The other point, as made in the "EdTech doesn't scale" post the other day, is that Edutainment is one of the only really scalable ways to do EdTech profitably, and that favours consumption, not growth or testing (because for learning to be effective, it more or less has to be quite hard). At least, to remember most of the content, not just highlights.
I started taking notes, started cutting down on low-quality infotainment/edutainment (for example while I know folks at SciShow work a lot on their content, put a lot of effort into producing scientifically correct stuff, but it's just not deep enough, it's too fast), and in general try to watch/listen to multiple videos that touch the same topics. (Because many complex things require multiple passes to comprehend anyway, and getting different viewpoints, different presentation helps a lot with that.)
That's my personal experience, and that's also the theory nowadays.
I mean, it's not worse than watching reality TV or sports or something. Maybe better - maybe consuming edutainment will inspire you to follow through and apply it.
However the question is increasingly whether simply the cognitive load of feedback is the reason for this is coming up.
i.e. does the Testing effect reduce in efficacy when you apply it to every waking hour, every course? does it just benefit when you study one course?
There are clear links that subjects where students have a stake in the result (i.e. it is mandatory for college) lead to higher attendance and final grades, regardless of study method.
Lots of the predominant psychology applies only to motivated students or those in mandatory courses.. so basically, we can't know the state for free willed learning/edutainment.
Its a captialsm valuation nothing more.
What are we as humans if we don't have the resources to educate and learn and be curious?
I really hope the current AI and Robot wave will lead us all to a more 'free' society
Focus on automatisation and we don't have a production issue.
Its a man made problem, not some kind of magic rule.
If we live in a world where human effort has no marginal utility, we also live in a world where human life has no value. If we don't, you're in a world where you're competing with other humans for some set of resources. Regardless of whether you believe that you are competing with them, others are competing with you.
I think competition is perhaps one of the most basic rules of reality.
As long as things cost something, and a course costs something to create and deliver, the question of valuation in some way is valid. It's not a capitalist issue, it's an allocation of resources issue, which is something universal as long as resources are limited.
Where it works, the free market is great because it transparently shows how people actually value something. That is, it shows how we actually are and what we actually want, not what would be nice in some utopian world.
The same thing happens in Germany but in an even more vicious way. You are basically triaged before high school and can only manage to switch with tons of bureaucracy and difficulty. It's gotten better but it's still very much 'your path is set and is almost impossible to change after high school' for most people.
I went to university in France when it was both free (still basically is) with no selection for entry and the amount of waste was huge for no benefit to anyone... well except for official stats because "I'm not unemployed, I'm a student"...
not true. there is also the gesamtschule which delays the decision to make the abitur until you are in 10th grade.
40% of students in germany qualify for university (and another 10% for fachhochschule). that is much higher than the university admission rates in the US.
Again, that's just as bad as paying for education. At least with money you can work or take a loan and chose the path you want even at age 20 or 25, you're not locked in by a choice that was made when you were a teenager. Yes, I know you also have to get good grades in the US or Canada, but at least here in Canada you can basically almost always go back to university, take a few perp courses and be eligible to apply even for medecine.
the abitur i got from the gesamtschule is just as good as the abitur someone got from a gymnasium. if i want to get into medicine or some other highly popular field all i need is good grades in the last 3 years of school.
a 10th grader is 16 years old because first grade starts at 6 years.
those 10th graders that don't continue school go into an apprenticeship, of which there are many choices available. germany has 12 years of compulsory education (9 or 10 years of school and 3 years of either school or professional education)
and no, that is not the same as paying for education.
loans are way harder to get in germany as the banks are much more conservative. getting a loan for school would be practically impossible.
And I guess that makes sense for Germany. Where I live, loans are basically guaranteed and almost free for students especially if you are graduating in a degree with good job prospects. This allowed my dad to basically switch paths entirely when he was like 40, as it paid for his entire spendings during his degree and he could do it easily in north America. It was basically impossible for him to do something similar in France.
i don't know if switching schools became easier or harder, but today i would only send my children to a gesamtschule where it was certain that they would not be under undue pressure in order to be able to continue after 10th grade. in my opinion the three-tiered system might as well be abolished because evaluating 9 year old children whether they might be capable of passing the abitur some 9 years later is absolutely dumb and misguided, and forcing them to switch schools will also hurt their socialization as they lose touch with some friends and have to find new ones.
the system should be replaced with a highschool like system that allows everyone a chance at passing the abitur, and only those that specifically opt to learn a trade instead should be able to leave school earlier, and even those should be offered a short path to an abitur test if they complete their apprenticeship.
on the other hand there is no problem entering university in germany at 40. it's free, so what should stop you? i actually did become a student again at age 30 for a short time. noone suggested that that would be wrong.
getting a loan for that is an entirely different matter. conservative thinking and ageism suggests that nobody has good job prospects starting a new career at that age. but you can do it if you get a part time job (actually, if you switch your current job to part time, which is something you are allowed to do by law in germany) and then use the remaining time to study. if classes are still structured the way they were in my time then you can study at your own pace. it may take a bit longer, but then i also expect that at 40 you are more driven to focus on getting stuff done so i don't think part time study will double the time you need to complete your studies.
You can get Bafoeg (financial support which you get for free) if you have a job degree and go to the BOS to get your university degree that way.
the point is: does charging for university and then giving financial support to those who need it really change anything other than causing more bureaucracy and risking that some people can't go because they don't qualify for financial support yet shy away from the expense?
reducing taxes so that people have more money so they can afford paid education is not going to lead to more students but less.
