The most important education technology in 200 years
November 3, 2012
Four of the 19 Coursera courses on AI and robotics (credit: Coursera)
Education is about to change dramatically, says Anant Agarwal, who heads edX, a $60 million MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the Web, free, with plans to teach a billion students, Technology Review reports.
“Massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, offered by new education ventures like edX, Coursera, and Udacity, to name the most prominent (see “The Crisis in Higher Education”) will affect markets so large that their value is difficult to quantify.
A quarter of the American population, 80 million people, is enrolled in K–12 education, college, or graduate school. Direct expenditures by government exceed $800 billion. Add to that figure private education and corporate training.
At edX, Agarwal says, the same three-person team of a professor plus assistants that used to teach analog circuit design to 400 students at MIT now handles 10,000 online and could take a hundred times more.
Coursera, an alliance between Stanford and two dozen other schools, claims that it had 1.5 million students sign up.
Changing the world
The rise of the MOOCs means we can begin thinking about how free, top-quality education could change the world.
Khan’s videos are popular in India, and the MOOC purveyors have found that 60 percent of their sign-ups are self-starters from knowledge-hungry nations like Brazil and China. Nobody knows what a liberal application of high-octane educational propellant might do. Will it supersize innovation globally by knocking away barriers to good instruction? Will frightened governments censor teachers as they have the Web?
The eventual goal isn’t to stream videos but to perfect education through the scientific use of data. Just imagine software that maps an individual’s knowledge and offers a lesson plan unique to him or her.
Comments (38)
by jwhitehawke
Are there no prisons?
And the union workhouses – are they still in operation?
From what you said at first I was afraid that something had happened to stop them in their useful course. I’m very glad to hear it.
by Christian Gehman
If education were solely about the transfer of “data,” then this would be an ideal plan for “educating” the human species. However, the subliminal transfer of humanizing patterns of behavior, which has been an essential part of education’s core curriculum for at least the last 2800 years or so.is best effected in person to person contacts. It seems to me that Agarwal et al. wish to transform “education” into a glorified internet-enabled Art Slides course proctored by robots and telecommuting part time instructors. There are some essential human attributes for which the education process necessarily takes place at the reading distance. Assimilating information is not the same thing as acquiring an education, though it may be a good first step. Eliminating child abuse would probably do more to reduce the prevalence of monsters among us.
by ALGERNON - THE OPSIMATH
Teach them how to think not what to think. Having that prussian invention the PhD means nothing. “You have a PhD in music……marvellous! But can play the instrument.” Let the market decide who is useful. We will move away from this ridiculous notion of “you must have a job” to offering your expertise to whoever needs your skills. Let’s get rid of borders, parasite bankers and government skwonks. Why do we need passports? Stop voting for these losels. The bricks and mortar are essential to house the practical side of education……..carving up cadavers, wet chemistry and engineering…………… Bottom line produce more than you consume. TU NE CEDE MALIS SED CONTRA AUDENTIOR ITO.
by Mr.X
@Algernon: Your new nickname?
Prussians never had your stupid “phd” in the first place.Don’t blame your horrendous educational system on us, ok ;)
And reading your writing makes one wonder if you carry a grudge against school/s.
I also wonder why, as long as we still had the Prussian system in Germany, we absolutely “dominated the nobel price”!?Well, today that doesn’t mean much in the soft fields anyway, just be Chinese and critizise “the party”.
In the 90ies our (German) schools have been finally and completly remodeled along Western lines, leading to a sharp decline in literacy, math skills and hard science skills.
Ps: Your country is the only one where you can gain access to higher educational institutions by being good at sports :)
Pps: I actually agree with you, the naive talk about not needing passports and borders.
by Mr.X
Pps: substracting the
by bof
I also wonder why, as long as we still had the Prussian system in Germany, we absolutely “dominated the nobel price”!?
Jews
by anthrobotic
Profound revolution in human education:
Awesome.
“MOOC” being the best name/acronym we can come up with:
Weak.
What’s that sound like, anyway? As in “mook?” That’s a pejorative term for a frat boy dude-bro, right? Go ahead, Urban Dictionary that. Or is it like an Italian “c” resulting in a homonym for “mooch?” That would be a lovely irony.
What about OEO – Open Education Online (pronunciation: oh-eee-oh)? Or, MIT’s “OCW” has kinda nailed it, so what about a variation on that? How about anything other than MOOC! Who’s in charge of this? Can someone get in touch with Agarwal or email Sal Khan or get all media & coverage people to just stop it or crowdsource this or something?
