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Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

366 points by alienreborn 6y ago

ralmidani 6y ago
I agree that Malan is an amazing educator and both energetic and energizing. I took CS50 via the Extension School, and got a chance to meet him when we showcased our final project. He is very approachable and down-to-Earth. But what was the point of contrasting his “glossy black hair” with the white hair of MIT’s Grimson/Guttag? Very cheap shot, and not even subtly ageist.
- ralmidani 6y ago
  Also, FWIW, I completed MIT’s Intro to Programming with Python on edX before I took CS50, and recommend that learners get a decent grasp of programming principles with a higher-level language (spending a week with Scratch doesn’t really count) before diving into C with its pointers, manual memory management, etc.
  - arslnjmn 6y ago
    I second this approach. Helped me get more out of CS50.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Honestly, although in a self-paced MOOC format you can probably get away with it, the MIT 6.001 course really isn't the place to learn programming, programming environments, etc. for the first time either. It doesn't ostensibly require programming background, but it's at a far different pace and level than the actual "intro to programming" course I took way back when in college--and I had even had a programming course in high school which was fairly unusual at the time. ADDED: I'm also not sure what to think about C in an intro course in this day and age. Sure, as a CS major, or even as part of a good programming curriculum, understanding some of what's going on under the covers is important. But that feels like a Level 2-ish topic at this point.
    - ralmidani 6y ago
      You’re actually right, I had also taken very basic “intro” courses locally before taking the MIT course, and Grimson was the first person to explain Big O to me. Having already done some Python and C++ probably helped get more out of that course, as well. But some people can’t drop thousands or even hundreds of dollars to have a prof or TA hold their hand as they learn programming essentials. They might have to put in more time on their own to do well in a course like 6.001, but that may be their only option. They could do Udemy courses, but the quality there seems to vary quite a bit (whereas with edX there’s some built-in vetting), and a complete beginner may be overwhelmed by the number of choices.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        I really liked 6.001 but I already have a fair bit of programming experience although I don't do it professionally and am not a CS major--so I got a lot out of it. MIT has a doubtless deserved reputation as being a bit of a firehose but even so, I can't imagine showing up on campus (during normal times) and learning the basics of programming including even the basics of using a command line on the side while taking not only 6.001 but an otherwise full course load. Charles Severance's Intro course from U Michigan is a nice Intro to Python MOOC course that's geared to genuine beginners.
        ralmidani 6y ago
        Thanks for recommending the Michigan course! I have mentored/tutored in the past but am currently too busy. If people contact me regarding lessons, I can politely redirect them to that course.
- jcims 6y ago
  >But what was the point of contrasting his “glossy black hair” with the white hair of MIT’s Grimson/Guttag? Very cheap shot, and not even subtly ageist. They know their audience.
- criddell 6y ago
  Ageist against whom? Gray hair isn't a problem image-wise if you are a professor nor is youth. I think the writer is just painting a picture.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Yeah, normally as quick to comment on casual ageism as anyone. But, in this case, it's the New Yorker and I think they're just humanizing the story. (And, per another comment, with respect to "knowing their audience" I expect the New Yorker readership skews relatively old.)
    - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
      I hate to read such articles. I don’t understand why they are so popular in the Anglosphere. It always comes off as if I am reading a failed fiction writer, not a journalist.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        The New Yorker in particular is more literary than journalistic. Not the magazine to read if you want "just the facts."
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        I don't exactly know how to explain why I like this writing style, but I really do. I even subscribed to the New Yorker for several years but ended up canceling when I realized how far behind I was falling in reading it. The dang thing comes every week and is at a high enough average quality level that each issue is worth reading cover to cover. Also, a decent chunk of the content in the magazine is actual fiction by actual accomplished fiction writers (not "failed" ones). You don't tend to see it linked from HN obviously, but that's very much the vibe they're going for. Think of it as part commentary on the times and part literary fiction magazine. That may not be your cup of tea but it is appealing to lots of people.
    - ralmidani 6y ago
      Humanizing the story via insulting/encouraging ageism toward a former MIT Chancellor (Grimson), and/or another well-known MIT Prof (Guttag) who is an expert in diverse CS sub-fields and has collaborated with the likes of Barbara Liskov? Given how long they’ve both been teaching and doing research, and how much cross-pollination there is between Harvard and MIT, it’s very likely both of them were influences on Malan himself. FWIW, my wife also found Prof. Grimson to be “too monotone” and asked me “how do you stay awake during those lectures?” but without bringing age into it. Side rant: I am the child of baby boomers, and I think their generation had it much easier than we do. I also get infuriated with the callousness and lack of empathy exhibited by many people from the Boomer generation. But rude retorts like “OK Boomer”, aside from being disrespectful, only encourage further callousness and lack of empathy.
- 0d9eooo 6y ago
