7 ms·

Will online classes make professors extinct?

25 points by esalazar 13y ago

jjoonathan 13y ago
Does anyone have numbers indicating the extent to which tuition subsidizes research funding or vice versa? I (and most HNers, I'd assume) wouldn't shed many tears over seeing the extraordinarily exploitative and inefficient institution of college education go through disruption. My experience has been that online lectures, course material, and forum discussions are more than up to the task of replacing their physical counterparts (pause+rewind is a killer feature, and the discussions in online forums are miles above anything I experienced in section/recitation). Hands-on labs are about the only thing that ought to have a marginal cost in this day and age. But I hate to think what disruption could do to academia. There are a handful of big (sometimes existential!) problems lurking on the horizon which absolutely rely on academia because incremental progress isn't amenable to monetization. I'm most worried about the drug industry. It's imploding (google "inverse moore's law"), leaving the basic science required to get over the slump in the hands of academics, and I don't want to wait 50 years for high-efficiency gene therapy (or let China grab the market) just because the research is tied to an outdated educational system. I know there's very little anyone can do about it, but I need to know the extent to which college tuition subsidizes said research before I can form a solid opinion on disruption. EDIT: Got off my ass and googled it. The NSF estimated in 1994 that 9.5% of research funding comes from tuition [1]. I would like to formally submit one internet-vote in favor of disruption, along with one internet vote to increase research funding to compensate :) [1] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm
- djf1 13y ago
  You mention pause+rewind as a killer feature. Another nice feature is the ability to watch at a faster or slower pace (I usually watch 1.5x). These conveniences have made it such that I strongly prefer watching taped lecture to physically attending class. Add to that the fact that you can almost always get a faster response from posting in an online forum (often Piazza for my Stanford CS classes) than attending overcrowded and understaffed office hours. Most of my education has already moved online. Even if online class doesn't make professors extinct, I think it will certainly make physical class time a thing of the past.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    Yes! 1.5x is fantastic! It solves the impedance mismatch inherent in human speech. 90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the remaining 10% takes 300% of available brainpower. If you have to listen at 1x speed you are either bored and sleepy or falling further and further behind, sometimes both. The pause button solves the falling-behind problem and 1.5x speed solves the boredom problem.
    - seehafer 13y ago
      "90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the remaining 10% takes 300% of available brainpower." I'd argue that's the result of poor communication, not any deficiency in human speech generally. Granted, it's very very hard to construct something with the right level of addressable information at every moment. But when it's done right it is glorious. I think one of the things people implicitly recognize in good communicators (not necessarily good orators, but good communicators) is their ability to tailor what they're saying in this way.
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
        Variance in the backgrounds of your audience and variance in the physical state of your audience (tired, sick, etc) places a strict upper bound on how well you can communicate. If one student isn't experiencing an impedance mismatch, you can probably find another that is, unless the class is extremely small and homogeneous. Pause+rewind is robust to these problems.
  - randomdata 13y ago
    Another feature that I have found to be quite useful is when I don't quite grok something, I can often quickly jump over to a lecture from a completely different person on the same subject. That alternative perspective can make it instantly clear.
  - danielbarla 13y ago
    I find that the phrase "pause+rewind" doesn't quite give the right impression; sure, sometimes you missed a sentence and need to rewind, and that's great. Other times, I'd like to fire up an editor and type out the code the lecturer's showing (I'm often surprised at how many things my mind missed just skimming the slide), see if it compiles, how it behaves for 10 minutes or so. Kind of like a self-imposed mini lab, if I'm feeling a bit behind on the topic at hand. Other times, it's great to play it at 1.5x, or even skip sections entirely. E.g. if I'm comfortable with the topic / environment, I don't want to sit through 20 minutes of setting an IDE up, or a walkthrough of "hello world". I wonder if it would be possible to deviate from the strict linear progression of lectures, and allow the learner to choose. The difficulties in prerequisite knowledge might outweigh the benefits, but it might be an interesting idea. More of a library of closely related lectures and information, rather than a single course.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  For my part, I don't consider college education to be exploitative or inefficient. People pay for the time and effort of professors who are very knowledgeable and have extraordinary teaching ability. I also think MOOCs have great potential, not because college education is bad, but because MOOCs allow the best educators to reach even more people. I don't expect the top-end of education to change much, but I hope that MOOCs can raise the overall quality of education.
  - bun-neh 13y ago
