What does it mean to teach “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” to 200 students at Stanford University? This is same as my mom’s teaching. “Now the students and I enjoyed the class, but it occurred to me that while the subject matter of the class is advanced and modern, the teaching technology isn’t. In fact, I use basically the same technology as this 14th-century classroom. Note the textbook, the sage on the stage, and the sleeping guy in the back. Just like today”, says Peter Norvig one of the teacher of the class.
There must be a better way, he and his co-teacher Sebastian Thrun thought. And the better way was an online class that was as good as the Stanford Class. On the online platform their renowned Stanford class was offered to the world absolutely free. Over 160,000 students from around the globe signed up for the 10-week class free. The overwhelming response that the class received is credited with sparking a massive open online course (MOOC)—renaissance.
If you want to disrupt traditional education, you can’t work in isolation. You have got to borrow the good ideas. As Mr Norvig admits “We studied what others had done, what we could copy and what we could change”. “From Khan Academy, we saw that short 10-minute videos worked much better than trying to record an hour-long lecture and put it on the small-format screen. We decided to go even shorter and more interactive”, he adds.
