http://digipen.edu, anyone?
:-) On Mar 31, 2013, at 12:55 PM, Roger Critchlow <r...@elf.org> wrote: > The rankings at http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings are > interesting, because I run out of non-US universities that I recognize in the > rankings long before I run out of US universities that don't appear in the > rankings. When I visited the site last spring they were listing tuition > costs, too. US education is priced like US health care, insanely more > expensive than the rest of the world, 5 to 10 to 20 times more expensive. > > What happened to free education? People figured out how to make a profit > from it and maximized the profit at the expense of the education. Free > education had no business model, so some bean counters made one up. Lots of > places still do free education, but not in the USA. > > I don't see MOOC's as a replacement for traditional education. It's a an > outreach tool, a recruiting program that finds the people who can apply > themselves to a subject and benefit and remain interested in the subject. It > finds them much more efficiently than admitting applicants to a four year > program. Really good students are really rare. Most of them would never > consider applying to a top 20 university. Most of them would never come to > the attention of a top 20 university admissions program. MOOC's can find > those rare students, make them aware of their abilities, and bring them to > the attention of the best schools. If a school can find one Andrew Viterbi > equivalent and educate him or her, the consequences are breathtaking. > > Of course the students of a MOOC won't learn as much computer graphics as > full time students in an on campus course. But the on campus course students > probably won't learn as much computer graphics as the students at Digipen.com > taking c++, physics based modeling, linear algebra, and computer graphics for > their first year classes. But the motivated independent learner will > probably out strip them all. > > -- rec -- > > > On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 10:05 AM, Bruce Sherwood <bruce.sherw...@gmail.com> > wrote: > Ed's post is highly cogent, and based on tons of experience. One of his > points that I had missed in my own analysis is the key difference between an > on-line course taken by on-campus students and remote students who lack the > supporting social infrastructure and may be consumed by job and life > responsibilities (my mature high school physics teachers were an unusual > bunch). That difference may account for the reported success of the on-line > intro physics course at Arizona State. > > Another point Ed correctly makes about Udacity's CS 101 and computer graphics > MOOCs that I too should have made is that both these courses, while > interesting experiments, are indeed very far from equaling the breadth and > depth of corresponding one-semester university courses. > > Bruce > > > On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Edward Angel <an...@cs.unm.edu> wrote: > Dave, > > I don't think interesting describes my response to this post. More like > disgusted. I would have said outraged but I'm getting too used to seeing > nonsense on the web to respond as I used to. Although I agree with most of > the points you and Bruce made, I disagree in a couple of important places but > more than that I object to the characterization of what is going on in the > post and how willing people are to accept some of its statements, most of > which are a total misreading of what is going on with universities and MOOCs. > > If I were to make a single statement about how to understand what is going > on, I'd harken back to Deep Throat and advise people to take his advice: > "Follow the money." > > It amazes me how many people are willing to see the faculty as the bad guys > on the credit issue and not even look deep enough into the issue to see that > is not the case for most of them. i've spent over 40 years in academia, a lot > of battling administrators and often other faculty about these issues. But > with regard to MOOCs, it's hard not to be a little sympathetic to the > situation college presidents find themselves in, especially at public > institutions. Budgets in states, including California and Washington, have > been cut dramatically. Although there is some idealism in universities' > support of MOOCs, they are not charitable institutions and other than a few > elite universities which can afford to support experiments with MOOCs that > provide high level classes for a global audience, the vast majority of > universities are struggling to support their own students. From the > administration's perspective MOOCs appear as a possible cost cutting measure, > one that may be necessary even if quality declines a bit. Most of the faculty > who are against MOOCs are fighting to preserve quality. Maybe that's a losing > cause but not something they should for which they should be reviled. These > issues have been discussed in detail in the Chronicle but the post that you > sent ignores the underlying issues. > > Let me examine one course in detail that to me shows why granting credit is > not justified. The Udacity computer graphics course is being taught by a very > good friend of mine, one I have tremendous respect for. I am enjoying the > course and am impressed by the quality of the tools that Udacity has made > available to him to enhance the presentation. Nevertheless I doubt that even > 1% of the students who finish the course would be able to pass the standard > senior/graduate course in Computer Graphics that is taught by most CS > departments (most of which use my textbook). If you want to take the view > that what we do in academia is