here comes professor everybody

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2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ== 1/19 W The Chronicle Review February 2, 2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody The ‘sharing economy’ meets higher education By Jeffrey R. Young hen Nick Walter graduated with an information-systems degree, he intended to start his own tech company to create the next big iPhone app, as so many twenty-somethings have tried in recent years. But then something dawned on him: He could make more money teaching. He set up a free account on a site called Udemy, which lets anyone teach online courses and charge for them, and then uploaded a series of lecture videos and exercises showing other people how to make apps. Walter had no experience teaching, no affiliation with a university or accredited educational institution, and—by his own admission —no particular gifts as a computer-science student. But that doesn’t matter to Udemy, or to any of a number of similar platforms that have emerged in recent years. Walter’s thin credentials didn’t bother his students, either. They’ve signed up in droves. And that’s precisely because he isn’t a typical teacher. Like any good entrepreneur, Walter identified an untapped need. He knew there were plenty of how-to videos and short in-person workshops run by certified coding wizards, but he viewed their very expertise as their weakness. "Almost every one of these tutorials or classes assumed you had some kind of programming experience," he says. For people like him who didn’t consider themselves computer nerds but who wanted to build things, "it was super hard to pick up stuff." So he pointedly never utters the word "Boolean" or other coding

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  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ== 1/19

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    The Chronicle Review

    February 2, 2015

    Here Comes Professor EverybodyThe sharing economy meets higher educationBy Jeffrey R. Young

    hen Nick Walter graduated with an information-systemsdegree, he intended to start his own tech company to

    create the next big iPhone app, as so many twenty-somethingshave tried in recent years. But then something dawned on him: Hecould make more money teaching.

    He set up a free account on a site called Udemy, which lets anyoneteach online courses and charge for them, and then uploaded aseries of lecture videos and exercises showing other people how tomake apps.

    Walter had no experience teaching, no affiliation with a universityor accredited educational institution, andby his own admissionno particular gifts as a computer-science student. But thatdoesnt matter to Udemy, or to any of a number of similarplatforms that have emerged in recent years.

    Walters thin credentials didnt bother his students, either. Theyvesigned up in droves. And thats precisely because he isnt a typicalteacher.

    Like any good entrepreneur, Walter identified an untapped need.He knew there were plenty of how-to videos and short in-personworkshops run by certified coding wizards, but he viewed theirvery expertise as their weakness. "Almost every one of thesetutorials or classes assumed you had some kind of programmingexperience," he says. For people like him who didnt considerthemselves computer nerds but who wanted to build things, "itwas super hard to pick up stuff."

    So he pointedly never utters the word "Boolean" or other coding

  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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    jargon in his video lectures if he can avoid it. And he never takeshimself too seriously: In one promotional video for his course, the25-year-old Walter dances to techno music while slogans such as"no programming experience required" appear next to him. Bytraditional standards, hes an anti-professor.

    Thousands of people have paid up to $199 to take that first coursehe created. And when the course was promoted by Udemy, Waltermade $20,000 in a single day. Thats more than some adjunctprofessors make in a year.

    These sites that letanyone teach coursesmight just change theway people thinkabout the value ofeducation, about thenature of expertise,and about whatteaching is worth.

    Walter now earns his living as a renegade professor. On a typicalmorning, he spends a couple of hours filming new lectures in theliving room of the house he shares with four other people in Provo,Utah, with the help of a videographer who works for him part time.In the afternoon he commutes to a coworking spacewhich has afaster Internet connectionand spends time answering questionsfrom students and marketing his courses. He has never taught in aclassroom, and doesnt have much interest in doing so. "To behonest," he confesses, "I never thought I would be a teacher."

    This is what happens when the so-called sharing economy meetseducationwhen the do-it-yourself spirit of Silicon Valley isapplied to teaching. Much has been written about how Uber isdisrupting the taxi business by letting people moonlight as taxidrivers using their own cars, and how Airbnb offers an alternativeto hotels by helping people rent out their spare rooms. But littleattention has been paid to emerging platforms that let people usethe knowledge in their heads to teach occasional courses online,for a fee.

    Such online services are growing fast. Udemy boasts more thanfive million students, more than 22,000 courses, and more than

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    $48-million in venture-capital investment. And Google hasannounced a partnership with edX, the online-educationnonprofit started by Harvard University and MIT, to open a similarplatform, called MOOC.org, that will let anyone teach in whatleaders call a "YouTube for courses."

