mooc for credit?
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those discussing MOOCs recently, might find this interesting
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/72-of-professors-who-teach-online-courses-dont-think-their-students-deserve-credit/ davew ============================================================ 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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David,
What is YOUR opinion on the matter? Do you, or are you intending to, teach any MOOCs or other online programs? Does Highlands offer, or plan to offer any. (I assume you are still at Highlands.) Thanks, Grant On 3/27/13 9:19 AM, Prof David West wrote: > those discussing MOOCs recently, might find this interesting > > http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/72-of-professors-who-teach-online-courses-dont-think-their-students-deserve-credit/ > > davew > > ============================================================ > 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 ============================================================ 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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In reply to this post by Prof David West
From twitter: Jailbreak the College Degree: "“The degree, like government, holds only the power we give it." http://goo.gl/8MiaZ Don't miss the youtube at the bottom
-- Owen
On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote: those discussing MOOCs recently, might find this interesting ============================================================ 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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Thanks, Owen, for posting something that has to do with the "real" world. "Here Comes Everybody" as Shirky would say. The advent of e-learning is the single most democratizing event in decades!
I just signed a contract in Canada to write the curriculum for the Complexity module as part of a distance learning team in Ottawa. This is at the request of high-level government officials who want to learn how to promote what the Canadians call the "Whole of Government" approach to breaking down the silos between executive branch agencies. merle On Mar 27, 2013, at 10:00 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > From twitter: > > Clay Shirky @cshirky36m > > Jailbreak the College Degree: "“The degree, like government, holds only the power we give it." > http://goo.gl/8MiaZ > > http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/jailbreak-the-degree-alternatives-to-the-certifed-transcript/ > > Don't miss the youtube at the bottom > > -- Owen > > On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote: > those discussing MOOCs recently, might find this interesting > > http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/72-of-professors-who-teach-online-courses-dont-think-their-students-deserve-credit/ > > davew > > ============================================================ > 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 > > ============================================================ > 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 ============================================================ 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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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
I developed and taught an on-line introductory physics course which is still being taught by colleagues at NCSU. The course is a distance version for in-service high school physics teachers of the Matter & Interactions curriculum created by Ruth Chabay and me. The goal of the distance course is not to train teachers to teach Matter & Interactions in high school (though some are doing that) but rather to give them a contemporary perspective on the intro physics that they teach, whereas the intro physics course they themselves took in college has for decades been taught from a 19th-century perspective (for example, the word "atom" is never mentioned). In the section "Course for HS teachers" at matterandinteractions.org there is an article describing the course. It is rigorous and challenging. It requires about 10 hours per week of teachers who are already extremely busy. The only reason they can get through the course, given the heavy demands on their time, is that (a) they have had to become very skilled at time management and (b) they are mature learners. Few of the teachers who start the course are unable to complete it but they have to work quite hard. There are weekly deadlines for completing homework. Professional development for teachers often means a couple days of workshops every year, but this two-semester sequence is orders of magnitude more and deeper than that. On the web site you can read reflections on the course by the teachers.
Typically, on-line courses have huge dropout rates and huge failure rates. This has made me very dubious about the possibility of on-line courses for unmotivated college freshmen who seem to need the social contract of in-person courses, and the structure imposed on their lives by frequent class periods and tests. However, I was surprised to be told that an on-line intro physics course at Arizona State has worked well, perhaps because regular on-line chat rooms play an important role.
When I was in college I took an engineering course by exam after self-study and I took a correspondence course in Italian in preparation for study in Italy (Purdue didn't offer Italian but Indiana University did). These experiences were successful, but I think few of my fellow students would have had the discipline to manage this.
I'm now taking my second MOOC, in order to understand exactly what they are and aren't. Ruth Chabay and I together worked through all of David Evans' Udacity course "CS 101". It was absolutely superb. It had a very clear stated goal: "In about seven weeks you will create a small search engine, even if you have never written a program before." Along the way, every new CS concept was introduced and exercised in the context of that clear goal. The presentations were very clear, punctuated frequently with short multiple-choice quizzes. Homework consisted of writing Python functions whose correctness was judged instantly by sending secret input data to the function and checking that the output was correct. By the end of seven weeks we had indeed written a small search engine.
