Is Sebastian Thrun's Udacity the future of higher education?

No.<p>The class Sebastian Thrun taught on AI, was a class devoid of all the qualities that made CS 221 one of the (formerly) greatest classes in not only the CS department, but all of Stanford. His AI class was dumbed down and slapped with a Stanford logo to make people think that they were performing at the same academic level as top notch university students when in fact he had simply lowered the level of achievement so that anyone could take the class. AI is hard. Machine learning is hard. Computer science is hard. Not everyone can do it, and no online course will change that fact.<p>Why can I say this? These are class reviews of CS 221 from Courserank before and after Sebastian Thrun made it his flagship for online teaching.<p>============================================================<p>BEFORE:<p>============================================================<p>Note: When taught by Andrew Ng the class received no ratings less than 4/5 stars<p>"4/5 Stars<p>Autumn 2006-2007<p>Andrew Ng<p>A+<p>0 of 0 people found this review helpful<p>Covers a broad spectrum of topics in AI. If you are interested in AI, but you aren't sure what area in AI you might want to take classes in or you don't know much about AI, this is a good class to take. After CS 221, you can go on to CS 229 (machine learning), CS 223B (computer vision), CS 224N (natural language processing), etc. This class is a lot of work, and most of it is valuable although not all of the programming assignments were that well designed when I took it."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"5/5 Stars<p>Winter 2008-2009<p>Andrew Ng<p>A-<p>0 of 0 people found this review helpful<p>Good class. Andrew isn't the most exciting lecturer, but you'll learn a lot of different AI techniques, and the programming assignments are interesting. The problem sets and midterm are heavily algebra/proof-based, so be prepared. Work through the section problems and you should be fine with that.<p>Since all psets, assignments, and the final project can all be done with a team, make sure you have at least 2 other people you know you can work with, or else you'll get dragged down."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"5/5 Stars<p>Winter 2008-2009<p>Andrew Ng<p>CR<p>0 of 0 people found this review helpful<p>I really enjoyed this class. Very interesting topics, long and involved problem sets, and not-so-difficult programming assignments. Except, of course, for the final project. GET A GROUP ... I had to drop down to CR/NC because my partners dropped the class, and so I spent most of dead and finals weeks working on this stupid robot dog.<p>That being said, I loved the class."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"5/5 Stars<p>Autumn 2009-2010<p>Andrew Ng<p>A-<p>0 of 0 people found this review helpful<p>Terrific class with great lecture material and interesting videos. I think the Audi parallel parking itself by driving backwards at 40mph, braking, and sliding into the parking spot was what kept me going.<p>The problem sets make sure you really understand the material, and the programming assignments are a great way to learn Matlab. The project is HARD and time comsuming, so make sure you have time in your schedule near the end of the quarter!"<p>============================================================<p>AFTER:<p>============================================================<p>Note: Under Sebastian Thrun the class has received no rating higher than 3/5 stars, even more telling, look at the comments for Autumn 2011/12 when the online system that Udacity is based off of was rolled out for Stanford students.<p>"3/5 Stars<p>Winter 2010-2011<p>Sebastian B Thrun<p>A-<p>5 of 5 people found this review helpful<p>With Thrun class had a very different feel than it would have Ng. It skimped on the math/theory and focused on intuition and practice. I liked it less, but for people who are less interested in the math, it was an improvement."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"3/5 Stars<p>Winter 2010-2011<p>Sebastian B Thrun<p>A-<p>5 of 5 people found this review helpful<p>If you can take this class with Andrew Ng I would recommend it. The version I took was pretty poorly taught. The lectures lacked both detail and clear explanations of the concepts. I feel like I came out of this class without having learned much of anything."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"1/5 Stars<p>Autumn 2011-2012<p>Sebastian B Thrun<p>B<p>7 of 7 people found this review helpful<p>Hands down the worst class I have taken at Stanford. Terribly taught, unresponsive and incompetent TAs, mixed up deadlines. Avoid at all costs."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing<p>5 of 5 people found this review helpful<p>god awful. learned absolutely nothing."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing<p>7 of 7 people found this review helpful<p>As the quarter wore on it became painfully clear that the focus on students was minimal for this class. Lectures aligned poorly with homework material, coding assignments were rarely well designed, and grading procedures were at best illogical and at worst completely incomprehensible."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"2/5 Stars<p>Autumn 2011-2012<p>Sebastian B Thrun<p>A-<p>4 of 4 people found this review helpful<p>This class was a waste of time. Seriously. The only beneficial part to me was the final project. Everything else was so frustratingly simplified and easy that I wanted to slap myself for taking this class.<p>Here's an actual problem from the midterm that demonstrates our professor's opinion of Stanford students:<p>For a coin X, we know P(heads) = 0.3 What is P(tails)?<p>And whenever there was anything REMOTELY difficult, the teachers would, without fail, give a hint...<p>Just skip to 229. It may be tougher, but this class is not worth it anymore."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing<p>6 of 6 people found this review helpful<p>Hands down the worst class I have ever taken in my life. This was a joke of a class, far too easy so the curve was mind boggling (the average on the midterm was around 97% because they gave the same test to us as they did to the online class).<p>Essentially, this class catered to its free online constituency that doesn't pay for tuition. Seriously, I am completely ashamed of this class, and it has no place in one of the best AI universities int he world. Only take it if u need it, otherwise go straight to 229 or something else much better."<p>------------------------------------------------------------<p>"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing<p>4 of 4 people found this review helpful<p>This course is useless and you should probably take it only if you have to.<p>The class should be the Stanford class given to anyone for free, but it has became the class for anyone given at Stanford (where we have to pay for it).<p>The homeworks were really easy, the only difficulty was to understand what was expected with poor indications. The real lectures sometimes conflicted with the online videos, and in this case the teachers considered the online video as the reference. This means that going to the class every morning instead of looking at free online video gives you a disadvange in this class. (confirmed by the TAs and posted on the class forums).<p>In one sentence : if possible take the online free class instead of paying for it. It will even be better."<p>RELATED:<p>Jeff Atwood’s blog post “Please Don’t Learn to Code” (<a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-to-code.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-t...</a>).<p>Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” from Welcome to the Monkey House<p>Edit: Fixed whitespace<p>TL;DR: Learn AI Hard. Thrun make class dumb. Now anybody learn AI.