  The harder story to tell that this piece is avoiding because of the difficulty is the institutional dynamics. It's hinted at in the article more or less directly, but the entire mindset at many places is so far from what's conveyed in this New Yorker piece that it sort of misses the ball completely. At the time the story in this article begins, administrators at many places were completely unfamiliar with the general idea behind open content distribution. In such places, online systems for course content were seen as a way of locking down the intellectual property that courses represent, not to distribute it. Where I was at, faculty were explicitly admonished not to distribute any online course material because it was seen as leaking university IP. Course management systems were seen as a way to deliver materials online securely so as to ensure that they weren't widely distributed. Even if someone wanted to put the effort into something that might now be called a MOOC, it was doubly frowned upon because you were putting effort into teaching rather than research (especially if you were untenured), and triply so because you were putting effort into distributing courses online, which was a fringe activity. By the time MOOCs came about and got a lot of press, and many of us were sort of shaking our heads at what seemed inevitable, it was a little too little too late. In online space, where social factors like reputation become amplified 100-fold, it's difficult to compete or add to the reputational weight of places like MIT or Harvard. Adding to this was the constant monetizing mindset, of trying to lock down materials, not recognizing the advertising/popularizing role that open content distribution enables. Then too was a sort of "so what" feeling, because in the absence of something like a pandemic, who really cares, from the perspective of the administration -- students come to campus and that's where the dollars come from; MOOCs and online course distribution of whatever form were seen as experimental, the realm of the extension service which is valued but only to a point. There's lots of issues the piece doesn't get into, or only gets into in a half-hearted way, which is how these types of online teaching dynamics really mess with the traditional structures. So instead of having an interesting conversation about how unfamiliar it is for universities to be dealing with Course A at Institution 1 competing with Course B at Institution 2, it recapitulates the discussion in terms of Malan, which misses the bigger picture entirely. These issues are not about one instructor of one course at one university. Maybe I'm just getting jaded, but I feel like this piece does a disservice to the behemoth of problems at universities represented by the online instructional debacle we've witnessed. Like lots of things, the pandemic is exposing widespread systemic problems, not creating them.
- Dumblydorr 6y ago
  I think it's a subtle way to hint that CS50 is cool and hip to younger folks, whereas to younger folks, the old and less technically savvy MOOC felt less engaging. I don't agree, I just think new Yorker used it to contrast the courses.
- futevolei 6y ago
  I don’t think the intention was to deliver a cheap shot, or at least I hope not. In many ways I liked MIT’s courses better but the contrast is clear. Ideally in the future everything will be online (at least partially) and students will be guided towards the style that serves them best. I have an in-person degree from a top public school with nearly 40k students and I also have an online cs degree from a mid level public school. I can do without the big lecture halls that have 300+ students. Just let me watch the video on my own schedule. I crave the small discussion sections where I can ask questions, draw on a board, hear other students questions etc...
melling 6y ago
“ Malan’s remote-teaching setup involves a host of technology, including a seven-foot-wide interactive computer screen, called a Microsoft Surface Hub” Don’t hear much about the Surface Hub these days. It’s alive and well?
- sukilot 6y ago
  $22K 4K touchscreen. It has a niche appeal.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Yea, it’s something that’s bought by departments who are having a good year and don’t wanna lose their budget.
- objclxt 6y ago
  > Don’t hear much about the Surface Hub these days. It’s alive and well? Microsoft released an updated version - the Surface Hub 2S - about a year ago. The intention was this could be upgraded in-situ using a cartridge to become the Surface Hub 2X. The 2X was meant to have all the hotness Microsoft were showing off in demos at the time (it has now been cancelled - [1]). I procured one for some R&D, it's only sold through OEMs and service providers, for around $10k (more if you get the steelcase stand and battery pack). For what it is it's quite good: it's industrial design and feature-set goes well beyond a lot of the competition (Google Jamboard, etc), although its applications are still quite niche. One nice feature is you can output the touch input to a connected Windows laptop, making it a (rather expensive) huge multi-touch external monitor. [1]:https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21119915/microsoft-surface-hub-2x-cancel-major-software-update-features-release-date https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21119915/microsoft-surface...
noelwelsh 6y ago
Kinda fluffy article. This talk on the pedagogy of CS50 has more content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjepjUTAk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjepjUTAk4
cjf4 6y ago
Taking CS50 feels similar to watching a movie that has an auteur’s fingerprints all over it. Every word in the lecture, every technology, and every problem set has been carefully crafted to fit together to create a cohesive experience. College instructors everywhere should take the course to see what the zenith of multimedia online education looks like.
- sseagull 6y ago
  One thing to keep in mind is that (according to the article) he took over the course in 2007. I have been interested in pedagogy and talking with all the great teachers, the one thing I see in common is the ability to update, improve, and iterate. Constantly. Pretty much every time the course is taught there is something slightly different. There is risk there (sometimes changes are harmful) but that is how you make the course better. My guess is that is the case here, and that the course 13 years ago was not nearly as refined. But he had a vision and stuck with it.
- bachmeier 6y ago
  I've watched some of the lectures of CS50 in the past, and the one question that has always come into my mind is this: "How do these lectures help you learn at a deep level?" I already knew most of the material, so I found it to be an entertaining review, but that's different from a beginner needing to learn new material at a deep level. I kind of think it'd be a nightmare to take good notes while watching his lectures. I'm not bashing the lecture style, but if I were a student, I'd prefer a good textbook to those lectures. In contrast, I watched all the lectures of Martin Odersky's functional programming MOOC. I learned a ton from that even when I'd already seen the material. His presentations were lower tech, with less razzle-dazzle, but my goal was to learn. His presentations are optimized (intentionally or not) to facilitate good note taking and later application.
  - arcturus17 6y ago
