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Learning has changed dramatically. There are incredible YouTube channels on every subject. Open courses are offered by top Universities for free. What hasn't

Learning has changed dramatically. There are incredible YouTube channels on every subject. Open courses are offered by top Universities for free. What hasn't changed is credentialism. Because knowledge is free, everyone can claim to have it. So the value of a credential has gone up. An actual MIT degree vs classes taken at MIT OpenCourseware is orders of magnitude more significant. You can learn anything for free now. Proving you've learned it is still heavily gate kept.

rchaud 3y ago
> An actual MIT degree vs classes taken at MIT OpenCourseware is orders of magnitude more significant. Most people are not autodidacts, so this would be a common perception even without the credentialism.
- corimaith 3y ago
  Pretty much. I feel that most people fall in the category of "it would be nice to have these skills", but they aren't necessarily willing to pay the sacrifice in time and investment for it. Same applies for school really, yeah it would nice if I got an A for algorithmic game theory, and maybe the concepts are kinda interesting from a general level, but the nitty gritty is way too complex and painful for me to put beyond in what's required for a B. A big draw of college admissions is to filter out those not passionate. Learning without passion is the elephant in the room, and I feel once we can solve that then we can look at a real revolution. Although perhaps for the gulf between the passionate and the unpassionate, we may not be that interested in solving it.
  - bredren 3y ago
    The quality, accessibility and style of how educational material and instruction has a hand here. This seems to put much on any given individual having some necessary bit set which isn’t really how people work.
  - barnabyjones 3y ago
    I think the Duolingo approach has proven pretty successful, breaking things down into very small pieces with lots of encouragement and practice. Certainly it's a challenge to apply it to other subject areas, especially if you're trying to teach software that the student has to open up separately and use, but it's not impossible. It just takes an enormous amount of work structuring and optimizing the questions, UX and learning sequence.
ghaff 3y ago
There was sort of a naive belief that both credentialism and motivation could be solved if the material were out there. And, by and large, that wasn't true especially among the people who needed them the most. There's a huge amount of material out there for people who want it. But it's most applicable to people who already have credentials in some form.
graemep 3y ago
There have been huge changes, and where you do not need the credentials, or can get credentials separately from the courses, it has changed dramatically. I have one a number of online courses, watched lectures that are put on Youtube, used material from university courses from their websites, and more. Some work related, some just for fun. I do not think everyone has caught up with the changes, and the benefits for general education. It is not just for adult, professional or university level education either. There has is a lot available for school level (to be clear in the British sense - primary school, secondary school/high school) education. Schools have not (yet, I hope) changed although what some did during lockdown showed what could be done, but home educators have (at least to an extent): online courses, remote tuition, online materials are a huge advance on textbooks plus local classes or tutors. For example my daughter is doing an online course for history GCSE (UK exam taken at 16 in schools, roughly high school diploma level AFAIK), has a remote tutor for classical civilisation GCSE (and help with latin revision though she self taught that). The supervision for the observations for astronomy GCSE was done remotely too. There is a lot of potential to do things differently, but change takes time. Systems have a lot of inertia in them.

rchaud 3y ago

> An actual MIT degree vs classes taken at MIT OpenCourseware is orders of magnitude more significant. Most people are not autodidacts, so this would be a common perception even without the credentialism.

corimaith 3y ago
Pretty much. I feel that most people fall in the category of "it would be nice to have these skills", but they aren't necessarily willing to pay the sacrifice in time and investment for it. Same applies for school really, yeah it would nice if I got an A for algorithmic game theory, and maybe the concepts are kinda interesting from a general level, but the nitty gritty is way too complex and painful for me to put beyond in what's required for a B. A big draw of college admissions is to filter out those not passionate. Learning without passion is the elephant in the room, and I feel once we can solve that then we can look at a real revolution. Although perhaps for the gulf between the passionate and the unpassionate, we may not be that interested in solving it.
- bredren 3y ago
  The quality, accessibility and style of how educational material and instruction has a hand here. This seems to put much on any given individual having some necessary bit set which isn’t really how people work.
- barnabyjones 3y ago
  I think the Duolingo approach has proven pretty successful, breaking things down into very small pieces with lots of encouragement and practice. Certainly it's a challenge to apply it to other subject areas, especially if you're trying to teach software that the student has to open up separately and use, but it's not impossible. It just takes an enormous amount of work structuring and optimizing the questions, UX and learning sequence.

ghaff 3y ago

There was sort of a naive belief that both credentialism and motivation could be solved if the material were out there. And, by and large, that wasn't true especially among the people who needed them the most. There's a huge amount of material out there for people who want it. But it's most applicable to people who already have credentials in some form.

graemep 3y ago

There have been huge changes, and where you do not need the credentials, or can get credentials separately from the courses, it has changed dramatically. I have one a number of online courses, watched lectures that are put on Youtube, used material from university courses from their websites, and more. Some work related, some just for fun. I do not think everyone has caught up with the changes, and the benefits for general education. It is not just for adult, professional or university level education either. There has is a lot available for school level (to be clear in the British sense - primary school, secondary school/high school) education. Schools have not (yet, I hope) changed although what some did during lockdown showed what could be done, but home educators have (at least to an extent): online courses, remote tuition, online materials are a huge advance on textbooks plus local classes or tutors. For example my daughter is doing an online course for history GCSE (UK exam taken at 16 in schools, roughly high school diploma level AFAIK), has a remote tutor for classical civilisation GCSE (and help with latin revision though she self taught that). The supervision for the observations for astronomy GCSE was done remotely too. There is a lot of potential to do things differently, but change takes time. Systems have a lot of inertia in them.