Although it is great to have lectures, slides etc. online (check also the Open Course Ware initiative from MIT), it is still a difference if you are just listening to the lectures or if you can really interact with the people attending.
Education is more about interaction and struggling for ideas than it is about listening to lectures.
Still great complimentary resources ... (also for lecturers).
>Education is more about interaction and struggling for ideas than it is about listening to lectures.
I disagree. Education is about acquiring skills & knowledge. Lectures, interactions, books, tutors, classmates.. these are the way education is delivered. Maybe university experience is "more about interaction and struggling for ideas than it is about listening to lectures," but saying that about education as a whole sounds a lot like saying news is about printing.
I have been an autodidact all of my life, and poor (and occasionally homeless) most of my adult life. I'm still young.
I've been learning partially via online video lectures (specifically MIT's OCW) and course materials since they first started popping up a few years ago, and I've learned a great deal - however, I feel that I would have learned much more if I was in a situation where I was always very close to being able to interact with other people learning the same stuff in person. Not to mention that there are other benefits.
In fact, I'll probably be pursuing college after completing my next gig, which is 4-5 months down the road - mainly because the type of stuff that I'm very interested in (like friendly AI and cognitive science) are only really moving in colleges - I'd be put directly in contact with more people with more interests doing more relevant stuff once I sludged past the undergrad part.
It's not that I can't keep learning and applying my knowledge on my own, it's that I think I may have hit a point where it's just not as efficient (for my purposes) anymore.
Colleges can be very useful. Access to lectures is only one of the ways they do what they do. That particular aspect, well you can do that without them.
I'm not saying this replaces colleges. Just saying that this also helps people become educated.
Education is about learning how to learn. You can either learn by yourself or with others. Learning with others is more effective and enjoyable, which is why sites like HN exist. Learning to learn with others is something you get from going to university, i.e. interaction and struggling for ideas.
I don't disagree that this (the recent availability of online lectures) is not a mirror replacement for uni. It's also not entirely new. The possibility of getting a uni equivalent education without enrolling has always existed (at least partially). Books, uni Libraries. Many places will let you sit in on virtually all classes without enrolling. But it has always remained in the sidelines.
But... Pointing to any developed of this kind and saying 'this isn't uni' as if it means something really substantial is short sighted. The improvement & accessibility of free online learning materials is going to have a profound effect, most probably.
If Universities' value is kept only in the fringe: 'interacting with others,' 'the personal & social experience' & the rest of the things that cannot be replaced by online study, well... Universities have an educational (skills & knowledge, if you prefer) role and a gate-keeping role. If they loose their edge on those, they loose their edge.
Only if you could filter them somehow. Most omnisio comments weren't serious. Half of the lecture comments would be idiots making fun of the instructors hair.
I don't know if any of you feel the same way, but I didn't appreciate how much random and interesting subjects I could learn from college until I graduated. Now I can attend lectures on my own schedule and in the comfort of my home, nice!
I used to go through the course catalog as an undergrad the same way I looked at the Sears Christmas catalog as a kid. Trying to pick the most interesting classes out of so many choices, like trying to pick the toys I wanted at the top of my Christmas list.
Agreed that it's amazing to be able to "attend" so many of these lectures for free now, just need to make the time.
To get the most out of these lectures, you really have to do all the problem sets and carefully read all the notes and material. Simply just watching the lectures is not enough unless you just want a very rough overview of the topic.
It will be really great if someone made a forum/website where people could interact with each other about a particular course and ask questions and have discussions regarding certain topics.
Not sure about MIT and Harvard, but for Stanford CS courses, if you go to csXXX.stanford.edu you'll typically get the class page, including slides, problem sets, programming assignments etc. Ex. http://cs221.stanford.edu.
Obviously, I agree with you. In fact, I'd go a step further and say that watching the lectures without doing the problems/coding gets you significantly less than halfway.
I've been a big fan of watching this stuff for edutainment. It's much like watching TV documentaries but with actual depth and insight about the subjects.
This is one of the best thing that happened to me this year. Also it would be great if these videos were also available through torrents. Lots of people can't streamline videos due to slow internet connection and constant disconnections and these videos are pretty huge(It is taking me 4 hours to download a single 400MB video)
But again just a thought, Thanks Academic Earth for such a wonderful website.
This is great. I've been watching some lectures online recently and found myself wishing for a good consolidated site. I wish there catalog was a bit bigger, but with luck this will grow. I wish they had some social tools too. Like a forum for each lecture for people to discuss and ask questions.
This is a pretty incredible compilation of lectures. I also really like the fact that they post Sample Exams, so you can test your learning.
My question... whats the licensing of these materials. What would stop me from setting up my own mini college, with a big screen TV, and use these courses instead of hiring professors. The value prop would be to combine these lectures with a classroom setting and a program that would encourage students to read along with the courses (textbook) and graded exams for feedback.
I have been blogging about free education for almost 3 years on my Free Science Online (http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com) blog. Check it out! I have collected hundreds of courses in math, physics, engineering, computer science, and other topics.
I've "sat" halfway through their Econ 159 - Game Theory and Econ 252 - Financial Markets. They seem interesting enough to be completed. Open Yale has best UI but their course plate is limited in numbers and to introduction courses.
I saw that too, but they could make it some kind of integrative portal.
If their goal is simply to stay as they are, just with more content, that is, quite literally, incredible. If I'm wrong though, hats off a million times to them.
I understand this is likely a PR under the guise of a blog post - but it seems unfair to overlook iTunesU and MIT's already mentioned OpenCourseware.
The benefits of viewing lectures within the iTunes/iPhone/Boxee environment shouldn't need to be recounted here - but it's important point to reinterate for less techy folk who may be looking for something similar and already have an itunes store account.
