Stanford University is going to make its regular Introduction to AI course available free on the Web this fall. The course regularly enrolls nearly 200 students. Students taking the free online version of the course can turn in lessons that will be graded and take the tests. They can receive a certificate indicating their level of performance in the course relative to the regularly enrolled students.

For details, see http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/stanford-u-offers-free-online-course-in-artificial-intelligence/32622?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en. Here are a couple of quotes from that Website:

The course—which is taught by Sebastian Thrun, a computer-science professor at Stanford, and Peter Norvig, director of research at Google—is among the largest at the university, with nearly 200 students typically enrolling each term. Those who want to join online need not register with Stanford officials or make their way to Palo Alto, though.

Mr. Thrun said the purpose behind grading the online students is to encourage them to work as hard as the Stanford students to meet deadlines and watch lectures. The benefit of having the courses run simultaneously as opposed to simply posting the course materials after the fact is that students can interact. “We wanted to synchronize the community of people taking the class,” Mr. Norvig said. “Nobody knows for sure what the right way is for courses to be run online.”

My Thoughts

Here are some of my thoughts about this offer:

1. Stanford has long been a leading center for research and study in AI. Thus, people taking the course will be participating in a “world class” course.
2. People who teach AI in colleges and universities throughout the world will be interested in the course because it will give them the opportunity to see what a high quality version of the course looks like.
3. It seems like that this “experiment” will raise the bar for standards in an introductory AI course throughout the world. Both students and faculty can readily compare the standards used in this course versus the standards used in their own college or university.
4. The methodologies used to make this course available free to a very large audience will prove to be an interesting experiment. If this course proves reasonably successful, then it will help pave the road to such courses being offered in other subject areas. We are used to the idea of somewhat standardized (widely sold) textbooks being used in a particular course that is widely taught. For example, College Algebra is taught throughout colleges and universities in the United States. But a textbook does not determine the quality of the course and standards being set in the course. Thus, the AI course experiment could well prove to be a step toward establishing a greater amount of uniformity in courses that currently vary widely in quality and standards.
5. The Massive Open Online Course movement (MOOC, n.d.) may signal a major change in education. Most of us are used to the idea that some courses are taught in large lecture sections that are accompanied by small discussion sections taught by graduate assistants. Suppose that in a particular course such as College Algebra there are a dozen or so “large lecture sections” available. Some might be taught by colleges and universities, while some might be offered by for-profit corporations. Why would other colleges and universities offer their own version of the course when instead they could piggyback on a carefully developed course taught by others?
6. Now, think about a MOOC being accompanied by high quality, modern, Highly Interactive Intelligent Computer-Assisted Learning (HIICAL) materials. Courses based on a combination of these two approaches to instruction could well come to dominate education throughout a country.

Retrospective Comment 12/19/2011

Today I encountered two articles about distance learning. The first indicated that this coming Spring MIT will offer its first free online course in which a student can do the assignment and get a Certificate indicating that they have successfully taken the course.  This sounds like what Stanford set up for its AI course.

This is a very interesting concept. We seem to be moving in the direction in which a person can learn on their ow via distance learning courses, and then get some sort of Certificate of Accomplishment that can be used as evidence of their work. Think about a future in which a job applicant says, "I could not afford to go to college. However, here is a set of certificates that verify I took and passed all of the courses required for a degree. You can verify the authenticity of these certificates by checking with the University that issued them."

The second article was a forecast of continuing increase in online education at the precollege level. It raised the issue of whether we are preparing teachers to deal with this type of teaching (and learning) situation.

Of course, there is also the issue of preparing students for this changing component of education. Students vary considerably in the amount of immediate and personalized help they need from a face-to-face human teacher as they work to learn new material. Our current educational system is somewhat oriented toward students developing into independent, self-sufficient, intrinsically motivated learners. H0wever,  the level of success eaves much to be desired.

It seems to me that one of the major goals of education should be to substantially increase students gaining the knowledge, skills, and drive to be self-sufficient, intrinsically motivated, lifelong learners. 

The Web as a global library and distance learning via the Web are potentially powerful educational change agents. Each teacher (as well as each parent, and others interested in education) can help students move in the direction described above. One way to do this is to help students learn to ask researchable, interesting, and relevant questions about the various topics they are studying in school, and then have students follow up on the questions they ask. (See the IAE Blog entry "That's a researchable question" at http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/thats-a-researchable-question.html.

This could become a routine component of each unit of study. Parents can do the same thing with their children. Parents and their children can ask questions of mutual interest and seek relevant information via the Web. This could become a "play together, learn together" routine activity. See the free IAE book:

Moursund, David (11/4/2011). Play Together, Learn Together: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Eugene, OR: Information Age Education. Download a free copy of the PDF file from http://i-a-e.org/downloads/doc_download/212-play-together-learn-together-stem.html and/or a free copy of the Microsoft Word file from http://i-a-e.org/downloads/doc_download/213-play-together-learn-together-stem.html.

References

MOOC (n.d.). Massive Open Online Course. A Web search using this term produces a huge number of hits. See, for example, http://wallyboston.com/2011/07/11/what-is-a-massive-open-online-course-aka-mooc/.

Moursund, D.G. (7/13/2011). Open courseware is changing the world. IAE Blog. Retrieved 8/2/2011 from http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/open-courseware-is-changing-the-world-of-education.html.

Parry, Marc (8/29/2010). Online, bigger classes may be better classes. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 8/2/2011 from http://chronicle.com/article/Open-Teaching-When-the/124170.