I've just finished Part 1 of Eric Haines' Udacity course on computer graphics (Part 2 won't be ready until May 1). It isn't as good at CS 101, but that's an extremely tough act to follow. The format is rather similar, drawing on excellent tools that Udacity provides to its teachers. Homework consists of making rather small modifications to a large JavaScript program that drives WebGL to display a 3D scene in the browser you're working in. Judging the correctness of the homework is apparently done by comparing the pixels produced by your program with the correct pixels. You are shown the difference, with the result that your mistakes are highlighted visually. Very clever, and instantaneous. Part 1 of the course dealt solely with static 3D scenes; I'm curious to see how animations will be judged, a topic to be presented in Part 2.
A significant difference between these two MOOCs is that in CS 101 there was real "grading". You collected points for correct homework. In the computer graphics course there is nothing about this. You can keep making homework submissions until you get it right (aided by the clever visual feedback), and no score is shown anywhere.
One other connection: Our Georgia Tech colleague Mike Schatz is developing a MOOC for Coursera on intro mechanics with an interesting concept. Students will use their cell phones to capture videos of moving objects which they will then analyze with video motion software (which allows you to extract position vs time information from a video) and model the motion with VPython (vpython.org). The course is loosely inspired by the Matter & Interactions curriculum which Mike has taught at Georgia Tech, in particular the central role of modeling and of computational modeling.
So what do I think about all this, having had both teaching and student experience? I think that the most important aspect of MOOCs is that they have stimulated a lot of experimentation and a lot of healthy debate and reflection. I've seen plenty of dismissive comments that they're nothing new, since there have been on-line courses for many years, but I feel that these comments miss some important points. My own on-line course for teachers is by the standards of such courses quite sophisticated, but the muscle that Udacity has been able to muster shows how much farther one can go with real investments in infrastructure, investments unlikely to be made as long as education is a cottage industry. I do remain skeptical about what is possible in the real world with real students, but it's good to try things, because universities do not uniformly provide superb education, especially in large intro courses, yet with very high costs.
Bruce ============================================================ 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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In reply to this post by Grant Holland
On Wed, Mar 27, 2013, at 09:57 AM, Grant Holland wrote: > David, > > What is YOUR opinion on the matter? Do you, or are you intending to, > teach any MOOCs or other online programs? Does Highlands offer, or plan > to offer any. (I assume you are still at Highlands.) > I left Highlands in December (three months back) but I am actively engaged in establishing the same kind of program at several other universities as well as a pure, for-profit, alternative. So on-line is part of my teaching future. However, I have come to the opinion that on-line is useful only as a replacement for the "lecture + textbook" aspect of education. This means that I believe you acquire the same knowledge in a MOOC as you would if you spent a semester with three times a week lecture, reading a textbook, plus classroom "discussion." Unfortunately, in both cases, you learn almost nothing. By that I mean there is nominal retention (score 100% on your final exam in December and you will be lucky to score above 50% on the exact same exam when classes resume in January), essentially zero integration with other knowledge, total absence of any pertinent tacit knowledge, lack of significant context, and close to zero application of the knowledge in any meaningful way. [When the esteemed members of this list report that their personal experience with MOOCs is quite different that what I am describing, they must recognize how atypical they are - probably 1-2 percent of the people involved in a MOOC will have a similar experience. Fifty-percent or more ("survey says" - the average is 70% dropout rate) will never even finish the class.] The model I am currently pursuing: - define a set of "competencies," things people should be able to do using their acquired knowledge - each competency is assessed at seven different levels; concepts and vocabulary, do under supervision, do independently, do in novel context, mentor others, teach others, make an original contribution - each competency is supported by 3-to-n (n usually less than ten) "learning modules," the scope of which is roughly equivalent to the material covered in a chapter or two of a typical textbook - the set of modules associated with a specific competency are almost always, multidisciplinary - all learning modules are on-line, can be entirely self paced and directed or involve both synchronous and asynchronous interaction with instructors and peers. - completion of all learning modules associated with a particular competency results in level one assessment for that competency. - the knowledge space is