Here Comes Professor Everybody

2/4/2015
Here Comes Professor Everybody - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle Review

February 2, 2015
Here Comes Professor Everybody

The sharing economy meets higher education
By Jeffrey R. Young
hen Nick Walter graduated with an information-systems

degree, he intended to start his own tech company to
create the next big iPhone app, as so many twenty-somethings

have tried in recent years. But then something dawned on him: He
could make more money teaching.
He set up a free account on a site called Udemy, which lets anyone
teach online courses and charge for them, and then uploaded a
series of lecture videos and exercises showing other people how to
make apps.
Walter had no experience teaching, no affiliation with a university
or accredited educational institution, andby his own admission
no particular gifts as a computer-science student. But that
doesnt matter to Udemy, or to any of a number of similar
platforms that have emerged in recent years.
Walters thin credentials didnt bother his students, either. Theyve
signed up in droves. And thats precisely because he isnt a typical
teacher.
Like any good entrepreneur, Walter identified an untapped need.
He knew there were plenty of how-to videos and short in-person
workshops run by certified coding wizards, but he viewed their
very expertise as their weakness. "Almost every one of these
tutorials or classes assumed you had some kind of programming
experience," he says. For people like him who didnt consider
themselves computer nerds but who wanted to build things, "it
was super hard to pick up stuff."
So he pointedly never utters the word "Boolean" or other coding
http://chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-Professor-Everybody/151445/?key=QGp1c1BoY3dFZHhmNTwXMmtQanJlMkIgYHscPXggblxVEQ==
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jargon in his video lectures if he can avoid it. And he never takes
himself too seriously: In one promotional video for his course, the
25-year-old Walter dances to techno music while slogans such as
"no programming experience required" appear next to him. By
traditional standards, hes an anti-professor.
Thousands of people have paid up to $199 to take that first course
he created. And when the course was promoted by Udemy, Walter
made $20,000 in a single day. Thats more than some adjunct
professors make in a year.
These sites that let
anyone teach courses
might just change the
way people think
about the value of
education, about the
nature of expertise,
and about what
teaching is worth.
Walter now earns his living as a renegade professor. On a typical
morning, he spends a couple of hours filming new lectures in the
living room of the house he shares with four other people in Provo,
Utah, with the help of a videographer who works for him part time.
In the afternoon he commutes to a coworking spacewhich has a
faster Internet connectionand spends time answering questions
from students and marketing his courses. He has never taught in a
classroom, and doesnt have much interest in doing so. "To be
honest," he confesses, "I never thought I would be a teacher."
This is what happens when the so-called sharing economy meets
educationwhen the do-it-yourself spirit of Silicon Valley is
applied to teaching. Much has been written about how Uber is
disrupting the taxi business by letting people moonlight as taxi
drivers using their own cars, and how Airbnb offers an alternative
to hotels by helping people rent out their spare rooms. But little
attention has been paid to emerging platforms that let people use
the knowledge in their heads to teach occasional courses online,
for a fee.
Such online services are growing fast. Udemy boasts more than
five million students, more than 22,000 courses, and more than
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$48-million in venture-capital investment. And Google has

announced a partnership with edX, the online-education
nonprofit started by Harvard University and MIT, to open a similar
platform, called MOOC.org, that will let anyone teach in what
leaders call a "YouTube for courses."
KimRaffforTheChronicleReview
NickWalter,arecentcollegegraduatewhomakesalivingteaching
appbuildingcoursesonUdemy,recordsvoiceoversathome.
So far most of the courses on Udemy make no attempt to compete
with colleges. The sites most popular offerings involve
technology, like Walters iPhone-app course, or seem more akin to
self-help books than to college courses. But you can also find
subjects like linear algebra, introductory philosophy, and art
history. A few professors are already teaching on the platform with
hopes of eventually breaking away from academe, and its leaders
say theres no reason full-scale introductory college courses like
calculus and physics cant find a lucrative home here.
The bigger, more immediate threat to colleges is indirect. These
sites that let anyone teach courses might just change the way
people think about the value of education, about the nature of
expertise, and about what teaching is worth.
Here comes Professor Everybody.
t first glance, online teaching platforms like Udemy may not sound
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that new. For years, aspiring computer programmers have relied

on video-tutorial sites and other online resources to teach
themselves the latest programming languages. A cottage
industry has emerged, including sites like Lynda.com.

