tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post1381768720404220660..comments2024-03-28T00:36:13.790-07:00Comments on Volatile and Decentralized: Making universities obsoleteMatt Welshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04255792550910131960noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-32109669233703838972012-02-09T04:55:06.141-08:002012-02-09T04:55:06.141-08:00Great Article about the Personality Development Co...Great Article about the Personality Development Courses. Please update more new its more useful to viewers.Personality Development Courseshttp://www.careerstrokes.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-82206226495160341252012-02-08T10:45:55.114-08:002012-02-08T10:45:55.114-08:00Here is how MITx will solve that problem. (Dr Anan...Here is how MITx will solve that problem. (Dr Anant Agarwal's interview)<br />http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/mits-new-free-courses-may-threaten-the-traditional-model-programs-leader-says/35245<br />------------<br />"In the very short term students will have to pledge an honor code that says that they’ll do the work honestly and things like that. In the medium term our plan is to work with testing companies that offer testing sites around the world, where they can do an identity check and they can also proctor tests and exams for us. For the longer term we have quite a few ideas, and I would say these are in the so-called R&D phase, in terms of how we can electronically check to see if the student is who they say they are, and this would use some combination of face recognition and other forms of technique, and also it could involve various forms of activity recognition."<br />----------<br /><br />Topic for tons of PhD thesis...Deveshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-27710989541318586392012-02-07T13:34:27.776-08:002012-02-07T13:34:27.776-08:00The other issue regarding online courses is how on...The other issue regarding online courses is how one can be sure that the person turning in papers and taking exams is the same person upon whom you're conferring the degree. Even live exams and interviews won't help unless you can expertly scrutinize the proferred identification and determine that it matches the person carrying it (as we saw with the SAT scandal). However, it's unlikely that unscrupulous students could hire someone to sit through an entire course for them in a traditional classroom setting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-39840661131920594782012-02-06T19:03:11.801-08:002012-02-06T19:03:11.801-08:00Problem that I see with online education is qualit...Problem that I see with online education is quality of homework. Lectures taught by Prof Andrew Ng, Trun and Prof Widom were all great but quality of homeworks was really poor, infact as graduate student in a univ ranked mid 30's, I would have done better assignments and projects in machine learning class than online machine learning class (on-campus CS 229 although has same rigour). Another thing is that we dont have technology right now which can grade tens of thousands of students partially, you either get results or you dont'. Imagine a course like online algorithms, it would be naive to ask multiple choice questions to students or ask them to write pseudo code which a computer program can grade partially.Yogeshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08581340792630245872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-82586075650991969782012-02-06T10:14:48.885-08:002012-02-06T10:14:48.885-08:00Hi Matt, we have created an open, non-profit calen...Hi Matt, we have created an open, non-profit calendar blog called One Change A Day which will feature 365 blog posts from around education and mooc worlds. This blog will also tell a story of how new ways of connecting with each other online are irreversibly changing education. It will also be published as a shared artifact of everyone’s experiences in print and digital calendar format at the end of the year.<br /><br />We would love to include your post, with your kind permission. The calendar blog is using the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License licence. Would this cause any conflicts with your current publishing permissions?Nicolahttp://moocblogcalendar.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-75170256153825786542012-02-02T12:18:49.427-08:002012-02-02T12:18:49.427-08:00I'd like to make a point on rote memorization ...I'd like to make a point on rote memorization in medicine. Doctors need to wield an amount of information daily, that is unfathomable to "mere mortals". They are thinking about patients on a plane that lay people can't really appreciate even if Doctor House dumbs it down for them.<br /><br />The rote memorization prepares the mind for dealing with that kind of knowledge. I know I didn't like Chemistry or Biochemistry, and I forgot close to 90% of it over the years, but it made me think about the world in chemical terms and it makes be better at dealing with "chemical" information. It is a little like Andrew Ng talks about in his "Unsupervised Feature Learning" Lectures. You have to learn a bunch of apparantly useless stuff to prepare your brain for the real task.