Will Online Learning Engage You More? Teppo Jouttenus and Victor Shnayder at TEDxBeaconStreet

Online education opens up possibilities for engaging with a tremendously diverse student body, experimenting with fascinating laboratory tasks, and receiving immediate feedback on your performance. In some respects, such tools can be more effective than traditional schooling. Victor Shnayder and his colleague Teppo Jouttenus will discuss specific examples from edX learners to highlight their successes and explore some directions to improve the power of online education even further.

Who here went to college?
Raise your hands.

I did too.

I got to spend four years
on this beautiful campus.

I learnt a lot about computer science
from my classes

and even more about life
from my friends.

I also developed
a lifelong love of orange and black.

(Laughter)

This is Teppo's son.

He recently learnt to walk

and even though Teppo
doesn't believe me when I tell him this,

he's going to be walking off
to college pretty soon.

So, Teppo. How do you think
your son's college experience

is going to be, compared to ours?

Teppo Jouttenus: I must admit
that I don't quite know.

I have more questions than answers

when I think about how will
education be 20 years from now,

both here in the US
and around the world.

But I do know that some things
must change,

and here are four:

education must get better.

Too many people enter college
unprepared to learn

and leave unprepared to get
a good job or be good citizens.

One scary statistic
from a recent study

is that 36% of students
across a range of universities

made no significant improvement

in their critical thinking, reasoning,

and writing skills
in four years of college.

We can do better than that.

VS: Education must get cheaper.

If it doesn't, then billions of people
around the world

who needs to be educated

are not going to get access

to the high quality education
they need.

Just here in the US,

there is over a trillion dollars
of student debt.

Anyone here still have student loans?

TJ: Education must be able
to adapt faster.

Anyone's college or university

were they specifically good
at making quick decisions,

adapting to change? No.

There are benefits
to keeping a steady course

but sometimes changing education

feels like taking a herd of elephants

and trying to get them
to change directions.

VS: And finally,
education has to last longer.

It may actually turn out to be

that four years of college
is too much

but four years of education
is definitely not enough

in today's quickly changing world.

So let's review where we are starting,

with traditional education first.

TJ: The traditional education bundle

has elements that are both non academic

like housing and football teams,

and academic,
like professors and classes,

and it comes with a hefty price tag.

There is a lot of experimentation
going on right now

in ways of unbundling education.

Taking these elements
in different combinations

to meet various different needs.

One interesting example is
taking online classes

without the football teams

and having them for free.

This obviously will not solve

all the challenges
we have in education

but it raises
some interesting questions

that are dear to our heart,
because we work at edX

and there we publish courses
from top universities

freely available to anyone
with an Internet connection.

So, Victor, how does this differ
from the standard education bundle?

VS: Sure. Before I worked at edX,
I spent several years

helping create and teach
classes at Harvard.

There we had a pretty standard model.

We had a professor that gives lectures.

I spent hundreds of hours
creating problems

and then grading then
when they were submitted.

Of course, students came
to my section and did problems.

Teppo has worked a lot
with creating edX classes

so tell us about one of those
and we will see how it differs.

TJ: Sure. As a program manager,

my job is to work with professors
and their teams,

and find the various different
components that come together

to do the best possible
online class that we can.

For one MIT course, we started
with the legendary Physics professor,

Walter Lewin,

added in two other professors,
three lecturers, one postdoc,

sprinkled into the mix some students,
a program manager, video team,

software engineers,
and blended it all together

to create the online version

of Walter Lewin's
Electricity and Magnetism.

And Victor was one
of the software engineers

that built the platform
that makes all of this possible.

Do you want to talk about
some of the elements of the class?

VS: Sure. So, here are
some of the screens in the class.

We have Walter Lewin,
or a video of Walter Lewin,

describing the science
behind Van der Graaf generators.

It's immediately followed by
problems like this one asking you,

did you actually understand
what you just saw?

Where students get incentive back.

