On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 11:27 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > There is some need for caution here: MOOC is a catch-all term and not all > the players involved are equally sleazy. > > That being said, I do not have a very positive opinion of Coursera and > Udacity, the two major for-profit players in this game. > > Daphne Koller, the principal behind Coursera likes to speak publicly with > missionary zeal about bringing high quality educational content to poor > Third World residents. But what is she telling her VC sponsors? Does she > believe her own bullshit? She strikes me as being either really really > naive or really really cynical. > > And here's Sebastian Thrun of Udacity making excuses for their most-recent > debacle at San Jose State: "I am particularly surprised that certain > outlets look at pass rates irrespective of student population. As if inner > city high school kids are to fare as well as college students.” > > > http://allthingsd.com/20130719/amid-controversy-udacitys-sebastian-thrun-is-relearning-how-to-teach/ >
I have been following Daphne Koller's public speaking 'oeuvre a bit and here's a partial list of her greatest hits that I have encountered so far. They all scream "bullshit artist" to me. - Quoting Thomas Friedman on why MOOCs are the answer to increasing college costs in the US. "Tom Friedman in his recent New York Times article captured in the way that no one else could the spirit behind our effort. He said that big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is urgently necessary. I have talked about what is urgently necessary. Let's talk about what suddenly possible." TED Talk Aug 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6FvJ6jMGHU - "Education of women is a way of reducing the population explosion." On how MOOCs will benefit the Third World. Stanford University Tanner Lectures Dec 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_VnJNkko8Y - "None that I can think of that are not classified. Sorry." In response to being asked to provide an example of how compulsory military service makes Israelis more enterpreneurial. NPR's From Scratch, June 2013, http://www.npr.org/2013/06/13/191380036/daphne-koller-founder-of-coursera -raghu.
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