    Many universities are utilizing MOOCs and/or online material in order to implement a reverse classroom. In a reverse classroom, students watch lectures and do reading at home and class time is used to extend and reinforce that material usually by answering questions and working through more examples. Students take to it pretty well when video lectures are available (my experience is that book only reverse classrooms don't work as well). It also generally leads to better retention, since more time is spent on hands-on experience. Instructors also take it pretty well. Using an existing set of lecture materials reduces the preparation workload, especially in the first year teaching a course.
  - chongli 13y ago
    Only a small amount of the tuition goes to pay for professors. Most money goes to feed administrative bloat. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/bureaucrats-paid-250-000-feed-outcry-over-college-costs.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/bureaucrats-paid-25...
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      I read the article, but I'm not convinced that there really is "bloat". Higher education is bigger and more complex than it once was, and the people best able to make strategic decisions might also be expensive. Coming from private industry, those salaries don't seem particularly high.
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
- chanakya 13y ago
  Whatever the failings/inefficiencies of college education, I'm not convinced that online courses are the answer. Given the non-credit nature of current MOOCs, they attract mostly bright and self-motivated learners, which leads to high-quality discussions on the forums. Every school and every company in the world has a few such students/employees, and there are enough schools and companies in the world to make current MOOCs shine even if a small fraction of these people subscribe. SJSU's 'disastrous' experience with 'regular' students may indicate that most students need the discipline/peer presence of a physical college: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/23/education-revolution-dont-believe-the-hype-or-the-counter-hype/ http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/23/education-revol...
sanskritabelt 13y ago
I've taken several coursera courses and maybe the good ones are hiding in there somewhere but I'm really unimpressed by the ones I've seen.
- Simucal 13y ago
  Which courses have you taken? I've completed the Machine Learning course and I'm currently taking Cryptography 1 from Coursera. They both have been great.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    Machine Learning, Drug Development, Nuclear Energy, VLSI: Logic to Layout, Computer Architecture, and Analytical Chemistry were all somewhere between "good" and "great" in my book. ML and NE were aimed at non-specialists and weren't rigorous. Maybe that's the objection?
    - sanskritabelt 13y ago
      That's part of it, yeah, lots of courses out there but they tend to be things like survey courses, etc. Some of this is that the video content turns out to be the equivalent of only a 1 or 2 credit course.
      - sanskritabelt 13y ago
        There's a Stanford professor that has the videos from his class about the Fourier Transform on youtube, go compare that to (just about?) anything on Coursera.
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
        It's unfair to criticize Coursera for having survey courses if they also have deep courses, which they do. It would be nice if they had more, but that's not really a criticism.
- vacri 13y ago
chewxy 13y ago
Betteridge's Law of Headlines says NO. Katy Jordan did a study of MOOCs recently [0], and it was found that the completion rates are in fact quite abysmal. I suspect that the reason for this is because there isn't much incentive to continue studying. So this is very much in line with the guy saying at the end of the article: Here's a library, now go get knowledge. Learning, IMO doesn't happen like this. MOOCs will just perform the functions of a library, albeit far more efficiently. The function of a classroom (not necessarily a professor) is still quite necessary for structured learning. And of course, with a classroom comes TAs and professors... which makes the answer to the question, No [0]http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html
- ams6110 13y ago
  It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost any topic under the sun. Online makes that easier (you don't have to leave the house, or type up papers and mail them in) but fundamentally, online education still requires a lot of self-discipline. If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up institutions of education. The real problem with undergraduate university environments right now is that the perceived value has fallen dramatically as tuition rates have skyrocketed. The universities and providers of easy financial aid are to blame for that.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    > It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost any topic under the sun. MOOCs differ from just reading a book on important aspects: 1. You have a teacher break down the content for you 2. You have graded assignments, which helps giving confidence you're absorbing the content 3. Interactive media (video, software) can be a more effective media to explain certain concepts 4. You have interaction with other students learning the same subject > If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up institutions of education. Back in the day, your only chance of having access to knowledge was at institutions, so I'm afraid this is more of a tradition than anything else. Remember that the church was once the source of knowledge too. Nowadays though, people aren't going to college for knowledge as much as for filling a pre-requisite to enter the job market.
calinet6 13y ago
I've taken a couple Coursera and other self-led courses and it's not a good fit for me. I recognize my deficiency at self-directed learning, and I imagine many many people share it. I just can't learn that way. A good chunk of people will require social, interactive, and hands-on learning led by people to whom they can listen and converse. Until that experience is sufficiently reproduced online (and surely even after that), "professors" will not be out of a job. Also the title is hyperbole.
- bphogan 13y ago
