I get easily excited about education-related topics so I may be over-reacting, but I think these classes will jump-start an educational revolution, and that people will start to fully appreciate just how inefficient traditional teaching methods are.<p>Some people like to say that this is nothing new because video lectures were posted on the internet for several years now (for example MIT Open Courseware etc.), but I think this misses the point entirely. There is a huge difference between low-quality video/audio recording of a prof mumbling for an hour and post-processed, perfected snippets of videos presented in a coherent fashion, and most importantly with supplementary materials that encourage people to actually apply their knowledge and get feedback. In addition, the fact that many people take the class at the same time also enhances the experience for everyone, and we've seen study groups form everywhere around internet.<p>Full disclosure, by the way, I'm a CS PhD student at Stanford and I am a (voluntary) co-creator of the programming assignments for the current ML class. It is a lot of work, but the way I see it, we only have to put great assignments together a single time, and thousands of people can enjoy them and benefit from them for years and years to come. That is what I call time well spent.<p>I hope all these classes go well, and I'm looking forward to telling my kids about what education used to be like in the old days. I have a feeling that they'll find it hard to believe me.
Since there seems to be someone involved in running these classes in this thread, I just want to throw this out there. The higher ratio of quizes per minutes of lecture the better.<p>I think its ideal to never go more than 2-3 minutes without asking us something, even if its trivial.<p>Right now I'm taking the AI classes, some of the units follow this rule and keep us paying attention through what I imagine would otherwise be some pretty dense stuff.<p>A few of the units (looking at you Professor Norvig) have had stretches 15+ minutes of lecture without asking us anything, just going to say, retention from those stretches was low.<p>Personally I really like it when they quiz our intuition of a subject before they lecture it, though it seems like other people complain about that on the reddit forum
I, for one, am really hoping this is a start of a trend - where coursework, even if just in a prerecorded format, is available to all, with the tuition going towards the rich in-person experience and grading/certification for the student, much like the way the primary tech conferences have been trending for free content for al.
MIT OCW requires a far higher level of intrinsic motivation. Stanford has almost nailed it. While online learning has taken Space out of the equation, Time, it seems, is still a big variable. Having people do the course at the same time with deadlines is working. They just need to work through the technical glitches, which shouldn't be that hard.
FYI: the "CS-101" course is a really really basic introduction to computational thinking. If you want intro programming you probably want CS106A, which hasn't been put into this format yet.<p>101 is taught by Nick Parlante, though, who was one of my favorite profs at Stanford.
This is fantastic. I would also like to do some course in mathematics (under graduate level calculus, discrete mathematics ) to improve my skills. Are there any good places/resources where I can learn these things (video lectures with quizzes in between will be a nice choice). I am also ready to take a paid certified course if some reputed college is offering them online.
This is fantastic. A few weeks ago Sebastian tweeted about the possibility of having an online Master's when they met with the president of Stanford. Has anyone heard anything new about it?
Although I had to drop the previous classes due to time, this looks promising. Particularly with the unified style; that is the one thing that seemed to hurt this years effort - The most widely advertised course (AI) had the worst layout and 'features'.
For me, as a brazilian computer engineering student, I think these classes are amazing. Although I study in one of the best computer schools in brazil ( www.cin.ufpe.br), my classes tend to be bad and boring. My teachers have Phd's and all those letters, but cant teach in a good and engaging way.
And my classes have old subjects, because they made the curriculum 10 years ago.<p>Thank you so much, Stanford, the teachers for the modern and brave choice to teach people all around the world, thanks for all the students engaged in making the classes available for everybody. and thanks hn buddies for always giving the good news.<p>Will enroll to SaaS and hci or nlp.
Arghhhh. I find these incredibly frustrating. I am writing a senior honors thesis for my university, and wanted to take as few classes as possible this year to focus on my thesis work. The ML class has distracted me this semester, and it looks like things are going to get worse next semester.<p>On a serious note, does anyone know if there are plans to continue these courses next year? I suppose it will really depend on how well each class goes, but I mostly feel pressured to take these because I'm afraid I'll miss them.
This is very exciting news, very much an autodidact's dream.<p>I've been enjoying crawling my way through the great ML classes by Prof Andrew Ng, and had been wondering if by any luck other classes would be provided for future semesters. Seeing this just makes me really happy, and thankful to Stanford. Not only is it the future of education but also gives countless people around the globe a chance to learn topics they may otherwise have never had access to (I am one in this category).<p>Signing up for NLP!
Anyone know if AI-Class will be running again in 2012? The links between the 2012 courses suggest not, but that could just be down to Ai-Class being different.
Does anyone else think a startup could be built around a software platform that universities could use for releasing their content to the world?<p>See here: <a href="http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-platform-that-universities-can-use-to-re" rel="nofollow">http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-platform-that-universit...</a><p>If anyone wants to work on this, contact me :)
One of the great hidden benefits of those classes is to taste the flavor of the classes, should they want to apply to the university. I would particularly interested in the difference between Berkeley classes (SaaS) and Stanford classes (CS101 or ML)
Now I know what am I doing next spring. :D Sweet!<p>Thanks for everyone at Stanford working on this and making it possible. What an amazing collaboration between teachers and students (as the current ML, DB and AI classes show as well).
I'm taking the ML class right now and it is truly excellent - all aspects of it, the videos, material and assignments. Can't recommend these enough.<p>The only problem with the winter classes is I can't decide which to take!
Do you get an email confirmation on signing up? Also how does this course work? The site didn't provide any information about that ― although I haven't seen the 'about course' video.<p>Has anybody here tried this before? Are the videos webcasts or pre-recorded video that I can download/view at anytime?<p>Also is it open for everybody or will the sign ups be restricted?<p>All in all this looks awesome and I'm very much interested in the Game Theory and SaaS classes! :)