    KimRaffforTheChronicleReviewNickWalter,arecentcollegegraduatewhomakesalivingteachingappbuildingcoursesonUdemy,recordsvoiceoversathome.

    So far most of the courses on Udemy make no attempt to competewith colleges. The sites most popular offerings involvetechnology, like Walters iPhone-app course, or seem more akin toself-help books than to college courses. But you can also findsubjects like linear algebra, introductory philosophy, and arthistory. A few professors are already teaching on the platform withhopes of eventually breaking away from academe, and its leaderssay theres no reason full-scale introductory college courses likecalculus and physics cant find a lucrative home here.

    The bigger, more immediate threat to colleges is indirect. Thesesites that let anyone teach courses might just change the waypeople think about the value of education, about the nature ofexpertise, and about what teaching is worth.

    Here comes Professor Everybody.

    t first glance, online teaching platforms like Udemy may not sound

  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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    Athat new. For years, aspiring computer programmers have reliedon video-tutorial sites and other online resources to teachthemselves the latest programming languages. A cottage

    industry has emerged, including sites like Lynda .com.

    Likewise, colleges themselves have been experimenting withmassive open online courses. With video lectures and onlinehomework produced by top lecturers at the worlds leadinguniversities, MOOCs serve as a kind of self-service collegewithout a credential to go with it.

    So whats different about Udemy?

    The earlier sites largely mimicked the old publishing or broadcastmodel of production: Only the few, and the carefully chosen, areallowed to teach college MOOCs or Lynda.com courses. ButUdemy, like Mooc.org to come, stresses that teaching is not justfor the elite. The message is that anyone can be both learner andprofessor, and that no matter who you are, your teaching mighteven have monetary value.

    The participation in Mooc.org by Googleone of the biggest techplayersseemed to me like a major endorsement of the idea. I wascurious about why the company is creating an open, globalschoolhouse. So last year when Googles chairman, Eric Schmidt,spoke at an event at Tufts University while promoting his book TheNew Digital Age, I asked him during a public question-and-answersession.

    "We really want to democratize the access to education, and theaccess to teaching, and then let the marketplace figure it out," hesaid. "Youll discover that teaching is an art. That there are peoplewho are gifted at it, and because of the way the Internet works,eventually the very most talented teachers will emerge, fromeverywhere. Its a great thing."

    His tone suggested that letting the marketplace "figure out"teaching was the most common-sense plan in the world. Buthaving covered colleges for more than 15 years, I found hiscomment subversive, even aggressive. Because in the typical

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    college system, the marketplace doesnt decide the best teaching,at least not in any direct way. Professors are typically hired andpromoted based on the quality of their research, and mostundergraduates choose a college based not on a specific instructorbut on a range of other factors, from geographic location to thequality of grub in the food court.

    Udemys chief executive, Dennis Yang, takes Schmidts argumenteven further. "What we have is competition among teachers" onthe platform, he says. "Its one of the few environments whereteachers and instructors have to compete with each other."Someone considering Walters iPhone course is shown how manystars previous students rated it, along with a list of other, similarcourses, many of them cheaper.

    That strikes some academics as a nightmare scenario. After all,when it comes to learning, the customer isnt always right.Students might rate challenging professors more harshly simplybecause they are more difficult. Yet students may learn more in achallenging class. Or they may simply not know whether theinformation they learned is up to dateor even accurate.

    "Thats kind of the elephant in the room," says Burton J. Bledstein,an expert on the history of professionalism and an emeritusprofessor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Ivespent my entire career trying to teach kids that not everybodysopinion is equal." He worries that some popular video instructorsare all flash and little analysis.

    But Bledstein also thinks the emergence of Udemy is a symptom ofwhat he sees as the death of professions. "We have an anti-authoritarian mood in the country from the Vietnam War onthrough the Iraq War, where we had all these professional expertsleading us down these paths," he says. Learning marketplaces tapinto this mood, he says, by not only allowing everyone to expressthemselves, but also giving out certificates of learning blessed byno other authority than that of the self-described professor.

    Other critics see the education marketplaces even more darkly.One of them is Guy Standing, a professor of development studies

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    at the University of London, who argues that various sharing-economy trends, including education marketplaces, are creating anew social class: the "precariat." Its members suffer from a mash-up of economic ills, including job insecurity, lack of workerprotections, and insecurity of identity.