We have interactive simulations
like this one,

written specifically for this class,

that shows how electric fields change
as charged particles move in them.

And finally we have a discussion forum

where students from all over the world

can connect and discuss the material
and help each other learn.

So, for example, in this particular screen

one of the students posted
a relevant video from Youtube

that illustrates some of the concepts
discussed in the class,

sparking a discussion
where people were asking

why this is working,
what is going on.

So together, compared to
the experience I had at Harvard,

this is somewhat different.
We get this bundle,

we lose that in-person connection
that I had with my students in section

but we get this global forum
and global connections,

and we get instant feedback,

which is something that
was much harder

to do in a traditional model.

So let's look at the edX class

with the four aspects we said before.

TJ: One way that the edX class
is pedagogically better

than traditional lecturing is because

the lecture is split into smalls snippets

and you get instant feedback,

so there is more engagement
with the student.

It is freely available
for the whole world

and the team can adapt faster

because they don't have
to spend any energy

recreating the parts that they loved.

Instead, they can focus
on improving the parts

that they weren't happy with.

And it opens up new possibilities
for lifelong learning.

Our colleague Ruth's father is 89

and he is still actively
taking edX classes.

VS: Of course, not everything
about the online class is better.

In particular, it costs a lot
to create such a class,

and, as I mentioned earlier,

we really lose that in-person connection
between teacher and student

that can be so important in some cases

to keep students motivated
and to help them get through the material.

But one of the great things is,
once we have created this class,

we can call up yet another bundle.

We are already trying things like this,

where we take Walter Lewin's course,

and we bring it to a campus,
or a thousand campuses,

and you can have the professor there

instead of having to spend
those hundred of hours

creating materials that we already have,

guide their students through it,

and really focus on addressing
the individual needs that they have

and not just incorporating the basics.

This is just one combination

and the future of education
is going to involve

lots of different experiments
and combinations.

Only some of which
will involve online learning.

That should bring us to...

TJ: Blenders.

Or how do we most effectively

blend online and face-to-face
elements in education,

and how do we create
the most effective education bundles

to meet the needs of different learners

in different kind of circumstances.

And this is where
we need your help.

As we and others
continue to experiment

we want you to try out
the different bundles

and share what works well.

So when you come across
a delicious educational smoothie...

(Laughter)

... tell your teachers,
tell your friends, tell your school,

because the more demand there is
for awesome learning experiences

the quicker the best educational bundles
become the new standard.

VS: Of course, it's important to remember
some of these educational smoothies

are going to have actual
snow and ice, not computers.

For example, this was my classroom
on a course I took several years ago

with the National
Outdoor Leadership School.

We spent several weeks
trekking through the mountains,

learning about leadership and teaching,

and trying to find our way
through the woods, and not get too lost.

I learnt a lot from this course.

I find myself using things I learnt here
pretty much every single day,

which is not something I can say
from most of my college classes.

This was one of the high points
of the trip.

We were on top of a mountain

and could really see
the landscape in front of us,

and sort of gather a glimpse
of where we were headed.

I find that working in the everchanging
landscape of education today

is sometimes like this,

where it feels like we really see
what is going on

and we know where we are going,
but more often it feels like this,

which is an afternoon on the trip,

trying to find camp
in a half frozen swamp

in the middle of a snowstorm.

But we did it,

and one of the things
I learnt from this trip,

and from this course was

how important it is
to really embrace the uncertainty

when you are exploring a new territory
that you don't know already.

And I think that
if we do that in education

we will be able to discover
better combinations

that more succesfully help people
teach and help people learn.

We hope that we've managed
to convince you

that the future of education is exciting

and that perhaps
you are a little nervous about it.

And we hope we help.

Join in discussion around this,
try new things, and share what works.

TJ: I don't know
if my son's college bundle

will include a football team or not.

But what I do know
is that when we continue, all of us,

to experiment and share
the best educational bundles

we can make education better,
cheaper, faster, and longer.

Thank you.

(Applause)