Comment by entha_saava | Hacker News Reader

Comment by entha_saava | Hacker News Reader

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As a student, it sounds more and more necessary these days.

I am a student from Rural India, studying at an "engineering" "college" (obviously in urban area). The minimum cost for getting into engineering degrees is too much for rural income scales here. And the quality of education is PATHETIC (everything is rote learning based and everyone is trying to game the system, because edu system is so mechanical).

Since the formal education is so costly and ineffective[0], many people like me would benefit from a commoditization through online medium. I started learning programming one year before I joined the college in Bachelor of Engineering (CSE) program. And having seen the teaching methods and rat race, I am pretty sure I can learn better if I go on my own. But there are too many stakeholders in the ineffective process, that would prevent such a thing from happening.

But even if they conduct college through online classes for the next year, I would be happy, because I would save on accommodation expenses by staying at home :).

[0] The ineffective four years of education is probably why many people complain about Indian SWEs. The entire thing is rat race for sustaining jobs - then mechanically clearing exams, copying GitHub repos, lying on resumes etc... If all of these people chose their subjects with genuine interest, about only 10% would be studying in CSE and "Indian SWE" would've had a better image worldwide.

Flipped classroom should be explored more, both for effective learning experience and lower costs. In high-demand fields like CS, ML, and Software Engineering, experts who can communicate well are both rare and well compensated in industry. Many if not most colleges cannot afford or unwilling to pay competitively for them.

Learning from top experts who teach online classes that can be accessed from many institutions while having local tutors would allow students to learn from experts who are good teachers and get in-person help as needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

And flipped classroom should be a familiar concept to anyone that has taken a 'seminar' class in college. Basically, everyone reads assigned material and then the teacher leads discussion during class. Flipped tends to use video instead of written material but the classroom experience is similar.

There are some similarities but I'd say well-designed MOOCs are quite a bit better that written materials for most students. Videos with regular quizzes & some automatic grading provide semi-interactive experience that is much more motivating to most than reading passive text.

For some, MOOCs can be better than live lectures. Many students dare not ask any questions in a lecture room anyway. They can pause to think, review materials if they get a quiz question wrong, and ask questions more openly in the MOOC forum.

In addition, the MOOC system can record student's performance in quizzes and some even have an AI designed to detect cheating, e.g. whether the typing pattern of the user is anomalous.

I think MOOCs are as good as a certain kind of live lectures; the kind where the professor copies the text on the whiteboard and students copy it into their notebooks, then repeat it in quizzes and exams.

But MOOCs can't compete with the best live lectures, where students have an opportunity for meaningful discussion, challenging and original projects, and building relationships.

I think I would agree although, but MOOCs can compete with the best lectures, they just can’t compete with the best interactive discussion. Can that be recreated or so we need intimate physical rooms with low class sizes to achieve it?

Decades ago, when I was young, we called this kind of thing "homework". It didn't need any kind of brand identity back then.

(In case anyone else is as pedantic as me about definitions: yes, there were two kinds of homework. The first was you read something at home, and then discussed it in the next class. The other was you learnt something and when practiced it at home afterwards.)

For anyone in India who is finding their current CS education ineffective: Please consider applying to the online software development bootcamp I founded: https://McLarenCollege.in

We don't charge any up-front fees. We only get paid as a share of your income after you graduate (or complete at least 60% of the course) so we have a strong incentive to provide effective tuition.

Lol is this LinkedIn?

On a more serious note, at least consider adding a "shameless plug" notice while promoting your own stuff on HN.

I am not really interested in this kind of stuff but looked at it.

> Our 12-week live online training course ....

No, thanks.. that's not the scope of a CS degree. You are promoting something irrelevant here - no offence.

I'm glad it was posted. I like alternative methods. Everything is a shameless plug about something. In your case, you're just shamlessly plugging the established college industrial complex. Sorry. I like the alt-ed world.

I like the alt-ed world too, but the person you’re replying to is correct: a 12 week boot camp is the equivalent of what? maybe one or two courses? Not even the same ballpark

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