Coursera and free education

Coursera and the future of education.

Sorry I have been gone for a while. Even if I had a couple good ideas to write, I didn't find the motivation to sit and write. Ironically, I have learned a couple of things about human motivation this summer.

One of the things that has been keeping me busy has been Coursera.org . This is huge. It is one of the most important things that has happened in a while and has the power to revolutionize the world. My father even goes as far as claiming that this will be the new printing press. My I'm-not-allowed-to-tell-her-age-year-old grandmother is starting tomorrow a course on History of the World since 1300 (http://goo.gl/BPT1i) the best thing is... it's free.


Coursera is an initiative by Standford University to provide top-tier level education for free.
Other top universitiessuch as UPenn, Duke, Princeton and Caltech have joined. The professors give 2 lectures per week.The good thing is that the lectures are divided in videos from about 10 minutes each.
 This is great for most people who's attention-span don't last 1 hour and a half. If you get distracted easily you can always rewind. If you don't have that much time, you can always find a 10 minute break to watch the videos without the need of finding a 1.30 hour time slot you probably don't have. You may just watch the videos or also do the quizzes and assignments for a certificate. They also have deadlines (Without deadlines, it would be harder to motivate people.)


I have been taking a gamification course taught by Kevin Werbach, proffesor at the Wharton School
of University of Pennsylvania. I'm already half-way through the course and it has been awesome.
 (https://www.coursera.org/course/gamification) The best thing is everything that evolves around the course. The facebook group, the sharing, the google docs, the dropbox folder, the forums etc.). There are people from literally all around the world doing this course. What is gamification, you may ask? Gamification is the use of game elements and game design in non-game context. (Do NOT confuse with Game Theory). It is about making activities more fun so that people will be more engaged.

Now, this type of online courses can change the world. I already think that this way of learning is superior to normal classes (at least at a european level) because you can personalize the experience. It removes rigidities that are intrinsic to normal upper level education. But best of all, it's free. There also other initiatives for this only trend. Imagine if you had (easy) access to the créme-de-la-créme of education for free. Normally this elite education was reserved for the elite. As there are only a limited number of places on these colleges, only a limited number of people graduated with this knowledge. This small number of people have still managed to make awesome discoveries and change the world. Imagine that just 1% of the people who did a course made any significant change. Now imagine that it is no longer 1% of say 1000, but 1% of a 1.000.000. Budget restriction will no longer be a barrier for geniuses.

Some might say that this is still too impersonal. That there is no discussion, no debate. Well, this is already true for most (european) institutions. And for that there are Coursera Meetups where people can meet to discuss ideas. There are also study groups that evolve around the course and facebook groups where people ask questions and exchange ideas. I have had more contact with classmates in gamification than I normally have at a normal university course.

Forget college subsidies and student debt. THIS is free education.