    Standing worries that vulnerable consumers eager for a shortcutinto a better job are being "seduced" into buying these onlinecourses. "Essentially you are hooked into sort of an addictiveprocess where you hopeor youve been toldthat doing such acourse will lead to an improvement in your career," he says. "Butoften there is absolutely no evidence that this is true."

    Yang, of Udemy, defends the quality of the courses. He says thatalthough the company makes no attempt to check their accuracy,all submissions are reviewed by staff membersfor technicalquality and to make sure that the topics are not "offensive,inappropriate, or illegal."

    Yang even argues that the student-rating system provides betterquality control for teaching than at traditional colleges. "In anopen marketplace where there is competition, if youre aninstructor and you cant teach well or you dont know what youretalking about, students will say so with ratings," he says. "If yourenot providing value, you wont make moneyonly the bestteachers go to the top."

    oday online-teaching marketplaces focus on what Yang callsthe "lifelong learning" demographicpeople who may

    already hold college degrees but want to update their skills or learnfor fun. He believes thats a growing audience.

    "Technology is changing faster than it ever has," he argues. "Letssay you graduated from college 10 years ago, and youre inmarketingFacebook didnt exist back then," he adds. As hedescribes it, many people who pay for Udemy courses say tothemselves, "Schools didnt really teach me this stuff, how do I getup to speed?"

    But he says that down the road he sees no reason why Udemy

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    cant play a role in college courses. There are already professorswho see these new marketplaces as a possible alternative toteaching at a college, if the sites mature and gain wideracceptance.

    CliffJetteforTheChronicleReviewKevindeLaplante,anassociateprofessoratIowaStateU.,makesanaverageof$2,500permonthteachingfromhishomestudio(above)onsiteslikeUdemy.

    Among the traditional professors teaching on Udemy is KevindeLaplante, a 47-year-old whose day job is as an associateprofessor of philosophy and religious studies at Iowa StateUniversity.

    Hes the kind of academic who has always been interested in beinga public intellectual. "As a kid I was inspired by Carl Sagan," hesays. "I went into academia hoping I could do more public-outreach stuff."

    So back in 2010 he started a free podcast, called the CriticalThinker Podcast, aimed at a general audience.

    He also doodles and often draws cartoons to illustrate material forhis courses, and calls himself a "frustrated cartoonist." When hefirst heard about Udemy a couple of years ago, he saw a way totake his hobbies and bring in some extra income. He has set up acritical-thinking course on Udemy, and he also used another

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    teaching platform, called Fedora, to build what is essentially hisown school, which he calls Critical Thinker Academy.

    He says he now makes an average of $2,500 per month through hisonline teaching, and he dreams of one day detaching himself fromtraditional academic affiliations.

    "Academia is one of the least mobile jobs," he points out. Whileyoung scholars may have some options for moving around, andacademic superstars do too, people like him wind up with farfewer choices over time. "My extended family is all around theOttawa area in Canadathats where my wifes family is," he adds."If I want to get a chance of moving back there, I have very fewoptions." So he hopes that one day he might make enough moneythrough his freelance teaching to make the move. Hes starting acouple of new courses and says he is on track to match hismonthly income from his university salary "at some point in2015."

    But he argues that money is not the only benefit of experimentingwith education marketplaces. "It also frees you up to do differentkinds of teaching," he says, noting that because his department atIowa State does not have a doctoral component, there are courseshe would like to teach that the university doesnt offer. On hisCritical Thinker Academy, theres no faculty committee toconvince. He can teach whatever he wants.

    About 1,000 students have registered for his academy, though notall of those have paid. Hes had about 4,600 paying students on hisUdemy courses. He is heartened, though, by the audience he drewfor his podcast, which he says reached about 1.6 million listenersover several years.

    "This is an important part of the story about how independentonline educators can create an audience that can support asustainable business," he argues. "If pessimistically we estimatethat one in 100 students has a strong interest in what you teach,then over 20 years, thats only 50 students who are really interestedin the questions that Im interested in, and would be willing tofollow what I do, and support and encourage what I do, outside of

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    the classroom. But 1 percent of 1.6 million is 16,000."

    The more I talked with people, the more I realized that the formatraises questions about the basic definition of what it means toteach.

    "I dont even think of it as teaching in any normal sense of theword. I think of it more like writing an audio/visual multimediatextbook for the Internet audience" says deLaplante. "There aresome discussion features," he adds, "but its more like havingaccess to the author to clarify certain points. I dont have theongoing relationship with students."