flat - meaning you can engage any learning module at any time - engagement with a learning module(s) is driven by actual work - a real world project - on a "just-in-time" basis, i.e. you encounter a problem and need some knowledge to solve that problem, so you engage the appropriate learning module. A last point - in my model, students spend 40 hours a week in a physical studio - doing things, working with both peers and mentors (professionals with lots of tacit knowledge to pass along) as well as "faculty." "School" is totally virtual. So I consider on-line to be essential - but as a means for achieving the most minimal educational objectives. The MOOC bandwagon is, in my opinion, a tragi-comedy that will end very very badly. And I come by this opinion via experience. I taught my first on-line course in 1995, was director of on-line learning at the University of St. Thomas, introduced the first on-line courses at highlands, facilitated on-line delivery to the point that almost 90% of Highland's classes have on-line classes and the school of business offers a totally on-line degree. But, then again, I also think that K-12 is totally inadequate and that higher education, with the exception of elite research universities and 2 year professional / vocational institutions, is irrelevant and will also come to a bad end in the relatively near term future. davew ============================================================ 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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So then what is a good system for learning? Self-driven research? Mentorships? Symposia?
-Arlo James Barnes ============================================================ 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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In reply to this post by Prof David West
Clearly stated, and as reasonable as the Waldorf School or other similar approaches to education.
However, I'm not clear on your approach to "degrees" and "credits". Do you agree with:
On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Prof David West
David,
Looks like a powerful, if complex, model to me. It even recovers some of the aspects of the apprenticeship model that have been lost - especially that of *community* - that take apprenticeship even beyond mentoring. Your model seems to imply the necessity of community in the education process. Community has largely been lost in the MOOCsland, and even in traditional undergraduate classroom education. It seems that most undergrads "take courses" rather than involve themselves in a community. Grant On 3/27/13 6:35 PM, Prof David West wrote: > On Wed, Mar 27, 2013, at 09:57 AM, Grant Holland wrote: >> David, >> >> What is YOUR opinion on the matter? Do you, or are you intending to, >> teach any MOOCs or other online programs? Does Highlands offer, or plan >> to offer any. (I assume you are still at Highlands.) >> > I left Highlands in December (three months back) but I am actively > engaged in establishing the same kind of program at several other > universities as well as a pure, for-profit, alternative. So on-line is > part of my teaching future. > > However, I have come to the opinion that on-line is useful only as a > replacement for the "lecture + textbook" aspect of education. This > means that I believe you acquire the same knowledge in a MOOC as you > would if you spent a semester with three times a week lecture, reading a > textbook, plus classroom "discussion." > > Unfortunately, in both cases, you learn almost nothing. By that I mean > there is nominal retention (score 100% on your final exam in December > and you will be lucky to score above 50% on the exact same exam when > classes resume in January), essentially zero integration with other > knowledge, total absence of any pertinent tacit knowledge, lack of > significant context, and close to zero application of the knowledge in > any meaningful way. > > [When the esteemed members of this list report that their personal > experience with MOOCs is quite different that what I am describing, they > must recognize how atypical they are - probably 1-2 percent of the > people involved in a MOOC will have a similar experience. Fifty-percent > or more ("survey says" - the average is 70% dropout rate) will never > even finish the class.] > > The model I am currently pursuing: > - define a set of "competencies," things people should be able to do > using their acquired knowledge > - each competency is assessed at seven different levels; concepts and > vocabulary, do under supervision, do independently, do in novel > context, mentor others, teach others, make an original contribution > - each competency is supported by 3-to-n (n usually less than ten) > "learning modules," the scope of which is roughly equivalent to the > material covered in a chapter or two of a typical textbook > - the set of modules associated with a specific competency are almost > always, multidisciplinary > - all learning modules are on-line, can be entirely self paced and > directed or involve both synchronous and asynchronous interaction with > instructors and peers. > - completion of all learning modules associated with a particular > competency results in level one assessment for that competency. > - the knowledge space is flat - meaning you can engage any learning > module at any time > - engagement with a learning module(s) is driven by actual work - a > real