5 ms·

Educators are going to need to deliver in-person value in excess of their cost. The writing is on the wall, there is no technological limitation preventing wor

by jcnnghm 13y ago

Educators are going to need to deliver in-person value in excess of their cost. The writing is on the wall, there is no technological limitation preventing world-class instructors from teaching everyone. This will doubtlessly be the first of many attempts by the entrenched to prevent this superior education from becoming the norm, out of fear they can't actually deliver real value aside from presenting slides.

SoftwareMaven 13y ago
There is a limitation: questions and answers. The place professors will have value is in direct student communication.
- bradddd 13y ago
  This is just the growing pains of two extremes that will ultimately best function in some form of compromise. All too often the argument is framed as "replace professors" etc, but it doesn't have to be so binary.
- jdreaver 13y ago
  I have had a handful of great discussions with professors, but if I had to choose between that and the awesome discussions I have had on MOOC forums, I would choose the MOOC route any day. Of course, that is simply my personal experience.
- jcnnghm 13y ago
  Certainly that's the new value prop, but wasn't a lot of that previously handled by teaching assistants? Personally, I think the Udacity "continuous Socratic method" approach is better than traditional lectures because it forces constant thought and engagement.
  - calinet6 13y ago
    It's still on a computer. I don't think it's a replacement. Not even close.
    - jerf 13y ago
      It sounds like you're begging the question (in the "correct" sense, not the modern vernacular sense). Computer education can't be as good as non-computer education, so therefore computer education isn't as good.
- jerf 13y ago
  Questions and answers aren't uniformly distributed. The bulk of questions will be from the same small set over time. Humans are only necessary for the exceptions. While this may never go to zero, it may not justify having an expensive human around answering what are mostly predictable questions over and over for the occasional bizarre one. (And I'd bet the bizarre ones often come from further weaknesses in the previous teaching which could be ground out of the MOOC over time.)
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Yeah, maybe they'll invent a book full of text that answers all the most commonly asked questions. ...like a textbook, which obsoleted teachers over a century ago. </sarcasm>
    - jerf 13y ago
      Text books do not have the feedback loop that online courses can have. In the worst case, they hardly have any feedback loop at all, even across decades. The tightness of the feedback loop changes everything, just like everything else that gets computerized. Like, say, this message board here we're having our conversation on, which is exactly the same as writing letters to the editor a hundred years ago, right...? Except for all the profound ways in which it is different.
- sageikosa 13y ago
  A bunch of eager students waiting to get a chance to discuss something with the educator can be handled on-line just as well as off-line, assuming both students and teachers have decent social media communicating skills.
  - SoftwareMaven 13y ago
    But that's a different topic: "Are classrooms a necessary component of education in the future?" is a very different question than "Are professors...?" I think the answer to both is probably "yes" but certainly not in the quantity they are today. I wouldn't want to be an employee at a teaching college over the next 10 years, much less a professor. The higher ed bubble is about to pop (between new technology, skyrocketing costs, and reduced perceived value, it's going to get hit on every side) and its going to be ugly when it does.
cafard 13y ago
If you pick up a copy of Hegel's smaller Logic or Philosophy of Mind, you will find that about 2/3 of the text (as I remember it) is essentially boiled-down lecture notes from his students. For all that, professors have taught courses on Hegel, and their students have had mixed success figuring out what exactly he was driving at.
LanceH 13y ago
Really. They don't need to outperform exceptional lecturing professors. They need to beat out all those awful TA's where the professor isn't lecturing at all.

by jcnnghm 13y ago

SoftwareMaven 13y ago

There is a limitation: questions and answers. The place professors will have value is in direct student communication.

bradddd 13y ago
This is just the growing pains of two extremes that will ultimately best function in some form of compromise. All too often the argument is framed as "replace professors" etc, but it doesn't have to be so binary.
jdreaver 13y ago
I have had a handful of great discussions with professors, but if I had to choose between that and the awesome discussions I have had on MOOC forums, I would choose the MOOC route any day. Of course, that is simply my personal experience.
jcnnghm 13y ago
Certainly that's the new value prop, but wasn't a lot of that previously handled by teaching assistants? Personally, I think the Udacity "continuous Socratic method" approach is better than traditional lectures because it forces constant thought and engagement.
- calinet6 13y ago
  It's still on a computer. I don't think it's a replacement. Not even close.
  - jerf 13y ago
    It sounds like you're begging the question (in the "correct" sense, not the modern vernacular sense). Computer education can't be as good as non-computer education, so therefore computer education isn't as good.
jerf 13y ago
Questions and answers aren't uniformly distributed. The bulk of questions will be from the same small set over time. Humans are only necessary for the exceptions. While this may never go to zero, it may not justify having an expensive human around answering what are mostly predictable questions over and over for the occasional bizarre one. (And I'd bet the bizarre ones often come from further weaknesses in the previous teaching which could be ground out of the MOOC over time.)
- saraid216 13y ago
  Yeah, maybe they'll invent a book full of text that answers all the most commonly asked questions. ...like a textbook, which obsoleted teachers over a century ago. </sarcasm>
  - jerf 13y ago
    Text books do not have the feedback loop that online courses can have. In the worst case, they hardly have any feedback loop at all, even across decades. The tightness of the feedback loop changes everything, just like everything else that gets computerized. Like, say, this message board here we're having our conversation on, which is exactly the same as writing letters to the editor a hundred years ago, right...? Except for all the profound ways in which it is different.
sageikosa 13y ago
A bunch of eager students waiting to get a chance to discuss something with the educator can be handled on-line just as well as off-line, assuming both students and teachers have decent social media communicating skills.
- SoftwareMaven 13y ago
  But that's a different topic: "Are classrooms a necessary component of education in the future?" is a very different question than "Are professors...?" I think the answer to both is probably "yes" but certainly not in the quantity they are today. I wouldn't want to be an employee at a teaching college over the next 10 years, much less a professor. The higher ed bubble is about to pop (between new technology, skyrocketing costs, and reduced perceived value, it's going to get hit on every side) and its going to be ugly when it does.

cafard 13y ago

If you pick up a copy of Hegel's smaller Logic or Philosophy of Mind, you will find that about 2/3 of the text (as I remember it) is essentially boiled-down lecture notes from his students. For all that, professors have taught courses on Hegel, and their students have had mixed success figuring out what exactly he was driving at.

LanceH 13y ago

Really. They don't need to outperform exceptional lecturing professors. They need to beat out all those awful TA's where the professor isn't lecturing at all.