<br /><br />So, yes, rote Memorization is neccessary. As to the clinic hours... I don't know ;-)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698807009161390255noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-83828350053402935112012-02-01T11:02:13.064-08:002012-02-01T11:02:13.064-08:00"Location" is a key word here. We are no..."Location" is a key word here. We are no longer limited to "either" on campus "or" off campus. If limited access to membership of an elite group is what is desired, than limiting access by keeping the number of spaces in a course below a limited number is a good idea. However, this is not about the campus, it is about education. Just as we should not be overly concerned about the future of the book, but rather about the future of reading, we should focus less on the future of the university and more on the future of learning.<br /><br />Mark McGuire<br />http://markmcguire.net/Mark McGuirehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02909690575519677604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-13936680895188419552012-02-01T10:10:33.278-08:002012-02-01T10:10:33.278-08:00The incentive issue is an important one, and it re...The incentive issue is an important one, and it relates to the business model. At many universities, the institution's reputation and exclusivity easily trump education. The personal goals of individual teaching staff (career advancement, recognition by their peers in the field, power) must also be taken into account. The need for a dotcom startup to realize a return for its investors will, understandably, influence decisions regarding access and the structure of any site or experience.<br /><br />markmcguire.netMark McGuirehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02909690575519677604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-30769267212216508432012-01-29T08:17:27.966-08:002012-01-29T08:17:27.966-08:00One can glean MUCH more out of a recorded lecture ...One can glean MUCH more out of a recorded lecture of a great professor than attending a lecture taught by a mediocre one. I recently completed Andrew Ng's free online machine learning course, and it was without a doubt the best course I've ever taken. Now I'm absolutely convinced that online learning can be extraordinarily effective, and has many advantages over the traditional lecture course. Obviously when it comes to cost-effectiveness, there is no contest. For a tiny fraction of what I've been paid to teach mathematics courses over the years (1-2 Mega dollars), Professor Ng, in one semester, was able to effectively teach several times the number of students who've attended my classes over two decades. And that free machine learning class can be truly life-changing for those who work through the class. For the knowledge imparted is immediately applicable to real-world problems and is in great demand. Taking Andrew Ng's machine learning class gave me a clear view of the future of education. And that future is here now!Rafael Espericuetahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15605719453112562680noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-9388697556136627462012-01-28T22:17:52.154-08:002012-01-28T22:17:52.154-08:00List of Universities in India, Top Universities in...List of Universities in India, Top Universities in India, Best Famous Universities in India if you want more visit below <br /><br /><a href="%E2%80%9Dwww.studyguideindia.com/Universities/%E2%80%9D" rel="nofollow"> List of Universities in India </a>seoseohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10499347486868871002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-87755151338684098092012-01-26T16:01:59.696-08:002012-01-26T16:01:59.696-08:00Has no one ever given (or sat in on) a lecture whe...Has no one ever given (or sat in on) a lecture where there was <em>interaction</em> between the students and the instructor that made the lecture better? Certainly not every class I teach is like that, but the few times each semester that is happens it feels magical. This cannot be replicated by video.<br /><br />I continue to be surprised at how few students ask questions during lecture, or even come to my office hours. Of course, I didn't do that either as an undergrad, but if I knew then what I know now, I definitely would have taken advantage of the opportunity. This, too, is something that video courses don't offer.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-19804723072218295282012-01-26T15:36:15.556-08:002012-01-26T15:36:15.556-08:00I wanted to throw out a learner's perspective ...I wanted to throw out a learner's perspective (Matt, I took your OS class at Harvard a few years ago):<br /><br />It wasn't until CS161 that I felt like someone actually sat me down and tried to teach me programming - two years into my CS degree! I was allowed to float through the program with huge holes in my knowledge. Universities/professors are forced to make assumptions about student ability and teach the same material to the whole class. Remediation is crucial but totally neglected. If it weren't for TAs like Geoff, and one patient fellow student, I would have been utterly lost. Unfortunately, we only ever put bandaids on my faulty