Tag: Education

This short talk by Professor Walter E Williams (of George Mason University) will persuade you (if you still have doubts) why it is crucial for lower class/caste children of India to be given the BEST private education. And of course, Prof. Williams has other excellent (and thought provoking) things to say in this talk as well.

This particular talk was given by Prof. Williams the Independent Institute in the mid-1990s. (I visited the institute in 1999 along with Parth Shah and keep in touch with a few of its faculty through social media).

Also listen to his other talks. This is excellent. Walker shows how the welfare state has become a "giant drug pusher", preventing all opportunity to succeed through hard work. And in breaking up families – which even slavery could not do.

Over the past year or so I've been writing about how the education system is about to change. And here's evidence that it is ALREADY happening (see the article below). I've annotated in colour. Virtually everything I've been writing about (and talking to people I meet) is happening as we speak.  In 10 years, expect the entire education system to have TOTALLY restructured. Most existing university buildings will become shopping malls and gyms. 

Online courses winning prestige

BY: ANDREW TROUNSON From: The Australian July 04, 2012 

PATTERN recognition and data analytics are highly specialised areas and Deakin University professor Svetha Venkatesh has had to put a lot of work into getting her PhD students up to speed.

But not anymore. She merely has them take a course and test from US Stanford University through online provider Coursera. And it's free.

"It is absolutely excellent; it is like they are attending Stanford," Professor Venkatesh says. When, of course, they are in Geelong.

Coursera is just one of a rising number of so-called Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) providers offering free courses associated with prestigious universities and offering testing and some certification. In the most recent move, Harvard and MIT have created their edX joint venture that will offer free courses.

And if the acronym MOOC is unwieldy, then at least "massive" captures the impact they are set to have on higher education. Some are calling it a "tsunami", others a "paradigm shift" or "game-changer".

Last week, Deakin vice-chancellor Jane den Hollander announced a new strategy in which MOOC courses would be embedded in curriculum as part of a shake up of teaching and learning. Traditional lectures would go by the wayside with free content being cherry-picked online from the world's best universities. That would, in theory at least, free up academics to focus on assessment tasks and more personalised teaching, including face-to-face, video and online.

And this week University of Southern Queensland vice-chancellor Jan Thomas was in India promoting the online Open Education Resource University international joint venture in which students can access content for free and only pay if they sit exams — a model pioneered by Britain's Open Universities, which now has 275,000 students globally.

But the potential ramifications are profound and it won't all be welcome news. Many Australian universities, perhaps all, simply won't be able to compete with much of the high-quality content on offer. And while that may force a timely refocus on the student experience and pedagogy, such as at Deakin, it raises doubts over the value of on-campus learning universities.

Australia's international market could be threatened if students in Asia simply supplemented their local degree with a Harvard course. It's an appealing and much cheaper alternative to spending tens of thousands dollars studying here.

"The Ivy League has nothing to lose because everybody will still want to go there and have the networking benefits. But a lot of other universities are going to be in the gun," said higher education expert Simon Marginson.

MOOCs could also drive a concentration of knowledge and content generation in the elite globally branded universities, and accelerate trends towards teaching-only academics.

The desirability of a full local degree could be undermined by students cobbling together several globally branded courses with parts of a local degree in a package that could end up being more sought-after by employers.

Open Universities Australia chief executive Paul Wappett said the attitude of employers would be critical. And he notes that the decline in university IT courses has been partly driven by the likes of Microsoft and Cisco taking over the space and employers valuing their certificates.

Melbourne University's Richard James says there is no doubt the sector is being hit by the first wave of a possible revolution. But he maintains universities remain central because of their ability to handle complex student assessment, the attraction of "deep" face-to-face learning, and their control over accreditation. [Sanjeev: THIS MAN IS LIVING IN A WORLD OF DELUSION!!]

"We are seeing the first wave of what looks like the disruptive effects of technology. At the moment the excitment is around high-quality free content. Once that is backed by rigorous assessment, student support and transpersonal deep experience then maybe the real revolution has hit us," he said.

Sean Gallagher, from Sydney University's US Study Centre, said MOOCs represented both a threat and an opportunity and he backed Deakin's move to embrace it. "These high-profile universities have attached their elite reputations to developing this and that says that online is here to stay as part of the future of elite tertiary education," he said.

Deakin's deputy vice-chancellor (academic) John Catford said: "We will provide content in ways students can access that are easier and mobile, and break it down into maybe 10 minute bites rather than 50 minute gulps."

When I was a young student in India, formal education consisted of buying textbooks, listening to lectures, attending the science lab, and possibly reading a few books and articles from the library. 

(In addition to formal education I bought and read books on virtually every topic under the sun, and perhaps learnt more from this process than from my formal education.)

While books will remain the staple of education, education is no longer chained to the lecture room.

The old model doesn't work well, anyway. Over time my rate of attrition of acquired formal knowledge has accelerated. Of what I knew about physics in my BSc final year in 1979 I recall at best about 60 per cent of the concepts and less than 20 per cent of the details. Even in economics which I studied as late as in 1996, more than half the details have disappeared from my head.

If any other product acquired at such high cost performed so poorly, we would sue the manufacturer.

But imagine if one could instantly retrieve (online) the original lectures of 1978 on the internet. That would boost my mind's recall, and clarify/ reinforce concepts about which I may have now – over the years – developed some doubts.

And this qualitative improvement in the educational product is what video technology is bringing. It is already happening with key lectures being recorded by good Western universities and uploaded online.

This has to be done only once: not for each "batch" of students. One lecture by an Albert Einstein on the special theory of relativity would be all he would need to deliver in his entire life. And no other human would need to teach this topic ever again. For millions of years.

In addition, simulation and video demonstrations can dramatically enrich the learning experience. One can demonstrate the details of complex science experiments or techniques without having access to an advanced lab. 

All this will revolutionse education. For instance, students:

• would no longer need to make detailed notes, but pay more attention to the lecture itself – thus increasing content absorption
• who miss a lecture could review the lecture later
• could watch the lectures online before their exams (and fast- forward sections they don’t need)
• could retrieve a specific lecture of interest to them during their later professional career, thus significantly strengthening their learning (and increasing the durability of education)

And students would no longer need to spend the time and effort to go to a university to listen to a lecture in the first place. 

An education revolution is being wrought right before our eyes. Education is now restricted only by one’s imagination. Humans will be able to learn faster and FAR MORE in the coming years as a result of this revolution. 

Brick and mortar universities will disappear. Or change beyond recognition. 

But more on this later.