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I like what udacity is doing overall but I think they've failed to really comprehend the nature of the education industry in the United States. Overall, the big

I like what udacity is doing overall but I think they've failed to really comprehend the nature of the education industry in the United States. Overall, the biggest problems are simply perceptions by employers in terms of what is considered a quality education. First, employers don't view self-studied or online education to be good. Second problem is employers overwhelmingly gravitate towards traditional degrees from government or private universities. This ends up corrupting the entire fabric of education. Students, seeking some sort of way to make themselves marketable in the job market, will only obtain education if it results in some sort of valuable degree. Hence the reason people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands to obtain these degrees. If you really want to disrupt education then you need to be directly figuring out how to change those perceptions. Start with the basics of making educational courses that would be considered the best in the world and then leverage the powerful benefits of an internet connected computer to create the best learning experience for the student. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. The way universities are teaching now is good but it is just not efficient and too costly overall. Take what works from traditional universities and then solve the weaknesses through the benefits of a computer. When I took udacity courses I just felt that the quality wasn't fully there. They felt more like something that would be a supplemental project you would take if you were studying a traditional course. You still need a way to obtain those key foundation skills before tackling the bigger projects.

arcturus17 8y ago
Udacity does a Masters of Science of CS with Georgia Tech for 7k. I hear most of the courses there are high quality and very rigorous... Perhaps they only need to apply that philosophy to smaller modules instead of a 12-course MS.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
  If you search around on HN there are more than a couple of threads speaking quite highly of this curricula. It’s probably the best MS in the world you can get in terms of value per dollar if you’re interested in applied CS.
  - krn 8y ago
    > It’s probably the best MS in the world you can get in terms of value per dollar if you’re interested in applied CS. It's worth pointing out, that in many parts of Europe Master's degree is either free, or costs less than 7k. Of course, the quality cannot be easily compared.
    - dalbasal 8y ago
      Free to the student perhaps, but generally the average cost (to whoever pays) of a year in college (masters/cs courses may be more) tends to be in the €10k-€15k range.
- trendnet 8y ago
  I am currently enrolled in that program. The program is great (I still don't believe it is so cheap). But it is not because of Udacity. It is great thanks to Piazza, professors, TAs, remote office hours, projects, students, Canvas, Slack groups, OMSCS subreddit, GaTech HPC clusters, remote labs, software licenses, student perks, and various other internal GaTech services. Udacity is just a small tool there to present a list of videos. Not a lot of professors use it for anything else. Hell, on Piazza for most courses you can even find a YouTube playlist because the Udacity web and mobile apps are incredibly bad compared to plain YouTube.
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    That's a good thing, isn't it? Do we really want everything locked down and centralised or do we want a portfolio of tools, marketplaces and such adding up to an educational platform.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Sure. I think the point though is that the education provided through MOOCs like Udacity, etc. is a small part of what's needed for an educational program in most cases. After all, we've had recorded lectures for decades. For certain types of course material such as programming assignments, computer grading systems are useful as well. However, for the most part, online courses aren't really all that different from Great Courses DVDs or YouTube videos. Which is to say nice resources but not very transformative.
      - dalbasal 8y ago
        Not transformative or not transformative in isolation?
        ghaff 8y ago
