashing geographic inequality. Perhaps education will be the first killer app for true "Metaverse" technology (but it won't be the last or biggest).
I really recommend MIT's Open Courseware for this. Modern MOOC platforms such as Coursera and edX tend towards the lower level courses and prerequisites are a major problem for anyone looking to do an entire degree. OCW is great though. Motivated learners can go at a minimum of 2x the speed of university classes.
The bigger problem is that not many people want to work through these kinds of courses. Universities motivate students through credentials, but open courseware is really just the people who love the education itself as opposed to the schooling and credentials.
What solutions though? Students, especially kids, still need some kick in the butt to actually do the work required to learn. I don't see MOOCs ever accomplishing that unless someone somehow finds a way to make an addictive and legitimately educational computer game that students are REQUIRED to play. Or some medication that helps students focus and absorb information without ruining their brains. I agree MOOCs can deliver superior quality education, but it will be a long time before they are motiviating in their own rights. And a lot of motivation in school comes from being near peers and having human connection with teachers and other supervisors. MOOCs fail that requirement almost by definition.
I think replacing the traditional 4-year college with MooCs would be really tough, but at the same time there's a lot of value in them. Giving the common person access to education from some of the best schools in the country is really terrific. The fact that so many world-renowned universities have participated at Coursera and edX says to me those institutions see value in the endeavor. In fact, some of those top-notch institutions are not only participating but leading the effort. E.g., Stanford at Coursera and MIT/Harvard/Berkeley at edX. The other day I read an interview(can't find the link now) with Daphne Koller, one of Coursera's founders. At the end she says that much of what is written about MooCs tends to be hyperbolic one way or another.
I can't believe no one is talking about MOOCs and how MOOCs are part of our daily lives and yet they have been absolutely toothless in taking over the system.
I personally think MOOC-with-tech-advancements is the future of education. And I have a suspicion brick-and-mortar educational system has played a role in crippling its progress.
I don't have any books for you, but I can give you my opinion on this idea (based on personal and observed experiences):
> why Stanford, MIT, etc. decided to release MOOCs
1. It's an interesting problem space for both learning and technology.
2. They aren't really giving much up. The value of their brick-and-mortar programs are as much or more about what happens away from the classroom as what happens in them. Many people do not understand this critical aspect of elite schools.
4. Courses like these are good for advertising and developing the recruiting funnel if used correctly.
On a personal level, I hope that the vast majority of the education system in the US gets forceably reset through some sort of crisis (student loans?) so that we can start from scratch. The current system is largely run by the administrators for the benefit of the administrators all the way from K-12 to grad school. We can definitely do better, and online education may be a compelling part of a new path.
I've been an enthusiastic follower of MOOCs since 2013 and it's amazing to me that there still isn't a better option than OCW for a serious, long-term learner.
Coursera and edX each had some great courses at their peak but the vast majority were lower-level, they came from a wide variety of institutions and most were time-restricted. As a result, even for subjects like mathematics or computer science there just wasn't a path for an ambitious learner to piece together the full material from a bachelor's degree. These days, even automated graders are behind the paywall and the promise of an education for all is more distant than ever.
OCW is truly an invaluable resource worth supporting and sharing!
I agree completely. MOOCs require too much commitment to be frank. I'm currently finishing my EE degree, so I can't really afford to "follow along" given my already full course lod every semester. In addition, I'm more interested in slightly advanced topics covered in a rigorous manner.
MIT OCW is the best solution. The self-paced courses on Coursera and Udacity are OK, but the UI as you say is too clunky, and the content is a bit shallow.
Right now I'm starting to work through Computer Systems Security on OCW [1]. They provide lectures on Youtube, so no need to fiddle around with a third-party app on mobile. They also provide all lecture notes, exams, and labs for learning purposes. The content of the course itself looks extremely interesting as well, and covers a wide array of topics related mainly to RE.
I don't think MOOCS are the solution unless utilized in schools. The role of a school teacher working along with a MOOC would be more motivational and disciplinary, which is what most teachers seem to specialize in anyway. Separate the content from the distribution. Only problem is when every student is learning exactly the same things and having no room for thinking out of the box, but again that pretty much already happens...
Maybe even let studebs choose their own MOOCs from a list so that their education is mostly based in interest and is self guided?
I agree with what you're saying, but MOOCs have showed time and time again that they don't work and people lose attention extremely easy. How is that perpetual problem going to stop?
