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Franck Dernoncourt
edX, Coursera and Udacity have attracted millions of students, and around me at MIT I've never heard anyone against it. Why would you be against free, online education?
Just as a reminder, in the US:
UPDATE (since the question has now focused on MOOCs' drawbacks):
I'll address 2 usual mistaken prejudices against MOOCs (quickly, not worth debating much ...):
Undergrads shouldn't fund research. Paying over 100 kUSD for a degree whereas they didn't have the chance to earn money yet is just absurd!
There is nothing intrinsic to the MOOCs that make them inferior to traditional education. On the contrary, using artificial intelligence for education will eventually proves to be more efficient than traditional education, since it can provide systematically and continuously customized feedback, which is impossible with a human teacher, unless you can afford private tutoring.
For example, when learning how to code, it would be far more efficient if the learner had a tool for automatic code evaluation and correction (e.g. see Automatically grading programming homework - MIT News Office), than if there were just one teacher walking around the class of 30 students.
The wikipedia page on massive open online course gives some other pros/cons.
Bottom line: people are never happy. Before, MIT/Stanford/etc used to be criticized for retaining education for themselves. Now they are being criticized for making education available for free all around the world. Geez... Too many commenters, not enough developers!
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edX, Coursera and Udacity have attracted millions of students, and around me at MIT I've never heard anyone against it. Why would you be against free, online education?
Just as a reminder, in the US:
UPDATE (since the question has now focused on MOOCs' drawbacks):
I'll address 2 usual mistaken prejudices against MOOCs (quickly, not worth debating much ...):
"Right now most scholarly and scientific research is funded by undergraduate education. The more you outsource that to private companies, the less research you're going to get."
Undergrads shouldn't fund research. Paying over 100 kUSD for a degree whereas they didn't have the chance to earn money yet is just absurd!
"At the same time, students will be getting an inferior education [with MOOCs]. " ; "while multiple choice quizzes can tell you that you got a math problem wrong, it can't explain why you got it wrong" ; "you'll get an education based on regurgitating information rather than critical thinking." ; etc.
There is nothing intrinsic to the MOOCs that make them inferior to traditional education. On the contrary, using artificial intelligence for education will eventually proves to be more efficient than traditional education, since it can provide systematically and continuously customized feedback, which is impossible with a human teacher, unless you can afford private tutoring.
For example, when learning how to code, it would be far more efficient if the learner had a tool for automatic code evaluation and correction (e.g. see Automatically grading programming homework - MIT News Office), than if there were just one teacher walking around the class of 30 students.
The wikipedia page on massive open online course gives some other pros/cons.
Bottom line: people are never happy. Before, MIT/Stanford/etc used to be criticized for retaining education for themselves. Now they are being criticized for making education available for free all around the world. Geez... Too many commenters, not enough developers!
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
