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from the article "The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now,

from the article "The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course? You could hire James Cameron to do it. You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality] experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?" ------------------------------- So @pmarca why not fund James Cameron then?

nrao123 12y ago
@pmarca doesn't have the skills to back Jim Cameron. You would need a Warner Brothers/HBO in conjunction etc to back creative artists. Education is a story telling business which may or may not have software at the core. However, he could back the Warner Brothers equivalent in education who would go onto then back Jim Cameron. Here is another post comparing the Education & Entertainment business in the Indian context: http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-entertainment-two-peas-in-a-pod/ http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-e...
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Couldn't Khan Academy be that WB equivalent of education? Are they not doing the same thing, just with a much much smaller production budget?
sytelus 12y ago
Andreessen is really missing the point here, IMO. If I could learn everything by watching videos and listening to lectures then there are already thousands of high quality documentaries, TTC courses and so on. The thing is that we humans don't learn subjects deeply just by watching bunch of videos but only by actually doing things. For instance, there are probably 100s of videos and lectures on General Relativity out there. You can watch them endlessly and you would have some understanding of overall ideas but you would be at complete loss if someone takes simple exercise problems from any textbook and asks you to solve it. In other words, deep understanding doesn't happen simply by watching phenomenal documentaries. Major component that really matters in any academic programs is homework and exercises. This is what allows students to get deep insights in to subject and make sure they can actually put their learning in to action. It also allows professors to verify that they have actually crossed the line from shallow understanding to deep understanding. This is what you pay for when you go to college. No amount of video lectures by James Cameron is going to replace this.
- mercer 12y ago
  I agree, and I think the future is is on 'MOOCS' taking all this into account. However, the homework and group work I've done in my studies (two different ones) was almost universally terrible. I had a strong suspicion that the teacher didn't even bother to properly grade our papers or assignments. More importantly, there is no reason why the quality of homework and group work cannot benefit equally from scaling up.
  - sytelus 12y ago
    That's exactly the issue: Grading homework, assessing that it hasn't been copied from others requires an expert human being. Whenever you need expert human being in the chain, scaling goes out of the window.
- rtpg 12y ago
  I think one thing we could be doing is making more educational software. If you have a budget of $100 million then you could make a bunch of small prototype software to help tackle each class. I am still convinced that a lot of my critical thinking skills came from the Jump Start series I played as a kid.
xorcist 12y ago
This must be a joke. Right? The example of the world's best teacher is .. James Cameron. Why? Because he's rich? Throw money at rich people and the world will be better for it? There is nothing to suggest you'd learn math better with high production values or 3D effects or even talented actors(!). I simply can't take this seriously.
mbesto 12y ago
AFAIK, MOOCs are not meeting their expectations both in terms of financials and educational success. Thus the idea that MOOCs are the answer for everything (in any form) is probably shortsighted. Happy to be proven wrong.

nrao123 12y ago

@pmarca doesn't have the skills to back Jim Cameron. You would need a Warner Brothers/HBO in conjunction etc to back creative artists. Education is a story telling business which may or may not have software at the core. However, he could back the Warner Brothers equivalent in education who would go onto then back Jim Cameron. Here is another post comparing the Education & Entertainment business in the Indian context: http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-entertainment-two-peas-in-a-pod/ http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-e...

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Couldn't Khan Academy be that WB equivalent of education? Are they not doing the same thing, just with a much much smaller production budget?

sytelus 12y ago

Andreessen is really missing the point here, IMO. If I could learn everything by watching videos and listening to lectures then there are already thousands of high quality documentaries, TTC courses and so on. The thing is that we humans don't learn subjects deeply just by watching bunch of videos but only by actually doing things. For instance, there are probably 100s of videos and lectures on General Relativity out there. You can watch them endlessly and you would have some understanding of overall ideas but you would be at complete loss if someone takes simple exercise problems from any textbook and asks you to solve it. In other words, deep understanding doesn't happen simply by watching phenomenal documentaries. Major component that really matters in any academic programs is homework and exercises. This is what allows students to get deep insights in to subject and make sure they can actually put their learning in to action. It also allows professors to verify that they have actually crossed the line from shallow understanding to deep understanding. This is what you pay for when you go to college. No amount of video lectures by James Cameron is going to replace this.

mercer 12y ago
I agree, and I think the future is is on 'MOOCS' taking all this into account. However, the homework and group work I've done in my studies (two different ones) was almost universally terrible. I had a strong suspicion that the teacher didn't even bother to properly grade our papers or assignments. More importantly, there is no reason why the quality of homework and group work cannot benefit equally from scaling up.
- sytelus 12y ago
  That's exactly the issue: Grading homework, assessing that it hasn't been copied from others requires an expert human being. Whenever you need expert human being in the chain, scaling goes out of the window.
rtpg 12y ago
I think one thing we could be doing is making more educational software. If you have a budget of $100 million then you could make a bunch of small prototype software to help tackle each class. I am still convinced that a lot of my critical thinking skills came from the Jump Start series I played as a kid.

xorcist 12y ago

This must be a joke. Right? The example of the world's best teacher is .. James Cameron. Why? Because he's rich? Throw money at rich people and the world will be better for it? There is nothing to suggest you'd learn math better with high production values or 3D effects or even talented actors(!). I simply can't take this seriously.

mbesto 12y ago

AFAIK, MOOCs are not meeting their expectations both in terms of financials and educational success. Thus the idea that MOOCs are the answer for everything (in any form) is probably shortsighted. Happy to be proven wrong.