After going viral over the summer, an artificial intelligence class offered by Stanford University has now enrolled over 130,000 students — a staggering number that exceeds the entire population of the St. George, Mississauga and Scarborough campuses combined. If taught on campus, the class would require 76 Convocation Halls filled to capacity, but instead, this enormous class is to be administered entirely over the Internet.
The class is the latest, and most popular, development in mass online education. In 2006, the Khan Academy opened its doors to users, offering an elaborate curriculum largely focused on maths and sciences. With video lessons streamed from Youtube, students can essentially self-administer their education on the site, progressing through lessons that begin with basic arithmetic, and working up to advanced calculus, algebra, and even economics. The following year, Apple introduced iTunes U, a new section of the iTunes Store where users can download podcast-style recordings of lectures on a variety of subjects. By 2009, sites like Academic Earth, and MIT’s OpenCourseWare, had managed to further approximate an actual class: offering syllabi, reading lists, examination materials, and suggested essay topics, along with video lectures.
The main problem with these initiatives was that there was no mechanism for students to receive feedback on their work. The instructors of the Stanford class are experimenting with ways to resolve this, using programs like Google Moderator to simulate tutorials, and personalizing examinations for each student to minimize cheating. Although the instructors have forgone numerical grade points, students will be ranked relative to their classmates, and those that complete the course will receive a statement of accomplishment.
The University of Toronto has remained conspicuously absent from these exciting developments. There are no U of T classes available on iTunes U or Academic Earth, while other Canadian post-secondary institutions much smaller than us maintain at least a modest presence. It is a shame, with so many classes at U of T which would lend themselves well to online distribution offered. This year, for instance, there is little doubt that Michael Ignatieff’s course on “renewing Canadian democracy” (POL382) could generate significant public interest. For the time being, any significant online presence is likely to remain a pipe dream at a university where the largest faculty only just began to experiment with a handful of online courses over this past summer.
Even if U of T has thus far failed to stake out a claim in this increasingly popular territory, many of these sites will likely prove enormously helpful to students. In the process of conducting research for this article, I compared some of my syllabi from classes taken at U of T against their online equivalents. Our version of a survey of John Milton (ENG303) was literally identical to the version found on OpenYaleCourses, with both progressing through Milton’s major works in the same order, and with similar emphasis on critical interpretation. While slightly more focused on the role of American foreign policy, Columbia’s “Conceptual Foundations of International Politics” was strikingly similar to our own Introduction to Theories of International Relations (POL208). Our offerings in political theory (POL200, POL320) are mirrored quite closely by Yale’s “Introduction to Political Philosophy” and Harvard’s “Justice.” The list goes on.
These courses tend to flesh out a subject more thoroughly than other student standbys like Sparknotes or Wikipedia, and thus may prove especially useful to keeners or inveterate class-skippers. Had I only discovered these resources while I was still enrolled in a class with significant overlap, I could have easily avoided tedious-sounding lectures in favour of teaching myself at a later date from the comfort of my own home. This realization soon gave way to a sense of frustration: why did I pay thousands of dollars for a class about Milton or political theory when I can get the exact same thing for free?
This line of reasoning touches on the chief argument against the emerging trend of free online education: that it will somehow disturb the delicate ecosystem of academia. There may well be some validity to this argument. Certainly, the principle of “open access” can be carried to a reprehensible extreme: in July, 24-year-old Aaron Swartz was arrested for hacking into MIT’s computer network and ripping 5 million scholarly articles off JSTOR.
The cache likely contained every article that exists on the popular journal archive. Though Swartz’s supporters argue that an ordinary citizen would have had to pay upwards of 70 million dollars for the same articles if purchasing them on an individual basis, the stolen files represent countless hours of labour by scholars. Not every function of a university can translate perfectly to cost-free online existence. Individual courses may have adapted successfully; the entirety of academic publishing has not been so lucky.
All this does not to suggest that the awesome powers of the web will soon render physical campuses, and in-the-flesh educators, obsolete. Although we may benefit from very good online approximations of classes on John Milton or political theory, there is no equivalent to a full four years of education yet available online. Digitally replicating the entirety of the “college experience” is a daunting task (good try, Mark Zuckerberg). Still, it is heartening see how knowledge once conveyed only through such means as an expensive fornal education is becoming both accesible and affordable, for the public. If only our own university would step up and take on a greater role in doing so.
