Coursera made the world a little flatter today. They sent me an email advising me that they have established a Career Services department, which will "Help Coursera students find great jobs."
This is one more step towards a true meritocracy, brought to you by the Web and a cadre of entrepreneurs unafraid to challenge authority and convention. My question in a previous post was whether employers would be willing to look past credentials and hire people with demonstrated skills. Coursera has given employers an easy way to do this, in a guise they will be familiar with: "Career Services."
I imagine some corporate director sitting with an HR manager, saying, "We need someone with a background in sales, but who also knows Instructional Design and network security." The HR manager searches Coursera's Career Services database. "How about this sales team leader who's taken "Fundamentals of Online Education" and "Information Security and Risk Management in Context?" And voila, you have an interview.
The benefit of a system like this is that it prioritizes the skills you've learned. So much of getting a job is knowing somebody and being in the right place at the right time. Coursera's system - and Udacity can do something similar - will make the market in which workers are matched with jobs much more efficient, reducing the influence of social networks and charisma. Of course, whether or not you get the job will depend heavily on these things, but their role in matching candidates with opportunities will be greatly reduced.
This will be a boon for both individuals and organizations. For individuals, it will open up new job opportunities and could aid in changing careers. Also, people will be better matched with jobs they like, because recruiters would be contacting them based on their participation in courses that they chose to devote their leisure time to, indicating that they really enjoy the field. For organizations, it could reduce turnover and improve productivity (by finding people who love the subjects they're working on), and also reduce the nefarious impact of cronyism. It will also allow organizations to create a truly diverse workforce, as they focus recruitment efforts on people with demonstrated skills rather than pedigrees from expensive universities or membership in the field's in-group.
All of these things will conspire to make the job market more meritocratic. We're a ways off from perfection, but we've made some giant steps towards democratizing education and creating a more level playing field for everybody.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Is knowledge more important than a credential?
The rash of pontificating on the impact of MOOCs on traditional higher education continues. Duke engineering school dean Tom Katsouleas envisions a world where we all learn from MOOCs but the richest among us pay for mentoring from the world's best and brightest.The New York Times recently published another article on courses offered by Udacity, Coursera, and EdX. And a new infographic cannily points out the benefits of online education over traditional classrooms.
While it's still uncertain how MOOCs will disrupt the higher education model, their rapid proliferation and adoption (remember, it was just last year that Sebastian Thrun offered the first one on AI) raise questions about the value of knowledge over credentials. MOOCs make it possible for people to gain skills that are marketable to companies looking for talented employees. But, will organizations be willing to take the risk of hiring someone without a degree, but who has demonstrated mastery of a skill by completing a MOOC?
Organizations are conservative beasts. They quite sensibly prefer known quantities over unknown ones. A degree from even the most obscure regionally accredited college comes with certain promises. By granting a degree, the college promises that the student had to meet certain minimal requirements, and had to learn research and critical thinking in an environment that assured some degree of academic integrity.
There are no such promises backing MOOCs. While anyone can vouch for the quality of an online course from Princeton, Stanford, MIT, or Harvard, there is no way to verify that MOOC students didn't cheat in order just to pass the class. There is also, at this point, little assurance of the quality of grading in some subjects (see the New York Times article), though this may change in the very near future.
So, will hiring managers be willing to take a risk on a candidate with a briefcase full of Coursera certificates but no degree? At this point, probably not. But I argue that they should be, because doing so might be a great way to help the U.S. economy get its groove back.
In Hackers, Stephen Levy details how a mangy group of MIT students became addicted to programming room-sized computers in the 1950s to 1970s. Few of them graduated with degrees, but most of them got jobs that allowed them to put their prodigious talents to use for leading corporations, universities, and the government. One of them even managed to get tenured as a professor at MIT without a degree. What is evident in the book is that this was made possible by the fact that a few brave souls were able to look past the lack of credentials to see their real talent. Recent history is replete with such examples, most notably Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
I hope that MOOCs allow a similar phenomenon. Instead of being limited to programmers, however, it could expand to talented people in all fields. An applicant may not have a degree in business, say, but maybe they've demonstrated their abilities in Coursera classes and have real-world experience running a small business. A talented instructional designer may learn her trade through MOOCs and prove it by designing free tutorials available on her own website. Organizations should be willing to take a chance on people like this, because too many people are cut off from access to higher education by exorbitant tuition and the demands of family, work, and life. Organizations will lose out if they don't harness the diverse talent spread throughout the population.
