Future of Education

Future of Education

Background

Many companies and non-profits are attempting to tackle the problem of the “Future of Education.” Free streaming lecture material is available from a variety of sources, from accredited universities on Academic Earth to private individuals on YouTube. Additionally, a range of for-profit entities offer online education, spanning the spectrum from large players like the University of Phoenix to niche innovators like Codecademy.

The Idea

What drew hundreds of thousands of people to register for Stanford’s online courses in AI, Machine Learning, and Databases? It seems to be a combination of the price (free) and the reputation of Stanford (signaling high quality and high desirability).

How might we build out an experience for pre-existing video lectures that brings more of the classroom experience at a place like Stanford to the previously solitary activity of self-teaching?

As our core lecture material, we’re beginning with Stanford’s “introduction to programming” course, CS106A. We propose to add a set of functionalities to the video lectures available online:

• simultaneous lecture viewing
• connection with other students you might want to study with
• relevant assignments and grading / feedback
• course scheduling / calendar reminders to guide you through the course
• guided curricula
• association with prospective employers

The idea is to build more of a cohesive “course” around a dauntingly long sequence of video lectures. The end goal is to guide students to the point where they have sufficient technical skills to be hired for a programming job (the equivalent of Stanford’s CS 106A, 106B, and 107).

Implementation Proposal

We propose to begin by prototyping individual features and getting feedback, starting with course scheduling to guide students through a sequence of lectures in a helpful way.

Issues to Consider

IP issues around using lectures as the core of the site Freely available vs. charging a small fee for grading or to improve student retention

Active in this Space

These organizations are engaged with using technology to lower the access barriers for high-quality education:

• Academic Earth
• MIT OCW
• P2PU.org
• Khan Academy
• Codecademy (http://www.codecademy.com/)
• Treehouse (http://teamtreehouse.com)
• Udemy (http://www.udemy.com)
• eduFire (http://edufire.com/)
• Teachstreet (http://www.teachstreet.com/)
• 2tor (http://2tor.com/)