    1. There’s a companion C book for the course 2. The labs go into much more detail compared to lectures 3. The psets can be Nintendo-hard; you’ll be doing devilish pointer stuff by week 3 or 4. The happy-go-lucky, flashy tone of the course is completely misleading. It is a challenging course, so much so that it’s been the subject of numerous cheating scandals from students caving under the pressure over the years. As for depth, this is a first intro to CS meant not only for CS majors but for people from other domains (Econ, humanities, hard sciences, what have you). The style is meant to cater to people who might not be a priori fascinated by flipping bits. Still quite a bit of people decide to concentrate on CS after taking the class, so it must be doing something right in that sense... The course is not mandatory for CS concentrators, so if you already know your fundamentals you can jump right into CS51 (functional programming) or CS61 (intro to systems), which are outstanding courses but much more terse in style.
bobochan 6y ago
My son took the AP version of the CS50 course last year in high school and showed me some of the exercises and videos. I immediately updated a lot of my own class materials after watching them and relentlessly hyped the edX class as a great companion to what we were learning. The entire environment, the culture, that Professor Malan has created is absolutely fantastic and I am incredibly grateful that Harvard has made this content available.
- noelwelsh 6y ago
  Can you get into some specifics that you adopted? I'm listening to the pedagogy video I linked in another comment and so far my takeaway is that Harvard / Malan has a LOT of money to spend on video production, TAs, and the like. That's not easily replicable.
  - bobochan 6y ago
    Sure. I really thought a lot of the early exercises were things that my students would enjoy doing, especially ISBN, Cash, and Caesar. I sent them to the CS50 web site and even showed them my own C solutions so that they could translate them. I am teaching a lot of students that have never programmed before, so one of my big takeaways is that they are not just learning Language X, they are learning lessons in programming that are applicable in many other languages. One more thing, with the course needing to be quickly adapted to Zoom last spring, I really noticed the importance of being able to give students rubrics and tests so that they could run their code with different inputs and make sure they were getting the correct outputs. That might seem obvious, but in the past the class was often in lab mode where I could walk around the class and work with them interactively.
ambar123 6y ago
I think that it's better than building an meth empire
ru552 6y ago
Malan is an excellent teacher and I absolutely enjoyed the time I spent with the CS50 material.
RikNieu 6y ago
I owe my career to Malan and his CS50 course. That's how I learned to code. I wish him only the best.
vcsilva 6y ago
CS50 is a really well-crafted course, and Malan is an amazing educator. Taking this class online is one of the reasons that got me interested in CS and programming. I think that this course in particular really highlights the impact of a good teacher. In college I've had multiple professors who quickly made my dislike subjects that otherwise I would have really liked.
Separo 6y ago
I took CS50 in 2013. Malan was a phenomenal teacher and presented complex concepts with a pace and clarity that made them easy.
jcq3 6y ago
Perhaps people appreciate this course because the prestigious Harvard school is behind it. I would traduce that bias by "a good school involves necessarily good courses" . Is it true though?
- valuearb 6y ago
  My wife watched his class on the architecture of the internet. She’s not technical at all but was absorbed by it to the end. And I never told her it was from Harvard.
  - ashtonbaker 6y ago
    Which course is this? I feel like I've seen it but I'm not able to find it with an internet search.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      I would like to find it too. I just related this story to my wife and she doesn’t remember watching it. I said “you were enraptured, and watched the whole thing?”! “Apparently it wasn’t that memorable“, she replied. Edit: Might be this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_KghQP86Sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_KghQP86Sw If so he’s updated it since we watched.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Not necessarily (although it often is, possibly because it's the rockstars who can afford the time and have the interest to play around with the MOOC thing). Early on with MOOCs, there was a Harvard literature course I was very excited about taking on Greek myth or something like that. I think I made it through about the first half of the first lecture. The whole thing felt incredibly pretentious and generally awful. (And, yes, I have taken literature courses at good colleges that were much more interesting.)
nanna 6y ago
It should be noted that such a slick class has had the priviledge of being granted the kind of institutional suport which is extremely rare across higher education today, at least in the West. Being allocated the same module for 13 years? Having it be the only module you teach? Having an entire production team at the ready? It's a mistake to think this is one man's achievement, and a model to universities everywhere of the kinds of quality that can be achieved if they give their staff a break from the endless restructurings, precarity, admin, overwork and burnouts that characterises the vast majority of their situations.
- AlexCoventry 6y ago
  What's the institutional incentive to switch up the teacher of a module?
  - randcraw 6y ago
    Usually it frees up the prior instructor to a) teach a more advanced course or one that's closer to their research interests rather than teach the same beginner level course over and over, or b) conduct research, which is why most tier 1 research uni profs took the job anyway. Most major research uni profs are obliged to teach 2-3 courses per semester. Most would prefer to teach fewer or more advanced courses. Only those who love to teach revel in intro courses, and from what I've seen, that's less than 10% of profs at big name research-driven schools.
    - wastedhours 6y ago
      > that's less than 10% of profs at big name research-driven schools From my experience that extends quite a bit further than that too even for a university that wasn't research heavy. I'd argue about half of my lecturers at university back in the day saw Level 1 classes not only as a hassle, but had active disdain for teaching them.
      - nogabebop23 6y ago
        Which is totally backwards, as these classes are the point of contact where energetic, motivated new students get that magical passion that pushes them into an entire life in the field. When I was in grad school and expressed a desire to focus on teaching, primarily 100 & 200 level courses my supervisor said "that's the punishment we reserve for those who are failing in their research". Totally crushed my desire to work at converting tangential students into future leaders in our field.
CydeWeys 6y ago
