Conscientiousness and Online Education

"As already observed, the school system already rewards Conscientious grinds, and oppresses creativity."

Emphasis mine. It seems to be a general principle that bringing the full power of computers to bear on a domain always starts out as "X, but on a computer" but as it realizes its full potential evolves into something else. News on your computer isn't just a newspaper, but on a computer. Games aren't just board games, but on a computer. The web isn't just a library, but on your computer.

I think this piece carries as an implicit assumption that online education will be just like conventional education, but on a computer. But while education may be "school, but on a computer!" right now, I see no reason in any dimension to think that will be the stable outcome, and every reason to believe that education too will not merely be made cheaper and a bit flashier, but as fundamentally transformed as everything else that computers have touched.

Consider a math education program that gives fine-grained, instant feedback about everything you are doing, as if a real-life math teacher were standing over your shoulder every second, giving you immediate feedback instead of handing in your papers and getting them back in two days. (Even as I say that, it sounds ludicrous to me that we expect learning to result from that.) If you're getting continuous feedback, it seems like it makes being conscientious much easier.

I agree with the argument that if online edu. requires more conscientiousness, we should expect a lower success rate.

I understand that gwern doesn't advocate against online education, but it's worth noting: even if the conversion rate through online edu is lower than expensive, sit-in-a-classroom edu, we can expect more people to become more educated, provided the economic or status rewards from online edu aren't much less than the expensive variety - because more people will want to try.

To increase the online edu success rate, look for mechanisms that make online learning more rewarding - perhaps some of the Zynga playbook - e.g. providing immediate public status gratification, or involving friends.

To specifically address akrasia (of course, having lower cost means more people will begin what they never really intended to do), allow more flexibility in deadlines (if the course has a fixed schedule, allow skipping assignments until the next run), offer a type of completion with cheap physical "classrooms" for proctored tests/assignments (would increase the value of the signal - you really performed the task yourself), and optionally including time for watching lectures with others.