foundational knowledge. Khan Academy has an obvious solution for this problem. In math, for example, you can go all the way back to 2 + 2 and fix any problems along the way. Intuition and mastery are stressed over completion of a course (what does that even mean?). If you suck at something, you stop and go back. There's no point in moving forward without fixing the problems. But high-school/university courses only move in one direction. This is wrong. The but-community-is-good! counter-argument doesn't hold water with me. You can have community learning without all being at the same level, which is already true of university courses (top of the class versus bottom of the class). We'd just be acknowledging the obvious. <br /><br />Being there in person doesn't make *that* big a difference. If you want to be around smart, like-minded people, you can go out and find them. Co-working environments and community-based meetups can fulfill this function. Granted, probably with less sex. For some, that might be worth the money...Laurence Favrothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13555600512373693909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-59077106854005392462012-01-26T09:14:27.529-08:002012-01-26T09:14:27.529-08:00I must say that the failures mentioned really don&...I must say that the failures mentioned really don't resonate with me at all in my experience (CS undergrad at large, public institution and now teach CS at a liberal arts school). Maybe they are mostly applicable to very highly ranked CS departments? As a result, I don't think it's correct to call these "failings of the conventional higher education model." There are TONS of colleges and universities out there where professors would never be able to get away with making a class hard on purpose to cut down on enrollment. And at many colleges, professors have long ago abandoned traditional lectures and instead keep classes exciting and dynamic, mixing in small group activities, etc. <br /><br />So, it seems like maybe the better solution to some of the failures is simply for professors to do a better job teaching! This could be about the lack of rewards for good teaching and the lack of punishment for bad teaching at top research institutions, but that doesn't excuse bad behavior like purposely making a class overly-hard. I've, sadly, heard too many professors says things like "The education model is clearly broken: I did a bad job teaching and no one seemed to care!" <br /><br />As for online lectures/learning, like any teaching style, it would be great for some and horrible for others.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-20620550832883032792012-01-26T08:25:08.791-08:002012-01-26T08:25:08.791-08:00Wow, Matt, we really should talk !! At UniShared, ...Wow, Matt, we really should talk !! At UniShared, we're sharing many of your thoughts (http://www.unishared.com). Today's online education is "everybody learning alone", whereas UniShared aims at reproducing the University experience by connecting students with curious people sharing the same learning goals. Feel free to add me on Skype (ID clementdelangue).<br /><br />Cheers!<br /><br />ClementClémenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11492303283406661962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-85039463626256289112012-01-25T22:15:36.000-08:002012-01-25T22:15:36.000-08:00Thanks. I agree in the concept of grades as feedba...Thanks. I agree in the concept of grades as feedback, and if you look at what Thrun and Norvig did with the AI course you see students are getting constant feedback through mini-quizzes during each lecture. Feedback and evaluation are really important; the question is whether it's necessary to impose them in such a time-limited fashion.<br /><br />It's true that there can and should be vastly differing approaches to education - this applies not just to different styles (as in your artist student) but also to different cultural norms and educational styles around the world - so maybe I should have said "3 or 4 conventional engineering universities in the US".Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-14463202676549506712012-01-25T22:11:41.979-08:002012-01-25T22:11:41.979-08:00I really like the idea of bringing the social/peer...I really like the idea of bringing the social/peer support element into this. This is critically important. Of course, in a conventional university setting students are competing for top grades and are prohibited from helping each other, so it's difficult to get any kind of ad hoc collaboration going.Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-75321817754003285912012-01-25T15:01:32.848-08:002012-01-25T15:01:32.848-08:00Hi Matt:
Two thoughts on Sebastian's activity...Hi Matt:<br /><br />Two thoughts on Sebastian's activity and your essay.<br /><br />First, re: grades. I always took the view that grades provided feedback. That if one was doing things right, you were conveying to students the quality of their work. The fact we had to provide a semester grade was, as you point out, not terribly useful except as a exclusivity activity. But conveying, clearly, that work was excellent or substandard (or somewhere in between) is important.<br /><br />Second, the idea of 3 or 4 universities. I suspect the number is higher -- say 20 to 30. Why? Because so many people learn differently. I remember, with great pain, a student from 30 years ago who was taking an intro computer science course because she felt she should understand computers. She was an artist. And, no matter how many ways I tried to explain it, she could not grok basic programming mechanisms such as for() loops. I always felt I failed her (she diligently slogged through the course, spent many extra hours, came to every office hour, schedule extra time). And that was compounded when I saw the first Macintoshes and a friend observed that her artist daughter had immediately taken to the mouse and visual interface to do great artwork on the Mac. I remembered the student and wondered if there wasn't a visual paradigm for computer science logic that would have helped her. I'll bet there is. Point of this story -- there are probably several different perspectives from which to teach a technology course (many more for, say, a history course) and we need to offer all of those perspectives if we're really going to let folks achieve their potential.<br /><br />Thanks for the fun essay!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-82781492449838367102012-01-25T12:45:51.151-08:002012-01-25T12:45:51.151-08:00I would say that there are two missing pieces that...I would say that there are two missing pieces that still need to be explored:<br /><br />(1) Peer Help<br />(2) Portfolio approaches to "accreditation/certification" + Peer review<br /><br />(1 elaborated)<br />You can only scale to hundreds of students and maintain quality if you start adopting approaches that have a multiplier effect. Teacher time is valuable. You described the winnowing approach you and many other professors adopted to discover the most capable students and give them extra attention. That's not going away and can in fact be leveraged to scale. The teacher helps the best students, who in turn help the other students either personally or also through scalable approaches like blog posts, tutorials and videos. A ecosystem approach to content and pyramid approach to tutoring where strong students help weaker students is still a better approach than helping a few and excluding the rest, which happens to be the current system. <br /><br />(2 elaborated)<br />The portfolio/project approach is quickly becoming the norm in areas where online education has been most explored -> learning computer skills. Github, Dribbble and Forrst provide excellent models for displaying quality of work completed and even collaboration skills when the work involves communities around a project. Good designers and developers on those communities don't have resumes. Opportunities chase them down. Becoming the best and getting attention for it is just a matter of producing openly.Andrew de Andradehttp://www.twitter.com/andrewdeandradenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-12932166876509505132012-01-25T08:21:42.719-08:002012-01-25T08:21:42.719-08:00Matt - Thanks for your thorough thoughts on the to...Matt - Thanks for your thorough thoughts on the topics. Clearly all is in the early stage. Here in Dresden, actually THE hightech center of Europe, universities run on the old model of learning. WiFi not available around cafeterias or restricted. Signs in the mensa, "During eating no learning, and laptops".<br /><br />So the current status is pretty much directed into learning environments that I encountered back in the 70s and 80s.<br /><br />Yet imagine what learning storm would break loose when students, professors, and entrepreneurs get the idea of cross-boundary learning via #TelePresence cc @LockSchuppenRalfLippoldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15149352083082630755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-3910162750139431502012-01-25T03:56:36.504-08:002012-01-25T03:56:36.504-08:00Very nice article. I think a key point missed here...Very nice article. I think a key point missed here is simply that the main part of education is the student's private assimilation and synthesis of various resources. The role of the teacher/course/lecture/important is just not important. I don't see much (non-social) educational value to universities in any form other than as a way to get access to a library (and its digital subscriptions) and have an expert in a field to answer questions sometimes. Sure, some people are more self-directed than others, but that's a trait that should translate into better job opportunities. I agree with the people who say that universities in the future will just be a kind of accrediting mechanism for education that students achieve independently through any and all means.Mike Parkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16023304770186091811noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-41037031401853728882012-01-24T14:34:25.910-08:002012-01-24T14:34:25.910-08:00When going from Bachelor to Master my dean was one...When going from Bachelor to Master my dean was one of my profs and his rule of thumb was that every exam should be written in a way that 50% of the students fail. I can thank my mom for the good education on my behavior when I asked him politely why this kind of filtering is not solely part of Bachelor. Because if you made it that far the exams should only indicate if you are on a good way to become Master and not be obstacles. His answer was the reason why I left university and made a lot of money.