  I agree with you 100%. I teach online and hybrid (part face to face, part online) courses. My students tell me they actively choose one or the other format. Some students cannot learn online and appreciate the ability to interact. I try to use the class time we have effectively, to demonstrate, to coach, to give feedback on their work. I save the "lectures" for their own time. I've taken online courses from some pretty bright people and never felt that they were a good fit because they were simply lectures. I don't learn by lecture. I learn by doing and getting feedback. I do horribly in "traditional" instructor-focused courses, AKA "lecture/test" courses. I do very well in courses where I can apply things. One thing I think is great about online education is the ability to reach a lot of people. But one thing that's terrible about it, in my humble opinion, is that it's harder to connect with students. My online classes have a cap of 27 students. I can manage a couple of courses like that. But in order to manage courses of 200-2000 people, I just would be putting up content and videos, and I'm sorry, but that's not teaching. That's nothing different than screencasts or books. If I get assessed, I want detailed feedback. I want to ask questions. And if those questions are being answered by a support staff, then there goes the argument of "learning from the best and brightest" that MOOCs advocate. I love teaching students hundreds or thousands of miles away. I don't think my role is going away any time soon, simply because I've evolved how I teach. The ones who should be worried are the ones who teach from the textbook and spend 64 hours per course lecturing from the front of the room. [edit to clarify reply]
gdahl 13y ago
Will high quality textbooks and the printing press make the medieval university go extinct?
molsongolden 13y ago
"Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. Even the greatest ideas of science are nothing more than working hypotheses, useful for purposes of special research but completely inapplicable to the conduct of our lives or the interpretation of the world. If, therefore, a man seeks education because he feels estranged and bewildered, because his life seems to him empty and meaningless, he cannot get what he is seeking by studying any of the natural sciences, i.e. by acquiring "know-how." That study has its own value which I am not inclined to belittle; it tells him a great deal about how things work in nature or in engineering: but it tells him nothing about the meaning of life and can in no way cure his estrangement and secret despair." - E.F. Schumacher (from his essay The Greatest Resource - Education) This quote is part a defense of the humanities and liberal arts as essential for presenting ideas of who, what, and why we are. Schumacher makes a strong distinction between education and training and I lean towards categorizing MOOCs as the latter. While they may achieve wider credentialed status, they will not and should not replace traditional educational institutions. Pricing, degree structure, and allocation of resources (professor pay vs. recreational amenities) might all need to be looked at but the mentor-pupil dynamic is essential to the liberal arts.
brubaker 13y ago
Pretty much every time a headline is in that format, the answer is "No" and the question is stupid.
eshvk 13y ago
Online courses are cute. The stanford machine learning course is a watered down travesty that doesn't compare to Andrew's original material out there. There is a reason for that too. The harder the courses get, the more it is nice to have an actual person to talk to about this shit. My real analysis class made sense only because I was able to talk to the professor after class and understand why I should care about open balls or closed balls. Similarly from a systems perspective, my OS class was the hardest C.S. class that I took. There was very little that I remember from the lectures but the most I took away was during designing shit and getting stuck and then going back and talking to the professor and brainstorming. This is stuff that inherently doesn't scale well to millions of people.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  That course isn't representative. I don't know the thinking behind it, (it was one of their earlier MOOC courses) but there are many courses with much better and harder content. Of course it is better to have a real person, but not everyone has that luxury, or their real professors are no good.
  - eshvk 13y ago
    Sure. Learning from data (caltech) is a good course. But all I got from the course was to go pick up the book and learn this stuff by working through the problem set. And I have a pretty decent linear algebra and probability background. Imagine if you are getting into this stuff new (which is not an unreasonable assumption considering the diverse background of ML folks), this would be brutal. Math is a contact, no holds barred sport where some hand holding initially is pretty damn nice. Also, I did some schooling in the third world and I am never going to come out and say that someone putting material for a course online is a bad thing. I am just annoyed by this idea that a bunch of online videos is a superior or equally effective replacement to an education at MIT or Stanford.
    - ilyanep 13y ago
      The online problem sets for the Caltech course aren't what you get in real life when the course is being actively offered, and also it was a pretty basic/easy course. That's not to say there aren't other hard classes online or that Yaser isn't great at teaching, but yeah...
sieva 13y ago
Schools aren't just going to disappear. It's natural for technology to take over a sizable chunk of the teaching process, handling inefficiencies as technology has always done best. It's probable that most of the world's population won't need to interact with professors, but a select few will always have the privilege of face to face learning. I believe there are too many niche studies for professors to be entirely replaceable. Not to mention the indirect benefits of attending a school campus.
ryanthejuggler 13y ago
No more than ebooks have wiped out printing.

