Buzz Sociopolitics Malaysia: Let the Revolution in College Education Begin

Let the Revolution in College Education Begin

May 16, 2012

NY Times: Come The Revolution (05-15-12)

Let a Revolution in College Education Begin

by Thomas L. Friedman

Andrew Ng is an join forces with highbrow of mechanism science during Stanford, as well as he has a rsther than desirable way of explaining how a new interactive online preparation association which he cofounded, Coursera, hopes to revolutionize aloft preparation by allowing students from all over a universe to not only listen to his lectures, though to do task assignments, be graded, receive a certificate for completing a march as well as have use of which to get a improved pursuit or benefit admission to a improved school.

"I normally learn 400 students," Ng explained, though final semester he taught 100,000 in an online march upon machine learning. "To strech which many students before," he said, "I would have had to learn my normal Stanford category for 250 years."

Welcome to a college preparation revolution. Big breakthroughs occur when what is unexpected probable meets what is desperately necessary. The costs of removing a college degree have been rising faster than those of health care, so a need to provide low-cost, quality aloft preparation is some-more strident than ever.

At a same time, in a knowledge economy, removing a higher-education degree is some-more vital than ever. And thanks to a spread of high-speed wireless technology, high-speed Internet, smartphones, Facebook, a cloud! ed cover as well as tablet computers, a universe has gone from connected to hyperconnected in just 7 years. Finally, a generation which has grown up upon these technologies is increasingly comfortable guidance as well as interacting with professors by online platforms.

The combination of all these factors gave bieing born to Coursera.org, which launched upon April 18, with a backing of Silicon Valley try funds, as my co-worker John Markoff initial reported.

Private companies, similar to Phoenix, have been offering online degrees for a fee for years. And schools similar to M.I.T. as well as Stanford have been offering lectures for giveaway online. Coursera is a subsequent step: office building an interactive platform which will concede a most appropriate schools in a universe to not only suggest a far-reaching operation of giveaway march lectures online, though additionally a complement of testing, grading, student-to-student assistance as well as awarding certificates of completion of a march for under $ 100. (Sounds similar to a great deal. Tuition during a real-life Stanford is over $ 40,000 a year.) Coursera is starting with 40 courses online from computing to a humanities offered by professors from Stanford, Princeton, Michigan as well as a University of Pennsylvania.

"The universities furnish as well as own a content, as well as we have been a platform which hosts as well as streams it," explained Daphne Koller, a Stanford mechanism science highbrow who founded Coursera with Ng after seeing tens of thousands of students following their giveaway Stanford lectures online. "We will additionally be operative with employers to bond students only with their agree with pursuit opportunities which have been appropriate to their newly acquired skills.

So, for instance, a biomedical association seeking for someone with programming as well as computational biology skills competence ask us for students who did well in a courses upon clouded cover computing as well as genomics. It i! s great for employers as well as employees as well as it enables someone with a reduction normal preparation to get a credentials to open up these opportunities."

M.I.T., Harvard as well as in isolation companies, similar to Udacity, have been formulating similar platforms. In five years this will be a huge industry. While a lectures have been in English, students have been forming investigate groups in their own countries to assistance one another. The biggest enrollments have been from a United States, Britain, Russia, India as well as Brazil. "One Iranian student e-mailed to say he found a way to download a category videos as well as was blazing them onto CDs as well as present them," Ng pronounced final Thursday. "We just pennyless a million enrollments."

To have guidance easier, Coursera chops up a lectures into reduced segments as well as offers online quizzes, which can be auto-graded, to cover any new idea. It operates upon a respect complement though is office building collection to reduce cheating.

In any course, students post questions in an online forum for all to see as well as then opinion questions as well as answers up as well as down. "So a many helpful questions bubble to a tip as well as a bad ones get voted down," Ng said. "With 100,000 students, we can log every singular question. It is a huge interpretation mine." Also, if a student has a question about which day's harangue as well as it's sunrise in Cairo though 3 a.m. during Stanford, no problem. "There is always someone up somewhere to answer your question" after we post it, he said. The median reply time is 22 minutes.

These top-quality guidance platforms could capacitate budget-strained village colleges in America to "flip" their classrooms. That is, download a world's most appropriate lecturers upon any subject as well as let their own professors concentrate upon operative face-to-face with students. Says Koller: "It will concede people who miss entrance to world-class guidance because of financial, g! eographi c or time constraints to have an opportunity to have a improved hold up for themselves as well as their families."

When we cruise how many problems around a universe have been attributable to a miss of education, which is very great news. Let a revolution begin.