How? Surely people/families in Germany/Austria, some of the richest countries in the world, can afford to pay something towards education costs... And in fact they do through their taxes, which are needed to pay for this "free" university. [obviously poor families can benefit from bursaries so this is not a relevant argument]
The waste is students picking courses just to do something or just because they are vaguely interested in them (and then they get all the benefits afforded to students, including housing subsidies). And then they give up, or they fail, or once they graduate they realise that it gets them exactly 0 job. So huge waste of resources and time and, as mentioned, sometimes a way to hide youth unemployment.
rich country doesn't mean rich people. we have high taxes and lower average wages. high rent in cities. in vienna, more than 60% of people live in subsidized housing. none of them could ever afford to pay for university.
and if more than 60% of students need financial support, all we are doing is adding expensive bureaucracy. might as well just make it free instead.
Every time similar topics are discussed it's odd to read some comments because they give the impression that people in the richest countries in the world have no disposable income (they can't pay for healthcare, they can't pay for higher education, they can't pay for public transport, etc). Of course there are poor people, but the majority have plenty of disposable income (that's what a rich country means).
> "in vienna, more than 60% of people live in subsidized housing"
This does not mean that this is a necessity it shows some issues with the housing market and housing policy, not that people are "poor". In fact, if the majority of people in a rich European city get housing subsidies it seems quite clear that this has nothing to do with poverty and not being able to afford it, but is a policy/market disfunction issue.
To go back to France, in France every student gets housing subsidies. This does not mean that they need it, it's just that the choice of policy has been to dish out subsidies without consideration of need.
the majority have plenty of disposable income (that's what a rich country means)
no, it doesn't.
rich country means a high GDP, but we put most of that into public infrastructure, public healthcare (so, yes, we can all pay for healthcare because everyone has insurance) and public transport, and we don't need to pay for education. if education were taken out of the mix then those with lower income would be excluded.
We use capitalism to control resources etc. but only thanks to controled capitalism / politics we are keeping pure capitalsim under control (like minimum wage, labor laws etc.).
We could create a new system. A system which determines how many resources we as society can produce on one side and want we need + want on the other side. Than we optimize our system for this.
Which would mean we would get rid of everything we don't need and optimize everything we can.
We don't need thousends of different companies doing simliar things just different with their own overhead. Capitalism needs this to control itself.
I don't see what's naive there. On the contrary this is absolute realism. And furthermore this goes hand in hand with individual liberty. Alternatives have been tried, and they failed...
For STEM things, I think it's usually of the same quality, and I prefer videos, so it's easier choice.
Same with Plato. You can read Plato on your own, you can listen to many more hours of free lectures on Plato, usually from better quality speakers, than you'd ever get at a university, you can join groups of people who want to discuss Plato's philosophy. These people will actually be individuals interested in the topic, not bored university classmates who spend half the time talking about other things because of their disinterest. This is all for free.
Even discounting the cost, university education trails far behind other forms of learning. Once the cost is factored in, the only appeal ends up being the credentials and the four year summer camp environment.
That's why when I see MOOCs brought up these days in the wild, it's usually from people who are taking them for credentials. Once credentials are taken away, MOOCs and universities just don't have a ton to offer for a motivated learner. It would be good if credentials and education were decoupled (for instance, like with the CFA), but there doesn't appear to be much of a push for that.
the problem with standardized tests however is that they lead to more schools just teaching for the test and not actually helping the students learn. it's tricky. depending on the subject or field. though i suppose papers and dissertations can be judged on their own merits. but other tests are trickier to do in a way that they can't just be passed by memorizing test knowledge.
It's better to work on improving transparent standards for credentials than to have tens of thousands of different standards that no one pays attention to and hoping that they're adequate, despite having no clue if that's actually the case.
I don't want to destroy all universities (like Trump or DeSantis do). But it IS true that the higher-education system needs a big revamp, and that the necessary change is unlikely to come from within, because the people (tenured faculty) who currently hold all the power have a strong interest in not rocking the boat.
But the few times I started a Udemy course, every single one was terrible, once I got past the first 20% or so. And contrary to their advertising, they did not allow me to return the course, because I had "completed too much" or something. IIRC I was around the 30-35% mark.
Totally different from Coursera, which can be hit and miss, but best stuff is very good.
Have you had a different experience? Which courses did you complete that were good?
TLDR: Udemy - cheap, and you get what you pay for.
I remember being both Neil Cummings and Max Schwarzmueller courses to be good, but I did them some time ago and when I was never to web development.
There was a Python course offered by three profs at Rice University that was A+.
Similar for Dan Ariely's Behavioral Economics class - of course, maybe it was all lies (now it turns out), but entertaining nevertheless.
Andrew Ng's course is quite math-heavy (I haven't done it), but it gets rave reviews.
So many Coursera tech/CS courses are offered by profs at elite universities - there's no way they could be the kind of crap that is standard on Udemy.
What Coursera lacks (compared to the university experience) is personal interaction with a real professor, group projects with smart and focused classmates, and personalized feedback.
Well over 90% of the searches on their site are for tech-related topics. And most of the remainder are probably for business.
You can fantasize about a USA where people want to read Plato and accidentally get English degrees. I also think that would be great. In our current reality, only the trust-fund kids, who already know they never need to work, will want to pay for that. (I mean, their dad or grandpa is the one paying.)