25 points by esalazar 13y ago

Does anyone have numbers indicating the extent to which tuition subsidizes research funding or vice versa? I (and most HNers, I'd assume) wouldn't shed many tears over seeing the extraordinarily exploitative and inefficient institution of college education go through disruption. My experience has been that online lectures, course material, and forum discussions are more than up to the task of replacing their physical counterparts (pause+rewind is a killer feature, and the discussions in online forums are miles above anything I experienced in section/recitation). Hands-on labs are about the only thing that ought to have a marginal cost in this day and age. But I hate to think what disruption could do to academia. There are a handful of big (sometimes existential!) problems lurking on the horizon which absolutely rely on academia because incremental progress isn't amenable to monetization. I'm most worried about the drug industry. It's imploding (google "inverse moore's law"), leaving the basic science required to get over the slump in the hands of academics, and I don't want to wait 50 years for high-efficiency gene therapy (or let China grab the market) just because the research is tied to an outdated educational system. I know there's very little anyone can do about it, but I need to know the extent to which college tuition subsidizes said research before I can form a solid opinion on disruption. EDIT: Got off my ass and googled it. The NSF estimated in 1994 that 9.5% of research funding comes from tuition [1]. I would like to formally submit one internet-vote in favor of disruption, along with one internet vote to increase research funding to compensate :) [1] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm

djf1 13y ago
You mention pause+rewind as a killer feature. Another nice feature is the ability to watch at a faster or slower pace (I usually watch 1.5x). These conveniences have made it such that I strongly prefer watching taped lecture to physically attending class. Add to that the fact that you can almost always get a faster response from posting in an online forum (often Piazza for my Stanford CS classes) than attending overcrowded and understaffed office hours. Most of my education has already moved online. Even if online class doesn't make professors extinct, I think it will certainly make physical class time a thing of the past.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  Yes! 1.5x is fantastic! It solves the impedance mismatch inherent in human speech. 90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the remaining 10% takes 300% of available brainpower. If you have to listen at 1x speed you are either bored and sleepy or falling further and further behind, sometimes both. The pause button solves the falling-behind problem and 1.5x speed solves the boredom problem.
  - seehafer 13y ago
    "90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the remaining 10% takes 300% of available brainpower." I'd argue that's the result of poor communication, not any deficiency in human speech generally. Granted, it's very very hard to construct something with the right level of addressable information at every moment. But when it's done right it is glorious. I think one of the things people implicitly recognize in good communicators (not necessarily good orators, but good communicators) is their ability to tailor what they're saying in this way.
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
      Variance in the backgrounds of your audience and variance in the physical state of your audience (tired, sick, etc) places a strict upper bound on how well you can communicate. If one student isn't experiencing an impedance mismatch, you can probably find another that is, unless the class is extremely small and homogeneous. Pause+rewind is robust to these problems.
- randomdata 13y ago
  Another feature that I have found to be quite useful is when I don't quite grok something, I can often quickly jump over to a lecture from a completely different person on the same subject. That alternative perspective can make it instantly clear.
- danielbarla 13y ago
  I find that the phrase "pause+rewind" doesn't quite give the right impression; sure, sometimes you missed a sentence and need to rewind, and that's great. Other times, I'd like to fire up an editor and type out the code the lecturer's showing (I'm often surprised at how many things my mind missed just skimming the slide), see if it compiles, how it behaves for 10 minutes or so. Kind of like a self-imposed mini lab, if I'm feeling a bit behind on the topic at hand. Other times, it's great to play it at 1.5x, or even skip sections entirely. E.g. if I'm comfortable with the topic / environment, I don't want to sit through 20 minutes of setting an IDE up, or a walkthrough of "hello world". I wonder if it would be possible to deviate from the strict linear progression of lectures, and allow the learner to choose. The difficulties in prerequisite knowledge might outweigh the benefits, but it might be an interesting idea. More of a library of closely related lectures and information, rather than a single course.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
For my part, I don't consider college education to be exploitative or inefficient. People pay for the time and effort of professors who are very knowledgeable and have extraordinary teaching ability. I also think MOOCs have great potential, not because college education is bad, but because MOOCs allow the best educators to reach even more people. I don't expect the top-end of education to change much, but I hope that MOOCs can raise the overall quality of education.
- bun-neh 13y ago
  Many universities are utilizing MOOCs and/or online material in order to implement a reverse classroom. In a reverse classroom, students watch lectures and do reading at home and class time is used to extend and reinforce that material usually by answering questions and working through more examples. Students take to it pretty well when video lectures are available (my experience is that book only reverse classrooms don't work as well). It also generally leads to better retention, since more time is spent on hands-on experience. Instructors also take it pretty well. Using an existing set of lecture materials reduces the preparation workload, especially in the first year teaching a course.
- chongli 13y ago
  Only a small amount of the tuition goes to pay for professors. Most money goes to feed administrative bloat. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/bureaucrats-paid-250-000-feed-outcry-over-college-costs.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/bureaucrats-paid-25...
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    I read the article, but I'm not convinced that there really is "bloat". Higher education is bigger and more complex than it once was, and the people best able to make strategic decisions might also be expensive. Coming from private industry, those salaries don't seem particularly high.
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
chanakya 13y ago
Whatever the failings/inefficiencies of college education, I'm not convinced that online courses are the answer. Given the non-credit nature of current MOOCs, they attract mostly bright and self-motivated learners, which leads to high-quality discussions on the forums. Every school and every company in the world has a few such students/employees, and there are enough schools and companies in the world to make current MOOCs shine even if a small fraction of these people subscribe. SJSU's 'disastrous' experience with 'regular' students may indicate that most students need the discipline/peer presence of a physical college: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/23/education-revolution-dont-believe-the-hype-or-the-counter-hype/ http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/23/education-revol...

sanskritabelt 13y ago

I've taken several coursera courses and maybe the good ones are hiding in there somewhere but I'm really unimpressed by the ones I've seen.