So much negativity here. Udacity is great. I have a finance background and struggled through some MIT OCW courses when I was learning how to program, and then ended up taking a year's worth of computer science courses at UF. One year later I have my first b2b web application with several dozen paying customers. I'm now taking some udacity courses and boy, I sure wish these existed 2 years ago. Udacity won't turn you into a world class computer scientist, but it is a wonderful way to learn and improve.

What portion of any of the hot online education projects could have been done <i>without</i> the web? For instance, how much of each of them could have been replicated by mailing people DVD/VHS lecture videos and quiz software? If most of it could be done without the web, why wasn't it? Cost? Excessive waiting and friction caused by going through the mail?<p>I agree with almost everything I've read of what Khan has said, and Thrun is certainly impressive. But when <i>other</i> people go nuts about the possibilities of online education, they seem to imply that the primary hindrance to educational success worldwide has been a lack of access to video lectures. For most students, I do not think that is the case.

At the very least Udacity seems to be winning the PR war. Coursera had the same origin as Thrun's AI class, and arguably had the better platform/user-experience from day one and today offers many more courses than Udacity - yet all the attention seems to be on Udacity only.

I think online, low-cost education will supplant courses taught with low or no instructor-to-student interaction in a very short window of time.<p>Less obviously, I think that mentors (teachers and professors at all levels) who provide value to individual learners will stay in high demand, along with the institutions that employ them. I also think that the personal networks of these mentors will become the gateway to top-level employment in many fields.

As someone who is vaguely familiar with programming and got about 1/2 way through the Udacity Python course I was disappointed with the education I received. Udacity courses seem to gamify to the extreme, giving hyper-specific tasks and immediate feedback without that much context or exploration.<p>I decided to sign up for an O'Reilly School of Technology course instead. Yes it's not free, but I fee like I am actually learning something.

I don't believe that the intent is to replace higher education for the tiny fraction of us who are lucky enough to be able to afford it thanks to money, time or location, but to make it much more widely available. Sebastian's quote from the end of the article: "It's the beginning of higher education for everybody."

As a current Udacity Student I believe that we are reaching (or have reached) the tipping point for online education.<p>The Udacity classes are very informative and relatively engaging (love the lecture quizzes), however, I do believe that there is still a lot of room for improvements.<p>On another note, I am pretty excited about the upcoming local Udacity Meetups (<a href="http://udacity.meetup.com/" rel="nofollow">http://udacity.meetup.com/</a>).

(note: did not read the CNN article) I think that all the complaining about the lack of difficulty is completely missing Thrun's and Norvig's objectives. The most important thing educators provide is inspiration, not information or putting students through mental push ups ad nauseam. I think Thrun's classes are extremely effective in that regard.

Often we forget, that "higher education" is just as much about building networks and adaptation, as learning traditional material. You learn what's acceptable, what kinds of people are successful, and what kinds of people you work best with.<p>You meet the people who are going to find you that dream job. If you're an entrepreneur, you find the people who you'll want working for/with you. You meet the people who'll help you get things done.<p>The question here really shouldn't be about whether Udacity is a good educational model. It should be about how far it can go - and I absolutely do not believe it is a replacement for traditional "higher education".

A little off topic, but when is the testing center partnership being started? I read the blog post announcing it, but there was no exact date on when one go and take the test.

Udemy is closer than Udacity to being the future of education but both are far too narrow.

A perfect example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines</a>):<p>“Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'”

No, it's a good attempt though. Most of his courses are too theoretical to matter or get anyone anywhere a job.