Re: Why are there no good online CS programs?
"Anne" <[email protected]> Sat, 06 Aug 2011 21:27:56 -0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.programming.language-of-the-year |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
---J2SI5jAHl3NOvevtx-bCPdiP6XfArmiyXXz6yw Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Jeff, You bring up a bunch of good points, none of which I can really disagree wi= th. And, in particular, I do agree that working with others, either in a c= lassroom or in a professional setting, is a much richer learning experience= than being alone. But there can be all sorts of reasons why a person migh= t feel compelled to be satisfied with a 'less rich' experience of learning = online/remotely rather than not get the education at all. I'm just going to toss out a couple of thoughts: >>there aren't very good online degree programs in the US I actually don't know much about the 'degree' part of this. OTOH, my eldes= t daughter, who has struggled with a learning disability, got a huge learni= ng/confidence boost and earned some crucial credits, while in the midst of = a getting a 'traditional' (read residential) undergraduate degree, by takin= g several online courses from UCLA. The content wasn't 'technical' in our = terms but ranged from a philosophy course to several in screen and televisi= on writing, which are pretty technical in their own weird way. So I do thi= nk good online education is out there. And, for her, online worked in a wa= y that classroom based education never had; it helped her develop some lear= ning skills she took back to the classroom that got her through to an under= grad degree. One problem you didn't mention, but I think needs to also be said (and was = alluded to by a couple of other posters), is that there seem to be serious = flaws in our approaches to undergraduate Computer Science education as a wh= ole. I've heard about a lot of traditional classroom-based programs that a= re floundering. They don't get a lot of entry-level students, many of thos= e students drop out after just a class or two, the number of degrees grante= d is way down. The amount of material you could teach is enormous, there s= eems to be no consensus on how to introduce it in a way that inspires rathe= r than intimidates, and the skillsets among graduates don't seem to match t= he many great jobs that are going begging, which feeds people's wrong (IMHO= ) that all the good programming jobs are disappearing. One place that seems to be doing a good job with an undergrad CS program is= little Allegheny College in PA. I stumbled on to hiring an intern from t= here last summer and hired two this summer: good skills, good ability to d= evelop new skills on the fly, and good work ethic. I need to talk to the p= rofs there and figure out what they are doing right.=20=20 ag --- In [email protected], "jefflcohen" <jeff@...> wrote: > > Hi Anne, >=20 > I think this is an excellent topic and worthy of some discussion. >=20 > I think there aren't very good online degree programs in the US in genera= l, let alone in CS. Yes, there are many online institutions that spend a l= ot of money on their marketing efforts. But I think they jury is still out= on the quality of that education. >=20 > Some universities (Stanford and MIT come to mind) already make a large am= ount of their courses available for free online via iTunes U. You can't ea= rn a degree that way, but it's another avenue for folks who want to learn m= aterial without having to travel or even pay tuition. >=20 > But back to the online thing - although there are many resources online (= ebooks, screencasts, tutorials) I believe that there is no better way to le= arn than from an instructor in person. Instead of proving online materials= , I provide onsite training to corporations several times a year, and this = fall I'll be part of Code Academy (codeacademy.org). I just think it's a m= uch better educational experience.=20=20 >=20 > Workplaces are becoming remote, but the set of problems that must be solv= ed to allow employees to work remotely is not comparable to the challenge o= f providing a rich learning experience comparable to what you get in a real= school. I hope that one day we'll get there, but I don't think anyone's f= igured it out just yet. >=20 > Thoughts? >=20 > Jeff > codeacademy.org > purpleworkshops.com > jeffcohenonline.com >=20 ---J2SI5jAHl3NOvevtx-bCPdiP6XfArmiyXXz6yw Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> </head> <body style="background-color: #fff;"> <span style="display:none"> </span> <!--~-|**|PrettyHtmlStartT|**|-~--> <div id="ygrp-mlmsg" style="position:relative;"> <div id="ygrp-msg" style="z-index: 1;"> <!--~-|**|PrettyHtmlEndT|**|-~--> <div id="ygrp-text" > <p>Jeff,<br> <br> You bring up a bunch of good points, none of which I can really disagree with. And, in particular, I do agree that working with others, either in a classroom or in a professional setting, is a much richer learning experience than being alone. But there can be all sorts of reasons why a person might feel compelled to be satisfied with a 'less rich' experience of learning online/remotely rather than not get the education at all.<br> <br> I'm just going to toss out a couple of thoughts:<br> <br> >>there aren't very good online degree programs in the US<br> I actually don't know much about the 'degree' part of this. OTOH, my eldest daughter, who has struggled with a learning disability, got a huge learning/confidence boost and earned some crucial credits, while in the midst of a getting a 'traditional' (read residential) undergraduate degree, by taking several online courses from UCLA. The content wasn't 'technical' in our terms but ranged from a philosophy course to several in screen and television writing, which are pretty technical in their own weird way. So I do think good online education is out there. And, for her, online worked in a way that classroom based education never had; it helped her develop some learning skills she took back to the classroom that got her through to an undergrad degree.