Free College Education? Worth Watching?

[johnnyshaka]

We're not quite there...yet...but this is a great start.

Ex-Stanford Teacher’s New Startup Brings University-Level Education To All [TCTV] | TechCrunch

Udacity - Free Classes. Awesome Instructors. Inspiring Community.

The classes are different than watching a recorded lecture that you’d find on iTunes or MIT OpenCourseWare. Classes are interactive and stop to quiz you on what you’re learning. And one of the benefits is that you go at your own pace, unlike a traditional lecture.

[Galaxy]

The University of Phoenix and other similar schools seems to get blasted/mocked, and lack the credibility factor with employers, so how would this be different?

[Matthean]

I'm also not exactly sure they are teaching equivalent classes to what a college would. Case in point, for a programming class they would likely do an actual complied language like Java or VB.NET as where they are using HTML and JavaScript. The coding offering are basically all net based languages. I do think the topics they cover will be closer to real world examples versus what colleges do. I'm curious about the Web App one.

EDIT: I think some if not all of the classes are 7 weeks so I don't think they are intending to be equivalent to college courses. You simply get certifications for however valid those are. Hint, they aren't.

[johnnyshaka]

At this point the completion and comprehension of the courses is probably all you're going to get out of something like this but I think these guys are on the right track. If that's all it ever amounts to (probably pretty tough to keep it free AND get it accredited to where the piece of paper would mean something) then I still think something like this has a lot of merit in that you have industry leading experts giving you some pretty sweet knowledge and all it cost you is time.

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by Matthean

I'm curious about the Web App one.

I signed up for it even though technically I don't have time for it. It's not like I'm out anything if I fail.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

The University of Phoenix and other similar schools seems to get blasted/mocked, and lack the credibility factor with employers, so how would this be different?

As someone who attended the University of Phoenix (online) for half of a graduate degree program (work conflicts made me withdraw) the mockery is pretty valid. The quality of the education they are providing is pretty weak.

[CrimsonFox]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

As someone who attended the University of Phoenix (online) for half of a graduate degree program (work conflicts made me withdraw) the mockery is pretty valid. The quality of the education they are providing is pretty weak.

hmmm, so what was it like? Can you give examples?

[Matthean]

Watch The Full Program Online | College, Inc. | FRONTLINE | PBS

This pretty much steered me away from them. UoP is actually on the expensive side even for online universities. Plus, I would just rather be in a class interacting with other people. I have gotten job leads and chances to network going to school in a physical building. They have a physical building in my area, and I know people who go there, but the documentary just confirms hearing about how their degrees aren't respected by a number of people.

[Fidatelo]

I took the initial AI course that Thrun and Peter Norvig offered through Stanford last fall (www.ai-class.org). It was really interesting and I learned alot, although I did drop out after the mid-term because Christmas was approaching and I just didn't have the time to keep up with the homework.

As for the quality, though, I felt it was pretty high, but not to the level of what I'm sure the actual Stanford students were acquiring. For example, all of the homework was multiple choice, whereas the actual Stanford students received real programming assignments as well. I'm sure they could incorporate this into online courseware given time, and the playing field would level.

Anyways, I wouldn't write this off yet. Thrun was a really engaging instructor even if it was just YouTube videos, and being able to converse with fellow students on forums like Reddit really made it feel almost as communal as any actual University course I've ever taken. In fact, it was more communal for me, as I am pretty introverted in real life and during my 1 year of university I never actually spoke with anyone I met in class (I maintained my same friends from high school). Whereas with the online course it would be much easier for me to break the social barrier and converse with fellow students.

Anyways, these are just my 2 cents.

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by Matthean

I'm also not exactly sure they are teaching equivalent classes to what a college would. Case in point, for a programming class they would likely do an actual complied language like Java or VB.NET as where they are using HTML and JavaScript. The coding offering are basically all net based languages. I do think the topics they cover will be closer to real world examples versus what colleges do. I'm curious about the Web App one.

What makes Java or VB.NET any more valid to learn than HTML/JS? I've been a software developer for almost 14 years and have extensive background with .NET, but frankly HTML/JS is the way of the future and would be what I would recommend someone learn if they were starting from scratch.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by CrimsonFox

hmmm, so what was it like? Can you give examples?

The majority of classes are forum based - your assignments are typically "Read this chapter and answer three questions about it. Here are the three questions." the answers are public forum posts, so if you wait you can simply crib your answers from the rest of the class. The "professors" are largely absentee - while they did a decent job of answering questions when asked, they did very little to stimulate discussion or move the class along other than simply posting the assignments. To receive participation credit, you must make two posts of 200 characters or more on 4 of the 7 days of each week. Reading response posts do not count toward this requirement.

Classmates would routinely post answers and commentary riddled with awful spelling and grammar mistakes, some of which the professors lauded (for content, not mistakes, but still). And this was for a Master's degree program in Education. I quickly realized that the effort I was putting in was about quadruple what was necessary. While hardly trying, I maintained a 4.0 GPA, except for the one class that fell on October-November of 2010.

Dd I learn stuff? Yeah. Was it because of the school? Maybe about 10%. The other 90% was simply from reading the textbooks.

[johnnyshaka]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

Dd I learn stuff? Yeah. Was it because of the school? Maybe about 10%. The other 90% was simply from reading the textbooks.

Sounds like my experience at a traditional "brick and mortar" school.

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

The majority of classes are forum based - your assignments are typically "Read this chapter and answer three questions about it. Here are the three questions." the answers are public forum posts, so if you wait you can simply crib your answers from the rest of the class. The "professors" are largely absentee - while they did a decent job of answering questions when asked, they did very little to stimulate discussion or move the class along other than simply posting the assignments. To receive participation credit, you must make two posts of 200 characters or more on 4 of the 7 days of each week. Reading response posts do not count toward this requirement.

Classmates would routinely post answers and commentary riddled with awful spelling and grammar mistakes, some of which the professors lauded (for content, not mistakes, but still). And this was for a Master's degree program in Education. I quickly realized that the effort I was putting in was about quadruple what was necessary. While hardly trying, I maintained a 4.0 GPA, except for the one class that fell on October-November of 2010.

Dd I learn stuff? Yeah. Was it because of the school? Maybe about 10%. The other 90% was simply from reading the textbooks.

How is this different from the established universities that offer online courses?

[Vince, Pt. II]

Not having taken an online course anywhere else, I can't compare the two. Compared to a brick and mortar university it's not even close to the undergraduate program I did, and this is a graduate level class. I expected more out of both my fellow classmates and the professors.

[Matthean]

I'm finding out why I don't use the Google App Engine. The class uses it since the class is coded in Python. It's been a mess to install and try to get everything working and it still isn't even hours later. I posted on the forums, but my post isn't showing, and the forums are a known issue right now. If this were being done in PHP, I could have blown through the homework in 2 minutes tops.