Distributed Education: the new form of Education

The other day, Computer Science department of Stanford University announced that 3 lectures are going to be provided this fall for not only students at there, but also people in the world. Those lectures contain lecture video, quiz, assignments, and discussion as well. Stanford has been doing this kind of distributed education, but this time, Stanford will offer real time lectures meaning people around the world literally participate in the classes simultaneously.

I've been using the series of lectures, of course with assignments and quiz as well. However, I felt somewhat alone. I was studying alone. I think the existence of certain number of people will boost your motivation or passion toward learning because of social effect and competition. You'll be motivated if you see people in your class do better than you or harder than you right? And this experimental distributed education is actually really different from the old ones.

I plan to enroll 2 lectures out of 3. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. This is like the new form of education. In the long time ago, there were no enough school that kids had to go a long way. In the past, education was physically distant. But now, it its distance is zero. You can access to the world's best education just by turning on your computer. The only distance you have to come over is your mind. Mind that you want to get that education.

The CS department at Stanford is definitely lead the new form of education with technology of Internet. I felt like they did kind of role they had, that is what the No1 education institute has got to do. And this kind of distributed education will be prevalent not only CS, but also for any fields. This is the right use of the Internet. I can't wait to see the world with dynamically connected each other where there are a lot of shortcuts.

75000 people have enrolled to Artificial Intelligence class as of this writing. This will grow further. And Stanford also offers the community service using facebook that connects all students. This is just a beginning. What is another options or way of providing distributed education??