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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 09/06/2013 03:20, James Clement
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CA+LBAbQXsuv-6wME5-smW+Pb-BKS2YXQ7Tt=MKmrpsQKBWk0bA@mail.gmail.com"
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no-repeat">Publishing, music, shopping, journalism – all
revolutionised by the internet. Next in line? Education.<br>
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<br>
I think this is an apt comparision. It is not so much that
everything universities are doing is doomed, but that (1) some
segments will be seriously changed, and (2) that the business model
will have to change. I have posted to the list about this topic
before, looking at how different roles change. <br>
<br>
Online courses seem really transformative in the areas where
teaching is mostly about distributing semantic information and
having people interact with it, especially if one can automate
testing and experimentation - mathematics might be a prime example.
I am less convinced they work for practical procedural skills: not
only might it be hard to train chemical synthesis or welding this
way, doing procedural tasks like accounting might be tricky.
Similarly evaluation difficulties in domains where the output is
natural language (like law) might be problematic. But these issues
are a bit like what goods are easy to sell via Amazon - yeah, pets
might be less practical than books, but that doesn't mean you can't
do greats in the non-pet market. <br>
<br>
Sitting on the pure research side I am less concerned, of course.
Here the internet has already transformed things by making everybody
within the same language sphere accessible to everybody else, and by
the ongoing earthquakes in scientific publishing. One interesting
aspect is of course that global collaboration has become easier -
not super-easy, since keeping momentum when you do not meet in the
coffee room all the time is tricky - but definitely easier. One of
my most productive co-authors is 99% of the time in Germany, and it
always feels surprising to meet him in RL. <br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
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