> Malan sees it differently: it is wasteful, he said, to have thousands of teachers, in computer science or other fields, all doing the work of devising similar curricula. Good programmers spend much of their time “refactoring” software—editing it to reduce inefficiencies, or “code bloat.” Malan’s teaching method pursues a similar objective. “I don’t think we want just one introduction to computer science and one introduction to psychology or any such field,” he said. “But there’s probably a number around dozens—hundreds—that makes more sense?” Rather than threaten the livelihoods of professors or the independence of institutions, such consolidation would, Malan believes, free teachers to do their best work. And holding online courses to the same standards as in-person ones would allow students beyond the small, predominantly privileged groups who enroll in places like Harvard to access the highest-quality instruction. 100% agreed with this, and this is something I've often thought about. An unbelievable amount of work is spent replicating the same curricula, lectures, and course materials over and over and over again. Think of how many calculus textbooks there are for example: there's thousands in English alone, as math professors are incentivized to spend years of their lives writing a textbook they can then have their students buy every semester, and thus create a second revenue stream for themselves. There aren't a million encyclopedias anymore; Wikipedia has pretty much dominated that space. We need something in the education space to fill that niche as well. Imagine how much better an experience most students will have if, instead of watching a random teacher out of millions teach a subject, and using one out of thousands of textbooks, they are instead watching the absolute best lectures and using the single best amazing compendium textbook of knowledge for the subject material. There are some projects that are trying this (e.g. the Wikimedia Foundation has Wikibooks), but none are that successful yet. I can think of a variety of reasons why, mostly having to do with inertia, but the reasons why it should succeed are far more compelling.
- jimhefferon 6y ago
  An awful lot of good teaching is interpersonal. There is a long history of didn't-work's in educational tech and often it is because the hard part is not the material, it is having students form the right mental models. That involves motivating them, adjusting the flow of information, and helping them as they go through a sequence of successive approximations. Basically, at least until now, it involves working with people. Of course, things can change and this course is certainly very admirable. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
cosmodisk 6y ago
Take aside the crew that does all the filming and editing and the fact that they can have guests like Zuckerberg or Ballmer,and you have a passionate tutor,who is willing to go extra mile. When I was at school, I only had 2 teachers like this- won't forget them for my entire life. At uni, most were so so( as the whole uni itsel) and often more interested in anything but teaching. However, briefly,we had an ex HSBC guy,who was the finance professor. The guy was funny, captivating and knew his shit inside out. When asked why he left banking,he did say he was finding academia more interesting. And he was a perfect fit. A lot of people are good at doing research but they may not be very good teachers,or not at least in the setting most of us are familiar with( large audiences,one guy delivering knowledge). I had a chance to watch som recorded lectures from MIT, Harvard,and some other famous institutions and the quality of teaching some( not all though) manage to deliver is exceptional.
- programmertote 6y ago
  Agree. I have taken classes with over 40+ professors (close to 50, but I have also taken two or three classes with some profs) in my undergrad and grad school. Out of them, I can recall ~5 being pretty good instructors. Being a professor does not guarantee one is a good teacher/instructor. The thing that sets apart good instructors from mediocre ones is the passion they have toward teaching (esp. the good ones seem to have empathy as in they want students to succeed and understand the materials that the instructors themselves probably took a good amount of time digesting when they were in students' shoes).
  - mettamage 6y ago
    Can confirm this. I taught for a bit (coding bootcamp, 1 year). I was super excited my first 3 months (it normalized after that) and during the whole year I had a lot of empathy in the sense that I felt their pain. It’s easy to feel someone’s pain when you yourself felt it a great deal as well back then. I was at my best during those first months. Experience and empathy all help but I could notice how being only slightly enthusiastic was hindering my performance.
mathattack 6y ago
I took the class. What didn’t scale were the TAs. It took 2 months to get anything graded. Malan’s response was “The TA will grade it within a week.” I suspect they’ve automated since.
- zaphod4prez 6y ago
  Yep, grading is fully automated now!
tijuco2 6y ago
"you don't need to attend Harvard" says the guy who attended Harvard. It sounds like a guy from a rich family who after failing some business, finally succeeded and then says: "if you fail, try again, don't give up". They just forgot that most people can't fail. That's a stupid advice
paulcarroty 6y ago
I've ended Harvard CS50 course and should say he's definitely one of the best, rockstar-like. Also seen tons of MIT, Berkeley and another courses from Coursera & Edx, so maybe can do the basic comparison. Secret maybe in very good covering of complex stuff and teaching style: pressure, fast moving between topics, playing with auditory in tv-show format, and nearly screaming to get attention while needed.
seddin 6y ago
David Malan is such a nice person, I remember when I was taking CS50 and found a syntax error and emailed him about it and he was so kind and fixed it.
compscistd 6y ago
I met Professor Malan once and asked him for some advice on overcoming imposter syndrome. His advice was a matter-of-fact, learn the things you feel like you don't know and it shouldn't be an issue. I still feel like that sometimes, but the way MOOCs are today makes it easier to approach anything I feel like I don't know.
deleted 6y ago
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Arete314159 6y ago
Sad to see the article did not mention the OG 1990's CS50 rockstar, Margo Seltzer.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
I think it might be useful to take a sneak peak at one of the past videos [0]. I did it. I found Prof. Malan to be very, very engaging. I wish one day everyone in the world will have access to this level of education for free, and not just for CS50. For everything. [0]: https://youtu.be/jjqgP9dpD1k https://youtu.be/jjqgP9dpD1k
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/1owAX https://archive.is/1owAX
eointierney 6y ago
The New Yorker needs editors More of less
f0rgot 6y ago
CS50 is THE reason I have a software development career today. Coincidentally, after CS50, I started watching an MIT Python course. If the MIT course had been my introduction so programming, I am sure that I would have dismissed software development as "not for me". I got lucky that my first exposure was CS50 - I owe a debt of gratitude to Malan.

