5 ms·

Meh, most of the research will fail. The true learning happens in the surroundings. Most of what you learn will come from the stories and shared experiences of

Meh, most of the research will fail. The true learning happens in the surroundings. Most of what you learn will come from the stories and shared experiences of your peers, post-docs, and professors. This is why academies have existed for so long through history. This is also why I love this approach! The Ph.D. will only be successful if it's possible to replace the surroundings and people of academy with the internet. If she's successful, the success will be self evident. Unfortunately, I still have my doubts about the chances of success.

psyklic 17y ago
Most startups will fail too, but the true learning happens through the attempt itself. Having skilled, motivated people working with you (usually on different projects in grad school) enhances the experience, but if you aren't working hard and failing alongside them, then your "experience" will be for naught.
netsp 17y ago
If she's successful, the success will be self evident. Please elaborate. My understanding is that the great barrier to disruptive innovation in education, higher or lower is that success is not self evident.
- jballanc 17y ago
  In her first blog post she mentions: "My degree will be in Educational Technology with an emphasis in (what else?) Open Education as the Great Equalizer." In other words her experiment, if you will, is whether or not it is possible to replace the environment of a university with on-line resources, and she is the subject. She's investigating whether or not it is possible to get an advanced degree on-line by attempting to get an advanced degree on-line. Rather brilliant if you ask me.
  - netsp 17y ago
    Silly of me to miss that. Cute. Doesn't really solve the validation problem though Unless you place a lot of faith indeed in the PHD process.
hughprime 17y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail". In my experience most (proper scientific) research succeeds eventually, both in the sense that it (a) gives the authors something to write a paper about and (b) it adds something, however small, to the total accumulated store of human knowledge. I will say, though, that while reading a paper, or a book, or even going to a lecture, can be useful from time to time, just about everything I learned in my PhD and postdoc was learned from face-to-face conversation with people who knew more than I did. The internet can't replace that.
- jballanc 17y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail". I've been working toward my Ph.D. for 7 years now. In that time, I've been involved in no fewer than 15 different research projects. Many of those made it a month or two before the results indicated that there was nothing interesting to be learned, and we moved on to the next problem. (The value of negative results is a topic for a different debate.) What I meant by my statement is that, if you took the research that a graduate student does in a lab at a university, and then had them do the same research in a lab in their basement (or some other isolated environment without peers and mentors), they wouldn't learn nearly as much as they do in the university setting. The specific research being done isn't as important as the setting in which it is done.
  - psyklic 17y ago
    Questionable -- they would certainly learn different things if they did it in their basement. For example, so much in university is already set up for you -- constructing your own lab in your basement, calibrating machines, writing custom software to run experiments, etc. would be quite a learning experience. (I'm talking about experimental fields here.) But more importantly, in universities you are guided away from things that do not work usually without entirely understanding why. Through independent study, you would go down these incorrect paths and have a much richer understanding. Instead of doing things how everyone else does them, you'd gain new perspectives than the status quo, and this would give you a leg up. Of course, this all presumes that the student is extremely self motivated. Unfortunately, even at the graduate level these students are very rare. This is why some professors are very hands on and others are very hands off -- different students work best at different levels of independence.
scott_s 17y ago
I'm about a year away from my Ph.D., and I disagree. A Ph.D. is a merit badge for doing research. Most of what I have learned is from doing my research, with guidance from more experienced people. But there is no substitute for doing the work.
- jballanc 17y ago
  with guidance from more experienced people I would argue that you could've done some other research project than the one you did, and still learned most of the same lessons. The specific research is unimportant.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    You need to be interested in the research you do. Other than that, I agree the specific research you do is not the most important variable. But, it's not just research-related lessons that you learn. What you learn about your area when you do in-depth research can't be learned from taking a course.

psyklic 17y ago

Most startups will fail too, but the true learning happens through the attempt itself. Having skilled, motivated people working with you (usually on different projects in grad school) enhances the experience, but if you aren't working hard and failing alongside them, then your "experience" will be for naught.

netsp 17y ago

If she's successful, the success will be self evident. Please elaborate. My understanding is that the great barrier to disruptive innovation in education, higher or lower is that success is not self evident.

jballanc 17y ago
In her first blog post she mentions: "My degree will be in Educational Technology with an emphasis in (what else?) Open Education as the Great Equalizer." In other words her experiment, if you will, is whether or not it is possible to replace the environment of a university with on-line resources, and she is the subject. She's investigating whether or not it is possible to get an advanced degree on-line by attempting to get an advanced degree on-line. Rather brilliant if you ask me.
- netsp 17y ago
  Silly of me to miss that. Cute. Doesn't really solve the validation problem though Unless you place a lot of faith indeed in the PHD process.

hughprime 17y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail". In my experience most (proper scientific) research succeeds eventually, both in the sense that it (a) gives the authors something to write a paper about and (b) it adds something, however small, to the total accumulated store of human knowledge. I will say, though, that while reading a paper, or a book, or even going to a lecture, can be useful from time to time, just about everything I learned in my PhD and postdoc was learned from face-to-face conversation with people who knew more than I did. The internet can't replace that.

jballanc 17y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail". I've been working toward my Ph.D. for 7 years now. In that time, I've been involved in no fewer than 15 different research projects. Many of those made it a month or two before the results indicated that there was nothing interesting to be learned, and we moved on to the next problem. (The value of negative results is a topic for a different debate.) What I meant by my statement is that, if you took the research that a graduate student does in a lab at a university, and then had them do the same research in a lab in their basement (or some other isolated environment without peers and mentors), they wouldn't learn nearly as much as they do in the university setting. The specific research being done isn't as important as the setting in which it is done.
- psyklic 17y ago
  Questionable -- they would certainly learn different things if they did it in their basement. For example, so much in university is already set up for you -- constructing your own lab in your basement, calibrating machines, writing custom software to run experiments, etc. would be quite a learning experience. (I'm talking about experimental fields here.) But more importantly, in universities you are guided away from things that do not work usually without entirely understanding why. Through independent study, you would go down these incorrect paths and have a much richer understanding. Instead of doing things how everyone else does them, you'd gain new perspectives than the status quo, and this would give you a leg up. Of course, this all presumes that the student is extremely self motivated. Unfortunately, even at the graduate level these students are very rare. This is why some professors are very hands on and others are very hands off -- different students work best at different levels of independence.

scott_s 17y ago

I'm about a year away from my Ph.D., and I disagree. A Ph.D. is a merit badge for doing research. Most of what I have learned is from doing my research, with guidance from more experienced people. But there is no substitute for doing the work.

jballanc 17y ago
with guidance from more experienced people I would argue that you could've done some other research project than the one you did, and still learned most of the same lessons. The specific research is unimportant.
- scott_s 17y ago
  You need to be interested in the research you do. Other than that, I agree the specific research you do is not the most important variable. But, it's not just research-related lessons that you learn. What you learn about your area when you do in-depth research can't be learned from taking a course.