Simucal 13y ago
Which courses have you taken? I've completed the Machine Learning course and I'm currently taking Cryptography 1 from Coursera. They both have been great.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  Machine Learning, Drug Development, Nuclear Energy, VLSI: Logic to Layout, Computer Architecture, and Analytical Chemistry were all somewhere between "good" and "great" in my book. ML and NE were aimed at non-specialists and weren't rigorous. Maybe that's the objection?
  - sanskritabelt 13y ago
    That's part of it, yeah, lots of courses out there but they tend to be things like survey courses, etc. Some of this is that the video content turns out to be the equivalent of only a 1 or 2 credit course.
    - sanskritabelt 13y ago
      There's a Stanford professor that has the videos from his class about the Fourier Transform on youtube, go compare that to (just about?) anything on Coursera.
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
      It's unfair to criticize Coursera for having survey courses if they also have deep courses, which they do. It would be nice if they had more, but that's not really a criticism.
vacri 13y ago

chewxy 13y ago

Betteridge's Law of Headlines says NO. Katy Jordan did a study of MOOCs recently [0], and it was found that the completion rates are in fact quite abysmal. I suspect that the reason for this is because there isn't much incentive to continue studying. So this is very much in line with the guy saying at the end of the article: Here's a library, now go get knowledge. Learning, IMO doesn't happen like this. MOOCs will just perform the functions of a library, albeit far more efficiently. The function of a classroom (not necessarily a professor) is still quite necessary for structured learning. And of course, with a classroom comes TAs and professors... which makes the answer to the question, No [0]http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

ams6110 13y ago
It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost any topic under the sun. Online makes that easier (you don't have to leave the house, or type up papers and mail them in) but fundamentally, online education still requires a lot of self-discipline. If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up institutions of education. The real problem with undergraduate university environments right now is that the perceived value has fallen dramatically as tuition rates have skyrocketed. The universities and providers of easy financial aid are to blame for that.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost any topic under the sun. MOOCs differ from just reading a book on important aspects: 1. You have a teacher break down the content for you 2. You have graded assignments, which helps giving confidence you're absorbing the content 3. Interactive media (video, software) can be a more effective media to explain certain concepts 4. You have interaction with other students learning the same subject > If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up institutions of education. Back in the day, your only chance of having access to knowledge was at institutions, so I'm afraid this is more of a tradition than anything else. Remember that the church was once the source of knowledge too. Nowadays though, people aren't going to college for knowledge as much as for filling a pre-requisite to enter the job market.

calinet6 13y ago

I've taken a couple Coursera and other self-led courses and it's not a good fit for me. I recognize my deficiency at self-directed learning, and I imagine many many people share it. I just can't learn that way. A good chunk of people will require social, interactive, and hands-on learning led by people to whom they can listen and converse. Until that experience is sufficiently reproduced online (and surely even after that), "professors" will not be out of a job. Also the title is hyperbole.

bphogan 13y ago
I agree with you 100%. I teach online and hybrid (part face to face, part online) courses. My students tell me they actively choose one or the other format. Some students cannot learn online and appreciate the ability to interact. I try to use the class time we have effectively, to demonstrate, to coach, to give feedback on their work. I save the "lectures" for their own time. I've taken online courses from some pretty bright people and never felt that they were a good fit because they were simply lectures. I don't learn by lecture. I learn by doing and getting feedback. I do horribly in "traditional" instructor-focused courses, AKA "lecture/test" courses. I do very well in courses where I can apply things. One thing I think is great about online education is the ability to reach a lot of people. But one thing that's terrible about it, in my humble opinion, is that it's harder to connect with students. My online classes have a cap of 27 students. I can manage a couple of courses like that. But in order to manage courses of 200-2000 people, I just would be putting up content and videos, and I'm sorry, but that's not teaching. That's nothing different than screencasts or books. If I get assessed, I want detailed feedback. I want to ask questions. And if those questions are being answered by a support staff, then there goes the argument of "learning from the best and brightest" that MOOCs advocate. I love teaching students hundreds or thousands of miles away. I don't think my role is going away any time soon, simply because I've evolved how I teach. The ones who should be worried are the ones who teach from the textbook and spend 64 hours per course lecturing from the front of the room. [edit to clarify reply]