        Being able to use the Internet to learn things is pretty transformative in aggregate of which MOOCs is a small piece. (Although, arguably, it hasn't really been transformative in the sense of the educational certifications required for most jobs, whether at the university level or specific established IT training certs.)
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  I guess that is a start. I would really like to see these courses enhanced by technology related tools. Personally I think the teaching method that is offered by codecadmey is genius. I'm personally not in CS so I guess that is why my views are slightly different compared to everyone else here. I work in accounting field. In terms of quality online curriculum there is basically nothing. The ones offered on coursera are basically a joke.
ackbar03 8y ago
It's really hard for me to associate online degrees with quality... End of the day it all depends on the person. The main value of a college education has always been the signaling, not the actual material
- indigochill 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, where do you see the quality difference arising between online vs. brick-and-mortar degrees?
  - anonymous5133 8y ago
    It is logical people have this view these days because the early versions of online courses were very weak in quality. Quite literally they were PDF scans of homework, a PDF syllabus, instructions on what to do (what chapters to read, when to submit stuff etc.) and power point slides. That was it. If you were lucky, you got video taped lectures from in-person classes. There is a lot of potential with interactive media using a computer that never gets applied to these online courses because of the technical limitations of teachers and related support staff. It is hard to make really good online courses.
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      At the same time online is shit for direct interpersonal communication, so that's the strongest tool teaching has out the window. The best you can get online is one on one video calls, and while not too much worse compared to real face to face conversations, you will be hard pressed to get live video to web scale.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Discussion forums are one part of MOOCs that basically don't work at all. For technical courses that roll out on a schedule (which are probably not as common any longer), they're vaguely useful for platform issues and maybe some points of particularly common confusion. But they're swamped with people who are clearly way out of their depth, e.g. have no idea how to even begin to setup a required programming environment on their system. From there, it descends into the absolute dumpster fire that is any sort of real discussion around less technical topics.
wespiser_2018 8y ago
I think there is still a lot of room to disrupt education in the US, and the unfortunate lesson of Udacity is that there really isn't a market for sub-academic degree granted by for-profit institutions. I agree that the educational platform is really the way to innovate: community based learning, interactive platforms, and social goal setting are all possibilities that could help people leverage internet connectivity to learn. We've yet to see a truly "mobile first" educational platform, which connects experts to the knowledge gaps of the population "on demand". Maybe someday I'll fix a flat tire by taking a quick course, or connecting directly with an expert to walk me through the process!
dalbasal 8y ago
Ultimately, education is 2nd only to defense as an industry. Relative to the hype (and to what I think the potential is), computers and the internet haven't impacted the industry much. At least, at first glance. At second glance, I think you'll find huge changes in how people learn things informally. I don't even mean doing online courses on the side. I mean blogs and PDFs and stackoverflow. If you can program, bake or pick locks, there's a good chance you learned online. Online learning has also been supporting the "we don't train employees" norms of the modern knowledge economy. The internet is a huge part of how people learn, it just isn't a big part of education. This is one of the reasons I think there is a lot of potential for major disruptions. If you try tackling credentials in a college-like way, this risks leaning into old paradigms and not really changing much. You'll never complete with Harvard on prestige, but you can probably compete on everything else (from social aspects to educational ones) with enough determination. Idk what the answers are for udacity, but overall I think the best approach is meandering discovery rather than point-and-row. Taking steps back is part of that.