    Walter, the iPhone-app instructor, says his inspiration for teachingonline was a series of video lectures he was required to watch in anaccounting course he took at Brigham Young University. Using a"flipped classroom," his professor assigned video lectures forhomework and then used class time for other things, like groupwork.

    "That format just fit so well with me," he says. "Being able to watchthese lectures whenever I wanted and be able to rewind when Ineeded tothat was huge to me. I loved that class."

    Walter now hopes that some professors may want to assign hisUdemy courses as replacements for a textbook and for their ownlectures so that their class time can be used for more-interactiveproblem solving.

    Udemys leaders say that a professor at San Jose State University isalready assigning a Udemy course on personal finance as a digitaltextbook for his students.

    If thats the way Udemy courses are used, it will threaten thetextbook-publishing industry more than it will imperil traditionalcolleges and universities.

    Clay Shirky, an associate arts professor in New York Universitysinteractive-telecommunications program and author of the bookHere Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing WithoutOrganizations, says he sees such marketplaces as a sign that the

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    lines between formal and informal education are blurring.

    "There used to be this big gulf between how-to guides and highereducation. Theres no clean break anymore," he says. "Theresalways been a big gap between acquisition of skills andeducation, as if theyre different things," he adds. "In many wayswhat the Udemys of the world are doing is theyre simply denyingthat things that people thought were fundamental differences areactually fundamental."

    However you categorize these new kinds of online courses andlearning materials, though, Shirky worries that they favor a certainkind of learner. "If youre not a self-starter in this world youre kindof screwed," he says. Talking of his own experience as a student, heremembers moments of frustration where he wanted to quit butpushed on because he didnt want to let his instructor down. Hedoubts that students in a Udemy course will stick with it whenthey hit a similar rough patch. "Theyre not going to pushthrough," he says. "Theyre not going to finish it."

    hen again, services are emerging that let learners reach livepeople to talk them through situations when video lectures

    arent enough. The biggest example of that is another Googleproject, called Google Helpouts, which provides a set of self-described experts willing to give brief, one-on-one consultingsessions via video chat. Its essentially on-demand tutoring, but onan eclectic range of topics, such as calculus, nutrition, fashion,furniture design, and guitar.

    Robert Woods, director of Faulkner Universitys Great BooksHonors College, charges $25 for 30 minutes of a "conversationalguide" to great books, and $10 for 15 minutes of talking through apersonal reading plan. When I asked him why he chose thosepricesexperts on the service can charge whatever they wanthesaid the cost serves as more of a screening function than a profit-making one. "I said, Im not in it for the money, but let me goahead and charge a rate that would bring in people who wereserious about doing the readings." He says the conversations havebeen "fascinating"from a mother home-schooling her son andlooking for suggested readings for him, to a woman who just

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    wanted someone to talk to about Jane Eyre. About half of hisclients were in the United States and half overseas. Most everyonehas given him a five-star rating. As one of the glowing reviewspoints out: "If you are committed to investing the time and energyto read any of the great books, it would be silly NOT to invest in aconversation to get these resources and insights."

    Woods typically conducts the video consulting chats in his study,with a tall bookshelf in the background. He said he decided to trythe Helpouts when he first read about the service, and he sees it asa kind of public outreach. "As a professor of great books, Ifrequently have people ask me what would you read, what wouldyou recommend," he says. But he admits the role he plays in thevideo chats is an unusual one, especially since a few have beenwith repeat customers whom he has gotten to know better overtime. As he put it: "Its a combination of coach, mentor, and aconsultant that you keep on retainer." He said he cant imaginethe format letting him make any serious money, and he has noplan to quit his university day job. But he says that he couldimagine somedaymaybe after he retirestrying such analternative path, if he could teach larger numbers of students at atime. (He imagines leading online book groups for a fee.)

    Helpouts hasnt been a hit for Google. Some providers complainthat Google hasnt done much to market the service, and otherssay it is awkward to schedule the help sessions. Even so, it hasformed an interesting community: hundreds of self-appointedteachers who trade tips and stories in a discussion group onGoogle Plus.

    Some of them have even bartered with their teaching. When MattGibson, who teaches guitar on Helpouts, wanted to learn how tomake his videos better, he agreed to teach someone a free guitarHelpout in return for a free session of a video-making Helpout. Nomoney changed hands, but both sides learned something.

