Stanford's Experiment: A class of 100.000+

What's the disruptive quality of technological change is in fact a deflation of existing hardware using software by the elegancy of design. A good example of this is Stanfords Introduction to Artificial Intelligence online course. As one of three free online courses it sets forth Stanford's effort to provide education to the public. Students enrolling in Stanford pay roughly 50.000US for an undergraduate course. The same course is taught now for 1-2% of the costs using for the most part free to use applications. The deal is simple: You get everything for free except the experience of studying at Stanford. And how does it work and feel is part of this series of posts while I follow this course myself.

Lets start

The simplicity of the website cannot be overestimated. Registering for the course is as simple as open up a cup of soup package. The registration process demands nothing but the name and an email adress. A confirmation email with a link to finalize the registration process is all that it takes. Together with two questions of your own competency and interest it was all that it takes to enroll in this service.

First Look

Sympathy is as important as professionalism. The first logon shows a simple weblog where news and updates inform about some bugs in the system together with apologies for them. The next big bloc are the courses.
All are on youtube and consist of 1-2 minute interactive video clips. After a general introduction some multiple choice question make the experience very native.



Questions are answered by email and an explenation is given to all of this. This is particulary helpful and makes the experience of interactivity work.

The next menu item is: Progress. A progress bar showing the completenes and correctness of your courses and answers. Very cool....


Time: Unite one: 30 minutes

Technical Details of the Platform
Once registered you can setup a link to your facebook, twitter and google+ account.

Discussion
Discussion of 100.000+ people dont take place on the platform but usea studygroup at Reddit and a dedicated q&a community. Meetups are also organized online via an external service here.