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I wonder if this is changing with things like online education and the wealth of real information and in-depth knowledge on the internet. It seems self-teachin

by erdevs 10y ago

I wonder if this is changing with things like online education and the wealth of real information and in-depth knowledge on the internet. It seems self-teaching is much, much more viable today and I imagine that younger generations of autodidacts might not be so ill-informed on the whole.

Noseshine 10y ago
I have taken about 70 courses by now - about 1/3 of them "hard", the rest more like "Nutrition for Horses", on edX and Coursera mostly. From the courses currently offered on the major course sites it seems they limit themselves to courses taught during the first two years of college - and many courses are dumbed-down to a "general public" level. There are a few exceptions, for example the quantum mechanics courses on edX, but they really are exceptions. You can get more demanding courses on the university learning websites themselves, for example https://lagunita.stanford.edu/ https://lagunita.stanford.edu/ for Stanford. The breadth of the courses and course-takers is focused on the basics though. That doesn't mean it's all easy and dumbed-down - a course like "Medical Neuroscience" on Coursera (excellent, by the way, the professor is a wonderful teacher - https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience) have a workload of >15 hours/week. It still is "only" an introductory course though. I think you can sure get the basics via online education, and that means "university level basics". The main problem I see with more advanced courses is that you need to test your level of understanding and have it challenged on a high level, way more than is good for an online course. That's because those tests, if they are any good, is going to show you the huge gaping holes you still have in your knowledge, and for an online course that's too discouraging.
- kaybe 10y ago
  These tests are also really really hard to do automatically. The usual way here during education is to get a worksheet parallelly to the lecture every week, work through the problems and hand them in for correction and grading. If it's easy, the solution and correction are straight-forward. But if it's hard, as, say, some mathematical proof, sometimes a lot of knowledge and work goes into determining the correctness of the solution. And these are the problems that I feel changed the structure of my mind over the years. And then, even if things are easy to determine right or wrong, as for a coding assignment, people still profit immensely from getting good feedback on their work, from qualified people (and not peer-grading like online courses occasionally do).

by erdevs 10y ago

Noseshine 10y ago

I have taken about 70 courses by now - about 1/3 of them "hard", the rest more like "Nutrition for Horses", on edX and Coursera mostly. From the courses currently offered on the major course sites it seems they limit themselves to courses taught during the first two years of college - and many courses are dumbed-down to a "general public" level. There are a few exceptions, for example the quantum mechanics courses on edX, but they really are exceptions. You can get more demanding courses on the university learning websites themselves, for example https://lagunita.stanford.edu/ https://lagunita.stanford.edu/ for Stanford. The breadth of the courses and course-takers is focused on the basics though. That doesn't mean it's all easy and dumbed-down - a course like "Medical Neuroscience" on Coursera (excellent, by the way, the professor is a wonderful teacher - https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience) have a workload of >15 hours/week. It still is "only" an introductory course though. I think you can sure get the basics via online education, and that means "university level basics". The main problem I see with more advanced courses is that you need to test your level of understanding and have it challenged on a high level, way more than is good for an online course. That's because those tests, if they are any good, is going to show you the huge gaping holes you still have in your knowledge, and for an online course that's too discouraging.

kaybe 10y ago
These tests are also really really hard to do automatically. The usual way here during education is to get a worksheet parallelly to the lecture every week, work through the problems and hand them in for correction and grading. If it's easy, the solution and correction are straight-forward. But if it's hard, as, say, some mathematical proof, sometimes a lot of knowledge and work goes into determining the correctness of the solution. And these are the problems that I feel changed the structure of my mind over the years. And then, even if things are easy to determine right or wrong, as for a coding assignment, people still profit immensely from getting good feedback on their work, from qualified people (and not peer-grading like online courses occasionally do).