A flowering of talent in many spheres of human endeavor, fertilized by near universal access to education, could drive this country's economy just the way that the advances made in Cambridge and Silicon Valley have for the past 60 years. In the end, knowledge is worth more than a credential.
While it's still uncertain how MOOCs will disrupt the higher education model, their rapid proliferation and adoption (remember, it was just last year that Sebastian Thrun offered the first one on AI) raise questions about the value of knowledge over credentials. MOOCs make it possible for people to gain skills that are marketable to companies looking for talented employees. But, will organizations be willing to take the risk of hiring someone without a degree, but who has demonstrated mastery of a skill by completing a MOOC?
Organizations are conservative beasts. They quite sensibly prefer known quantities over unknown ones. A degree from even the most obscure regionally accredited college comes with certain promises. By granting a degree, the college promises that the student had to meet certain minimal requirements, and had to learn research and critical thinking in an environment that assured some degree of academic integrity.
There are no such promises backing MOOCs. While anyone can vouch for the quality of an online course from Princeton, Stanford, MIT, or Harvard, there is no way to verify that MOOC students didn't cheat in order just to pass the class. There is also, at this point, little assurance of the quality of grading in some subjects (see the New York Times article), though this may change in the very near future.
So, will hiring managers be willing to take a risk on a candidate with a briefcase full of Coursera certificates but no degree? At this point, probably not. But I argue that they should be, because doing so might be a great way to help the U.S. economy get its groove back.
In Hackers, Stephen Levy details how a mangy group of MIT students became addicted to programming room-sized computers in the 1950s to 1970s. Few of them graduated with degrees, but most of them got jobs that allowed them to put their prodigious talents to use for leading corporations, universities, and the government. One of them even managed to get tenured as a professor at MIT without a degree. What is evident in the book is that this was made possible by the fact that a few brave souls were able to look past the lack of credentials to see their real talent. Recent history is replete with such examples, most notably Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
I hope that MOOCs allow a similar phenomenon. Instead of being limited to programmers, however, it could expand to talented people in all fields. An applicant may not have a degree in business, say, but maybe they've demonstrated their abilities in Coursera classes and have real-world experience running a small business. A talented instructional designer may learn her trade through MOOCs and prove it by designing free tutorials available on her own website. Organizations should be willing to take a chance on people like this, because too many people are cut off from access to higher education by exorbitant tuition and the demands of family, work, and life. Organizations will lose out if they don't harness the diverse talent spread throughout the population.
A flowering of talent in many spheres of human endeavor, fertilized by near universal access to education, could drive this country's economy just the way that the advances made in Cambridge and Silicon Valley have for the past 60 years. In the end, knowledge is worth more than a credential.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Get Used To It
Today the New York Times published an article on the need for workers in all sectors of the economy, from physicists and doctors to auto mechanics and librarians, to constantly upgrade their skills to remain relevant and keep their jobs. The article mentioned Coursera, Lynda.com, and other online education sites. They are resources workers can use to learn new skills and keep up with the state of the art in their fields.
Nothing new here. The takeaway for me is that, as I've said in earlier posts, online education is the most cost-effective way to get people the education and training they need for today's world. Millions of people wouldn't have access to useful courses, like Coursera's new one on strategy and innovation in organizations, if they weren't provided online, free of charge.
All this means that we better get used to learning on our computers, tablets, and mobile phones. The need to learn quickly will only increase, and we can't be scared of new ways of learning because they are nothing like the classrooms, teachers, and chalkboards we grew up with.
I think the pressure to learn will bring about a kind of "Golden Age" of education. The requirement to learn constantly, throughout one's life and not just during youth, happens to coincide with a point in history in which there have never been more resources for all people to do so.
