"The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course?
You could hire James Cameron to do it.
You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality] experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?"
Andreessen is really missing the point here, IMO. If I could learn everything by watching videos and listening to lectures then there are already thousands of high quality documentaries, TTC courses and so on. The thing is that we humans don't learn subjects deeply just by watching bunch of videos but only by actually doing things.
For instance, there are probably 100s of videos and lectures on General Relativity out there. You can watch them endlessly and you would have some understanding of overall ideas but you would be at complete loss if someone takes simple exercise problems from any textbook and asks you to solve it. In other words, deep understanding doesn't happen simply by watching phenomenal documentaries.
Major component that really matters in any academic programs is homework and exercises. This is what allows students to get deep insights in to subject and make sure they can actually put their learning in to action. It also allows professors to verify that they have actually crossed the line from shallow understanding to deep understanding. This is what you pay for when you go to college. No amount of video lectures by James Cameron is going to replace this.
I respectfully disagree. If you measure learning with homework questions from textbooks, then of course textbooks and the modern classroom will seem like the best way to learn. There are many ways to educate. Getting a person intensely interested in a subject is the best way to get them to learn more about it, and Hollywood does intense interest like nobody's business. Someone who associates math with special effects and compelling stories will be more receptive than someone who associates math with boring lectures and homework problems.
Someone who watched a documentary on General Relatively won't be able to perform the necessary calculations to get a rocket to the moon, but that doesn't mean that they didn't learn anything. A higher concept view that makes people say, "Oh, I get why gravity is cool now" could be more useful to most people than homework assignments that don't hold a lot of practical value. Someone is going to be an astrophysicist, needs rigorous practice and skill mastery. Someone who is gong to be a plumber might be better off learning the concepts in an intuitive way that provides an opportunity to learn more.
I think 'knowledge' can be gained from watching these lectures. By knowledge I mean facts. But if you want to learn a skill, you better be slogging on the homework's to gain intuition. I don't think you can learn discrete math by just watching lectures, you'll have to spend countless hours doing problems to learn anything non-trivial.
I think one thing we could be doing is making more educational software. If you have a budget of $100 million then you could make a bunch of small prototype software to help tackle each class.
I am still convinced that a lot of my critical thinking skills came from the Jump Start series I played as a kid.
I agree with you, but I would take it even further. A problem with MOOCs (and I love that acronym so much, ya MOOC!) is there is a belief that the value of prestigious colleges lies primarily in listening to old white guys prattling on for hours. The true value of an Ivy league degree is making connections to other wealthy people and learning the secret handshakes or whatever to be allowed into aristocrat level job opportunities. The "education" at these places is a smoke screen and justification for this entitlement process. "It's not that my daddy is rich that I have been handed a plum job, its because I got just so darn educated at my fancy school!"
The true value of an Ivy league degree is making connections to other wealthy people and learning the secret handshakes or whatever to be allowed into aristocrat level job opportunities.
If this is the case, I really need to get a refund on my Harvard tuition.
> If this is the case, I really need to get a refund on my Harvard tuition.
No refunds.
It's your own fault really. Going to Harvard (or any other Ivy League school) and focusing on classwork rather than networking is incredibly short-sighted. The price premium that Harvard commands is not because they have access to math or chemistry or philosophy that other schools don't know about, it's because of the opportunity to network.
If all you wanted to do was learn, you could have gone to state school.
I was joking, of course—there are no secret handshakes.* I had a great time at Harvard and have always been grateful to have the chance to attend. I also did plenty of networking while I was there. Finally, don't underestimate the value of learning alongside some of the great minds of your generation. (For example, my classmate Manjul Bhargava just won the Fields Medal.) Having top classmates inspires you to up your game.
By the way, Harvard charges no price premium vs. other private schools, and with financial aid it cost me and my parents the same as a state school.
*Actually, there probably are some secret handshakes, but they're not taught to people who merely "network". If there are such handshakes, they exist at the so-called final [sic] clubs, which most people in my circle of friends either knew nothing about or openly disdained.
I chose Harvard over a state school, but I was driven primarily by the great research opportunities for undergraduates and the easy access to and funding for those opportunities, not by networking opportunities. I'm very happy with my decision and believe I received a great education in all respects.
I agree, and I think the future is is on 'MOOCS' taking all this into account.
However, the homework and group work I've done in my studies (two different ones) was almost universally terrible. I had a strong suspicion that the teacher didn't even bother to properly grade our papers or assignments.
More importantly, there is no reason why the quality of homework and group work cannot benefit equally from scaling up.
That's exactly the issue: Grading homework, assessing that it hasn't been copied from others requires an expert human being. Whenever you need expert human being in the chain, scaling goes out of the window.
@pmarca doesn't have the skills to back Jim Cameron. You would need a Warner Brothers/HBO in conjunction etc to back creative artists. Education is a story telling business which may or may not have software at the core.
However, he could back the Warner Brothers equivalent in education who would go onto then back Jim Cameron.
The example of the world's best teacher is .. James Cameron.
Why? Because he's rich? Throw money at rich people and the world will be better for it?
There is nothing to suggest you'd learn math better with high production values or 3D effects or even talented actors(!). I simply can't take this seriously.
AFAIK, MOOCs are not meeting their expectations both in terms of financials and educational success. Thus the idea that MOOCs are the answer for everything (in any form) is probably shortsighted. Happy to be proven wrong.
"The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course?
You could hire James Cameron to do it.
You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality] experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?"
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So @pmarca why not fund James Cameron then?