world project - on a "just-in-time" basis, i.e. you encounter a > problem and need some knowledge to solve that problem, so you engage > the appropriate learning module. > > A last point - in my model, students spend 40 hours a week in a physical > studio - doing things, working with both peers and mentors > (professionals with lots of tacit knowledge to pass along) as well as > "faculty." "School" is totally virtual. > > So I consider on-line to be essential - but as a means for achieving the > most minimal educational objectives. > > The MOOC bandwagon is, in my opinion, a tragi-comedy that will end very > very badly. And I come by this opinion via experience. I taught my > first on-line course in 1995, was director of on-line learning at the > University of St. Thomas, introduced the first on-line courses at > highlands, facilitated on-line delivery to the point that almost 90% of > Highland's classes have on-line classes and the school of business > offers a totally on-line degree. > > But, then again, I also think that K-12 is totally inadequate and that > higher education, with the exception of elite research universities and > 2 year professional / vocational institutions, is irrelevant and will > also come to a bad end in the relatively near term future. > > davew ============================================================ 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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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
I think the MOOC's are very good thing, but still in their infancy. I took two MOOC classes. Both classes had very good lectures, in fact better than most of my previous UNM classes. However the homework was kind of lame and the online forums were not as good as a real study group. I expect that eventually the homework will get better. It does seem difficult to make a general tool to grade thousands of students in a variety of different courses.
At the very least MOOC's are a great supplement to an education, because the lectures are so good. On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote: Clearly stated, and as reasonable as the Waldorf School or other similar approaches to education. ============================================================ 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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In reply to this post by Prof David West
Dave,
I don't think interesting describes my response to this post. More like disgusted. I would have said outraged but I'm getting too used to seeing nonsense on the web to respond as I used to. Although I agree with most of the points you and Bruce made, I disagree in a couple of important places but more than that I object to the characterization of what is going on in the post and how willing people are to accept some of its statements, most of which are a total misreading of what is going on with universities and MOOCs. If I were to make a single statement about how to understand what is going on, I'd harken back to Deep Throat and advise people to take his advice: "Follow the money." It amazes me how many people are willing to see the faculty as the bad guys on the credit issue and not even look deep enough into the issue to see that is not the case for most of them. i've spent over 40 years in academia, a lot of battling administrators and often other faculty about these issues. But with regard to MOOCs, it's hard not to be a little sympathetic to the situation college presidents find themselves in, especially at public institutions. Budgets in states, including California and Washington, have been cut dramatically. Although there is some idealism in universities' support of MOOCs, they are not charitable institutions and other than a few elite universities which can afford to support experiments with MOOCs that provide high level classes for a global audience, the vast majority of universities are struggling to support their own students. From the administration's perspective MOOCs appear as a possible cost cutting measure, one that may be necessary even if quality declines a bit. Most of the faculty who are against MOOCs are fighting to preserve quality. Maybe that's a losing cause but not something they should for which they should be reviled. These issues have been discussed in detail in the Chronicle but the post that you sent ignores the underlying issues. Let me examine one course in detail that to me shows why granting credit is not justified. The Udacity computer graphics course is being taught by a very good friend of mine, one I have tremendous respect for. I am enjoying the course and am impressed by the quality of the tools that Udacity has made available to him to enhance the presentation. Nevertheless I doubt that even 1% of the students who finish the course would be able to pass the standard senior/graduate course in Computer Graphics that is taught by most CS departments (most of which use my textbook). If you want to take the view that what we do in academia is irrelevant than I'd estimate that even fewer would pass the certification exam in OpenGL that is being developed by the Khronos Group, the industry group that sets many of the standards including OpenGL, WebGL, and OpenCL. I don't think there are necessarily any bad guys here (other than those who intentionally distort the data). Nevertheless, it is totally unclear as to (a) whether there is a business model