<br> <br> One problem you didn't mention, but I think needs to also be said (and was alluded to by a couple of other posters), is that there seem to be serious flaws in our approaches to undergraduate Computer Science education as a whole. I've heard about a lot of traditional classroom-based programs that are floundering. They don't get a lot of entry-level students, many of those students drop out after just a class or two, the number of degrees granted is way down. The amount of material you could teach is enormous, there seems to be no consensus on how to introduce it in a way that inspires rather than intimidates, and the skillsets among graduates don't seem to match the many great jobs that are going begging, which feeds people's wrong (IMHO) that all the good programming jobs are disappear ing.<br> <br> One place that seems to be doing a good job with an undergrad CS program is little Allegheny College in PA. I stumbled on to hiring an intern from there last summer and hired two this summer: good skills, good ability to develop new skills on the fly, and good work ethic. I need to talk to the profs there and figure out what they are doing right. <br> <br> ag<br> <br> --- In <a href="mailto:pragprog%40yahoogroups.com">[email protected]</a>, "jefflcohen" <jeff@...> wrote:<br> ><br> > Hi Anne,<br> > <br> > I think this is an excellent topic and worthy of some discussion.<br> > <br> > I think there aren't very good online degree programs in the US in general, let alone in CS. Yes, there are many online institutions that spend a lot of money on their marketing efforts. But I think they jury is still out on the quality of that education.<br> > <br> > Some universities (Stanford and MIT come to mind) already make a large amount of their courses available for free online via iTunes U. You can't earn a degree that way, but it's another avenue for folks who want to learn material without having to travel or even pay tuition.<br> > <br> > But back to the online thing - although there are many resources online (ebooks, screencasts, tutorials) I believe that there is no better way to learn than from an instructor in person. Instead of proving online materials, I provide onsite training to corporations several times a year, and this fall I'll be part of Code Academy (codeacademy.org). I just think it's a much better educational experience. <br> > <br> > Workplaces are becoming remote, but the set of problems that must be solved to allow employees to work remotely is not comparable to the challenge of providing a rich learning experience comparable to what you get in a real school. I hope that one day we'll get there, but I don't think anyone's figured it out just yet.<br> > <br> > Thoughts?<br> > <br> > Jeff<br> > codeacademy.org<br> > purpleworkshops.com<br> > jeffcohenonline.com<br> > <br> <br> </p> </div> <!--~-|**|PrettyHtmlStart|**|-~--> <div style="color: #fff; height: 0;">__._,_.___</div> <div id="ygrp-actbar" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 10px; white-space: nowrap; color: #666; padding-top: 15px;"> <div> <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Why%20are%20there%20no%20good%20online%20CS%20programs%3F" style="margin-right: 0; padding-right: 0;"> Reply to <span style="font-weight: 700;">sender</span></a> | <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Why%20are%20there%20no%20good%20online%20CS%20programs%3F"> Reply to <span style="font-weight: 700;">group</span></a> | <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragprog/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxazVtZWEzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzI4Mzg3MDgEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDA3MjA3BG1zZ0lkAzEwMjA0BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3JwbHkEc3RpbWUDMTMxMjY2NjA3Nw--?act=reply&messageNum=10204">Reply <span style="font-weight: 700;">via web post</span></a> | <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragprog/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJlNDM3OTBpBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzI4Mzg3MDgEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDA3MjA3BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA250cGMEc3RpbWUDMTMxMjY2NjA3Nw--" style="font-weight: 700;">Start a New Topic</a> </div> <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragprog/message/10197;_ylc=X3oDMTM2bHR1ZmVsBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzI4Mzg3MDgEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDA3MjA3BG1zZ0lkAzEwMjA0BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3Z0cGMEc3RpbWUDMTMxMjY2NjA3NwR0cGNJZAMxMDE5Nw--">Messages in this topic</a> (<span style="font-weight: 700;">8</span>) </div> <!------- Start Nav Bar ------> <!-- |**|begin egp html banner|**| --> <div id="ygrp-vital" style="background-color: #e0ecee; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 10px;"> <span id="vithd" style="font-weight: bold; color: #333; text-transform: uppercase; ">Recent Activity:</span> <ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; display: inline;"> <li style="border-right: 1px solid #000; font-weight: 700; display: inline; padding: 0 5px; margin-left: 0;"> <span class="cat"><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragprog/members;_ylc=X3oDMTJmaDFmY3A5BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzI4Mzg3MDgEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDA3MjA3BHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA3ZtYnJzBHN0aW1lAzEzMTI2NjYwNzc-?o=6" style="text-decoration: none;">New Members</a></span> <span class="ct" style="color: #ff7900;">2</span> </li> </ul> <div style="clear: both; padding-top: 2px; color: #1e66ae;"> <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragprog;_ylc=X3oDMTJlaXVwbG5mBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzI4Mzg3MDgEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDA3MjA3BHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA3ZnaHAEc3RpbWUDMTMxMjY2NjA3Nw--" style="text-decoration: none;">Visit Your Group</a> </div> </div> <div id="ft" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0 2px 0 0; clear: both;"> <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJkbm40azV0BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzI4Mzg3MDgEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDA3MjA3BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2dmcARzdGltZQMxMzEyNjY2MDc3" style="float: left;"><img src="http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/yg/logo/us.gif" height="15" width="137" alt="Yahoo! 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