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

[Jeff Davis]

The internet is clearly a paradigm altering information exchange
innovation.  It is so new and its power so great that we can't see the
forest for the low-hanging fruit.

Newspapers are dieing, and the reason is trivially obvious.  As
obvious as Wikipedia.  And amazing.  Remember, Wikipedia -- with its
evolving problems and evolving solutions -- is a free to make free to
use, volunteer, not for profit, outside the old commercial paradigm,
information co-op.  Hoorah!

 Universities are, if not next, high up on the list for imminent
obsolescence.  Hell!, there's probably a Wiki-versity already out
there.  (I haven't Googled it.  I'll leave that to you.)

Why is Harvard (or University X) a "good school"?  Top flight staff?
To be sure.  But what about the top flight students? Surely they
count.  Why does Harvard (or U of X) charge big bucks for tuition?
Why don't the top flight students charge the Universities instead?
For the privilege of having the best students there to make that
school the top flight institution that it is?  After all, the students
are the ones actually doing the work of learning.

A lecture series can be put on DVD.  The information is all in public
domain.  The words coming out of the mouth of some Nobel laureate's
mouth are the same when spoken by a talking head or voice synthesizer.
 Curriculum, course notes, tests, texts can all be assembled in
digital form from sources publicly available.  So why the big bucks
for lecturers, etc?  Old paradigm inertia, nothing more.  (The UoP is
trying to expand their business model.  Kudos.  But it's still an old
paradigm model.  A dinosaur walking.)

The internet isn't even an infant yet.  It's barely "crowning".

As an undergraduate at Case Tech, I took the standard thermo course.
Crappy teacher.  I passed, but I didn't "get" it.  Paused for a stint
in the military, and then resumed my engineering studies at UC
Berkeley, and decided to do Thermo again in the hopes of "getting it"
the second time.    another crappy "professor".  A grad student
actually, whose notion of teaching was to use the hour to transcribe
the book onto the chalkboard.  I passed, but still didn't "get it".
Then I went to SF State, a cheesy little school with a cheesy
engineering dept.  Took Thermo yet again, this time from Jerome Fox a
former hot shot project manager from Bechtel or some such big league
firm.  Best teacher bar none I have ever encountered.
(Inter-personally a monster, but that's another story.)  Took things
small step by small step, proceeded quickly from one to the next, and
had the students to work problems in class at every step.  He never
screwed up by missing a step.  Never skipped a "link" necessary for
assembling the "chain" of learning. Never let his comprehensive
familiarity with the subject cause him to  skip something long since
useless in application but essential in moving along the path from not
knowing to knowing and understanding.

He had a bad ticker and was always at risk of dropping dead.  This was
the early eighties -- no internet yet -- and my three different tries
at Thermo made me peculiarly aware of the striking variations in
teaching quality/effectiveness "out there".  I wanted to get Prof Fox
on video tape (early eighties remember) to preserve, for the future
legions of engineering students, the astonishing resource that was his
teaching ability.  He made Thermo ***easy***.  I mean easy as in well,
... easy.

So what I see as the Wiki-versity is a micro-payment, for-profit site
where **anyone** can submit a lesson/lecture for sale.  No need to be
a University Prof.  Joe Nobody could do it.  The proof of the pudding
is in the eating.  If your submission is most effective, then it sells
to the folks who need and want it.  If you price it at a dime or a
dollar -- cheap enough to buy rather than "pirate" -- in the internet
market of 7 billion, you're gonna make some money.

Little side point.  The Meyers-Briggs 4 by 4 matrix generates 16
personality variants, and it's not hard to suppose that each has its
own learning style that needs a teaching style to fit.  So, for any
given subject, there should be a whole slew of lessons to choose from
to find something that fits.

Bye-bye newspapers, bye-bye Universities.  What's next?

Best, Jeff Davis

         "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                                            Ray Charles