that makes sense for MOOCs and (b) what happens to students who complete a less than standard course via a MOOC. Is there a benefit to students who complete a beginning programming or graphics course other than to have sparked their interest? If they want to continue, most will be led right back to the system that is having financial problems and looked to MOOCs to get around them. From what I've seen, the same is true for essentially all the low level MOOCs. The situation is different for advanced technical courses such as the Stanford Machine Learning course but in the end I suspect that they will also have a minimum impact due to both money issues and to the problems facing non-traditional students other than the ones on this list. I have been involved with advanced technical courses for non-traditional students since 1967 when as a grad student I taught some graduate computer design courses for USC at Lockheed and other locations around Southern California. The students were desperate for advanced education since the aerospace industry was known to lay off engineers with 10-15 years of experience at the slightest downturn and then hire new graduates as soon as business improved. In spite of their motivation and good preparation, very few of these students could complete a standard course in a semester due to the demands of a full time job and a variety of other life issues. I've confirmed this over the years by teaching the same course on campus and off campus both live and via remote technologies multiple times. The on campus students were always able to get the course done while on the average the off campus students could handle about 1/2 to 2/3 of the course. In1972, as a junior faculty I taught one of the first remote delivery courses at USC to a similar audience using one way video and two way voice. It was a huge technical advance and provided high level courses all over the LA area. Later USC, Stanford and others, such as the National Technical University, went national with their programs. At UNM I used a variety of methods to reach remote students, including teaching live classes at Las Alamos, using the video system and recently the on-line system. For 30 years at UNM, almost all of my advanced classes were taught to remote students. Under all these systems, very little changed in terms of their effectiveness. None of the methods had a business model that was able to survive changing technologies, competition, and the true delivery costs. But more than these factors, are the difficulties of teaching in teaching non-traditional students. For every Owen who is willing to put in all the effort needed to get the most out of a class, there may be 10-100 others who are less prepared, don't have the time and are dealing with their jobs. In all the years, I've been teaching such students, I've had some great successes but I've also had to put in far more effort per student for remote students than I did for on-campus students. I note that many courses at UNM are now taught concurrently both on campus and on line. Many local students choose the on-line versions and are willing to pay an additional $100 delivery fee (which does come close to extra costs for the remote course). But most of these students actually are on campus so can access their cohorts, their instructors and the live lectures if desired. Thus they are actually paying for the extras of being able to not come to campus with its parking issues and to be able to review material on-line which to most is worth the extra $100 fee. Their performance is very different from that of truly remote students who cannot access the campus. My final comment is about the bandwagon everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon to dump on US colleges and universities. At this point in my life, I've taught in over 20 countries in five continents, including over 100 professional development courses. The reason I and others have been in such demand comes back to the successes of US schools in educating us. So while every other advancing economy is trying emulate the US success, here we are slashing budgets (what every happened to the free college education?), crapping on ourselves and looking for magic solutions in MOOCs. We have plenty of problems to solve, many that the colleges and universities have helped exacerbate and even greater problems with K-12 education but let's acknowledge where our colleges and universities have gotten us and not be so quick to toss out what we have achieved. Ed __________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon On Mar 27, 2013, at 9:19 AM, Prof David West wrote:
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Ed's post is highly cogent, and based on tons of experience. One of his points that I had missed in my own analysis is the key difference between an on-line course taken by on-campus students and remote students who lack the supporting social infrastructure and may be consumed by job and life responsibilities (my mature high school physics teachers were an unusual bunch). That difference may account for the reported success of the on-line intro physics course at Arizona State. Another point Ed correctly makes about Udacity's CS 101 and computer graphics MOOCs that I too should have made is that both these courses, while interesting experiments, are indeed very far from equaling the breadth and depth of corresponding one-semester university courses.