arcturus17 8y ago

Udacity does a Masters of Science of CS with Georgia Tech for 7k. I hear most of the courses there are high quality and very rigorous... Perhaps they only need to apply that philosophy to smaller modules instead of a 12-course MS.

SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
If you search around on HN there are more than a couple of threads speaking quite highly of this curricula. It’s probably the best MS in the world you can get in terms of value per dollar if you’re interested in applied CS.
- krn 8y ago
  > It’s probably the best MS in the world you can get in terms of value per dollar if you’re interested in applied CS. It's worth pointing out, that in many parts of Europe Master's degree is either free, or costs less than 7k. Of course, the quality cannot be easily compared.
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    Free to the student perhaps, but generally the average cost (to whoever pays) of a year in college (masters/cs courses may be more) tends to be in the €10k-€15k range.
trendnet 8y ago
I am currently enrolled in that program. The program is great (I still don't believe it is so cheap). But it is not because of Udacity. It is great thanks to Piazza, professors, TAs, remote office hours, projects, students, Canvas, Slack groups, OMSCS subreddit, GaTech HPC clusters, remote labs, software licenses, student perks, and various other internal GaTech services. Udacity is just a small tool there to present a list of videos. Not a lot of professors use it for anything else. Hell, on Piazza for most courses you can even find a YouTube playlist because the Udacity web and mobile apps are incredibly bad compared to plain YouTube.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  That's a good thing, isn't it? Do we really want everything locked down and centralised or do we want a portfolio of tools, marketplaces and such adding up to an educational platform.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Sure. I think the point though is that the education provided through MOOCs like Udacity, etc. is a small part of what's needed for an educational program in most cases. After all, we've had recorded lectures for decades. For certain types of course material such as programming assignments, computer grading systems are useful as well. However, for the most part, online courses aren't really all that different from Great Courses DVDs or YouTube videos. Which is to say nice resources but not very transformative.
    - dalbasal 8y ago
      Not transformative or not transformative in isolation?
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Being able to use the Internet to learn things is pretty transformative in aggregate of which MOOCs is a small piece. (Although, arguably, it hasn't really been transformative in the sense of the educational certifications required for most jobs, whether at the university level or specific established IT training certs.)
anonymous5133 8y ago
I guess that is a start. I would really like to see these courses enhanced by technology related tools. Personally I think the teaching method that is offered by codecadmey is genius. I'm personally not in CS so I guess that is why my views are slightly different compared to everyone else here. I work in accounting field. In terms of quality online curriculum there is basically nothing. The ones offered on coursera are basically a joke.

ackbar03 8y ago

It's really hard for me to associate online degrees with quality... End of the day it all depends on the person. The main value of a college education has always been the signaling, not the actual material

indigochill 8y ago
Out of curiosity, where do you see the quality difference arising between online vs. brick-and-mortar degrees?
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  It is logical people have this view these days because the early versions of online courses were very weak in quality. Quite literally they were PDF scans of homework, a PDF syllabus, instructions on what to do (what chapters to read, when to submit stuff etc.) and power point slides. That was it. If you were lucky, you got video taped lectures from in-person classes. There is a lot of potential with interactive media using a computer that never gets applied to these online courses because of the technical limitations of teachers and related support staff. It is hard to make really good online courses.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    At the same time online is shit for direct interpersonal communication, so that's the strongest tool teaching has out the window. The best you can get online is one on one video calls, and while not too much worse compared to real face to face conversations, you will be hard pressed to get live video to web scale.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Discussion forums are one part of MOOCs that basically don't work at all. For technical courses that roll out on a schedule (which are probably not as common any longer), they're vaguely useful for platform issues and maybe some points of particularly common confusion. But they're swamped with people who are clearly way out of their depth, e.g. have no idea how to even begin to setup a required programming environment on their system. From there, it descends into the absolute dumpster fire that is any sort of real discussion around less technical topics.

wespiser_2018 8y ago

I think there is still a lot of room to disrupt education in the US, and the unfortunate lesson of Udacity is that there really isn't a market for sub-academic degree granted by for-profit institutions. I agree that the educational platform is really the way to innovate: community based learning, interactive platforms, and social goal setting are all possibilities that could help people leverage internet connectivity to learn. We've yet to see a truly "mobile first" educational platform, which connects experts to the knowledge gaps of the population "on demand". Maybe someday I'll fix a flat tire by taking a quick course, or connecting directly with an expert to walk me through the process!

dalbasal 8y ago

Ultimately, education is 2nd only to defense as an industry. Relative to the hype (and to what I think the potential is), computers and the internet haven't impacted the industry much. At least, at first glance. At second glance, I think you'll find huge changes in how people learn things informally. I don't even mean doing online courses on the side. I mean blogs and PDFs and stackoverflow. If you can program, bake or pick locks, there's a good chance you learned online. Online learning has also been supporting the "we don't train employees" norms of the modern knowledge economy. The internet is a huge part of how people learn, it just isn't a big part of education. This is one of the reasons I think there is a lot of potential for major disruptions. If you try tackling credentials in a college-like way, this risks leaning into old paradigms and not really changing much. You'll never complete with Harvard on prestige, but you can probably compete on everything else (from social aspects to educational ones) with enough determination. Idk what the answers are for udacity, but overall I think the best approach is meandering discovery rather than point-and-row. Taking steps back is part of that.