MIT OpenCourseWare introduces courses designed for independent learners | Hacker News Reader

MIT OpenCourseWare introduces courses designed for independent learners

web.mit.edu

383 pointsashwinl38 comments

As a young autodidact struggling to fit into the traditional education world this is a welcome gift. To me a traditional diploma granting institution is now akin to a rubber stamp. You're not paying for the education, you're paying for the brand under the assumption that it will get you a job. I could rant, but I plan on doing it in a cohesive and informed blog release or something at a later date.

MIT diffuses my cynicism with steps like this. In an academic system I do not trust there are clearly intelligent like minded people enabled to make a difference. After years of dreading my involvement with academia, movements like this make me want to wander back in with an open mind.

If anyone involved with MIT OpenCourseWare ever reads this please know that I respect and appreciate what you have done for people thirsty for knowledge. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Well, by attending a traditional institution you're really paying firstly for experts to take partial responsibility for your learning, enough to stake some of their reputation on it, and secondly for entrance to a club of peers of similar ability to learn with.

With more and more material available online, I can see how taking full responsibility for your own learning is less daunting than it once was. I'm still curious as to what will replace the role of peers of similar ability in this self-learning model.

In my experience at one of those traditional institutions, those experts often couldn't care less about any responsibility to undergrads. Their job is to do research, and to get grants to support that research. The number of professors for whom teaching was clearly a nuisance was one of the most depressing parts of the experience.

Having similarly capable peers is really the primary advantage, especially if those relationships carry on after you finish.

I agree completely, particularly with undergrad educations. Professers aren't picked on their teaching ability. They really don't have an incentive to improve the education of their students, other than personal diligence.

You could give pre-tests to people and organize them into "classes" which they will stay with for four years... along with ways of sharing personal info with each other (Facebook friends perhaps)... with a once-a-year in-person meetup weekend.

There is a site http://openstudy.com/ where you can get into contact with other people taking the courses at OCW.

I wanted to work through the 18.06 calculus course anyway, so having that with enhanced material is great news to me.

...secondly for entrance to a club of peers of similar ability to learn with.

I do not know what university you attended, but honestly, the learning ability of 'peers' within most universities varies greatly.

If they were so similar, all the 'peers' would have similar SAT scores, undergraduate grades, majors, and graduation rates.

Educating is not a priority for the majority of undergrad programs in the US (in terms of academics).

Knowledge, interaction, communities, infrastructure, and facilities are all important.

Knowledge is a commodity, but that's been true since Gutenberg. It's just a little more true now. Unis could have mailed out videos of lectures in the past, for a relatively small fee.

Interaction and communities are important. I'm guessing that online 1:1 interaction is a lot weaker (though Skype could help a bit) because it's so slow. Online communities are better, as 1:N interactions can be more powerful. The question is, how important was one on one time with your lecturer? I'm guessing it wasn't a big part of your university time, unless you were doing a high level course. Too many students to lecturers.

Infrastructure and facilities (especially labs) ... except for online journal subscriptions these are getting pretty weak these days anyway. Old-timers love to gas on about the time they nearly blew up the chem lab, but I've never been allowed near the sort of things they were able to do. For some reason. People doing a big research project (on something that isn't just computational or theoretical) get a bit more play, but only on one machine.

In short, budget cuts and commercialization have killed most of what most universities have to offer anyway.

I'll try to simplify that. A good school should have: mentors, peers, information, infrastructure.

Mentors - Intelligent people who guide you. Peers - Friends and community to fulfill all kinds of human needs. Information - The data that you must put into your head and the process designed to get it there. Infrastructure - Equipment, tools, software, etc. Things you wouldn't have easy access to on your own.

I didn't get much one on one time with lecturers, and I'm an ambitious fool. I approached many, but I always felt like they were waiting for me to leave. I wasn't allowed to do anything in the labs except rush through some simple prewritten task. My peer group was great, and I do think that is one benefit of schools like this. They attract plenty of intelligent innocent young-ens and put them all in one place.

I would love to be a part of an online education community, I've actually just gotten really excited about that. Ideas brewing!

I was at a Polytechnic for my degree. It is pretty much a uni, just doesn't have the prestige. The lecturers are as good and have taught at universities in the past. I say this as I think they are often confused with community colleges in america. It was really good in that the classes were small (it ended up being 15 students in first year). We could even talk to our lecturers at lunchtime.

I felt free to listen in to my lecturer's discussions at lunchtime, or raise a topic of interest and discuss it with them. They also had real world experience which was great. For example: the head didn't have a degree in my field. It was in commerce, not Information Systems. The Information Systems part was from working in that field for years.