    In its short history, the Internet has given voice to millions ofpeople with something to say. First came blogging, then social-media curation. Perhaps online education will be the next greatform of digitized democratized expression. And if that happens,

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    colleges will have to reckon with itand college professors maylose their once-exclusive franchise on authority.

    Jeffrey R. Young is a senior editor at The Chronicle.

    42 Comments The Chronicle of Higher Education Kevin deLaplante9+Sort by Oldest Share

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    Reply

    wclibrary 2 days agoLet's crowd-source advanced degrees.

    Will solve everything. 6

    Reply

    TerribleEddie a day ago> wclibrary"The free market has spoken." -- Stephen Colbert

    2

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    johnkuhlman90 2 days agoSo Prof. del-aplante makes $2500 per month in addition to his salary as anassociate professor. He has a part-time job. Does he spend 40 hours a weekon his job at Iowa State U.?

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    Kevin deLaplante 2 days ago> johnkuhlman90FYI, I've been full-time at Iowa State for fifteen years. I was departmentchair for four years. I spend a few hours a week making videos on myown time (weekends and evenings). After a few years it starts to add up.

    Part-time job is the wrong model (for me, at least). The revenue is morelike the revenue someone might get for writing a textbook or publishinga book for the general public. People continue to purchase the booklong after the work has been done. The difference is that the book is inmultimedia format and published online.

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    happyprof 2 days ago> Kevin deLaplanteKudos on making this work so well for you. I hope it does giveyou the mobility, eventually, that is so hard to find in thehumanities after tenure. I once heard an associate dean grumblethat he only became a chair and then associate dean so that hewould finally be able to relocate.

    I'm curious, though, about the financial side- how do you reportthe income for tax purposes? Are you technically anindependent contractor with Udemy? When my wife had thatstatus with a de facto employer, she had to set aside about 45%of her contracting income for expected taxes (since independentcontractors pay the employee's and the employer's share ofSocial Security and Medicare).

    Once again, more power to you. You are no doubt reachinghundreds, maybe thousands, of people who might otherwise nothave been exposed to big ideas in philosophy.

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    Edit Reply

    Kevin deLaplante 2 days ago> happyprofThat's very kind, I appreciate it.

    Edit Reply

    Kevin deLaplante 2 days ago> happyprofRegarding taxation, I need to report all this as "additionalincome", and plan accordingly -- taxes are not deductedup front. I'm not exactly sure how Udemy treats itsinstructors for tax purposes.

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    Majo Jacinto 2 days ago> Kevin deLaplanteProfessor deLaplante - I'd be more than happy to sharewith you how. Come join my income tax prep course onUdemy. Best!

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    jamesrovira a day ago> Kevin deLaplanteRight -- I think that's the best comparison to a Udemy course: acollege textbook. You don't get college credit just for reading atextbook, so you shouldn't get college credit just for taking aUdemy course. But as something comparable to a collegetextbook, Udemy courses may be good supplements to collegecourses.

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    Nick Walter 2 days agoHey this is Nick from the first part of the article. If you have any questionsabout getting into teaching I'm on twitter twitter.com/nickchuckwalter

    2

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    happyprof 2 days ago> Nick WalterGood on you, Nick! Time to spruce up that apartment a bit, though,buddy. It's downright desolate.

    Reply

    Nick Walter 2 days ago> happyprofNah it's right where it should be :)

    4

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    pbrown1991 a day ago> Nick WalterWhat kind of teaching it is when you "dont have the ongoingrelationship with students"?

    Reply

    engprof 2 days agoGood for these guys! If they can make some money and fame outsidetraditional academics, go for it. I will even read the occasional article abouttheir success. However, I am not giving up my day job anytime soon.Employers expect diplomas and the knowledge they represent. I am prettysure that most of the higher-ed market will remain in traditional programs.

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    JPvonGundling 2 days agoWhile there are legitimately qualified people like Prof. deLaplante offeringcourses on these sites, the problem is that they'll be competing with charlatansand hacks, and the average person won't be able to tell the difference. Let'ssay someone wants to take an online course on quantum mechanics, and thechoices are (a) some unknown physics professor at some obscure liberal artscollege who will assign tough homework problems, use lots and lots of math inhis lectures, and expect large amounts of reading outside class; and (b)

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    Reply

    Deepak Chopra -- or, perhaps, someone less obviously nutty but still all styleand no substance, whose class will be far more "fun" but of little to no genuineeducational value. It will be no contest.

