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This article just appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Watching the Ivory Tower ToppleNew online courses open to all constitute a thrilling collegiate coup Some quotes:
You can read the full article here. |
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"In this new educational model, the shy and the easily distracted get advantages."? I was about to take offense, but I see that the meaning in context is "get advantages over their experience in traditional classrooms." I'm OK with that. People able to research the Web also get advantages. Why am I suddenly thinking of Death of a Salesman? The nerdy neighbor boy Bernard grows up to argue cases before the Supreme Court, while the it's-not-what-you-know-but-who-you-know characters don't fare so well. |
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Hmmm interesting. None of the courses have finished and 200 resumes are sent? Or does the article mean the 200 from Sebastian earlier AI class? For me I don't really care about these resume stuffs, what I really like is to be able to receive a quality university education for free. Even if it's not recognised in any way. This approach of getting the resume of the best students to send to the different companies appears to be a win win solution if it works out. The rest of us get to learn, and they (udacity) get to pick some top candidates to offer to interested companies. I don't know where you got the number 200 from, I was reading 15. And yes, they must have been from the AI class. @Tom Vandenbosch if you click on the article there was a correction. "Udacity recently forwarded the resumes of 200 students to companies. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said 15 students." @snowpolar Thanks for that correction. I believe that 200 is approximately the number of students that got a perfect score in the AI class. This may explain why so many are determined to get a perfect score, and why so many get frustrated when they don't.. @mathprof Oops, and I don't have a perfect score. Oh, and I am not yet frustrated. Anything wrong with me? 1
I'm here to learn computer science. So far, Udacity has more than lived up to that goal. I love it here! I can't wait for each week's lectures and HW. As for the job stuff, I'm not interested in a job...I'm interested in inventing the future. |
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Watching is an understatement - we are toppling it! |
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Some of the comments to the WSJ article are giving a wrong perspective, e.g.
Actually, if someone would go through that trouble to achieve a perfect score, that'd make them more hireable in my opinion. Think of how many accounts you'd have to create on day 1 to leave enough of a buffer to get through multiple questions on multiple weeks. Any account with a wrong answer would suddenly be useless. If a question had a dozen or so possible correct choices you'd have to have one account for every possible question, and lose all of the accounts except one... for each question that worked that way! Udacity is a bit easier to game, since the final exam can be 100% of your grade. Still harder to pull off across multiple classes... ...but we have to come to terms with the potential "crowd education" this has. Being top in class in a class this large is meaningful even though this technology is still in its infancy and not as reputable as "bricks and mortar" education -- in both positive and negative implications |
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This bit made me laugh:
They all came from the online group! I wonder why! lol
Or if someone else answered your on-line quiz questions for you! Oh the irony! |
Thanks for another good find! Hey, Tom, could you please go over to aiqus.com and post this, too? I passed on your VOA find there, but don't want to keep stealing your thunder. Oh, and a CS373 post would be great, too.
Thanks for sharing nice article
While I really love udacity providing free education for everyone, the "purely on performance" bit is a little scary (and elitist).
Hey @Hillbilly, feel free to share it wherever you want, I am also not the original writer of the article and I am not really active on aiqus.com and CS373, since I am just a beginner.
OK Tom, I put it up on aiqus, giving you credit for the find. I'll take a look in CS373 later to see if somebody's mentioned it already.
Beginner or not, you're part of the larger community of students involved in these online classes, and I'm sure you're welcome at aiqus (a general site for all the online courses), or CS373. Same goes for anyone taking CS101. We're all in this together.
@Hillbilly Thanks for the encouragement.