The wrinkle in the fold is our educational system in the U.S. We can't expect people to become effective - and voracious - lifelong learners if they aren't taught to read and write at an advanced level. It won't work if we graduate students from high school who are mathematically and scientifically illiterate. And it definitely won't work if our students have never had the meaningful experiences with art and culture, as both audience and producer, that are required to think creatively and critically.
We need to make sure that quality education - both in the classroom and online - is available to everyone, from Pre-K through graduate school. That means public investment in our educational system, which is our intellectual infrastructure. It's time to start building.
Nothing new here. The takeaway for me is that, as I've said in earlier posts, online education is the most cost-effective way to get people the education and training they need for today's world. Millions of people wouldn't have access to useful courses, like Coursera's new one on strategy and innovation in organizations, if they weren't provided online, free of charge.
All this means that we better get used to learning on our computers, tablets, and mobile phones. The need to learn quickly will only increase, and we can't be scared of new ways of learning because they are nothing like the classrooms, teachers, and chalkboards we grew up with.
I think the pressure to learn will bring about a kind of "Golden Age" of education. The requirement to learn constantly, throughout one's life and not just during youth, happens to coincide with a point in history in which there have never been more resources for all people to do so.
The wrinkle in the fold is our educational system in the U.S. We can't expect people to become effective - and voracious - lifelong learners if they aren't taught to read and write at an advanced level. It won't work if we graduate students from high school who are mathematically and scientifically illiterate. And it definitely won't work if our students have never had the meaningful experiences with art and culture, as both audience and producer, that are required to think creatively and critically.
We need to make sure that quality education - both in the classroom and online - is available to everyone, from Pre-K through graduate school. That means public investment in our educational system, which is our intellectual infrastructure. It's time to start building.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Missing the point of online education
Today's New York Times featured an editorial by Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, called "The Trouble With Online Education." Professor Edmundson describes how a good college teacher can read the emotions of a roomful of students and adjust his teaching accordingly, like "a jazz composition" in which "there is the basic melody that you work with. It is defined by the
syllabus. But there is also a considerable measure of improvisation
against that disciplining background." The best teachers are adept at at modulating their instruction to fill in gaps in students' knowledge and abilities, spark their interest in pursuing in-depth learning, and fostering a sense of intellectual community that extends beyond the classroom.
Edmundson insists that these aspects of instruction are missing, or greatly compromised, in online education:"Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. The Internet teacher, even one who responds to students via e-mail, can never have the immediacy of contact that the teacher on the scene can, with his sensitivity to unspoken moods and enthusiasms." Online classes are the educational equivalent to poster reprints of famous artworks. While they convey the idea, the texture and nuance is lost.
This view of online education is common among academics, especially those in the humanities. It is also a form of a wider critique of online interaction in general, in which detractors hold that interactions via Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and blogs are less rich and meaningful than interaction in person and communication via telephone and flattened trees with ink on them. In person interaction is richer than digital interaction, without a doubt, but online interaction has advantages that in person communication doesn't. It allows communication over vast distances, asynchronous collaboration, and reduces barriers of entry so that anyone can participate in content creation. Yes, digital interaction is different from traditional ways of communicating, and some things are lost. But many things are also gained. To see one as better than the other is to miss the point: New forms of communication are not about displacing old ones, but are rather about letting us do things that were previously impossible, or not even thought of.
Just as digital detractors miss the point about what new communications technologies are for, so do Edmundson and those of his ilk miss the point of online education. Yes, professors may not be able to individualize their instruction for particular groups of students. But in the United States, at this time, the question for a vast swath of the population is not, "How do I get the best higher education possible?" The question is, "How do I get any higher education at all?" With tuition at private schools upwards of $50,000 per year, tuition at state schools around $20,000, and few grants and scholarships available, students are looking to get an education as cheaply as possible, so they are not burdened by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that prevents them from buying a house, starting a family, launching a business, going into the non-profit world, or travelling abroad. Online education, which is free from Coursera, MIT, and other institutions, and is very low cost at schools like Western Governors University, is about providing an alternative to mortgaging our young people's future.