<br /><br />I can only applaud to your article, but I would like to add that the fast development in some sciences creates a need for continuous education. So in fact we should see our universities as constant training centers to refresh our knowledge and be indicators to ourselves.Harry Pachtyhttp://kuche.myminicity.com/comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-4656950138877708902012-01-24T13:05:05.897-08:002012-01-24T13:05:05.897-08:00With regard to CS, I agree with drawing a distinct...With regard to CS, I agree with drawing a distinction between education and research. A point to note is that top research universities don't pay much importance to teaching anyway (the academic kiss of death if a tenure-track PI gets the best teaching award). When I took my algorithms 101, I was lucky to have a brilliant teacher, and I'm eternally grateful to her. On the other hand, I've taken advanced ML and NLP courses taught by awesome researchers, but found them excruciatingly painful to learn from - they were terrible at teaching but I realized they were really fantastic with one-on-one meetings about research projects and advice. In fact, there have been so many occasions when I've turned to resources such as videolectures.net to fully grasp a thing or two.Karthik Dinakarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12238880238653020698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-34578925267636924682012-01-24T12:32:51.707-08:002012-01-24T12:32:51.707-08:00I think Matt's story is a great example of som...I think Matt's story is a great example of someone having the actual right to say they're "bad at math", rather than using it as a cop out: he's actually taken a great deal of advanced math, succeeded at it, and has been able to apply it in world class research and engineering work.<br /><br />I.e., if you're giving up on basic algebra, then yes it's a cop out. If you've actually attempted real and complex analysis, tried to read and understand machine learning papers, and *then* make a conclusion --then you can state that you are indeed "bad at math"<br /><br />For what it's worth, I'm decent at discrete mathematics, but found continuous mathematics hard (after four quarters of calculus, differential equations, several upper division courses, etc...) <br /><br />That's another example of what's wrong with the current educational system: unless you happen to go to a top academic high school, chances are you won't be exposed to discrete mathematics (group theory, combinatorics, proofs, etc...) before college, and will be discouraged from going into Computer Science/Natural Sciences/Engineering in college if you aren't a "star" in your high school calculus class (which is taught as if it's the hardest mathematics class possible -- with many students expected to fail -- rather than the merely the basis for all university mathematics). As a result, you end up missing out on many people who could have otherwise been engineers or even scientists: if it wasn't for California's excellent community college program (where special effort went into teaching Calculus and Calculus-based Physics for students transferring into schools like UCLA and Berkeley), this would have been me as well.Alex Feinberghttp://afeinberg.github.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-91503733575018279632012-01-24T11:48:11.264-08:002012-01-24T11:48:11.264-08:00I actually think doing research tends to make educ...I actually think doing research tends to make education stronger, so it's very true that we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't see any reason why these need to be coupled in terms of the *location* where research and teaching happen. Universities should continue doing research as they have always done, but maybe we should radically change the way we teach students - and which students we teach.Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-17503832830058249872012-01-24T11:06:35.050-08:002012-01-24T11:06:35.050-08:00Matt,
So, here is a question for you. The bet we ...Matt,<br /><br />So, here is a question for you. The bet we have made in higher education is that faculty research enhances the quality of pedagogy.<br />Having done a PhD myself (you are were one of my editors; thanks!), I really don't think this is the case, at least for undergrad education. My guess is that the vast majority of resources spent on research are to enhance the prestige of the school. Students (and their parents) want to be in a higher prestige environment for signalling purposes. Did you feel that your time as a researcher enhanced your abilities as a teacher? Or do you think they were largely disjoint activities?<br /><br />Where I think education should really move is an online model for basic education and certification. And the elite university model for research and all the other aspects of the "university experience".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com