Stanford To Offer Free CS and Robotics Courses

DeviceGuru writes "Stanford University will soon begin offering a series of 10 free, online computer science and electrical engineering courses. Initial courses will provide an introduction to computer science and an introduction to field of robotics, among other topics. The courses, offered under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), are nearly identical to standard courses offered to registered Stanford students and will comprise downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts. And get this: all the courses' materials are being released under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license."

Hmm....

Does this mean one can now pad one's resume with "Studied at Stanford" or some such verbiage, without (much) guilt? Not an issue for me but for those newer to the field, it just might help...

Re:Hmm....

It worked for both Presidents Bush.

35!

They also have to be 35.

What a load of BS (CS)

"The Fourier Transform and its Applications" WTF!!

My employer's lawyers protect us from the liabilities of open source and I don't see the in-house tools I'm forced to use *anywhere* on Stanford's course listing!
How *exactly* are we supposed to find people with expertise in our proprietary crap if no one out there is teaching it???
Universities are soooo out of touch.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

It's not the universities that are out of touch. It's your employers that are out of touch, and the multiple-choice generation of wannabe professionals who can't see past their first half-dozen paychecks. If you get the education that you appear to want, you'll be unemployable in five years.

Take it from someone who's been in the industry for 30 years and still going strong... you can't learn too much theory because theory doesn't go out of fashion the way technology fads and acronyms do.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

It's actually scary what the average slashdotter thinks makes a competent coder. When I suggested that I spent some spare time exploring and extrapolating FizzBuzz for fun (and testing!!! my solutions), I got called incompetent because it was an "uninteresting" problem. Instant gratification, instant results seem to be the flavour of the day...leading to poor untested code resulting from poor and/or incomplete analysis. I wonder how many "uninteresting" business problems some of these jokers would code poorly and/or incompletely without testing for the sake of saying they're quick and switched on.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

Except that you tend to get the reverse situation also; I've met CS majors who couldn't make a simple top level user app in a relatively generic IDE.

In principle I agree with your basic assessment, the core skills should be as you listed, but by no stretch should they be the limits of what is taught in colleges. From what undergrad programs I have seen you tend to get either one or the other, with a few exceptions here and there.

I am personally a result of an undergraduate Software Engineering program that covered a portion of the CS curriculum, and to a lesser extent CE, along with just about everything else in the realm of top level programming from an SE point of view.

In my opinion, software is one of the fields that benefits from the jack of all trades route and I believe more collegiate programs should follow this model.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Lisp and Scheme are excellent languages for beginning computer science students. Functional languages in general are great for beginners. Mutation is a difficult thing to wrap your head around when you are starting out; functional programming is much easier when you have no other exposure to programming.

In high-school algebra, you learn that a function f(x) takes a single number as input, and returns another number. This idea of 'functions' translates perfectly to functional programming.

Functional programming also teaches kids who may have limited experience in other languages to think differently. If you are used to loops, you learn recursion. If you have never used loops, recursion makes sense as a way to simplify a complex problem.

I think that using C and Java to teach these concepts will introduce too much confusion, especially if these freshman students search Google when they get stuck with a problem. The solution on Google will be so much different that what they learned in class, and for a good reason.

OpenSource University?

So what is better? Something free that everyone has access to or something that only the rich and privileged can attain? I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source.

Re:OpenSource University?

I'm cheering it. There are quite a few folks in the world that can neither attend the school, or afford it if they could attend physically. That said, they would love to have Stanford class material to learn from as part of their hobby ambitions. Hobbyists notoriously have a zero dollar budget and a zest for learning stuff. Even if it seems unlikely that you'd see Starbucks' employees logging on for a lecture during their lunch break, it's possible.

Anything that educational institutes can do to generally raise the engineering awareness and savvy of the population is fulfilling their mission in a broad sense. I'm fully going to do these courses. I have more time than spare coin at the moment, and Stanford level courses are appreciated. Even if I got credit for them it would not affect my paycheck. What I know, and what I have accomplished do more to shape that number than anything I might have learned in school. When you are 24 that piece of paper is very important. When you put 10+ years on that, people are far more concerned with what you have done since graduation. Adding additional studies to your resume might sound hokey, but it shows what a lot of people want to see... effort, desire, and staying in-career with your interests.

You might be a Windows system admin, but you only get to be a hero when you can also work on that new machine that the marketing guy set up and is now not working. Oh, yeah, it runs Linux. Specialists are passe' and the more you know how to deal with, the better you will deal with any one part of it. Continuing education is not a joke, and even this counts.

Re:OpenSource University?

So what is better? Something free that everyone has access to or something that only the rich and privileged can attain? I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source.

To be fair to Stanford, it's not only the "rich and privileged" who have access to its degree programs. As of this year, Stanford no longer charges tuition [sfgate.com] for students whose family income is less than $100,000 per year. Most other "posh" American schools have similar programs -- Harvard, for example, waives tuition for families earning less than $60,000. In 2005, Yale announced that it would waive tuition for any musicians who wanted to pursue a Master's degree in music and were good enough to be accepted in the program. And so on.

Education really doesn't put up as many barriers in America as people think. It's the people who are rich who put up the barriers, whether they're going to university or not.

MIT has many more...

Good info on Stanford. In addition, don't forget that MIT has had many more courses available for a good while now:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm [mit.edu]

And many schools/universities have their material online. Try Google.

Those with thin wallets and empty pocketbooks can get a decent education as long as they have the time, the will, and with free access to a computer (via public library for example).

Re:MIT has many more...

Yes, but no one goes to school for an education, they go to school for a degree. I'm not saying thats how it should be, but thats just the sad truth of this country. I can go through and learn that material, same as a student at Stanford, I could outscore them on the test, but in the end they will get the job and I will be on the street because they paid.