366 points by alienreborn 6y ago

I agree that Malan is an amazing educator and both energetic and energizing. I took CS50 via the Extension School, and got a chance to meet him when we showcased our final project. He is very approachable and down-to-Earth. But what was the point of contrasting his “glossy black hair” with the white hair of MIT’s Grimson/Guttag? Very cheap shot, and not even subtly ageist.

ralmidani 6y ago
Also, FWIW, I completed MIT’s Intro to Programming with Python on edX before I took CS50, and recommend that learners get a decent grasp of programming principles with a higher-level language (spending a week with Scratch doesn’t really count) before diving into C with its pointers, manual memory management, etc.
- arslnjmn 6y ago
  I second this approach. Helped me get more out of CS50.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Honestly, although in a self-paced MOOC format you can probably get away with it, the MIT 6.001 course really isn't the place to learn programming, programming environments, etc. for the first time either. It doesn't ostensibly require programming background, but it's at a far different pace and level than the actual "intro to programming" course I took way back when in college--and I had even had a programming course in high school which was fairly unusual at the time. ADDED: I'm also not sure what to think about C in an intro course in this day and age. Sure, as a CS major, or even as part of a good programming curriculum, understanding some of what's going on under the covers is important. But that feels like a Level 2-ish topic at this point.
  - ralmidani 6y ago
    You’re actually right, I had also taken very basic “intro” courses locally before taking the MIT course, and Grimson was the first person to explain Big O to me. Having already done some Python and C++ probably helped get more out of that course, as well. But some people can’t drop thousands or even hundreds of dollars to have a prof or TA hold their hand as they learn programming essentials. They might have to put in more time on their own to do well in a course like 6.001, but that may be their only option. They could do Udemy courses, but the quality there seems to vary quite a bit (whereas with edX there’s some built-in vetting), and a complete beginner may be overwhelmed by the number of choices.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I really liked 6.001 but I already have a fair bit of programming experience although I don't do it professionally and am not a CS major--so I got a lot out of it. MIT has a doubtless deserved reputation as being a bit of a firehose but even so, I can't imagine showing up on campus (during normal times) and learning the basics of programming including even the basics of using a command line on the side while taking not only 6.001 but an otherwise full course load. Charles Severance's Intro course from U Michigan is a nice Intro to Python MOOC course that's geared to genuine beginners.
      - ralmidani 6y ago
        Thanks for recommending the Michigan course! I have mentored/tutored in the past but am currently too busy. If people contact me regarding lessons, I can politely redirect them to that course.
jcims 6y ago
>But what was the point of contrasting his “glossy black hair” with the white hair of MIT’s Grimson/Guttag? Very cheap shot, and not even subtly ageist. They know their audience.
criddell 6y ago
Ageist against whom? Gray hair isn't a problem image-wise if you are a professor nor is youth. I think the writer is just painting a picture.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Yeah, normally as quick to comment on casual ageism as anyone. But, in this case, it's the New Yorker and I think they're just humanizing the story. (And, per another comment, with respect to "knowing their audience" I expect the New Yorker readership skews relatively old.)
  - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
    I hate to read such articles. I don’t understand why they are so popular in the Anglosphere. It always comes off as if I am reading a failed fiction writer, not a journalist.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      The New Yorker in particular is more literary than journalistic. Not the magazine to read if you want "just the facts."
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      I don't exactly know how to explain why I like this writing style, but I really do. I even subscribed to the New Yorker for several years but ended up canceling when I realized how far behind I was falling in reading it. The dang thing comes every week and is at a high enough average quality level that each issue is worth reading cover to cover. Also, a decent chunk of the content in the magazine is actual fiction by actual accomplished fiction writers (not "failed" ones). You don't tend to see it linked from HN obviously, but that's very much the vibe they're going for. Think of it as part commentary on the times and part literary fiction magazine. That may not be your cup of tea but it is appealing to lots of people.
  - ralmidani 6y ago
    Humanizing the story via insulting/encouraging ageism toward a former MIT Chancellor (Grimson), and/or another well-known MIT Prof (Guttag) who is an expert in diverse CS sub-fields and has collaborated with the likes of Barbara Liskov? Given how long they’ve both been teaching and doing research, and how much cross-pollination there is between Harvard and MIT, it’s very likely both of them were influences on Malan himself. FWIW, my wife also found Prof. Grimson to be “too monotone” and asked me “how do you stay awake during those lectures?” but without bringing age into it. Side rant: I am the child of baby boomers, and I think their generation had it much easier than we do. I also get infuriated with the callousness and lack of empathy exhibited by many people from the Boomer generation. But rude retorts like “OK Boomer”, aside from being disrespectful, only encourage further callousness and lack of empathy.
0d9eooo 6y ago
The harder story to tell that this piece is avoiding because of the difficulty is the institutional dynamics. It's hinted at in the article more or less directly, but the entire mindset at many places is so far from what's conveyed in this New Yorker piece that it sort of misses the ball completely. At the time the story in this article begins, administrators at many places were completely unfamiliar with the general idea behind open content distribution. In such places, online systems for course content were seen as a way of locking down the intellectual property that courses represent, not to distribute it. Where I was at, faculty were explicitly admonished not to distribute any online course material because it was seen as leaking university IP. Course management systems were seen as a way to deliver materials online securely so as to ensure that they weren't widely distributed. Even if someone wanted to put the effort into something that might now be called a MOOC, it was doubly frowned upon because you were putting effort into teaching rather than research (especially if you were untenured), and triply so because you were putting effort into distributing courses online, which was a fringe activity. By the time MOOCs came about and got a lot of press, and many of us were sort of shaking our heads at what seemed inevitable, it was a little too little too late. In online space, where social factors like reputation become amplified 100-fold, it's difficult to compete or add to the reputational weight of places like MIT or Harvard. Adding to this was the constant monetizing mindset, of trying to lock down materials, not recognizing the advertising/popularizing role that open content distribution enables. Then too was a sort of "so what" feeling, because in the absence of something like a pandemic, who really cares, from the perspective of the administration -- students come to campus and that's where the dollars come from; MOOCs and online course distribution of whatever form were seen as experimental, the realm of the extension service which is valued but only to a point. There's lots of issues the piece doesn't get into, or only gets into in a half-hearted way, which is how these types of online teaching dynamics really mess with the traditional structures. So instead of having an interesting conversation about how unfamiliar it is for universities to be dealing with Course A at Institution 1 competing with Course B at Institution 2, it recapitulates the discussion in terms of Malan, which misses the bigger picture entirely. These issues are not about one instructor of one course at one university. Maybe I'm just getting jaded, but I feel like this piece does a disservice to the behemoth of problems at universities represented by the online instructional debacle we've witnessed. Like lots of things, the pandemic is exposing widespread systemic problems, not creating them.
Dumblydorr 6y ago
I think it's a subtle way to hint that CS50 is cool and hip to younger folks, whereas to younger folks, the old and less technically savvy MOOC felt less engaging. I don't agree, I just think new Yorker used it to contrast the courses.
futevolei 6y ago
I don’t think the intention was to deliver a cheap shot, or at least I hope not. In many ways I liked MIT’s courses better but the contrast is clear. Ideally in the future everything will be online (at least partially) and students will be guided towards the style that serves them best. I have an in-person degree from a top public school with nearly 40k students and I also have an online cs degree from a mid level public school. I can do without the big lecture halls that have 300+ students. Just let me watch the video on my own schedule. I crave the small discussion sections where I can ask questions, draw on a board, hear other students questions etc...