MOOC is not clever, it’s super lame.
Come on, people – branding is important!
-Reno at Anthrobotic.com
by kilgatron
How will proof of learning be demonstrated for certification, accreditation, or professional title? This is no small matter. If, before I go under the knife, I’ll want real certification. Any answers? I’m not a skeptic or naysayer about the revolution–I’m just curious.
by Christian Gehman
Some of the most important transfers of “information” including surgical skills, musical competence, aesthetics and even a good bit of the higher maths — take place most efficiently in human to human interchanges. For example, it is a rare Freshman who can make her way through the differential without a tutor. People who believe education is primarily about a transfer of “information” are often engineers or people afflicted with an autism-spectrum disorder like Aspberger’s Syndrom. Aesthetic appreciation of human cultural artifacts is most effective in the presence of the objects themselves: it’s not realistic to expect the students in an online Art Slides course to learn much about the aesthetic experience of paintings without visiting several museums.
by David
Great trends but a couple of questions come up in my mind.
1 – is it a good thing to have education dominated by a small number of corporations? How will this work long-term if it reduces bodies on campuses that fund them?
2 – Aside from pure learning, what value would such courses have to the students in the market? Perhaps this informs the first question. Unless they are real innovators, they’ll still need a regular education. In the programs I’ve looked at, free courses were non-credit. If you wanted credit you had to pay big bucks and sync with the in-class students.
by kilgatron
Oh, and David below, your concern about coorporate domination of education is well placed. Whole fields of human knowledge, the humanities for example, may be neglected because education will only be seen in terms of money.
by Fred
You can educate yourself in the humanities at the local library, or even via amazon.com
The age of universities putting kids $10,000s or even $100,000s in debt so they can work at Starbucks will soon be over.
by Rob
1. As opposed to ivory tower intellectuals who have no reason to tailor their theories to real life? Yes. This is a great improvement. At least a corporation will always need to be mindful of the product they produce because they will have to convince, not coerce people to take their offerings.
2. The only reason these classes aren’t being adopted is because the established educational guild is doing everything they can to discredit it. Much like the music companies fighting new technology the old, controlled way must make way for the new, decentralized future.
by Christian Gehman
A large component — perhaps the most important component — of traditional education takes place in small groups and in one on one interchanges. Online education can’t begin to compete with this, but it can claim to “educate” people in a cost-effective way if the most important component of education — the civilizing influence of intelligent, creative, inquiring minds — is devalued by Agarwal and his chums.
by Daniel
“Just imagine software that maps an individual’s knowledge and offers a lesson plan unique to him or her.”
This is the key. The web just means it can access n whereas brick and mortar institutions can only access n – some number. But software that can gauge where the holes are and help to fill them, that can find the right pace, that can lay out material in a coherent way will be path breaking.
by Christian Gehman
So, if all of the world’s ifnformation is available online, what would be the point of teaching the students anything more than curiosity?
by FredB
Even if taking the MOOC is free, we need to ask if students are being asked to purchase a textbook to take the course. Currently, textbooks are very expensive – the GAO estimates that full time college students spend around $900/year on textbooks. But, a MOOC could provide an online textbook for free. If it did, then we would need to consider how much it cost to develop and maintain an online textbook. Back in 2007, I made presentation that did just this. It was to a US House subcommittee that was looking into the high cost of commercial textbooks.
Here the link:
A sustainable business model for open electronic textbooks.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/txtbkpres/beshearspresent.pdf
Earlier, I’d published a paper on the case for creative commons textbooks that also examined the cost of developing a maintaining electronic textbooks. Bottom line, if you had a coalition of around a 1000 schools commission the development of textbooks for around 200 courses, the cost would be around $3.25 per year per student. In total, it would cost around $75 million a year to develop and maintain these textbooks, which is a rounding error in the US Department of Education’s annual budget.
