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Comment by flogic | Hacker News Reader

If I ever return to school, I'd certainly be willing to consider online courses in combination with testing at an approved location.

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If I ever return to school, I'm going to want what I didn't get nearly enough of in my undergraduate degree: in-person access to professors.

I don't want college credit for browsing the web and watching videos. I want coaching, feedback and interaction from people with deep knowledge in their field.

But doing the gruntwork online, and focussing on quality interaction with professors? I can see real-time lecturing dying out: that's time that could be more profitably spent doing the coaching and feedback that as you point out has much greater value.

Exactly, like the flipped classroom: covering the material is through videos, questions and discussions are in person.

@blahedo: True, it doesn't have to be video. Personally I prefer reading to watching a video.

Don't put the cart before the horse: videos are only one way to cover the material, and not always (or even usually) the best one. The people that are strongly pushing videos as an integral component of flipping the classroom are in fact still stuck in a lecture mode---but why use videos of lectures if the complaint about lectures is that they're less efficient than just reading the book? Video is appropriate for some things, but other modalities (such as books, viz software, practice problem engines, etc) are more appropriate for much of the "before you come to class" material.

Sounds like you want apprenticeships and mentors, not professors.

I do think apprenticing needs to come back, big time, to complement a digital learning curriculum for the grunt work. In my undergrad, I'd say 2% of my time was actually professor-engaged, and the rest was assembly line rote work read-the-book-repeat-the-answer.

> Sounds like you want apprenticeships and mentors, not professors.

Sounds like a PhD program where you really are an apprentice and the professor is really a mentor.

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