Likewise, colleges themselves have been experimenting with
massive open online courses. With video lectures and online
homework produced by top lecturers at the worlds leading
universities, MOOCs serve as a kind of self-service college
without a credential to go with it.
So whats different about Udemy?
The earlier sites largely mimicked the old publishing or broadcast
model of production: Only the few, and the carefully chosen, are
allowed to teach college MOOCs or Lynda.com courses. But
Udemy, like Mooc.org to come, stresses that teaching is not just
for the elite. The message is that anyone can be both learner and
professor, and that no matter who you are, your teaching might
even have monetary value.
The participation in Mooc.org by Googleone of the biggest tech
playersseemed to me like a major endorsement of the idea. I was
curious about why the company is creating an open, global
schoolhouse. So last year when Googles chairman, Eric Schmidt,
spoke at an event at Tufts University while promoting his book The
New Digital Age, I asked him during a public question-and-answer
session.
"We really want to democratize the access to education, and the
access to teaching, and then let the marketplace figure it out," he
said. "Youll discover that teaching is an art. That there are people
who are gifted at it, and because of the way the Internet works,
eventually the very most talented teachers will emerge, from
everywhere. Its a great thing."
His tone suggested that letting the marketplace "figure out"
teaching was the most common-sense plan in the world. But
having covered colleges for more than 15 years, I found his
comment subversive, even aggressive. Because in the typical
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college system, the marketplace doesnt decide the best teaching,

at least not in any direct way. Professors are typically hired and
promoted based on the quality of their research, and most
undergraduates choose a college based not on a specific instructor
but on a range of other factors, from geographic location to the
quality of grub in the food court.
Udemys chief executive, Dennis Yang, takes Schmidts argument
even further. "What we have is competition among teachers" on
the platform, he says. "Its one of the few environments where
teachers and instructors have to compete with each other."
Someone considering Walters iPhone course is shown how many
stars previous students rated it, along with a list of other, similar
courses, many of them cheaper.
That strikes some academics as a nightmare scenario. After all,
when it comes to learning, the customer isnt always right.
Students might rate challenging professors more harshly simply
because they are more difficult. Yet students may learn more in a
challenging class. Or they may simply not know whether the
information they learned is up to dateor even accurate.
"Thats kind of the elephant in the room," says Burton J. Bledstein,
an expert on the history of professionalism and an emeritus
professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Ive
spent my entire career trying to teach kids that not everybodys
opinion is equal." He worries that some popular video instructors
are all flash and little analysis.
But Bledstein also thinks the emergence of Udemy is a symptom of
what he sees as the death of professions. "We have an antiauthoritarian mood in the country from the Vietnam War on
through the Iraq War, where we had all these professional experts
leading us down these paths," he says. Learning marketplaces tap
into this mood, he says, by not only allowing everyone to express
themselves, but also giving out certificates of learning blessed by
no other authority than that of the self-described professor.
Other critics see the education marketplaces even more darkly.
One of them is Guy Standing, a professor of development studies
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at the University of London, who argues that various sharingeconomy trends, including education marketplaces, are creating a
new social class: the "precariat." Its members suffer from a mashup of economic ills, including job insecurity, lack of worker
protections, and insecurity of identity.
Standing worries that vulnerable consumers eager for a shortcut
into a better job are being "seduced" into buying these online
courses. "Essentially you are hooked into sort of an addictive
process where you hopeor youve been toldthat doing such a
course will lead to an improvement in your career," he says. "But
often there is absolutely no evidence that this is true."
Yang, of Udemy, defends the quality of the courses. He says that
although the company makes no attempt to check their accuracy,
all submissions are reviewed by staff membersfor technical
quality and to make sure that the topics are not "offensive,
inappropriate, or illegal."
Yang even argues that the student-rating system provides better
quality control for teaching than at traditional colleges. "In an
open marketplace where there is competition, if youre an
instructor and you cant teach well or you dont know what youre
talking about, students will say so with ratings," he says. "If youre
not providing value, you wont make moneyonly the best
teachers go to the top."
oday online-teaching marketplaces focus on what Yang calls

the "lifelong learning" demographicpeople who may
already hold college degrees but want to update their skills or learn
for fun. He believes thats a growing audience.
"Technology is changing faster than it ever has," he argues. "Lets
say you graduated from college 10 years ago, and youre in
marketingFacebook didnt exist back then," he adds. As he
describes it, many people who pay for Udemy courses say to
themselves, "Schools didnt really teach me this stuff, how do I get
up to speed?"
But he says that down the road he sees no reason why Udemy
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cant play a role in college courses. There are already professors