Here’s a link to the paper that supports these figures:
The Case for Creative Commons Textbooks
http://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2010/09/case-for-creative-commons-textbooks.html
by David
As a related aside, some private schools now offer iPads pre-loaded with required texts to students. They’re included as an attractant with tuition.
by high carbfoods
Yes, distant on line education opens the windows of knowledge, wide open rather. We should also have some agreed ISO standard so that employers hiring track quality; other students seeking greater depth get credits for their online efforts. Monitoring these measures is important. Some subjects favor internet and others such Pharmacy, Biology, Medicine and Eng lean on practical efforts. How this will be resolved is left to imagination. The whole world is educated is not a promise of paradise, but opens self starters for businesses of their own. Good beginning but needs the balanced views of cautious critics.
by Ron Abate
The quality of instruction and the motivation of the learner are key to the success of on-line learning. The teaching of factual topics can be best achieved, in my opinion, by adhering to the concepts of programmed learning as described by Dr. Skinner, a renowned psychologist. The methodology involves self-paced learning, where information is presented in small units, followed by a required testing of mastery of the unit. The results of the evaluation determine whether the learner proceeds to the next unit or returns to addition instruction on the failed unit.
by GatorALLin
I love that they say the goal is to perfect education through scientific data.There are so many Universities in the USA now where the professors make $50K a year teaching, but $200k+ a year selling their textbooks for the class. Are these textbooks the best for the class and the students, or are the assumed to be and just part of a System build off money vs. scientific proof that it is the best way to teach the classes? It will be very interesting to watch out this new format of global training allows it to be open source and transparent to let the best teaching methods and best formats float to the top. I think you have to measure (correctly) and you have to build in the ability to change (no just let the teachers vote, but let the data vote and let the students vote on what works best). It would be so cool to have the worlds best teachers on their best subject and on their best day be recorded for the ultimate learning opportunity on Every subject there is to create the perfect school online (what a huge gift to the world and to education!). I agree there is no one perfect way to do something, rather each perfect class may require it changes to best fit a student’s learning style and the value of courses online vs. in person.
I also love that you can track the progress of a student throughout the course and not just at the end so you confirm no important building blocks were missed. I think there is also an order of these building blocks that is critical so that you don’t skip over things that will be required later that prove critical.
I hope we can as a society keep improving systems that benefit everyone and keep making systems that allow for change and needed corrections. After watching “Waiting for Superman” and seeing how a broken system for US education can allow unions, or tenure to keep bad teachers in place or broken systems from changing we must keep looking to science vs. opinions (with agendas not focused on learning, but rather on money) to prove what works.
Thank you MIT, Stanford and other respected organizations for making the focus on better education first….vs. how to just make money. We have so many global challenges left to fix that it will take so many more educated people to do it and this type of project gives hope to solving them on a massive scale. What if every human knew we came from the same mother…what if we were all on the same side. What if our enemies were not each other so often sold to us in movies or with fear…. what if our real enemies were lack of food, diseases, pollution, lack of education, etc? I love that education of this type brings us closer to fixing the problems that affect us all. Keep up the good work!!
by Editor
Well put. I just posted a classic TED talk by Peter Norvig at http://www.kurzweilai.net/peter-norvig-the-100000-student-classroom because he eloquently addresses some of the issues you mention. For me, it’s the smartest, most revolutionary 6 minutes in the history of education. See what you think.
by Mr.X
“It would be so cool to have the worlds best teachers on their best subject and on their best day be recorded for the ultimate learning opportunity on Every subject there is to create the perfect school online (what a huge gift to the world and to education!)”
Won’t happen.
by Justin
I found out recently that Hugo de Garis is making just that happen, at least on a small scale. He seems to have some good material.
Check out his Youtube account.
http://www.youtube.com/user/profhugodegaris?feature=g-all-u
by Mr.X
Well, I just assumed that not all the worlds (!) best teachers would teach in English.And I hope DeGaris recovered from his rather not-so-smart political/ideological illness.But I will nevertheless check out his stuff, just because he has some crackpot theories doesn’t mean he hasn’t anything smart to say.
Depending on their inclinations, smart people are more likely to build highly complex, idiosyncratic theories, which of course is tantamount to saying they are more likely to say/predict unlikely things.
by Mr.X
Well, comment is waiting for approval, but I may add that yes, being open-minded pays off ;)
by Justin
It certainly does pay off. Hugo de Garis is sometimes offensive to listen to. He says things like we need to pamper those with the highest IQ’s and orient all television towards pretty much worshiping the smartest citizens in each country (even though I do agree that we need television to be a tad bit more informative).
He is a very smart person though, and like you said it might be that intellect which leads him to some of his very strange ideologies.
by Marcos Marin
Unfortunately in this case it does (though as always, a broken clock is always right 2 times a day). He forgets the first chapter of any respectable book on AI (let alone linguistics) and still calls himself an AI researcher.
So, no, don’t do it, you will waste your time. The very first couple minutes of the very first one I went to check was already about the very most stupid of theories of all time.
