I think there's an opportunity to craft some sort of DIY degree programs, cobbled together from online lectures, assignments (with automated grading?), readings, and help forums. Perhaps it would just be a feature of a site like this, but I personally would love to see something like that.
Can you please explain how what you propose differs from Academic Earth? Obviously it has the lectures, and found this link on the page for the first lecture for the Stanford Machine Learning course:
Right, everything's out there if you're willing to dig for it. It would be nice to have everything in one place, though. I'm not saying it's hard, it would just be nice if it were all organized ahead of time.
I have always thought a good business model for sites like academic earth would be to offer tests (using the many test centers around the world) to users to certify them in certain classes.
Amen. The first person to make steps toward getting rid of the ivory tower universities in favor of cheap online accredited degree programs is my hero. I am absolutely amazed there aren't any good options out there for people who want a marketable degree at a low cost using online courses.
What I think can speak to its power a lot more than just some virtual degree which will probably be overlooked at, is an awesome product/project/etc created by virtual university graduates and publicized as so.
Creating these virtual degrees is pointless and loses respect really quickly. Just like security certifications serve only as a filter for the lowest candidates and don't actually add much to some qualified.
Projects, interests and output talks, b.s. walks. (This is coming from someone who ended up getting a CISSP... sigh)
I agree with you, it's not about the degree itself or the certification. It's about the education, and the confidence it gives you knowing that you've completed certain coursework that others in the field think is important.
As a scaled-back example, I worked through the Stanford iPhone Programming course. It was great, even without videos of the lectures or being able to ask questions. The slides and exercises provided context, structure, introduced material appropriately, etc. Much better than what I'd been able to piece together through tutorials and sample code from Apple. In the end, it was nice to know that I had the same basis that the Stanford students had when they worked on their class projects. Those projects got written up on Techcrunch, too. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/stanford-students-relea...
I find it a little ironic to decry the "ivory tower" in a discussion about a site filled with free, online lectures from ivory tower universities. They are providing much of the learning for free at this point, so the only thing missing is the "marketable degree at a low cost." The "marketable" part is largely a function of the selectivity of the university in question, so I doubt that a low cost degree from a new institution will be highly marketable any time soon. You pretty much need to convince society first that your university is prestigious and selective and the best students all want to go there, a veritable Catch 22.
Honestly, I think the proliferation of certificates and degrees has had a negative affect on the value of higher education, RE: that "marketable degree" you mentioned. Not to mention that some (myself included) could argue a 2 year tech degree is currently more valuable than any non technical bachelors.
TopCoder uses fundamentally automated grading for its contests, and people learn much about programming through it -- the teaching happens from human to human, but the presence of an immobile, unthinking obstacle to overcome doesn't at all hinder the learning process.
Such strong language. I did pose it as a parenthetical question...
Anyway, I think automated grading could work for anything math-based, as well as for some computer programs. Consider that much of learning is done through homework and exercises that build upon previous exercises. I spent many hours learning by working through problems and checking my answers with an answer guide. (And being infuriated when I found mistakes in the answer guide!) Doing homework isn't a complete education, but it sure is a part of one. And yes, as long as the exercises are well designed, they make you able to think.
Needless to say, grading essays and whatnot is another ballgame altogether.
I'm going to have to go back and listen to a number of these lectures. The first video I click on the professor says "Computer Science isn't computer programming." so so true.
I find http://videolectures.net/
better than academicearth because it also has interesting sessions and talks from conferences, where all the really cutting edge stuff is.
videolectures.net has the problem of insisting on displaying stuff in the browser, which sucks. I want to download things and watch them on my ipod or iphone (or Plex media center), without being chained to my computer screen.
Choosing "windows media", a proprietary format, for an open site with lectures is extremely annoying.