gdahl 13y ago

Will high quality textbooks and the printing press make the medieval university go extinct?

molsongolden 13y ago

"Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. Even the greatest ideas of science are nothing more than working hypotheses, useful for purposes of special research but completely inapplicable to the conduct of our lives or the interpretation of the world. If, therefore, a man seeks education because he feels estranged and bewildered, because his life seems to him empty and meaningless, he cannot get what he is seeking by studying any of the natural sciences, i.e. by acquiring "know-how." That study has its own value which I am not inclined to belittle; it tells him a great deal about how things work in nature or in engineering: but it tells him nothing about the meaning of life and can in no way cure his estrangement and secret despair." - E.F. Schumacher (from his essay The Greatest Resource - Education) This quote is part a defense of the humanities and liberal arts as essential for presenting ideas of who, what, and why we are. Schumacher makes a strong distinction between education and training and I lean towards categorizing MOOCs as the latter. While they may achieve wider credentialed status, they will not and should not replace traditional educational institutions. Pricing, degree structure, and allocation of resources (professor pay vs. recreational amenities) might all need to be looked at but the mentor-pupil dynamic is essential to the liberal arts.

brubaker 13y ago

Pretty much every time a headline is in that format, the answer is "No" and the question is stupid.

eshvk 13y ago

Online courses are cute. The stanford machine learning course is a watered down travesty that doesn't compare to Andrew's original material out there. There is a reason for that too. The harder the courses get, the more it is nice to have an actual person to talk to about this shit. My real analysis class made sense only because I was able to talk to the professor after class and understand why I should care about open balls or closed balls. Similarly from a systems perspective, my OS class was the hardest C.S. class that I took. There was very little that I remember from the lectures but the most I took away was during designing shit and getting stuck and then going back and talking to the professor and brainstorming. This is stuff that inherently doesn't scale well to millions of people.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
That course isn't representative. I don't know the thinking behind it, (it was one of their earlier MOOC courses) but there are many courses with much better and harder content. Of course it is better to have a real person, but not everyone has that luxury, or their real professors are no good.
- eshvk 13y ago
  Sure. Learning from data (caltech) is a good course. But all I got from the course was to go pick up the book and learn this stuff by working through the problem set. And I have a pretty decent linear algebra and probability background. Imagine if you are getting into this stuff new (which is not an unreasonable assumption considering the diverse background of ML folks), this would be brutal. Math is a contact, no holds barred sport where some hand holding initially is pretty damn nice. Also, I did some schooling in the third world and I am never going to come out and say that someone putting material for a course online is a bad thing. I am just annoyed by this idea that a bunch of online videos is a superior or equally effective replacement to an education at MIT or Stanford.
  - ilyanep 13y ago
    The online problem sets for the Caltech course aren't what you get in real life when the course is being actively offered, and also it was a pretty basic/easy course. That's not to say there aren't other hard classes online or that Yaser isn't great at teaching, but yeah...

sieva 13y ago

Schools aren't just going to disappear. It's natural for technology to take over a sizable chunk of the teaching process, handling inefficiencies as technology has always done best. It's probable that most of the world's population won't need to interact with professors, but a select few will always have the privilege of face to face learning. I believe there are too many niche studies for professors to be entirely replaceable. Not to mention the indirect benefits of attending a school campus.

ryanthejuggler 13y ago

No more than ebooks have wiped out printing.