What do you refer to with ” rather not-so-smart political/ideological illness.” The artilect crackpottery? If not, please elaborate, I do want more weapons against this idiot. thx.
by Mr.X
@Marcos: Well, I remember having read something about “Globa” the global superstate by 2040, the linguistic superiority of English speakers compared to the rest of us, and a war between “cosmist” and whatever group is the opposite- predicting nonetheless the forcing of a common culture upon the whole of mankind.
Each of these predictions contained so many things that seemed to ignore the basics of politics, linguistics etc that I won’t go search for his essays in order to argue against them- they speak for themselves.
I guess all these essays are to be found on this website.
One characteristic of his reasoning -as outlined in those writings- was a certain elitist arrogance, another one was a certain agression against people perceived to be different from hin, and the last one was wishful thinking.
Since linguistics was something I was interested in back then, his remarks on this subject puzzled me the most: A 200 sth page introduction would have refuted most of his premises, rendering the rest rather arbitrary-unlikely, maybe plain out wrong (one can be right for the wrong reasons).
by Marcos Marin
Oh, I guess I missed this globa thingy.. thanks.
yes, you are right, it’s ridiculous, no you dont even need 200 page (if that’s what you mean, i dont understand well your phrase there, maybe you mean HIS 200 pages), 1 term per refusal suffices: the cost benefit analysis of language… lookup table runtime complexity for chinese characters.. blah blah blah… etc.. the former has actually been if not proven by recent studies I’ve seen, then at least given strong evidence for; lookup tables are the most naive algorithm for anything you can imagine, but it’s fast, and thus figure in many 1st chapters on AI, thus my previous comment =)
The other refusals similarly have already established terms or authors who could be cited against….
by Mr.X
I meant if he read one of this “short introduction to xy” books he wouldn’t have said some of the things.
by Gorden Russell
It’s already happening, Mr. X. Don’t be so glum. This will improve lives all around the globe. Of course, an enlightened people will bring down a dictator. Just look at the Arab Spring. Tyrants hate that when it happens.
Yet realpolitik makes our government prop up repressive governments for our own geopolitical needs. The people of Iran still hate us for supporting the Shah and soon we might have to keep them from producing atomic bombs.
We are going to see this happen again and again as unpopular regimes are brought down.
by Mr.X
If you believe in the “Arebellion”- well you probably never traveled outside your country and swallow everything western media conjures up.
Besides, little me was being optimisitic.I don’t need any educated competition:)
Anyway: You did nothing to refute my argument, you only restated your premise.^^ How can you know your teachers are “worlds best”? I dislike this tendency to exaggerate.
Ps: Why shouldn’t Iran get atomic bombs!?The only country evil enough to actually use them against another people, still has so many…;)
Pps: The USA today isn’t exactly a good example of realpolitik.Never was the reign of ideology so undisputed as today, it seems.
Have a nice day:)
by David
Already has. I saw universities experimenting with this in the ’70′s. Expert talks recorded and facilitated by teaching aides. The main issue with this is knowledge evolves so there needs to be continual update of content. Teachers in such roles also tend to charge a lot more.
You also need to ensure you have other voices in the stream so the talk isn’t one-sided. Good teachers offer a synthesis of various approaches.
by jerry t. searcy
I hope students in America are taught:
1. The U.S. Constitution and the the Founder’s intentions regarding its creation.
2. The Federalist Papers and the Founders intentions regarding it.
3. The failed history of Keynesian Economics and socialism around the world.
If this is done perhaps eventually politicians holding Libertarian ideology can win election instead of the same old stale, big government Democrat – Republican ideology…one can hope!
by Gorden Russell
You got it backwards, searcy. Keynesian economics don’t fail when they are applied. TARP was deficit spending, and it saved all those banks.
It is the supply-side trickle down Laffer Curve that is the big fraud.
by Daniel
You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. Saving the banks is a loaded phrase that would require a great deal of unpacking but doing so shows that TARP was an utter failure except in transferring billions to the wrong people. Letting them go through bankruptcy and reorganizing would have been far saner. cheaper and less damaging to the economy. But that’s too complicated for Left Wing Nut Jobs who take a non-economist like Keynes who said ‘Not to worry, in the end we’re all dead’ as their hero.
by Joel
What a dream. Hopefully they can keep governments out and this stretches to primary and secondary education.
Anyone who doubts how education has been used to subjugate the masses should look up Horace Mann (the undisputed father of the modern american school system )and his journey to create the Massachussetts school system