irrelevant than I'd estimate that even fewer > would pass the certification exam in OpenGL that is being developed by the > Khronos Group, the industry group that sets many of the standards including > OpenGL, WebGL, and OpenCL. > > I don't think there are necessarily any bad guys here (other than those who > intentionally distort the data). Nevertheless, it is totally unclear as to > (a) whether there is a business model that makes sense for MOOCs and (b) what > happens to students who complete a less than standard course via a MOOC. Is > there a benefit to students who complete a beginning programming or graphics > course other than to have sparked their interest? If they want to continue, > most will be led right back to the system that is having financial problems > and looked to MOOCs to get around them. > > From what I've seen, the same is true for essentially all the low level > MOOCs. The situation is different for advanced technical courses such as the > Stanford Machine Learning course but in the end I suspect that they will also > have a minimum impact due to both money issues and to the problems facing > non-traditional students other than the ones on this list. > > I have been involved with advanced technical courses for non-traditional > students since 1967 when as a grad student I taught some graduate computer > design courses for USC at Lockheed and other locations around Southern > California. The students were desperate for advanced education since the > aerospace industry was known to lay off engineers with 10-15 years of > experience at the slightest downturn and then hire new graduates as soon as > business improved. In spite of their motivation and good preparation, very > few of these students could complete a standard course in a semester due to > the demands of a full time job and a variety of other life issues. I've > confirmed this over the years by teaching the same course on campus and off > campus both live and via remote technologies multiple times. The on campus > students were always able to get the course done while on the average the off > campus students could handle about 1/2 to 2/3 of the course. > > In1972, as a junior faculty I taught one of the first remote delivery courses > at USC to a similar audience using one way video and two way voice. It was a > huge technical advance and provided high level courses all over the LA area. > Later USC, Stanford and others, such as the National Technical University, > went national with their programs. At UNM I used a variety of methods to > reach remote students, including teaching live classes at Las Alamos, using > the video system and recently the on-line system. For 30 years at UNM, almost > all of my advanced classes were taught to remote students. Under all these > systems, very little changed in terms of their effectiveness. None of the > methods had a business model that was able to survive changing technologies, > competition, and the true delivery costs. > > But more than these factors, are the difficulties of teaching in teaching > non-traditional students. For every Owen who is willing to put in all the > effort needed to get the most out of a class, there may be 10-100 others who > are less prepared, don't have the time and are dealing with their jobs. In > all the years, I've been teaching such students, I've had some great > successes but I've also had to put in far more effort per student for remote > students than I did for on-campus students. I note that many courses at UNM > are now taught concurrently both on campus and on line. Many local students > choose the on-line versions and are willing to pay an additional $100 > delivery fee (which does come close to extra costs for the remote course). > But most of these students actually are on campus so can access their > cohorts, their instructors and the live lectures if desired. Thus they are > actually paying for the extras of being able to not come to campus with its > parking issues and to be able to review material on-line which to most is > worth the extra $100 fee. Their performance is very different from that of > truly remote students who cannot access the campus. > > My final comment is about the bandwagon everyone seems to be jumping on the > bandwagon to dump on US colleges and universities. At this point in my life, > I've taught in over 20 countries in five continents, including over 100 > professional development courses. The reason I and others have been in such > demand comes back to the successes of US schools in educating us. So while > every other advancing economy is trying emulate the US success, here we are > slashing budgets (what every happened to the free college education?), > crapping on ourselves and looking for magic solutions in MOOCs. We have > plenty of problems to solve, many that the colleges and universities have > helped exacerbate and even greater problems with K-12 education but let's > acknowledge where our colleges and universities have gotten us and not be so > quick to toss out what we have achieved. > > Ed > > __________ > > Ed Angel > > Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) > Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico > > 1017 Sierra Pinon > Santa Fe, NM 87501 > 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu > 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel > > > On Mar 27, 2013, at 9:19 AM, Prof David West wrote: > >> those discussing MOOCs recently, might find this interesting >> >> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/72-of-professors-who-teach-online-courses-dont-think-their-students-deserve-credit/ >> >> davew >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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