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The Future of Online Education?

gmanyo

sswwwaagggg
Joined
Jun 8, 2010
Messages
275
MBTI Type
ENTP
Last year at Stanford, professor Sebastian Thurn decided to make one of his classes open to anyone. Not only did he put up videos of the class online, but he actually made online tests and material, and upon completing the class you got a certificate. He got about 160,000 students signed up for this class from all over the world.

He liked the turnout so much that he actually decided to leave his job at Stanford to work only on Udacity, a site which provides university level classes with real professors for free. There are only 2 classes right now (the classes begin February 20), but you can enroll in them right now if you want to.

I'm wondering how this will turn out. Will it just end up as a one time thing, or could this be the future of education?

http://www.udacity.com
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
14,037
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ISFP
Enneagram
496
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I have taught college classes online through a rural community college for the past four years, and have other family members who have been teaching online for much longer than that. Last summer there was even a distance education conference. I would say the field is already stabilized as something that will endure and is growing rapidly. Community colleges are some of the leaders, but many universities have an online component. It is fantastic. There is even K-12 education available online now, but that is really recent - within the past year or two.

Did you specifically mean free classes? I think MIT has free access to some of their classes.
 

Haight

Doesn't Read Your Posts
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Apr 18, 2007
Messages
6,232
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INTj
Working for free is an unsustainable business model.

. . . unless all the employees are rich, of course.
 

Saslou

New member
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
4,910
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This is the way forward.

I much prefer to be educated in an environment other than in a classroom. I can then work at a pace which suits me instead of waiting for others to catch up and me becoming bored in the process.
 

gmanyo

sswwwaagggg
Joined
Jun 8, 2010
Messages
275
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ENTP
I think online education is definitely the future of education. I also think that Udacity in particular is a step forward; there are already online classes and such, but this is the first one I've seen that A) is done by a professional B) is a real class (with grades and tests and exams and due dates) C) has a huge, international user base and D) is completely free (as in it has all of these things; certainly there are other options which have just one or two). It could even end up being taught in different languages.

Not that I want to downplay classes from universities that have been put up online: just before finding this I was "taking" Physics 200 at Yale (actually just classes 12 through 15 in particular). It was awesome.

Go ahead and sign up for the classes at Udacity if you want. They're really cool.

Working for free is an unsustainable business model.

. . . unless all the employees are rich, of course.

That's true, but I think many professors who really do enjoy educating will be willing to teach an extra class for "the greater good", which is why I think Udacity could work really well.

Too bad it has such a terrible name, though.
 
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