The Shirky article is thoughtful. Thanks for the pointer. A key issue, which Shirky handles well, is the need to compare apples with apples. Many university courses are just plain not very good, for all the reasons he gives. I've seen the kind of criticism of MOOCs that he rightly challenges. Comparing a small seminar taught by an actual professor with a giant lecture is daft.
Ruth Chabay and I took the Udacity CS 101 course to see what a modern MOOC is like. The course is superb. It has a very clear, very challenging goal: "In about 7 weeks you will write a small search engine, even if you've never written a computer program before." Along the way, all CS concepts were introduced in the context of the goal. The "chalk talks" were in general excellent, there were frequent meaningful quizzes, and there was challenging homework in the form of having to write Python functions that were checked by the uploaded program being given data different from sample data and seeing whether the function produced the correct output. On the other hand, historically, failure and dropout rates have typically been huge in distance courses, as would seem to be the case with current MOOCs. You have to be highly motivated to keep at a challenging course without the usual social contract implicit in traditional course settings. Maybe MOOCs + social media will change this, but I have my doubts. Bruce On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 8:45 PM, Ron Newman <[email protected]> wrote: > Clay Shirky points out the obvious but overlooked re: accessibility of > traditional education: > > http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/ > > Ron > -- > Ron Newman, Founder > MyIdeatree.com <http://www.Ideatree.us> > The World Happiness Meter <http://worldhappinessmeter.com> > YourSongCode.com <http://www.yourSongCode.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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