Re:I'd be pissed.

No, no. Don't worry about it. To view the lecture video, you have to install Microsoft Silverlight. So in other words, the asking price is too high for many.

Re:I'd be pissed.

I'd say an in-class experience, including talking with an instructor, graded homework, and the recognition (towards a degree) is quite a bit of value that ISN'T included in the online version.

Their two different beasts.

Re:I'd be pissed.

I'd say an in-class experience, including talking with an instructor, graded homework, and the recognition (towards a degree) is quite a bit of value that ISN'T included in the online version.

Their two different beasts.

Totally agreed. I see that someone learned his homonyms via an online course.

Re:I'd be pissed.

Their two different beasts.

Totally agreed. I see that someone learned his homonyms via an online course.

I concur. Someone learned their vocabulary via an online course. Their/There/They're are homophones (same sound). Polish/polish and read/read are homographs (same spelling). Bank/bank and stalk/stalk are homonyms (same sound and same spelling). Homonyms are both homographs and homophones.

I attended my university linguistics courses in person.

Re:I'd be pissed.

RTFA! The freeloaders don't get Stanford credit for the free courses.

Re:I'd be pissed.

What's the problem? If you read it a little more thoroughly you would see that they don't give any credit with the free classes. It doesn't hurt the paying students or lower the value of the actual degrees that paying students receive. I'm severely physically disabled and was unable to finish my EE degree back in 1993 because of health reasons. I doubt I'll ever go back to school. This is a great chance for me to at least finish educating myself, degree or no degree.

Re:I'd be pissed.

Are you kidding? When I was at Stanford (a ways back now) most of the intro class lectures were big enough that non-students could easily sit in on any lectures if they wanted (and I would recognize several who did repeatedly - some of whom were clearly not "all there"). I bet you could even turn in the homework and take tests in many cases... and occasionally they'd probably be oblivious enough to grade it and give it back.

I looked at the courses, and (scarily?) I recognize a few of the profs/lectures from over 15 years ago - they definitely picked some of the best for this program (the CS106A lecturer was my CS106A TA back then, but he was a fantastic TA ;)

Anyway, as a former undergrad, I hope people do use this resource! The more quality education/teachers available to anyone who wants it the better.

Re:I'd be pissed.

Kid, we don't pay the fortune for fancy college's teaching materials, we pay the fortune for their paper with their stamp on it. Welcome to the real life.

Re:I'd be pissed.

Economic theory is almost always wrong when it predicts individual human behavior.

Re:IQ bell curve

We need to temper our response to these programs [...]

Why?

What a strange response. I've read your comment three times now, and I still don't get it. That is, I don't get it because I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt; it seems like you're advocating for long-dead Social Darwinist tripe. But that couldn't possibly be the case, as you are one of those on the "right" side of the curve, right?

You act as if this is your Harrison Bergeron fantasy (in which you are the protagonist, of course). This isn't the government forcing Stanford to admit cretins! It's just a school sharing part of their curricula on the web.

If "you" are a member of "us", count me as a member of "them".

Yay Stanford. Using the web to its potential for making civilization a little better for all of us. What's not to like? And what would we possibly have to gain by preventing people from learning?

Re:IQ bell curve

Simply by replying, and specifically by your spelling, you are NOT "them". You can benefit by a higher education that focuses not only on the practical application of our knowledge base that would be applicable in earning a respectable living doing a productive job (ie. a tech school), but on an education that uses theoretical considerations to go beyond simple application, towards synthesis that leads to new applications, new knowledge.

A simple example is the requirement that algebra must be passed in order to get a high school diploma... I would argue that for a fairly significant portion of our society, passing an application-focused class such as auto shop is much more valuable and pertinent to graduating from high school than passing an algebra test. I grew up with a number of people who can't possibly grasp algebra, but who benefited greatly from various "tech school" high school courses, got their high school diplomas, and got decent jobs right out of school. They would have been very poorly abused by any system that required them to pass algebra to get their diploma, and they never would have graduated if the school system in place at the time had cut shop class in order to attempt to force these below average students to pass college-prep courses. They were much better served by being offered application-level courses that taught them practical skills that led directly to productive jobs.

One friend of mine was particularly affected by the current philosophy that no student is "below average", and that all students deserve a college education. He got all the opportunities anyone could imagine including a free ride to a good university based on an intercollegiate athletic scholarship, and he was completely unsuited for the academic challenge. When he failed out of college, he found himself unsuited for any job other than fast-food shift supervisor because his high school refused to recognize that he was "below average", and refused to tailor his education towards something he could have actually used. He ended up with few practical skills since they forced him into math courses that he barely passed instead of letting him take skills-application courses, and was unable to get a job that paid well enough to support himself.

That's what I'm talking about when I say as slashdotters we should temper our response to these education opportunities. They are not the answer to all our problems, because the vast majority of people in the US are incapable of benefitting from the and trying to tailor high school education to force the no-shit 50% of students who are "below average" to go to college, is a gross injustice. We need to recognize that an awful lot of people have absolutely no use for a Stanford level of education, and ensure that rather than trying to force them into a particular college-prep track that they are not prepared or capable of following, we should provide application-level educational opportunities that lead to jobs, not a future involving washing out of college and ending up on the street with a bruised ego and no practical education that they'll find useful in finding a job they can handle.

Re:Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlig

Just a few lines lower on any page, there are links to view the same video in other formats including,

1. Youtube

2. iTunes

3. Vyew

4. WMV Torrent

5. MP4 Torrent

for instance, this [stanford.edu] MP4 torrent available from this [stanford.edu] page.