There is a place for completely studying solo, but meetups in physical space do allow people to innovate better (bouncing ideas off each other without impediment). Creating a study group with red_beard08, squizgirl77 and <some guy with a weird name> has a certain amount of artificialness to it. Perhaps due to not knowing them. Maybe social tools like twitter will help alleviate that.

I'm a fellow autodidact, have been for six years - pursuing my own liberal curriculum and technical specializations. I'd be interested in having a chat over email about your curriculum and the other things I don't get to talk about with other people because I don't have any kin on the same path! (you're the first I've found that also openly referred to themselves as an autodidact!)

ixmatus at [google's mail]

I, too, am self-educating, and would love to keep in touch. Same nick on twitter, etc.

My academic experience is mostly in history (esp. historiography, history of science and medicine), because I also want to be a librarian, but I've been programming since I was 5.

I went to a small liberal arts school (Clark University in Worcester, Mass), and majored in physics and minored in mathematics. Of the 32 courses I took there, 2-3 were bullshit courses. The required "perspectives" as the called them. And even with the scholarships, the education was not cheap. I ended up graduating without having taken a single computer science/engineering course. I then proceeded to work as a software developer, having taught myself Pascal, C, C++, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Python, SQL, and 2-3 other much more niche languages while in middle school, high school and college. I am now in my third year working full time as a software developer and I am not looking to go back to physics directly. From a certain perspective it may seem that I have wasted four years at Clark. I rarely use the knowledge I gained there directly.

However, I need to emphasize the opportunities that I had at Clark. First, I worked in a research lab since my first year. It did not start out as cutting edge "wow look at what I've discovered" type stuff, but by my junior year I was working on novel and interesting stuff (related to organic magnetism). My findings were surprising to me as well as to my professors (of course having to do a lot with their guidance). This is not something you can do on your own. You either work for a private company's R&D (probably requires quite a bit of the "rubber stamps" you mention), the government (even more of 'em) or at a research University. This alone was worth it for me.

Next, I worked as a Resident Advisor for almost three years. This is a job which requires you to learn a ton about people, how to deal with them, how to lead them. Not something that can be taught in a classroom, but also I think something that is perfectly practiced on 250+ freshmen entering the campus. Not a job I'd want to have as a career, but one of the most valuable life lessons I've learned.

On top of that, I got to work for the IT department there and actually develop fairly complex web applications. Besides working with great people, it also provided me with awesome references, and so far quite a few hours of freelance work after I graduated. Yes, I could have done projects on my own, but this kind of work was a bit different. For example, I learned to gather requirements, estimate development time, etc.

Lastly, I met some awesome people. I understand that places like MIT take this effect to the next level. I don't have a large network of people in my field from Clark. However, I did have a friend there with whom I developed a social network which showcased my talents to my potential employers after I graduated, and allowed me to get my offer letters. True, I could have met someone to work with elsewhere, but having a large-ish web project under my belt made getting a job easy.

Basically, what I am trying to say is that from a certain perspective I did not waste my time at Clark. I did not walk the alternative path, but I did enjoy the one I did walk.

P.S.: I think that comp. sci. and computer engineering are a special field. Much of the stuff you'd care to learn is online. FOSS makes it easy to learn and experiment and read great code. Anyone with an analytical mind, lots of persistence and free time can become a software developer at least on some level. My wife is currently going through a graduate program to become a Physician Assistant (a clinician in the US). Her experience is drastically different. Everything is very practical. Today she is learning how to put on casts, for example. This is stuff she will be using. Here the dimploma is still a proof that you actually are able to decide matters of health, life and death; prescribe medication; perform surgery; deliver babies; or tell a patient they have cancer. My point is that not all fields have the same issues as others.

I agree with the benefits you've mentioned, I think right now I'm just bitter. I would think a liberal arts school, particularly Clark, would offer a significantly different experience than the one I received. As well, I think I would enjoy a practical program like the one your wife is going through. That is clearly learning tangible skills valuable in the real world.

I think my largest frustration is that the purpose of school, in my humble opinion, is to educate students. To get information (a liberal definition of information capabilities, skills, networks, etc.) from textbooks and professors and extracurricular programs, and cram into the students head in a way that leaves them capable of using it in the future. The purpose of an education is to educate. It killed me to find out that this was hardly the first priority. Somethings are done right, many more wrong, but the bottom line and priorities of the school I attended seemed off. (I was at McGill University by the way)

I didn't realize OCW was meant for teachers... I thought it was for independent learners all along.

