"Udacity sometimes belabors some really basic points. Coursera never gives me that 'dumbed-down' feeling. It's more like a real, and challenging, college course."
I think this actually may be Udacity's biggest strength. It's a lot more hands on than a college course, which makes it somewhat easier. But do you actually learn less? After thinking about it, I really don't think so.
With your average college CS class they spend a few minutes talking about some problem, and then you spend a week on your own working on it. Whereas with Udacity they actually teach you all the concepts you need to solve the problem, and then you work through it together step by step.
The strength of the traditional college approach is that it teaches you to be resourceful to some extent. But this comes at an enormous cost. You basically spend all week writing shitty code and trying to make it compile just to learn at best one or two concepts. Whereas with Udacity they are actually teaching you how to write quality code, but you still have to do the most challenging parts of the algorithm yourself. (And these aren't trivial, they often take several hours.)
Clearly at some point you do need to learn to fly yourself, but with Udacity at least you can wait until you're up to speed on the basic tools rather than being shoved out of the nest on day one. Even if it seems dumbed down, I'm completely convinced that you're actually learning much more this way than what you learn in the traditional CS classroom. And after all, the measure of a class shouldn't be how hard or easy it is, but rather how much you learn from it.
I like the short cycles and quick bits of programming, especially given that they've also got the weekly homeworks. I'm just saying that sometimes they move too slowly for my taste. Let me run the videos at high speed without hassle, and that'll help. I can slow down when I need to, and speed through the parts I already get. (I've found that at high speed, having to concentrate a bit just to understand the words helps keep me focused.)
Ultimately, maybe we'll end up with classes that have several levels of explanation, letting you pick which you think best suits you for that particular piece...maybe for one part a quick presentation of an equation is sufficient, and for a less familiar part you want a step-by-step walkthrough with lots of intuitive explanation.
Hmm. Telescopic lectures ala http://www.telescopictext.com/ .. You get a short explanation, some tests, and if you get below a certain score, they go into a more detailed explanation.
I think this actually may be Udacity's biggest strength. It's a lot more hands on than a college course, which makes it somewhat easier. But do you actually learn less? After thinking about it, I really don't think so.
With your average college CS class they spend a few minutes talking about some problem, and then you spend a week on your own working on it. Whereas with Udacity they actually teach you all the concepts you need to solve the problem, and then you work through it together step by step.
The strength of the traditional college approach is that it teaches you to be resourceful to some extent. But this comes at an enormous cost. You basically spend all week writing shitty code and trying to make it compile just to learn at best one or two concepts. Whereas with Udacity they are actually teaching you how to write quality code, but you still have to do the most challenging parts of the algorithm yourself. (And these aren't trivial, they often take several hours.)
Clearly at some point you do need to learn to fly yourself, but with Udacity at least you can wait until you're up to speed on the basic tools rather than being shoved out of the nest on day one. Even if it seems dumbed down, I'm completely convinced that you're actually learning much more this way than what you learn in the traditional CS classroom. And after all, the measure of a class shouldn't be how hard or easy it is, but rather how much you learn from it.