I view the online education/MOOC type stuff being for teaching the basics. For example, have the undergrad curriculum be online and basically free. If people want to go to grad school at MIT or wherever, then have them take an extremely hard exam in the subject. I think overall, you would get higher caliber candidates this way just because of how big online education can scale.
The current education system is highly exclusionary based on characteristics that are obtained in high school and most of the characteristics are directly linked to income. The problem is many people can still go on to get these skills later in life but can't really get into MIT once they're adults. You can, in theory, but we all know in practice it is not realistic.
MOOCS are nice as a kind of podcast when they are on a n interesting subject. That being said I don't see them replacing academia until three big problems are solved.
The first is the value added problem, at the end of the day they aren't better than normal lectures and are actually a bit worse. It's funny that even the most innovate institutions have accomplished little more than putting lectures up online. Lectures are about on level with books when it comes to retention. A much better model would be adopting something more like code academy with a good balance of interactivity and theory.
The second and probably most important problem is the depth problem. You don't go to college to take general ed requirements. You go to take the high level sophisticated classes in your field. These classes are rarely delivered in the form of a lecture and often have extensive lab courses and student teacher interaction. I've yet to see a MOOC that can replace this effectively. Similarly, there is no good model for students to come in and pick up lab classes or lab materials. I'm sure there is a volunteer system that could do it, but it doesn't exist yet.
The final problem is of course credentialing. While many classes provide you with a certificate at the end the value of this is really up in the air. For most people, a certificate is unnecessary, the value is in the material, but if they plan to replace colleges they need to solve this problem.
I think MOOCs are the future. Just more like the 10 or 15 year future over the 5 to 10 year future.
I agree with you. I once followed OCW to learn stuff. Then it evolved into edx. I remember taking Anant Agarwal's EE course sequence and found it wonderful. Notable courses were always from MIT on edx. But now in the last year I have found edx to have SO MANY courses, like you said the microsoft technologies (which I found a bit shallow and unnecessarily split into a lot of courses) it becomes confusing and exhausting trying to find something. In addition, edx has become a paid model where you lose access after a couple of weeks, and you usually don't have access to assignments even when you audit now.
I have let go of edx and moocs and now fish for online university courses which are put up on their websites. Notable ones are MIT, UCB, UC (davis/san diego i don't remember, but one of them puts up all videos as podcasts), CMU (some videos), Brown, etc. Then you have top profs putting up stuff online, like Sedgewick, Pavlo, etc. Personally I feel this is the way forward, pick and choose courses online directly from universities, instead of mooc platforms, for each subject. There is this github repo - https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses/blob/master/R... which lists out a lot of courses. Occasionally, if you browse enough, you might find some rare links like these courses on database systems - https://bigdata.uni-saarland.de/datenbankenlernen/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDIJAkbAr53I4fggNsbzdrA/pla...
at the same time, MOOCs haven't even really started yet. Think about the first video games compared to what we have now.
Now think about the MOOCs we have now, and imagine what the 8th generation of MOOCs will look like. I can't imagine that. But I can imagine that it will possibly be more effective than the average teacher out there.
One of the greatest things about a MOOC is that your teacher can be a feynman caliber instructor. For a student that is willing to put in a lot of effort and has the desire to learn, what is going to better for you, a year's worth of pre-recorded feynman, or an average physics teacher? that might be up for debate, but personally, i'm going with feynman every single time.
For example, School Yourself is the single best math program I've ever discovered on the internet: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-algebra-schoolyourse...
Compare that to the Calc1 course from MIT on EdX as well. The algebra course engages you, helps you think through problems, and offers a customized learning path with a virtual tutor. The MIT course is just lecture and reading materials, it's not interactive, and it doesn't help you to discover the topics on your own in the same way that School Yourself does.
I desperately want to see a focused study program from an entity like EdX that takes a person from algebra to discrete mathematics using the model of School Yourself. I also want to see a similar course path for physics and chemistry.
Being a liberal arts major I wouldn't be where I am in technology today if it wasn't for friends, IRC, and places like EdX. I was willing to literally sift through hundreds of hours of content to get here though. Not everyone has that kind of time or interest, we need to make it easier for everyone to learn.
If we can just have a single platform that really focuses on bringing value to the individual and giving them a strong base to work from piece by piece, then we would have so many more mathematicians, physicists, engineers, programmers, etc.., all without crushing student debt. Imagine the innovation that we could realize!
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