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    Kevin deLaplante 2 days ago> JPvonGundlingIt's a risk for sure (for the consumer). But it's just an instance of thebroader problem posed by the democratization of publishing that'semerged over the last ten or fifteen years. In the absence ofcredentialed peer review, the only alternative seems to be publicreviews and ratings, which Udemy provides, at least. My hope is that acharlatan teaching demonstrably false or misleading material on a topiclike quantum theory on Udemy would attract critics in the public reviewsection, so consumers would have some sense of that going in.

    Private video course platforms like Fedora, on the other hand, let youhost whatever you want on your own site, so it's much harder for theconsumer to judge the reliability of the information or the expertise ofthe instructor. But again, this is just an instance of a larger problem thathas been around much longer than these technologies.

    Reply

    happyprof 2 days ago> Kevin deLaplanteIt even plagues traditional publishing. See, for instance, the greatdifference in public and academic reactions to Jared Diamond'sbooks or the recent Jefferson biography, "Master of theMountain."

    Reply

    madamesmartypants a day ago> Kevin deLaplante"In the absence of credentialed peer review, the only alternativeseems to be public reviews and ratings"Would peer-reviewing become possible on a site like Udemy?

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    Kevin deLaplante a day ago> madamesmartypantsI don't know how they would practically implementsomething like that, as a general practice. But peerreview from outside is pretty easy to do on a course-by-course basis. For example, if a college was consideringoffering a Udemy course as a supplement for a for-creditcourse, they could easily have faculty check the quality ofthe materials and the instruction in advance.

    Reply

    occprof2 19 hours ago> Kevin deLaplanteEasily?

    At my college, online courses are created, published, andtaught and the administration doesn't care a whit whatthe faculty think about the quality. As long as the coursedesigner (hello Pearson) is happy, they are happy.

    And the custo - uh . . . students? As long as they sign upto talk to each other on discussion boards and takemultiple choice tests as many times as it takes for themto get a grade they're happy with, who cares? It's allabout the children, isn't it . . .

    welfarescam 2 days agoThere is probably a good textbook out there to teach you any subject, but youhave to use the one the school demands, probably because the teacher,

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  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ== 15/19

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    have to use the one the school demands, probably because the teacher,principal, school board member or education ministry hack has been paid offto force you to buy the second rate text. Choice kills these guys.

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    funthinker 2 days agoThis trend might go very far in the future. For example, currently we receivedaily news from professionals (newspapers, TV or radio stations, newsagencies etc), and we generally trust that at least the reputed ones providereliable news. But why not give this task to self-designated "newsmakers" onthe Internet? Then let the customers decide which news they like. What if someof these newsmakers present completely made-up news, with no relationshipto reality, but delivered attractively, in a highly entertaining fashion? Thenprobably they will get most viewers. How about the reliability of the news?Well, I'm afraid, in many cases we do not really care; in particular, when thereis no direct consequence. For example, if there is an earthquake in Uzbekistan,but the newsmaker says it was in Tajikistan, does that really make a differencefor most people?

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    Kevin deLaplante 2 days ago> funthinkerI worry about the Orwellian drift that new media technologies makepossible too. What's disturbing is how far along this path we've actuallygone already, with personalized search filters working behind thescenes all the time, and new media sites popping up that claim to besatirical, but are actually creating news stories that read exactly like"regular" news stories (unlike the Onion, which is transparently satirical)except the story is completely false.

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    22279475 a day ago> funthinkerUm isn't Fox entirely about "completely made up news, with norelationship to reality, but delivered attractively..." ?? Then there wasColbert...Seems like fake news already is a viable commercialenterprise.

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    occprof2 19 hours ago> funthinkerFor a well thought out look at this exact question, see The People'sPlatform by Astra Taylor

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    autocrat a day agoThe marketplace is a nice theory. However, when I go shopping I like to usespecific stores and brands to help me with the "transaction costs." Separatingthe good quality stuff from the junk and dangerous is not always easy.

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    pbrown1991 a day agoPeople spend $199 for this?

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    Kevin deLaplante a day ago> pbrown1991Proportionally, very few. Nick can speak for himself, but the businessmodel that Udemy uses is based on targeted discounting. They'realways running some kind of promotional discount deal. Sometimes it'ssite-wide and public, like on Black Friday week, or back-to-schoolweek, and sometimes it's targeted ad campaigns that only some peoplewill see, and there are other combinations (e.g. targeted discountingthat is displayed only on the mobile apps, based on the courses youhave flagged on your "wish list" -- much like Amazon does). The baseprice may be set high, but the vast majority of students who sign up fora course, sign up at a much lower price point. Instructors make their

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  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ== 16/19

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    a course, sign up at a much lower price point. Instructors make theirmoney largely on volume. Hence, Udemy's business strategy is to getas many people as possible into the Udemy ecosystem, whereeveryone is set up to make a one-click purchase (again, similar toAmazon).