melling 6y ago

“ Malan’s remote-teaching setup involves a host of technology, including a seven-foot-wide interactive computer screen, called a Microsoft Surface Hub” Don’t hear much about the Surface Hub these days. It’s alive and well?

sukilot 6y ago
$22K 4K touchscreen. It has a niche appeal.
vxNsr 6y ago
Yea, it’s something that’s bought by departments who are having a good year and don’t wanna lose their budget.
objclxt 6y ago
> Don’t hear much about the Surface Hub these days. It’s alive and well? Microsoft released an updated version - the Surface Hub 2S - about a year ago. The intention was this could be upgraded in-situ using a cartridge to become the Surface Hub 2X. The 2X was meant to have all the hotness Microsoft were showing off in demos at the time (it has now been cancelled - [1]). I procured one for some R&D, it's only sold through OEMs and service providers, for around $10k (more if you get the steelcase stand and battery pack). For what it is it's quite good: it's industrial design and feature-set goes well beyond a lot of the competition (Google Jamboard, etc), although its applications are still quite niche. One nice feature is you can output the touch input to a connected Windows laptop, making it a (rather expensive) huge multi-touch external monitor. [1]:https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21119915/microsoft-surface-hub-2x-cancel-major-software-update-features-release-date https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21119915/microsoft-surface...

noelwelsh 6y ago

Kinda fluffy article. This talk on the pedagogy of CS50 has more content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjepjUTAk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjepjUTAk4

cjf4 6y ago

Taking CS50 feels similar to watching a movie that has an auteur’s fingerprints all over it. Every word in the lecture, every technology, and every problem set has been carefully crafted to fit together to create a cohesive experience. College instructors everywhere should take the course to see what the zenith of multimedia online education looks like.

sseagull 6y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that (according to the article) he took over the course in 2007. I have been interested in pedagogy and talking with all the great teachers, the one thing I see in common is the ability to update, improve, and iterate. Constantly. Pretty much every time the course is taught there is something slightly different. There is risk there (sometimes changes are harmful) but that is how you make the course better. My guess is that is the case here, and that the course 13 years ago was not nearly as refined. But he had a vision and stuck with it.
bachmeier 6y ago
I've watched some of the lectures of CS50 in the past, and the one question that has always come into my mind is this: "How do these lectures help you learn at a deep level?" I already knew most of the material, so I found it to be an entertaining review, but that's different from a beginner needing to learn new material at a deep level. I kind of think it'd be a nightmare to take good notes while watching his lectures. I'm not bashing the lecture style, but if I were a student, I'd prefer a good textbook to those lectures. In contrast, I watched all the lectures of Martin Odersky's functional programming MOOC. I learned a ton from that even when I'd already seen the material. His presentations were lower tech, with less razzle-dazzle, but my goal was to learn. His presentations are optimized (intentionally or not) to facilitate good note taking and later application.
- arcturus17 6y ago
  1. There’s a companion C book for the course 2. The labs go into much more detail compared to lectures 3. The psets can be Nintendo-hard; you’ll be doing devilish pointer stuff by week 3 or 4. The happy-go-lucky, flashy tone of the course is completely misleading. It is a challenging course, so much so that it’s been the subject of numerous cheating scandals from students caving under the pressure over the years. As for depth, this is a first intro to CS meant not only for CS majors but for people from other domains (Econ, humanities, hard sciences, what have you). The style is meant to cater to people who might not be a priori fascinated by flipping bits. Still quite a bit of people decide to concentrate on CS after taking the class, so it must be doing something right in that sense... The course is not mandatory for CS concentrators, so if you already know your fundamentals you can jump right into CS51 (functional programming) or CS61 (intro to systems), which are outstanding courses but much more terse in style.