Bruce On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
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The rankings at http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings are interesting, because I run out of non-US universities that I recognize in the rankings long before I run out of US universities that don't appear in the rankings. When I visited the site last spring they were listing tuition costs, too. US education is priced like US health care, insanely more expensive than the rest of the world, 5 to 10 to 20 times more expensive. What happened to free education? People figured out how to make a profit from it and maximized the profit at the expense of the education. Free education had no business model, so some bean counters made one up. Lots of places still do free education, but not in the USA.
I don't see MOOC's as a replacement for traditional education. It's a an outreach tool, a recruiting program that finds the people who can apply themselves to a subject and benefit and remain interested in the subject. It finds them much more efficiently than admitting applicants to a four year program. Really good students are really rare. Most of them would never consider applying to a top 20 university. Most of them would never come to the attention of a top 20 university admissions program. MOOC's can find those rare students, make them aware of their abilities, and bring them to the attention of the best schools. If a school can find one Andrew Viterbi equivalent and educate him or her, the consequences are breathtaking.
Of course the students of a MOOC won't learn as much computer graphics as full time students in an on campus course. But the on campus course students probably won't learn as much computer graphics as the students at Digipen.com taking c++, physics based modeling, linear algebra, and computer graphics for their first year classes. But the motivated independent learner will probably out strip them all.
-- rec -- On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 10:05 AM, Bruce Sherwood <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2
http://digipen.edu, anyone?
:-) On Mar 31, 2013, at 12:55 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Bruce Sherwood
digipen.com redirects to digipen.edu which is what I meant, digipen.org doesn't open at all. -- rec -- On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Bruce Sherwood <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4
I was so eager to correct Roger's typo that I made a typo of my own!
Concerning college costs, is it perhaps the case that in the 1950s college professors were paid rather little and now are often paid fairly well? I made a brief stab at digging out the data but didn't find quite what I was looking for.
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In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2
One of my best former students just left Pixar after 15 years to join Digipen. It will be interesting to talk to him at SIGGRAPH this summer. It's also interesting that he received all his college education in public universities before their costs became ridiculous.
Let me ask you the following question: Do you think that the student who chooses digipen will get a better CS education that if she went to the University of Washington which has one of the top CS programs? How does the answer depend on the fact that Washington's support for its universities has dropped in half the past couple of years? Here's another illustrative anecdote about public education in the State of Washington. A very close friends of mine passed away this year while he was president of Lake Washington Technical College, which is a state school that until a couple of years ago was a 2 year TVI school and now also gives B Tech degrees. Because of the state budget cuts, it didn't do him much good to recruit more students from Washington for which he received less than cost of educating them. His innovative solution was to recruit students from China who pay full tuition to car repair program since China is selling more cars than anyone but lacks trained mechanics to fix them. My reading of these examples is that while the digipens (which are the class of the focussed private education field) may do well, it does not represent an overall improvement for US educations, especially for those who lack the financial means to attend the digipens. Nor is it clear that such focussed education is better for most students. Ed __________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon On Mar 31, 2013, at 11:55 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
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In reply to this post by Bruce Sherwood
There are a lot statistics for Engineering and CS salaries. I believe the major factor is that while engineering/CS professor salaries have gone up at about the same rate as those in industry, the typical teaching load has more than dropped in half. Consequently, the cost of teaching a student has gone up to account for how universities are subsidizing research out of tuition. To some extent this problem is build into the system since NSF will not cover salaries during the academic year.
Ed __________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon On Mar 31, 2013, at 1:02 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
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In reply to this post by Edward Angel
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 1:08 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
The student might do better or worse. The outcomes of education vary greatly between students. What we count as "a better CS education" varies depending on the student we're looking at. There's a reliable proportion of undergraduate students who never learn anything for longer than it takes to pass the exam. Some of them won't even do that if they can figure out how to cheat.
You can find them at Harvard commencement ceremonies. After four years at one of the top 5 universities in the world, they believe that the difference between winter and summer is that the earth is closer to the sun in summer. 20-30% of graduating seniors and alumni questioned, if I remember the study correctly. Smarter than the average bear?
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