who see these new marketplaces as a possible alternative to
teaching at a college, if the sites mature and gain wider
acceptance.
CliffJetteforTheChronicleReview
KevindeLaplante,anassociateprofessoratIowaStateU.,makes
anaverageof$2,500permonthteachingfromhishomestudio
(above)onsiteslikeUdemy.
Among the traditional professors teaching on Udemy is Kevin
deLaplante, a 47-year-old whose day job is as an associate
professor of philosophy and religious studies at Iowa State
University.
Hes the kind of academic who has always been interested in being
a public intellectual. "As a kid I was inspired by Carl Sagan," he
says. "I went into academia hoping I could do more publicoutreach stuff."
So back in 2010 he started a free podcast, called the Critical
Thinker Podcast, aimed at a general audience.
He also doodles and often draws cartoons to illustrate material for
his courses, and calls himself a "frustrated cartoonist." When he
first heard about Udemy a couple of years ago, he saw a way to
take his hobbies and bring in some extra income. He has set up a
critical-thinking course on Udemy, and he also used another
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teaching platform, called Fedora, to build what is essentially his

own school, which he calls Critical Thinker Academy.
He says he now makes an average of $2,500 per month through his
online teaching, and he dreams of one day detaching himself from
traditional academic affiliations.
"Academia is one of the least mobile jobs," he points out. While
young scholars may have some options for moving around, and
academic superstars do too, people like him wind up with far
fewer choices over time. "My extended family is all around the
Ottawa area in Canadathats where my wifes family is," he adds.
"If I want to get a chance of moving back there, I have very few
options." So he hopes that one day he might make enough money
through his freelance teaching to make the move. Hes starting a
couple of new courses and says he is on track to match his
monthly income from his university salary "at some point in
2015."
But he argues that money is not the only benefit of experimenting
with education marketplaces. "It also frees you up to do different
kinds of teaching," he says, noting that because his department at
Iowa State does not have a doctoral component, there are courses
he would like to teach that the university doesnt offer. On his
Critical Thinker Academy, theres no faculty committee to
convince. He can teach whatever he wants.
About 1,000 students have registered for his academy, though not
all of those have paid. Hes had about 4,600 paying students on his
Udemy courses. He is heartened, though, by the audience he drew
for his podcast, which he says reached about 1.6 million listeners
over several years.
"This is an important part of the story about how independent
online educators can create an audience that can support a
sustainable business," he argues. "If pessimistically we estimate
that one in 100 students has a strong interest in what you teach,
then over 20 years, thats only 50 students who are really interested
in the questions that Im interested in, and would be willing to
follow what I do, and support and encourage what I do, outside of
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the classroom. But 1 percent of 1.6 million is 16,000."

The more I talked with people, the more I realized that the format
raises questions about the basic definition of what it means to
teach.
"I dont even think of it as teaching in any normal sense of the
word. I think of it more like writing an audio/visual multimedia
textbook for the Internet audience" says deLaplante. "There are
some discussion features," he adds, "but its more like having
access to the author to clarify certain points. I dont have the
ongoing relationship with students."
Walter, the iPhone-app instructor, says his inspiration for teaching
online was a series of video lectures he was required to watch in an
accounting course he took at Brigham Young University. Using a
"flipped classroom," his professor assigned video lectures for
homework and then used class time for other things, like group
work.
"That format just fit so well with me," he says. "Being able to watch
these lectures whenever I wanted and be able to rewind when I
needed tothat was huge to me. I loved that class."
Walter now hopes that some professors may want to assign his
Udemy courses as replacements for a textbook and for their own
lectures so that their class time can be used for more-interactive
problem solving.
Udemys leaders say that a professor at San Jose State University is
already assigning a Udemy course on personal finance as a digital
textbook for his students.
If thats the way Udemy courses are used, it will threaten the
textbook-publishing industry more than it will imperil traditional
colleges and universities.
Clay Shirky, an associate arts professor in New York Universitys
interactive-telecommunications program and author of the book
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without
Organizations, says he sees such marketplaces as a sign that the
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lines between formal and informal education are blurring.