bobochan 6y ago

My son took the AP version of the CS50 course last year in high school and showed me some of the exercises and videos. I immediately updated a lot of my own class materials after watching them and relentlessly hyped the edX class as a great companion to what we were learning. The entire environment, the culture, that Professor Malan has created is absolutely fantastic and I am incredibly grateful that Harvard has made this content available.

noelwelsh 6y ago
Can you get into some specifics that you adopted? I'm listening to the pedagogy video I linked in another comment and so far my takeaway is that Harvard / Malan has a LOT of money to spend on video production, TAs, and the like. That's not easily replicable.
- bobochan 6y ago
  Sure. I really thought a lot of the early exercises were things that my students would enjoy doing, especially ISBN, Cash, and Caesar. I sent them to the CS50 web site and even showed them my own C solutions so that they could translate them. I am teaching a lot of students that have never programmed before, so one of my big takeaways is that they are not just learning Language X, they are learning lessons in programming that are applicable in many other languages. One more thing, with the course needing to be quickly adapted to Zoom last spring, I really noticed the importance of being able to give students rubrics and tests so that they could run their code with different inputs and make sure they were getting the correct outputs. That might seem obvious, but in the past the class was often in lab mode where I could walk around the class and work with them interactively.

ambar123 6y ago

I think that it's better than building an meth empire

ru552 6y ago

Malan is an excellent teacher and I absolutely enjoyed the time I spent with the CS50 material.

RikNieu 6y ago

I owe my career to Malan and his CS50 course. That's how I learned to code. I wish him only the best.

vcsilva 6y ago

CS50 is a really well-crafted course, and Malan is an amazing educator. Taking this class online is one of the reasons that got me interested in CS and programming. I think that this course in particular really highlights the impact of a good teacher. In college I've had multiple professors who quickly made my dislike subjects that otherwise I would have really liked.

Separo 6y ago

I took CS50 in 2013. Malan was a phenomenal teacher and presented complex concepts with a pace and clarity that made them easy.

jcq3 6y ago

Perhaps people appreciate this course because the prestigious Harvard school is behind it. I would traduce that bias by "a good school involves necessarily good courses" . Is it true though?

valuearb 6y ago
My wife watched his class on the architecture of the internet. She’s not technical at all but was absorbed by it to the end. And I never told her it was from Harvard.
- ashtonbaker 6y ago
  Which course is this? I feel like I've seen it but I'm not able to find it with an internet search.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    I would like to find it too. I just related this story to my wife and she doesn’t remember watching it. I said “you were enraptured, and watched the whole thing?”! “Apparently it wasn’t that memorable“, she replied. Edit: Might be this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_KghQP86Sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_KghQP86Sw If so he’s updated it since we watched.
ghaff 6y ago
Not necessarily (although it often is, possibly because it's the rockstars who can afford the time and have the interest to play around with the MOOC thing). Early on with MOOCs, there was a Harvard literature course I was very excited about taking on Greek myth or something like that. I think I made it through about the first half of the first lecture. The whole thing felt incredibly pretentious and generally awful. (And, yes, I have taken literature courses at good colleges that were much more interesting.)

nanna 6y ago

It should be noted that such a slick class has had the priviledge of being granted the kind of institutional suport which is extremely rare across higher education today, at least in the West. Being allocated the same module for 13 years? Having it be the only module you teach? Having an entire production team at the ready? It's a mistake to think this is one man's achievement, and a model to universities everywhere of the kinds of quality that can be achieved if they give their staff a break from the endless restructurings, precarity, admin, overwork and burnouts that characterises the vast majority of their situations.

AlexCoventry 6y ago
What's the institutional incentive to switch up the teacher of a module?
- randcraw 6y ago
  Usually it frees up the prior instructor to a) teach a more advanced course or one that's closer to their research interests rather than teach the same beginner level course over and over, or b) conduct research, which is why most tier 1 research uni profs took the job anyway. Most major research uni profs are obliged to teach 2-3 courses per semester. Most would prefer to teach fewer or more advanced courses. Only those who love to teach revel in intro courses, and from what I've seen, that's less than 10% of profs at big name research-driven schools.
  - wastedhours 6y ago
    > that's less than 10% of profs at big name research-driven schools From my experience that extends quite a bit further than that too even for a university that wasn't research heavy. I'd argue about half of my lecturers at university back in the day saw Level 1 classes not only as a hassle, but had active disdain for teaching them.
    - nogabebop23 6y ago
      Which is totally backwards, as these classes are the point of contact where energetic, motivated new students get that magical passion that pushes them into an entire life in the field. When I was in grad school and expressed a desire to focus on teaching, primarily 100 & 200 level courses my supervisor said "that's the punishment we reserve for those who are failing in their research". Totally crushed my desire to work at converting tangential students into future leaders in our field.

