Of course I jumped at the chance of taking the first AI class, eager to see if it would go towards the (possibly hugely profitable) world-wide higher education framework I was hoping we'd manage to build. I was disappointed by the certificate at the end only mentioning Stanford to make sure that we didn't think this was associated with them in any way. They were clearly not getting it.
But Sebastian Thrun was, and I think Anant Agarwal at MIT is as well. The extremely high teaching standards they have already shown: add a way to give trusted certificates, and this could be the way out for millions of kids throughout the world. And, I assure you, people everywhere _will_ pay for a paper from a trusted source that shows the degree of excellence they or their kids have achieved.
That's not to say there isn't room for other programs that are run in different ways, not only will there be but many will be insanely successful and profitable, but I think that the Udacity model is going to sort of the default way of doing things that every other program is compared against.
From the article: " For the first round of exams, programming will not be included."
I don't think you can demonstrate programming competence with a 90 minute multiple choice test, so I'm interested to see how they end up tackling that challenge.
While the Udacity exam is the actual in depth proficiency challenge that employers will care about, the Pearson name gives some sort of assurance that this person did indeed pass a difficult coding related exam in a physical setting where we can verify their identity, reducing the likelihood that someone cheated or had someone else complete the Udacity course for them. The actual test questions might ask something like "How would you approach problem x, describe what language you would use and how you might structure a program," or for multiple choice, "Which of these is written using proper Python syntax" etc. If you have to learn enough to pass the Pearson test in the end, you'll still have to put in a large chunk of time, making cheating downright impractical.
End result, this partly addresses one of the fundamental issues with online learning that Sebastin Thrun has talked about before, providing a form of physical identity verification and association with an online student username. Of course, someone could always pull a bait-and-switch in the physical testing center, but that's a whole other ball game.
It sounds like the Pearson exams are in addition to the online, coding test.
After all, educations need the signaling factor, and credibility is required for the signal to be effective.
Talk about closing the loop further in enhancing the viability of online education.
I consider this one of the biggest turning point in Udacity, if not online education space as a whole.
The endpoint is a model that will satisfy the employers - whether that's webcam or live proctoring or any combination thereof is irrelevant.
One variant of live proctoring could be an arrangement in which universities give students a number of online options to fulfill a particular requirement - cs, math, physics, etc - and administer their own exams. So the university would simply use it's brand to issue the stamp of quality. In a sense - this is cannibalism for the university. But I think there are public schools that are struggling to serve their students in a financially feasible way. This could be a good way to streamline...
Maybe there will be an added inconvenience of opening the software, maybe there'll be people who might game the system. But for a large part of the population I think it should work
Be interesting to see how it turns out.
EDIT - and of course for things slightly more academic, I'd expect there to be not quite the same set of issues as there were with vendor qualifications (before someone points it out). Yes, I too would prefer to hire people who maintain an interest in learning over someone that didn't (I'm signed up for four of these things as soon as my MSc is out the way), so not intended as a derogatory comment.
If the partnership gets it right then Pearson will look to acquire Udacity, given Pearson's track record of how little they innovate after acquisition this may be damaging to Udacity's long term goals however if the stakeholders of Udacity are looking for a quick out of the market then it might be ideal for them.
The question is, should the lesson plans (for the overall year) be open source, or a marketplace of proprietary competition, or both?
For final exams that cover an entire course, a test independently designed by a third party, using input from employers, entreprenuers and academics, might be a great supplement. Where you took the course would be irrelevant, so long as you could pass the test. It would allow for easy comparison of students in different programs.
Testing is a vital step in providing a credential at least as valuable as a college degree.