"There used to be this big gulf between how-to guides and higher
education. Theres no clean break anymore," he says. "Theres
always been a big gap between acquisition of skills and
education, as if theyre different things," he adds. "In many ways
what the Udemys of the world are doing is theyre simply denying
that things that people thought were fundamental differences are
actually fundamental."
However you categorize these new kinds of online courses and
learning materials, though, Shirky worries that they favor a certain
kind of learner. "If youre not a self-starter in this world youre kind
of screwed," he says. Talking of his own experience as a student, he
remembers moments of frustration where he wanted to quit but
pushed on because he didnt want to let his instructor down. He
doubts that students in a Udemy course will stick with it when
they hit a similar rough patch. "Theyre not going to push
through," he says. "Theyre not going to finish it."
hen again, services are emerging that let learners reach live
people to talk them through situations when video lectures
arent enough. The biggest example of that is another Google

project, called Google Helpouts, which provides a set of selfdescribed experts willing to give brief, one-on-one consulting
sessions via video chat. Its essentially on-demand tutoring, but on
an eclectic range of topics, such as calculus, nutrition, fashion,
furniture design, and guitar.
Robert Woods, director of Faulkner Universitys Great Books
Honors College, charges $25 for 30 minutes of a "conversational
guide" to great books, and $10 for 15 minutes of talking through a
personal reading plan. When I asked him why he chose those
pricesexperts on the service can charge whatever they wanthe
said the cost serves as more of a screening function than a profitmaking one. "I said, Im not in it for the money, but let me go
ahead and charge a rate that would bring in people who were
serious about doing the readings." He says the conversations have
been "fascinating"from a mother home-schooling her son and
looking for suggested readings for him, to a woman who just
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wanted someone to talk to about Jane Eyre. About half of his

clients were in the United States and half overseas. Most everyone
has given him a five-star rating. As one of the glowing reviews
points out: "If you are committed to investing the time and energy
to read any of the great books, it would be silly NOT to invest in a
conversation to get these resources and insights."
Woods typically conducts the video consulting chats in his study,
with a tall bookshelf in the background. He said he decided to try
the Helpouts when he first read about the service, and he sees it as
a kind of public outreach. "As a professor of great books, I
frequently have people ask me what would you read, what would
you recommend," he says. But he admits the role he plays in the
video chats is an unusual one, especially since a few have been
with repeat customers whom he has gotten to know better over
time. As he put it: "Its a combination of coach, mentor, and a
consultant that you keep on retainer." He said he cant imagine
the format letting him make any serious money, and he has no
plan to quit his university day job. But he says that he could
imagine somedaymaybe after he retirestrying such an
alternative path, if he could teach larger numbers of students at a
time. (He imagines leading online book groups for a fee.)
Helpouts hasnt been a hit for Google. Some providers complain
that Google hasnt done much to market the service, and others
say it is awkward to schedule the help sessions. Even so, it has
formed an interesting community: hundreds of self-appointed
teachers who trade tips and stories in a discussion group on
Google Plus.
Some of them have even bartered with their teaching. When Matt
Gibson, who teaches guitar on Helpouts, wanted to learn how to
make his videos better, he agreed to teach someone a free guitar
Helpout in return for a free session of a video-making Helpout. No
money changed hands, but both sides learned something.
In its short history, the Internet has given voice to millions of
people with something to say. First came blogging, then socialmedia curation. Perhaps online education will be the next great
form of digitized democratized expression. And if that happens,
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colleges will have to reckon with itand college professors may

lose their once-exclusive franchise on authority.
Jeffrey R. Young is a senior editor at The Chronicle.
42 Comments
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Kevin deLaplante
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wclibrary
2 days ago
Let's crowd-source advanced degrees.

Will solve everything.
6
Reply Share
TerribleEddie > wclibrary
a day ago
"The free market has spoken." -- Stephen Colbert