CydeWeys 6y ago

> Malan sees it differently: it is wasteful, he said, to have thousands of teachers, in computer science or other fields, all doing the work of devising similar curricula. Good programmers spend much of their time “refactoring” software—editing it to reduce inefficiencies, or “code bloat.” Malan’s teaching method pursues a similar objective. “I don’t think we want just one introduction to computer science and one introduction to psychology or any such field,” he said. “But there’s probably a number around dozens—hundreds—that makes more sense?” Rather than threaten the livelihoods of professors or the independence of institutions, such consolidation would, Malan believes, free teachers to do their best work. And holding online courses to the same standards as in-person ones would allow students beyond the small, predominantly privileged groups who enroll in places like Harvard to access the highest-quality instruction. 100% agreed with this, and this is something I've often thought about. An unbelievable amount of work is spent replicating the same curricula, lectures, and course materials over and over and over again. Think of how many calculus textbooks there are for example: there's thousands in English alone, as math professors are incentivized to spend years of their lives writing a textbook they can then have their students buy every semester, and thus create a second revenue stream for themselves. There aren't a million encyclopedias anymore; Wikipedia has pretty much dominated that space. We need something in the education space to fill that niche as well. Imagine how much better an experience most students will have if, instead of watching a random teacher out of millions teach a subject, and using one out of thousands of textbooks, they are instead watching the absolute best lectures and using the single best amazing compendium textbook of knowledge for the subject material. There are some projects that are trying this (e.g. the Wikimedia Foundation has Wikibooks), but none are that successful yet. I can think of a variety of reasons why, mostly having to do with inertia, but the reasons why it should succeed are far more compelling.

jimhefferon 6y ago
An awful lot of good teaching is interpersonal. There is a long history of didn't-work's in educational tech and often it is because the hard part is not the material, it is having students form the right mental models. That involves motivating them, adjusting the flow of information, and helping them as they go through a sequence of successive approximations. Basically, at least until now, it involves working with people. Of course, things can change and this course is certainly very admirable. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

cosmodisk 6y ago

Take aside the crew that does all the filming and editing and the fact that they can have guests like Zuckerberg or Ballmer,and you have a passionate tutor,who is willing to go extra mile. When I was at school, I only had 2 teachers like this- won't forget them for my entire life. At uni, most were so so( as the whole uni itsel) and often more interested in anything but teaching. However, briefly,we had an ex HSBC guy,who was the finance professor. The guy was funny, captivating and knew his shit inside out. When asked why he left banking,he did say he was finding academia more interesting. And he was a perfect fit. A lot of people are good at doing research but they may not be very good teachers,or not at least in the setting most of us are familiar with( large audiences,one guy delivering knowledge). I had a chance to watch som recorded lectures from MIT, Harvard,and some other famous institutions and the quality of teaching some( not all though) manage to deliver is exceptional.

programmertote 6y ago
Agree. I have taken classes with over 40+ professors (close to 50, but I have also taken two or three classes with some profs) in my undergrad and grad school. Out of them, I can recall ~5 being pretty good instructors. Being a professor does not guarantee one is a good teacher/instructor. The thing that sets apart good instructors from mediocre ones is the passion they have toward teaching (esp. the good ones seem to have empathy as in they want students to succeed and understand the materials that the instructors themselves probably took a good amount of time digesting when they were in students' shoes).
- mettamage 6y ago
  Can confirm this. I taught for a bit (coding bootcamp, 1 year). I was super excited my first 3 months (it normalized after that) and during the whole year I had a lot of empathy in the sense that I felt their pain. It’s easy to feel someone’s pain when you yourself felt it a great deal as well back then. I was at my best during those first months. Experience and empathy all help but I could notice how being only slightly enthusiastic was hindering my performance.

mathattack 6y ago

I took the class. What didn’t scale were the TAs. It took 2 months to get anything graded. Malan’s response was “The TA will grade it within a week.” I suspect they’ve automated since.

zaphod4prez 6y ago
Yep, grading is fully automated now!

tijuco2 6y ago

"you don't need to attend Harvard" says the guy who attended Harvard. It sounds like a guy from a rich family who after failing some business, finally succeeded and then says: "if you fail, try again, don't give up". They just forgot that most people can't fail. That's a stupid advice

paulcarroty 6y ago

I've ended Harvard CS50 course and should say he's definitely one of the best, rockstar-like. Also seen tons of MIT, Berkeley and another courses from Coursera & Edx, so maybe can do the basic comparison. Secret maybe in very good covering of complex stuff and teaching style: pressure, fast moving between topics, playing with auditory in tv-show format, and nearly screaming to get attention while needed.

seddin 6y ago

David Malan is such a nice person, I remember when I was taking CS50 and found a syntax error and emailed him about it and he was so kind and fixed it.

compscistd 6y ago

I met Professor Malan once and asked him for some advice on overcoming imposter syndrome. His advice was a matter-of-fact, learn the things you feel like you don't know and it shouldn't be an issue. I still feel like that sometimes, but the way MOOCs are today makes it easier to approach anything I feel like I don't know.

deleted 6y ago

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Arete314159 6y ago

Sad to see the article did not mention the OG 1990's CS50 rockstar, Margo Seltzer.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

I think it might be useful to take a sneak peak at one of the past videos [0]. I did it. I found Prof. Malan to be very, very engaging. I wish one day everyone in the world will have access to this level of education for free, and not just for CS50. For everything. [0]: https://youtu.be/jjqgP9dpD1k https://youtu.be/jjqgP9dpD1k

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/1owAX https://archive.is/1owAX

eointierney 6y ago

The New Yorker needs editors More of less

f0rgot 6y ago

CS50 is THE reason I have a software development career today. Coincidentally, after CS50, I started watching an MIT Python course. If the MIT course had been my introduction so programming, I am sure that I would have dismissed software development as "not for me". I got lucky that my first exposure was CS50 - I owe a debt of gratitude to Malan.