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I agree with his sentiment that this will fundamentally change education - but I have no idea who's going to take over things like certification of achievement

by Vivtek 14y ago

I agree with his sentiment that this will fundamentally change education - but I have no idea who's going to take over things like certification of achievement and certification of course quality. Certainly Coursera doesn't have any plan for the first and is relying on name recognition for the second, and ultimately that's not going to cut it. But somebody is going to get it right, and soon.

VLM 14y ago
"I have no idea who's going to take over things like certification of achievement and certification of course quality" Grade inflation and diploma mills, both incredibly popular in the brick and mortar .edu community, show "the market" doesn't care about those problems. My gut level guess is massive gamification. I'm not going to get "a" cert for my coursera quantum computation class, I'll get a "medal" in qubit definition, a medal in inner product calculations, a medal in mastery of the implications of the two slot experiment, etc. So your QC crypto startup wants to hire a dude with minimum 500 medals in physics, minimum 300 medals in quantum physics, minimum 100 medals in quantum cryptography. From the inside, as a coursera student, what I don't understand is why coursera is so chronologically limited. I must sign up before a certain date, must do homework before a certain date, must this date, must that date. I don't know why, other than they like arbitrary chronological limitations. So its youtube with a wiki and a quiz/survey program... why add a weird scheduling layer on top that doesn't fit the technology/culture of online education?
- bcbrown 14y ago
  I read something where the goal is to mimic the offline community of students at a real university. By having a large group of people all taking the class at the same time, you maximize the chances that if someone asks a question on the forum, someone else who's at the same point in the class will come across it and be able to answer it.
ecdobry 14y ago
edX looks promising.

by Vivtek 14y ago

VLM 14y ago

"I have no idea who's going to take over things like certification of achievement and certification of course quality" Grade inflation and diploma mills, both incredibly popular in the brick and mortar .edu community, show "the market" doesn't care about those problems. My gut level guess is massive gamification. I'm not going to get "a" cert for my coursera quantum computation class, I'll get a "medal" in qubit definition, a medal in inner product calculations, a medal in mastery of the implications of the two slot experiment, etc. So your QC crypto startup wants to hire a dude with minimum 500 medals in physics, minimum 300 medals in quantum physics, minimum 100 medals in quantum cryptography. From the inside, as a coursera student, what I don't understand is why coursera is so chronologically limited. I must sign up before a certain date, must do homework before a certain date, must this date, must that date. I don't know why, other than they like arbitrary chronological limitations. So its youtube with a wiki and a quiz/survey program... why add a weird scheduling layer on top that doesn't fit the technology/culture of online education?

bcbrown 14y ago
I read something where the goal is to mimic the offline community of students at a real university. By having a large group of people all taking the class at the same time, you maximize the chances that if someone asks a question on the forum, someone else who's at the same point in the class will come across it and be able to answer it.

ecdobry 14y ago

edX looks promising.