2
johnkuhlman90
Reply Share
2 days ago
So Prof. del-aplante makes $2500 per month in addition to his salary as an

associate professor. He has a part-time job. Does he spend 40 hours a week
on his job at Iowa State U.?
4
Reply Share
Kevin deLaplante > johnkuhlman90
2 days ago
FYI, I've been full-time at Iowa State for fifteen years. I was department
chair for four years. I spend a few hours a week making videos on my
own time (weekends and evenings). After a few years it starts to add up.
Part-time job is the wrong model (for me, at least). The revenue is more
like the revenue someone might get for writing a textbook or publishing
a book for the general public. People continue to purchase the book
long after the work has been done. The difference is that the book is in
multimedia format and published online.
22
Edit Reply Share
happyprof > Kevin deLaplante
2 days ago
Kudos on making this work so well for you. I hope it does give
you the mobility, eventually, that is so hard to find in the
humanities after tenure. I once heard an associate dean grumble
that he only became a chair and then associate dean so that he
would finally be able to relocate.
I'm curious, though, about the financial side- how do you report
the income for tax purposes? Are you technically an
independent contractor with Udemy? When my wife had that
status with a de facto employer, she had to set aside about 45%
of her contracting income for expected taxes (since independent
contractors pay the employee's and the employer's share of
Social Security and Medicare).
Once again, more power to you. You are no doubt reaching
hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who might otherwise not
have been exposed to big ideas in philosophy.
1
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Kevin deLaplante > happyprof
2 days ago
That's very kind, I appreciate it.
Edit Reply Share
Kevin deLaplante > happyprof
2 days ago
Regarding taxation, I need to report all this as "additional

income", and plan accordingly -- taxes are not deducted
up front. I'm not exactly sure how Udemy treats its
instructors for tax purposes.
4
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Majo Jacinto > Kevin deLaplante
2 days ago
Professor deLaplante - I'd be more than happy to share

with you how. Come join my income tax prep course on
Udemy. Best!
6
Reply Share
jamesrovira > Kevin deLaplante
a day ago
Right -- I think that's the best comparison to a Udemy course: a

college textbook. You don't get college credit just for reading a
textbook, so you shouldn't get college credit just for taking a
Udemy course. But as something comparable to a college
textbook, Udemy courses may be good supplements to college
courses.
1
Nick Walter
Reply Share
2 days ago
Hey this is Nick from the first part of the article. If you have any questions
about getting into teaching I'm on twitter twitter.com/nickchuckwalter
2
Reply Share
happyprof > Nick Walter
2 days ago
Good on you, Nick! Time to spruce up that apartment a bit, though,

buddy. It's downright desolate.
Reply Share
Nick Walter > happyprof
2 days ago
Nah it's right where it should be :)

4
Reply Share
pbrown1991 > Nick Walter
a day ago
What kind of teaching it is when you "dont have the ongoing

relationship with students"?

engprof
Reply Share
2 days ago
Good for these guys! If they can make some money and fame outside
traditional academics, go for it. I will even read the occasional article about
their success. However, I am not giving up my day job anytime soon.
Employers expect diplomas and the knowledge they represent. I am pretty
sure that most of the higher-ed market will remain in traditional programs.
8
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JPvonGundling
2 days ago
While there are legitimately qualified people like Prof. deLaplante offering
courses on these sites, the problem is that they'll be competing with charlatans
and hacks, and the average person won't be able to tell the difference. Let's
say someone wants to take an online course on quantum mechanics, and the
choices are (a) some unknown physics professor at some obscure liberal arts
college who will assign tough homework problems, use lots and lots of math in
his lectures, and expect large amounts of reading outside class; and (b)
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Deepak Chopra -- or, perhaps, someone less obviously nutty but still all style
and no substance, whose class will be far more "fun" but of little to no genuine
educational value. It will be no contest.
5
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Kevin deLaplante > JPvonGundling
2 days ago
It's a risk for sure (for the consumer). But it's just an instance of the
broader problem posed by the democratization of publishing that's
emerged over the last ten or fifteen years. In the absence of
credentialed peer review, the only alternative seems to be public
reviews and ratings, which Udemy provides, at least. My hope is that a
charlatan teaching demonstrably false or misleading material on a topic
like quantum theory on Udemy would attract critics in the public review
section, so consumers would have some sense of that going in.
Private video course platforms like Fedora, on the other hand, let you
host whatever you want on your own site, so it's much harder for the
consumer to judge the reliability of the information or the expertise of
the instructor. But again, this is just an instance of a larger problem that
has been around much longer than these technologies.
Edit Reply Share
happyprof > Kevin deLaplante
2 days ago
It even plagues traditional publishing. See, for instance, the great

difference in public and academic reactions to Jared Diamond's
books or the recent Jefferson biography, "Master of the
Mountain."
Reply Share
madamesmartypants > Kevin deLaplante
a day ago
"In the absence of credentialed peer review, the only alternative

