[ExI] mit's answer to the stanford ai class

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Subject: Re: [ExI] mit's answer to the stanford ai class

>...It does do all these things - but there are two remaining pieces of
value that currently require a physical place for people to come to:

>...1) Proving that a certain person has a given general skill category...

>...2) Research...




OK good points, both.  

To the second point, some kinds of research can be done without physically
gathering the participants, but it influences the kinds of research that is
done.  This post is not primarily about that however. 

The first point is how to prove satisfactory mastery of the skillset on the
part of the student.  I see this as a new and interesting challenge.  We
know that grading and testing vary widely from one university to the next.
My own engineering school was small, and its reputation not widely known.
My solution to that was to take the universally-recognized Professional
Engineering state boards exams.  I have never actually used my PE license
professionally, but it does carry weight as a credential.  Engineers will
not talk it down, for they are not entirely sure they could pass those state
boards exams.  I have never heard a fellow engineer talk dismissively about
the PE license.

The state boards take a day to complete, but we can imagine a month of
day-long exams to establish expertise across a wide range of engineering
skills.  Given a choice of taking 30 online courses and spending 30 days in
exams to prove one's skills, as opposed to spending four or five years on a
campus, many might choose the month of exams.  We can imagine a physical
presence required exam place, similar to the one I used recently to get
state-recognized teaching credentials.  You pay the fee, go to a bricks and
mortar location with plenty of identification, take the test real-time.

As the introduction of the web in the early 90s created a huge demand for
website designers, online learning creates a huge new demand for
demonstrating mastery of skills gathered by alternate means.

Of course, to create any analog to traditional college, we need to work out
teledildonics.  But that is another area of discussion entirely.