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As someone who had to drop out of school in the 2008 crisis (family trouble), I owe a good chunk of my learning to the first era of online teaching. Those cour
by torben-friis 10mo ago
As someone who had to drop out of school in the 2008 crisis (family trouble), I owe a good chunk of my learning to the first era of online teaching.
Those courses that were basically “we’re a top university and we let someone record the class from the back” were a literal life changer. Honestly, that was all I wanted.
Everything that came after has been substantially worse. Work is gamified, teachers spend more time building an audience than creating the product… it’s all horribly tainted by profit.
If we went back to recording lectures by the worlds best and putting it online for free with attached books and exercises, we could improve the world a lot.
- coldcache 10mo agoMIT OCW does a great job of this
- azangru 10mo ago> Those courses that were basically “we’re a top university and we let someone record the class from the back” were a literal life changer. Honestly, that was all I wanted. Does anyone remember what happened to UC Berkeley? They had a lot of their courses recorded and uploaded to youtube; an absolute joy. Then, some [beep] sued them for not making the recording accessible enough, i.e. not providing captions alongside the recordings. And they had to take down all their published courses! Because if someone cannot make use of those courses, then no-one can! Such a shame! Especially considering how these days, captions can be generated automatically for anyone who really needs them.
- komali2 10mo agoIt got archived https://archive.is/D1Ail https://archive.is/D1Ail
- Blackthorn 10mo agoWhere is the archive available for use?
- komali2 10mo agoIn that link. "Uploaded" column in table is archive links. Or scroll to "archive efforts" for links to torrents.
- Blackthorn 10mo agoThere's nothing in the uploaded column, and the torrent link does not exist. Edit: interestingly, refreshing the page filled out the uploaded column.
- ibrahima 10mo agoIirc the complaint was that machine generated captions were not good enough :(. Yeah it's pretty sad.
- edent 10mo ago[flagged]
- ghaff 10mo agoMachine transcriptions are obviously better than they used to be. But requiring perfect human transcriptions in this day and age would IMO be unreasonable for most purposes. Certainly machine transcriptions are used these days for purposes that most intelligent people would judge to be perfectly reasonable.
- BeFlatXIII 10mo agoSo the rest of the world should have the access removed out of some delusion of fairness?
- tourmalinetaco 10mo agoSo if 4% of the population cannot partake, then the other 96% should be barred from participating?
- vasco 10mo agoPeople really believe this. And also if you mention other disabilities that affect a similar ratio to the one they care about, ie 0.16% of people, they'll say it's too expensive and doesn't affect enough people. Like what if I want this content to be consumable by people who have such heavy learning disabilities that the whole content would need to be 20x as long and explained much more step by step?
- brendoelfrendo 10mo agoIf 4% of the population cannot partake of your services, then it is you who are being the asshole, not the 4% of people asking for an accommodation.
- wtetzner 10mo agoThey were uploading these for free. The end result of the videos being taken down is that they are now even more inaccessible to that 4% than they were before. Making things more accessible is a worthy goal, but the world is imperfect and making things better requires resources.
- LeoPanthera 10mo ago> And they had to take down all their published courses! No. They chose to take them down, instead of providing reasonable accommodations to those with disabilities. Choosing to see everything in the most cynical light doesn't make that version of events true.
- bdbdbdbdbd 10mo agoHow is this a better outcome than not having captions on free content? Which can be Auto dubbed on YouTube anyway
- vasco 10mo agoYes but it's stupid to force them to do it. If the state wants to demand this the state can pay for it. To hide free knowledge just because of a few specific pet disabilities... The content is also not accessible to someone with serious enough learning disabilities for example. Should they be forced to create an accessible version of that?
- lief79 10mo agoOddly enough, UC Berkley is public education, so it's the federal government and state government. At least technically true.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- BenFranklin100 10mo agoYou realize it would cost a significant resources to make the “accommodations” you are suggesting? Money, despite what you may believe, doesn’t grow on trees. Given the range of worthy competing interests where the money could be spent, the university likely had no practical choice but to take it offline, lest it face the bad press and wrath of Progressives. You remind me of people who insist every single new apartment must be ADA compliant instead of a reasonable percentage throughout the city. Another example is banning SROs on the grounds they are “inhumane”. The moral purity results in less housing and forcing people to live in the cars or on the street.
- BeetleB 10mo agoYou're missing important context, which is that they were required by (federal) law to provide said accommodation, and they failed to do it (some would say they chose not to do it). It was easier (cheaper) to pull the plug. Don't blame the litigant. If you don't like it, change federal law.
- blitz_skull 10mo agoThey got sued for not having subtitles… no thanks. I think I’ll blame the chucklefucks that thought, “Oh an opportunity for a quick buck” and resulted in everyone losing a valuable resource.
- rat87 10mo agoIt's not about money it's about making sure things are accessible. The ADA is one of the reasons America is more accessible then Europe. Lawsuits are the enforcement mechanism
- blitz_skull 10mo agoYour argument is that someone sued Berkeley for posting free education materials online purely in the name of accessibility and not to make a quick buck? Free education provided at zero profit to Berkeley, to great benefit to the public, and it was just the wholesome desire for subtitles that made the case? Bullshit.
- BeetleB 10mo ago> and not to make a quick buck? Tell us - how much money did they make?
- raw_anon_1111 10mo agoHow accessible is the course now?