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    Kevin deLaplante a day ago> pbrown1991But you can see how you could make a lot in a short period of time,especially on a launch. If you have 6000 students in one of yourcourses, and you launch a new course and tell those 6000 students thatthey can sign up for your new course for 5 dollars if they do so in thenext two days, afterward the price is going up ... even if only half ofthem sign up, well, you can do the math.

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    Renee Jones a day agoI am in awe of how modern technology is changing all aspects of our lives,especially our access to education. My husband is an adjunct professor ofEnglish and have always found he has been treated like a commodity by mostof his college employers. This gives him and his other adjunct colleagues away to supplement their regular income. These services are also a muchneeded add-on to mainstream education. And BTW a good teacher, like myhusband, will make this work for his students.

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    ruben_gamboa a day ago> Renee JonesAwesome. Encourage your husband to do this. I'd love to see moregood venues for good teachers.

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    donaldheller a day ago"Professors are typically hired and promoted based on the quality of theirresearch."

    True at research universities, but not true for the 40% of undergrads whoattend community colleges, and the millions of others who attend teachinginstitutions.

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    occprof2 19 hours ago> donaldhellerThanks for beating this dead horse. Amazing how much life the fallacyof "publish or perish" has.

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    Debdessaso a day agoI don't know why so many people are upset about this newest development ineducation and its implications for the future of higher education. Professorshave never been required to be teachers by training--a concept that I've neverquite understood. Perhaps the innovative ways of delivering higher educationdiscussed in this article will force the profession to require teacher certificationsimilar to the K-12 system. So-called academic freedom may go by thewayside (and it should), but at least the professor standing in front of the classwill have been trained to do what he or she is expected to do: teach.

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    ironyroad 21 hours ago> DebdessasoWhy is academic freedom -- generally, freedom within certainboundaries of teaching and research -- "so-called"? It's not entirelyclear what you think it should be, or should be called.

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  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ== 17/19

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    green_for_Dean a day ago"Essentially you are hooked into sort of an addictive process where you hopeor youve been toldthat doing such a course will lead to an improvement inyour career," he says. "But often there is absolutely no evidence that this istrue."

    People have been attending grad school for ages with just this in mind sonothing new there! I think it's great to have so many platforms out there thatoffer information and a path through learning, but most people are oninformation overload right now and there is a lot competing for people's timeso even though we have all of these additional avenues and pipelines available,many people have had enough already and just want to curl up with a goodbook.

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    123highered a day agoBeing forthright about not checking for accuracy seems like a marketingdisaster! My course materials and activities are subject to scrutiny (foraccuracy among other things) not just by students who can compare theinformation to others teaching similar content but also by faculty. Onlinematerials and activities at a mainstream university increase the odds thatcourse materials can be scrutinized for accuracy, substance and pedagogy.This may be one reason why employers don't take such "education" fromUdemy and other such companies seriously.

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    tchas1949 a day ago

    see more

    I suggest a new role for older or retired academics: Paid mentors andevaluators of courses and instructors, both online and on campus.

    Teachers can be anywhere in their academic life, but mentors and evaluatorsshould have significant experience in the subject area. I recommend aminimum of twenty years of successful teaching in the subject area. Successcould be documented by average or better evaluations compared to othertwenty-year instructors, or teaching excellence awards during the past fiveyears.

    Mentors provide constructive criticism based on experience to help youngerinstructors (or older instructors in new courses) improve their teaching andcourses.

    Evaluators are experts who grade the teachers and courses. An evaluationrubric or rubrics would be necessary for consistent evaluations. Ateacher/course grade should be the average of several evaluations. Also, theevaluations from two years ago may not be accurate for this year's course,particularly if the teacher has updated his course with the help of mentors.

    jamesrovira a day agoUdemy is great for what it does, but once the discussion moves towardreplacing college courses with Udemy courses it becomes banal and ratherstupid. It doesn't take into account the real differences between a basictraining course and a college-level course, or even between a 100 level and a400 level college course -- and assessment differences.

