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It's very simple, I think: If you need these courses for credentialing, you have to lock them down more. Get a credit card, require a payment, and issue a toke

by msg 14y ago

It's very simple, I think: If you need these courses for credentialing, you have to lock them down more. Get a credit card, require a payment, and issue a token. Validate the name and address (and maybe store a hash of the SSN), and don't allow duplicates. Treat "cheating" as fraud, and act accordingly. If you need these courses for lifelong learning, the problem doesn't exist. Let someone take it a million times if that's what they need to do to learn.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
No, credentialling should be separated from learning. If I need to prove I can safely build a bridge, I should just be tested on that. If I want to learn how to build a bridge, my education should allow me to do whatever I need to do to master the subject. A huge part of our problems in higher education and hiring have come because we've conflated the two.
- msg 14y ago
  tl;dr: I think that agrees with what I was saying, for some definitions of the word "separated". The two activities credentialling and learning are strongly related, because testing can be a good way to give feedback during the learning process, in addition to being the only scalable way to filter masters from novices. As far as I can tell, apprenticeships and co-ops don't scale today. Interesting if they could. I don't think it harms Udacity to run both - a free tier for people to get their feet wet in CS and explore through a lifetime of learning, and a pro tier that gives the equivalent of a Master of Science with certificate (ie, classes only, no thesis). The free tier allows unlimited retries, has no deadlines, and encourages self-learning. But the pro tier separates the wheat from the chaff a bit, is strict on identity, is strict on plagiarism, gives one-try test grades, and has a minimum bar for certification. You could probably make the divide between free and pro in a much different manner than I just did. I think I gave a pretty old-school university way of thinking about the problem. Of course they are not confined to think this way. The materials for both tiers could be very close to each other, to the point where it would be wasteful to separate instruction. That's why liberal education and professional education get smushed together into higher learning today. Maybe Udacity can separate out these two in an interesting way.

by msg 14y ago

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

No, credentialling should be separated from learning. If I need to prove I can safely build a bridge, I should just be tested on that. If I want to learn how to build a bridge, my education should allow me to do whatever I need to do to master the subject. A huge part of our problems in higher education and hiring have come because we've conflated the two.

msg 14y ago
tl;dr: I think that agrees with what I was saying, for some definitions of the word "separated". The two activities credentialling and learning are strongly related, because testing can be a good way to give feedback during the learning process, in addition to being the only scalable way to filter masters from novices. As far as I can tell, apprenticeships and co-ops don't scale today. Interesting if they could. I don't think it harms Udacity to run both - a free tier for people to get their feet wet in CS and explore through a lifetime of learning, and a pro tier that gives the equivalent of a Master of Science with certificate (ie, classes only, no thesis). The free tier allows unlimited retries, has no deadlines, and encourages self-learning. But the pro tier separates the wheat from the chaff a bit, is strict on identity, is strict on plagiarism, gives one-try test grades, and has a minimum bar for certification. You could probably make the divide between free and pro in a much different manner than I just did. I think I gave a pretty old-school university way of thinking about the problem. Of course they are not confined to think this way. The materials for both tiers could be very close to each other, to the point where it would be wasteful to separate instruction. That's why liberal education and professional education get smushed together into higher learning today. Maybe Udacity can separate out these two in an interesting way.