4 ms·

Stanford Class2Go

47 points by smagch 14y ago

noelwelsh 14y ago
This is intriguing: Professors have access to the classes' data to learn how their students learn. We will facilitate experiments. For example, we intend this to be the best plaform for running A/B/N tests to measure the impact of different teaching methods on student outcomes That they're giving data driven decision making such a prominent place is great. I would like to know more, though. Having taught before at the University level I know it's a ton of work. It's even more work if you're developing parallel versions of a course for testing purposes. So the A/B feature had better be really easy to use. There is also the ethical issue of giving students a worse performing variant of the class. The solution here is to use a bandit algorithm or an early stopping method to find the best variant as quickly as possible. Finally, I think the Coursera model where everyone runs through the course on the same schedule is not optimal for experimentation. It doesn't allow for a tight feedback loop, because you have to wait N weeks before you can experiment with changes on the next cohort.
thinkling 14y ago
Stanford is hosting the Intro to Databases class [1] on class2go, while the previous run was hosted on Coursera. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4880112 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4880112
- cyberp 14y ago
  Yup. Both Berkeley and Stanford -- Coursera's first schools -- are fleeing for the hills.
- 27182818284 14y ago
  I thought this was pretty annoying, actually. I was used to Coursera already, but had to create new logins, etc. Then I was confused because Coursera listed (and still lists) the DB course as coming soon at the same time leading up to the Class2Go version. :-( I'm slightly disappointed by the muddled way it was carried out.
ivan_ah 14y ago
The main objects in the code base can be examined here: https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main/c2g/models.py https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main... It looks like nice functionality that any online educational product could use. I certainly hope to use Also of interest is the urls.py which shows you all the different aspects of the web application. https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main/urls.py https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main... Good stuff.
themgt 14y ago
We were able the 'main' app booted after adding a requirements.txt: http://class2go.a.pogoapp.com/ http://class2go.a.pogoapp.com/ It would be nice if you could separate out the ops infrastructure from the actual application, to suit a wider variety of deployment scenarios.

47 points by smagch 14y ago

This is intriguing: Professors have access to the classes' data to learn how their students learn. We will facilitate experiments. For example, we intend this to be the best plaform for running A/B/N tests to measure the impact of different teaching methods on student outcomes That they're giving data driven decision making such a prominent place is great. I would like to know more, though. Having taught before at the University level I know it's a ton of work. It's even more work if you're developing parallel versions of a course for testing purposes. So the A/B feature had better be really easy to use. There is also the ethical issue of giving students a worse performing variant of the class. The solution here is to use a bandit algorithm or an early stopping method to find the best variant as quickly as possible. Finally, I think the Coursera model where everyone runs through the course on the same schedule is not optimal for experimentation. It doesn't allow for a tight feedback loop, because you have to wait N weeks before you can experiment with changes on the next cohort.

thinkling 14y ago

Stanford is hosting the Intro to Databases class [1] on class2go, while the previous run was hosted on Coursera. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4880112 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4880112

cyberp 14y ago
Yup. Both Berkeley and Stanford -- Coursera's first schools -- are fleeing for the hills.
27182818284 14y ago
I thought this was pretty annoying, actually. I was used to Coursera already, but had to create new logins, etc. Then I was confused because Coursera listed (and still lists) the DB course as coming soon at the same time leading up to the Class2Go version. :-( I'm slightly disappointed by the muddled way it was carried out.

ivan_ah 14y ago

The main objects in the code base can be examined here: https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main/c2g/models.py https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main... It looks like nice functionality that any online educational product could use. I certainly hope to use Also of interest is the urls.py which shows you all the different aspects of the web application. https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main/urls.py https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/main... Good stuff.

themgt 14y ago

We were able the 'main' app booted after adding a requirements.txt: http://class2go.a.pogoapp.com/ http://class2go.a.pogoapp.com/ It would be nice if you could separate out the ops infrastructure from the actual application, to suit a wider variety of deployment scenarios.