    Framing the issue in terms of anti-authoritarianism and anti-elitism is anothersign of thinly veiled anti-intellectualism at the service of the profit motive. Theywant to take teaching away from colleges and professors only so that they canmake money with it.

    Yes, in order to teach at a college level you actually need to know something,and to be awarded college credit you need to be assessed by professionalswho are able to determine if your work is at the college level.

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  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ== 18/19

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    who are able to determine if your work is at the college level.

    I'm not opposed to using Udemy as "companions" to college courses -- to fillin tech gaps, for example, or as supplemental instruction, etc.

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    11274135 a day agoThis mostly describes something like a "micro education." That is, learninghow to do this, that, or the other thing as needed. Not bad, in fact, very useful.Especially the courses I can get at Home Depot on home carpentry orplumbing. It certainly has a place in education, somewhere. But it is notnecessarily a substitute for a college education, although it probably is a partof it. A traditional college education has two in parts. One is to acquire generalcultural (lower case c) knowledge that may have no particular use except tohelp one understand the context in which one lives. This is not the kind ofknowledge that you get from day to day experience. The other is to learn howto approach some particular body of knowledge (it often doesn't matter what itis) and over a reasonable period of time to become something of an expert inthat area, able to understand what other experts are talking about, able to writeand speak from a base of knowledge as an expert, and even to contributesomething to the body of knowledge. But what's really important is to becognizant of the general process that you have gone through to gain expertisein a particular area. That's important because you are going to have to do itover and over again as life progresses. What you "major" in doesn't matter allthat much. It's "majoring" that matters. Basically, this is learning how to learn,that is, to learn something of much great complexity than how to lay bathroomfloor tile. This is "macro education" and it is much bigger than the sum of itsparts. WE don't want to confuse micro and macro education, or we shall surelylose the forest in the trees.

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    occprof2 19 hours agoJust what is education? It seems that these podcasts and videos are supplyinginformation.

    For me, education occurs when students take information, create an artifact(in my field, English, an essay), get feedback on it, revise, feedback,revise, and then submit for someone with experience and expertise to evaluate.

    It's that feedback that students want and pay for. My wife, currently workingon a Master's in Clinical Microbiology, complains about her class where thestudents run their own discussions and summarize each other responses. Shesays "I'm paying for the TEACHER to instruct me, not classmates."

    More broadly, most of my classes involve open or directed group discussion.The emphasis isn't on the "sage on the stage," but provoking the students tofigure out the answers on their own. You know, work. Im confused now:doesnt the Chronicle and other publications currently look askance at the typeof pedagogy at the center of this approach?

    This seems like a slightly more interactive "Great Courses" series.

    Caveat Emptor. Just cuz' something is labeled "new and improved" -- evenwith the imprimatur of the reigning god of all that is righteous and noble and,most importantly, profitable, in the world (all bow down before theentrepreneur), don't mean it's new -- or good.

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    digithead99163 2 hours agoFrom the article: "He knew there were plenty of how-to videos and short in-person workshops run by certified coding wizards, but he viewed their veryexpertise as their weakness. "Almost every one of these tutorials or classesassumed you had some kind of programming experience," he says. For peoplelike him who didnt consider themselves computer nerds but who wanted to

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  • 2/4/2015 Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ== 19/19

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    like him who didnt consider themselves computer nerds but who wanted tobuild things, "it was super hard to pick up stuff." "

    This attitude is exactly why we have so many bugs, errors and issues withsoftware. There's a good reason why those designing and building bridgesdon't learn this way because if you can't handle things like calculus andphysics and, gasp, Boolean logic, then you have no business participating insuch endeavors other than as a laborer lifting heavy objects.

    Not that this attitude is anything new, the late computing scientist EdsgerDijkstra over his career lamented this perspective of these so-calledentrepreneurs which he outlined here: http://dsc.ufcg.edu.br/~dalton...

    My favorite quote from it is: "If you carefully read its literature and analyze whatits devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering hasaccepted as its charter, How to program if you cannot. "

    Of course, people will point to people like Gates and Jobs who never took aprogramming class as evidence that it's unnecessary to be educated inprogramming to be good at it. But that's the same as saying some people getrich playing the lottery. Making millions playing the lottery happens but thatdoesn't make it a good retirement plan unless you're the one running thelottery.

    My question for all of those folks developing these courses and those that takethem: How do you know when you're wrong if you never learned to identifywhat is wrong from the beginning?

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