Bill Gates has predicted that the best higher education will come from the web and will be cheaper - this is just another step. [Article: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/bill-gates-education/ Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Qg80MVvYs&feature=playe...]

In the same vein as MIT, UC Berkeley has many lectures on availble on Youtube. [http://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley]

Great to see that MIT are addressing the most important problem with OCW: organizing the knowledge intelligibly.

I'm currently having fun with their introduction to programming that uses Python: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput.... (Get the lectures on iTunes U.)

Granted, I don't know if that's the best gateway drug to programming, but it has the irrefutable advantage of assignments that apply the information. You always feel morose watching OCW lectures where the lecturer talks about an assignment that you'd love to do.

Surprised that MIT TAs haven't setup online sites where you can do the assignments for a fee.

There's a business model for you!

If you're looking for intros to programming, 1.00 is also a fantastic course (it's what made me switch to a CS major) which uses Java. The materials are a bit older than for 6.00 though.

Also another good "beginner" (was already a programmer, and it was still a great course) course that actually has everything - lectures, notes, textbook, assignments, tests and answers! - available free online is the UC Berkley CS61A course.

The course teaches the fundamentals of Computer Science with Scheme (Lisp) and the book is SICP (a really great all-around CS book). I watched all the lectures, and did most of the assignments over a month or two last year and learned a lot. Sometimes you have to Google around for old tests/answer keys, but resources for the entire course are online. I highly recommend it if you are remotely interested in programming.

Multiple Semesters of Audio/Video Lectures are on iTunesU

Resources from the Summer 2010 Course:http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/su10/

Edit: Formatting

Great tip, thanks!

If you're like me, and sometimes prefer to have some visual with your audio, Berkley also provides webcasts of these lectures. Here, for example, is Spring '08 of CS61A:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906...

If you're working through the 6.00 class, you may be interested in joining the people on Curious Reef who are doing that class also: http://curiousreef.com/class/mit-opencourseware-600-introduc.... Over 250 people have joined that class so far.

(disclosure, Curious Reef is my website)

The first thought that popped into my mind from reading this was when is there going to be a bachelor's equivalency exam? Perhaps a new potential market for the ETS?

It isn't a bachelor's equivalency exam but if you take enough credits you can get a degree entirely by examination.

http://www.excelsior.edu/ecapps/exams/creditByExam.jsf

This is great news! In most cases the materials on offer were sparse, but an initiative like this will make it really useful both for autodidacts and instructors looking for materials.

Khan giving them a bit of scare? I bet...

I do think this is a genuine attempt to spread knowledge.

Even being cynical there is no real downside for them. People will still want to go to MIT 'for real' and they will still fill their lecture halls with paying students - even if MIT could expand to take everyone that wanted to go there - this would dilute the MIT brand.

Allowing everyone else to get the knowledge for free simply kills the competition, there is no market for a staet-college online course when you can have the best for free.

Maybe if smaller state-colleges are smart they can leverage OCW to their advantage. Instead of doing their own lectures and coursework, they'll use OCW and focus on adding value where OCW cannot with things like instructor led discussion and Q&A sessions about the lecture you've just seen, helping with and grading coursework, one-on-one assistance with assignments, handing out certificates or diplomas upon completing a set of courses, and all the other good stuff an actual college can to better than a pre-recorded video. In fact I'd probably sign up and pay money for just that.

Exactly. Why cannot OCW serve as a sort of standardized curriculum for state schools to model their classes off of?

That was the idea, and why MIT were surprised that most people were using it on their own.

What I meant was that there was no market for a small college selling lectures online for $100s when you could get MIT for free. It won't change the economics of people going to college

Are you sure? Salman Khan did graduate from MIT, so I figure things tend more towards cooperation than competition.

I'm only implying friendly competition, though MIT does have a little "not made here" syndrome.

If they do, then the universities really have it bad. Universities should leverage what sets them apart from autodidact studies. Mainly the social aspect and all the advantages that it entails.

It's too early to speak of any "eating into the share". If anything it increases the market which is good for Khan, good for MIT, good for Berkeley.

Already posted this in longer form as a reply [1], but the UC Berkeley CS courses that are available online are really great, and you can usually find ALL the material for the course online.

If you want to learn Scheme (Lisp), I highly recommend CS61A [2]

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2103949 [2] http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/su10/ Lectures on iTunesU

This is a fantasy come true.

I've always been an independent learner, so I think this is great, but the concept of a "course for independent learners" sounds a lot like herding cats.

8.01 Physics I: Classical Mechanics is Amazing. Walter Lewin makes the bizarre properties and mysteries of the universe come alive in the classroom.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com