- 10mo ago
- secabeen 10mo agoIt's going to get worse, ADA Title II updates require that by April 2026 all PDFs and documents be used by UCB be accessible to the WCAG 2.1 AA standard. I expect a lot of third-party content currently hosted on University of California websites will go away. https://dap.berkeley.edu/documents-forms/pdfs https://dap.berkeley.edu/documents-forms/pdfs https://dap.berkeley.edu/ada-title-ii-updates/title-ii-ada-what-does-it-mean-us https://dap.berkeley.edu/ada-title-ii-updates/title-ii-ada-w...
- Aurornis 10mo ago> If we went back to recording lectures by the worlds best and putting it online for free with attached books and exercises, we could improve the world a lot. I learn well this way. You learn well this way. However, the big revelation from the early experiments with online courses and MOOCs is that most people don’t. Fundamentals of math, history, physics, and other core topics aren’t changing except maybe for some context on current applications (e.g. how math applies to machine learning, how historical context relates to current events). Those same online course recordings you watched are still valid. There is some room for improvement with new recordings with new gear and better audio, but it’s marginal. Once those courses are recorded and released, we don’t need to keep doing it every year over and over again. The material is out there, it’s just not popular to self-learn at a self-directed pace.
- ghaff 10mo agoYou need forced exercises, you need grading, you need something of a schedule. Not to say people can't do it. But, especially for difficult material, even a lot of motivated people won't. I mean I remember what undergrad (and grad school) was like and I'm pretty sure doing that independently and optionally would be tough.
- bluGill 10mo agoJust look at success for adults learning the things adults commonly take up: languages or musical instruments. There is some good results, but mostly you find people who can say "Hello, how are you" and no more; or they can play some simple songs but nothing major. It takes hours and hours of practice / study time to learn anything hard. You can find a lot of community ed classes that will bring you to about that level in many subjects, but it is hard to find anyone willing to put in the hours needed to learn something to more than a surface level.
- ghaff 10mo agoI agree. There are a lot of activities that you can get the basics of pretty quickly given some natural abilities/talents/interest. But most adults won't have the time or inclination to spend hundreds of hours (and probably money) on often rather boring exercises to reach the next level of an activity like playing an instrument.
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoAlmost my entire education has been OJT (On the Job Training). I'm a high school dropout, with a G.E.D. I've spent my entire life, looking up the noses of folks that just assume they are better than me. Gets a bit grating, but the plus side is, is that I have to prove myself, over, and over. Besides that annoyance, it's been excellent. Directing my own learning has been amazing. Having to prove myself, over and over, and over again, has taught me to deliver results, because no one is willing to front me anything, or give me the benefit of the doubt. Delivery is my "at rest" state, and that kind of thing is hard to teach (Play A Boy Named Sue, by Johnny Cash). What you talk about works well for people like me (and you, from the sound of it), but a lot of folks need more structure. A lot of institutions also need that paper. There are many doors that are closed to people like us. My first formal school was a fly-by-night tech school, created to milk the GI Bill, after Vietnam. The school has long since, fallen to dust, but it was exactly what I needed, at the time. It taught me structure, troubleshooting, and problem-solving. When I left, I was ready to immediately jump into the deep end. I like the idea of vocation-oriented post-K12 schooling, including things like union apprenticeships. The problem is that, in the US, these aren't really supported by "The Establishment," so we tend to get rather dodgy outfits (like the one I attended). I have heard that German University is highly vocation-oriented. I've been impressed by many of the Germans with whom I've worked. I feel that they are extremely results-driven. That may be because of the particular company that I worked for, and the types of engineers that our field attracts, though.
- nkmnz 10mo agoTertiary education in Germany is pretty much a continuum. On one end, you have "Berufsakademien" that offer bachelor's degrees with integrated vocational training – you need to find the employer yourselves, they pay your fees and some salary that you can live off (more or less). On the other end, there's Ivory Tower Academia where no one cares about what happens outside of the classroom. And there is everything in between those two poles.
- thaumasiotes 10mo ago> Play A Boy Named Sue, by Johnny Cash It's by Shel Silverstein; Johnny Cash just performed it.
- philipwhiuk 10mo ago> If we went back to recording lectures by the worlds best and putting it online for free with attached books and exercises, we could improve the world a lot. How is that a viable model?
- falcor84 10mo agoMaybe improving the world is a good idea regardless of whether it's a viable model? Anyway, in this case, the cost to the university is quite low and there's no real loss of income, as the real value the vast majority of people pay for is clearly in the status that comes from being there in person and getting the diploma.
- ASalazarMX 10mo agoMaking the world a better place sometimes is incompatible with a profitable business model, that's why donations still exist.
- SamDc73 10mo ago> If we went back to recording lectures by the worlds best and putting it online for free with attached books and exercises, we could improve the world a lot. MIT OpenCourseWare still upload a lot of their lectures to YouTube for free (been doing it for decades) and pretty sure some other universities do the same. The main problem with online courses is lack of "direction" and engagement (which both Udemy and Coursera don't solve)
- clw8 10mo agoStanford's Youtube channel is also a goldmine. There's actually a lot of professors that put their lectures on Youtube, you just have to look (or watch enough that the algorithm finds them for you).
- SamDc73 10mo agoI find the Stanford channel a bit hard to navigate, MIT has a dedicated channel for the courses and another one for the other stuff, I wish Stanford did the same. The same applies to Harvard too
- 3abiton 10mo agoShout outto MIT open courses, and Stanford online for pioneerig this.
- nsagent 10mo agoAgreed. That's how I got my start in ML, through Andrew Ng's course a little over a decade ago. I then went on to get my PhD in CS focused on NLP.