Even for those who have completed undergraduate or graduate education, the rapidly evolving nature of work in our "information" or "post-industrial" economy requires constant upgrading of skills and new learning. For those of us paying $500 a month in student loan debt, it is not easy to take a class in the evening at a community college to sharpen our skills. It is more likely we have a second job waiting tables at the bar next to the college, to help pay off those loans (or just make rent and buy food). Of course, for many young college graduates, the job at the bar is primary employment, since it's very difficult to get a job at the moment. So yes, online education lacks many of the benefits of traditional education. But for those of us who are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise struggling to make ends meet, online education is the only option. And, in light of a recent study showing that online education is sometimes more effective than traditional education, at least in terms of imparting concrete knowledge, it is a damn good option for those of us with a desire to educate ourselves for today's world or a love of learning and no money.
Another argument can be made that online education does in fact allow the type of customization that Edmundson extols. I'll save that for another day. The bigger issue is that Edmundson's view is elitist in that it ignores the plight of the vast majority of Americans who are not wealthy and who do not have access to prestigious universities. Many Americans don't have access to any university or college at all. Online instruction is our best bet for educating our population for the modern economy, and for leading a fulfilling life in a rapidly changing world. A computer, a modem, and Internet service cost a hell of a lot less than $50,000 a year.
Edmundson insists that these aspects of instruction are missing, or greatly compromised, in online education:"Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. The Internet teacher, even one who responds to students via e-mail, can never have the immediacy of contact that the teacher on the scene can, with his sensitivity to unspoken moods and enthusiasms." Online classes are the educational equivalent to poster reprints of famous artworks. While they convey the idea, the texture and nuance is lost.
This view of online education is common among academics, especially those in the humanities. It is also a form of a wider critique of online interaction in general, in which detractors hold that interactions via Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and blogs are less rich and meaningful than interaction in person and communication via telephone and flattened trees with ink on them. In person interaction is richer than digital interaction, without a doubt, but online interaction has advantages that in person communication doesn't. It allows communication over vast distances, asynchronous collaboration, and reduces barriers of entry so that anyone can participate in content creation. Yes, digital interaction is different from traditional ways of communicating, and some things are lost. But many things are also gained. To see one as better than the other is to miss the point: New forms of communication are not about displacing old ones, but are rather about letting us do things that were previously impossible, or not even thought of.
Just as digital detractors miss the point about what new communications technologies are for, so do Edmundson and those of his ilk miss the point of online education. Yes, professors may not be able to individualize their instruction for particular groups of students. But in the United States, at this time, the question for a vast swath of the population is not, "How do I get the best higher education possible?" The question is, "How do I get any higher education at all?" With tuition at private schools upwards of $50,000 per year, tuition at state schools around $20,000, and few grants and scholarships available, students are looking to get an education as cheaply as possible, so they are not burdened by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that prevents them from buying a house, starting a family, launching a business, going into the non-profit world, or travelling abroad. Online education, which is free from Coursera, MIT, and other institutions, and is very low cost at schools like Western Governors University, is about providing an alternative to mortgaging our young people's future.
Even for those who have completed undergraduate or graduate education, the rapidly evolving nature of work in our "information" or "post-industrial" economy requires constant upgrading of skills and new learning. For those of us paying $500 a month in student loan debt, it is not easy to take a class in the evening at a community college to sharpen our skills. It is more likely we have a second job waiting tables at the bar next to the college, to help pay off those loans (or just make rent and buy food). Of course, for many young college graduates, the job at the bar is primary employment, since it's very difficult to get a job at the moment. So yes, online education lacks many of the benefits of traditional education. But for those of us who are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise struggling to make ends meet, online education is the only option. And, in light of a recent study showing that online education is sometimes more effective than traditional education, at least in terms of imparting concrete knowledge, it is a damn good option for those of us with a desire to educate ourselves for today's world or a love of learning and no money.
Another argument can be made that online education does in fact allow the type of customization that Edmundson extols. I'll save that for another day. The bigger issue is that Edmundson's view is elitist in that it ignores the plight of the vast majority of Americans who are not wealthy and who do not have access to prestigious universities. Many Americans don't have access to any university or college at all. Online instruction is our best bet for educating our population for the modern economy, and for leading a fulfilling life in a rapidly changing world. A computer, a modem, and Internet service cost a hell of a lot less than $50,000 a year.
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