Stanford University’s president predicts the death of the lecture hall as university education moves online
May 31, 2012 | Source: IEEE Spectrum
A Stanford University course on iTunes U (credit: G. Prisco)
Stanford University recently explored offering online courses to a larger audience with a programming class for iPhone applications, first available in 2009, that has been downloaded more than one million times.
This past fall, more than 100 000 students around the world took three engineering classes — Machine Learning, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, and Introduction to Databases.
Stanford president John L. Hennessy says that’s just the beginning. In fact, in his vision of the future, the lecture hall will play a much smaller role.
“I’m a believer in online technology in education,” he said. “I think we have learned enough about this to understand that it will be transformative. It’s going to change the world, and it’s going to change the way we think about education. … It’s going to filter down into high school, too, where we have an even more dramatic problem, considering the shortage of highly qualified high school teachers, particularly in science and math.”
Instead of lectures, “this generation is completely comfortable watching a video online; for them, it’s not markedly different than having a person up at the front of the classroom. They are happy using technology. They know how to hit the pause button; they know how to speed it up a little bit, to watch it 20 percent faster and make the process more efficient.”
Comments (17)
by MTML
This might work for the sort of knowledge factory education math and science require, but the humanities, arts, and design will never be taught as good as the embodied, expressive character of a great lecturer. Surely facts and equations are easily conceived through detached lecture processes, but the ability to not risk yourself of face to face contact with a professor, by challenging or interacting through the best means possible, i.e., the body, the quality of such an education will lose its intrinsic value of mutual understanding. I am in favor of such courses up to a point, a point when the student wants to delve into deep and profound matters.
by Dean Gilbert Tonkin
Absolute bullshit! Students…..get off your asses and get to class. You might learn to think for yourselves and discover the meaning between the lines and develop early stages of practical wisdom. When was the last time your fucking computer screens had professorial or peer group smelly armpits or bad breath and eyes that oozed midnight oil? And cramming is valid cobblestone on the pathway in the pursuit of excellence.
by Mehdi Massoudi Rad
I live in Iran . Recently I got access to lectures on signal processing. It was really awesome. You will feel you are a student in Standford and get much inspiration as well. Especially when you see that the courses are taught by the outstanding professors. Thank you all.
by DeBee Corley
There is resistance to video lectures? You do know that you get a written transcript (that is searchable, obviously).
Interesting to speculate on how much I have to pay attention when my imbedded digital assistant assimilates the information. Or do I get a “total of mankind’s information” loaded into my assistance with continuous updates?
by anthrobotic
Somewhat dated, but good resources: TERMINAL ANACHRONISM: The Traditional University System (ENDANGERED) – http://goo.gl/CWvlI
by Dennis R.
MyKindOfTown’s comment has some truth to it. Although I think the lecture part of the learning experience can be moved online fairly easily.
Interaction and information exchange within a group can provide stimulus and instant feedback that learning in isolation can not. However, much of social interaction is moving online. Universities, etc. are no longer the only gathering places of inquiring minds. Social exchanges that once took place in discussion sections and between and after classes may become digital/virtual. And while they aren’t necessarily in real time, the “conversations” do have the benefit of being always available. Big difference. Big change. Harder for older brains like mine to appreciate, or at least feel comfortable with.
And shame on us if we presume that online social interaction will remain keyboard/text-based. Audio and video are possible. But some of us (myself included) haven’t been trained to think like that.
by Ron Abate
Just as there is good and inferior instruction in the lecture hall, there can be good and inferior instruction online. The design of online training is key. It should be sequential, reinforcing, monitoring progress, and require mastery before moving on to the next segment.
by Geoffrey Pierce
What’s encouraging is the tendency for higher quality online lectures to filter to the top. The evolution of great lectures and progression standards will be much faster than if they languished in isolated classrooms.
by GatorALLin
…reply to GeoffreyPierce (above)…. YES, I love your thought that all of these lectures must also have a voting system to allow students who love the info presented in a way that best helps them learn should float to the top automatically. Ted.com has some great ideas they use to make sure info gets across. One is to limit the talks to video and to a specific amount of time. They rank them lots of ways….but the coolest always float to the top. For students who score well on exams, we must figure out how to rank them Not just on LIKE, but on actual success of what can be learned. So each student’s learning styles may prove different and so somehow I hope they find a cool way to take this into account. Maybe TypeA personalities as students learn best from TypeA lectures…. maybe the opposite… but that should be easy to track if you know your students and if you grade them.
by GatorALLin
…..reply to RonAbate…. Love this comment that some teaching is built on sequence or building blocks…so confirming or recommending that students passed prerequisites before moving on may prove critical to this particular lecture/topic. Totally agree, as long as you still let students learn at their own pace and you recommend these details vs. require them (maybe I took a preReq. class at another school and this school won’t accept for internal reasons..thus tries to force me to take their preReq before I can take this one as they “think” they know best for me…….Fail).
tons of great ted.com videos on this subject, here is just one of many interesting ones that I found http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html
by Cy Dy
I wonder how to watch the videos 20 percent faster. Does anyone know?
by GatorALLin
reply to CyDy… actually that sounds like a cool idea….some way to download ahead of time… then have a custom play back that could speed it up by 20% so that some could digest the info faster (if they learn better that way, or if maybe is just review type material, or speaker is horribly slow). Or have some type of variable control that would speed up/down by micro amounts as you wanted. I smell cool video player app next…. “Make it so #1″
by Chrispium
VLC player can play videos with speeds from 25% to 400%. Program is freeware. My favourite!
by Michael Tefsfaye
MITX online video courses have a button you just press and it just speeds up but its comprehensible.
by MyKindOfTown
Learning online versus learning face to face, or amongst a group of fellow students is a very different (and in my experience, less enriching) experience. The idea of the lecture hall going the way of the Dodo is highly dubious.
by Marcos Marin
No, but it won’t disappear you’re right. However it will become more like a renaissance workshop, for doing, interaction and problem solving.. not lecturing. In this sense, the “lecture” hall will go Dodo’s way =)
by GatorALLin
…reply to MyKindofTown (above)…. I agree that some type of learning is best suited for hands on or face-to-face, but I think the idea here is how to educate the world for Free…. and most of the folks in the lecture halls paid a ton of money for their classes and their degree/paper at the end. Some kid in africa with no chance to be in that lecture hall (for reasons of cost/location/etc) would like to watch this same video to learn the info (not to get a degree), so that would be hella cool to make this info for free on a massive scale (if you expect a singularity to get here, this type of massive transformation must happen somehow..and this is part of that change).