seems to be public reviews and ratings"
Would peer-reviewing become possible on a site like Udemy?
1
Reply Share
Kevin deLaplante > madamesmartypants
a day ago
I don't know how they would practically implement

something like that, as a general practice. But peer
review from outside is pretty easy to do on a course-bycourse basis. For example, if a college was considering
offering a Udemy course as a supplement for a for-credit
course, they could easily have faculty check the quality of
the materials and the instruction in advance.
Edit Reply Share
occprof2 > Kevin deLaplante
19 hours ago
Easily?
At my college, online courses are created, published, and
taught and the administration doesn't care a whit what
the faculty think about the quality. As long as the course
designer (hello Pearson) is happy, they are happy.
And the custo - uh . . . students? As long as they sign up
to talk to each other on discussion boards and take
multiple choice tests as many times as it takes for them
to get a grade they're happy with, who cares? It's all
about the children, isn't it . . .

welfarescam
Reply Share
2 days ago
There is probably a good textbook out there to teach you any subject, but you
have to use the one the school demands, probably because the teacher,
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have to use the one the school demands, probably because the teacher,
principal, school board member or education ministry hack has been paid off
to force you to buy the second rate text. Choice kills these guys.
1
Reply Share
funthinker
2 days ago
This trend might go very far in the future. For example, currently we receive
daily news from professionals (newspapers, TV or radio stations, news
agencies etc), and we generally trust that at least the reputed ones provide
reliable news. But why not give this task to self-designated "newsmakers" on
the Internet? Then let the customers decide which news they like. What if some
of these newsmakers present completely made-up news, with no relationship
to reality, but delivered attractively, in a highly entertaining fashion? Then
probably they will get most viewers. How about the reliability of the news?
Well, I'm afraid, in many cases we do not really care; in particular, when there
is no direct consequence. For example, if there is an earthquake in Uzbekistan,
but the newsmaker says it was in Tajikistan, does that really make a difference
for most people?
2
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Kevin deLaplante > funthinker
2 days ago
I worry about the Orwellian drift that new media technologies make
possible too. What's disturbing is how far along this path we've actually
gone already, with personalized search filters working behind the
scenes all the time, and new media sites popping up that claim to be
satirical, but are actually creating news stories that read exactly like
"regular" news stories (unlike the Onion, which is transparently satirical)
except the story is completely false.
5
Edit Reply Share
22279475 > funthinker
a day ago
Um isn't Fox entirely about "completely made up news, with no

relationship to reality, but delivered attractively..." ?? Then there was
Colbert...Seems like fake news already is a viable commercial
enterprise.
Reply Share
occprof2 > funthinker
19 hours ago
For a well thought out look at this exact question, see The People's
Platform by Astra Taylor

autocrat
Reply Share
a day ago
The marketplace is a nice theory. However, when I go shopping I like to use

specific stores and brands to help me with the "transaction costs." Separating
the good quality stuff from the junk and dangerous is not always easy.
3
Reply Share
pbrown1991
a day ago
People spend $199 for this?

1
Reply Share
Kevin deLaplante > pbrown1991
a day ago
Proportionally, very few. Nick can speak for himself, but the business
model that Udemy uses is based on targeted discounting. They're
always running some kind of promotional discount deal. Sometimes it's
site-wide and public, like on Black Friday week, or back-to-school
week, and sometimes it's targeted ad campaigns that only some people
will see, and there are other combinations (e.g. targeted discounting
that is displayed only on the mobile apps, based on the courses you
have flagged on your "wish list" -- much like Amazon does). The base
price may be set high, but the vast majority of students who sign up for
a course, sign up at a much lower price point. Instructors make their
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2/4/2015
a course, sign up at a much lower price point. Instructors make their

money largely on volume. Hence, Udemy's business strategy is to get
as many people as possible into the Udemy ecosystem, where
everyone is set up to make a one-click purchase (again, similar to
Amazon).
1
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Kevin deLaplante > pbrown1991
a day ago
But you can see how you could make a lot in a short period of time,
especially on a launch. If you have 6000 students in one of your
courses, and you launch a new course and tell those 6000 students that
they can sign up for your new course for 5 dollars if they do so in the
next two days, afterward the price is going up ... even if only half of
them sign up, well, you can do the math.

Renee Jones
Edit Reply Share
a day ago
I am in awe of how modern technology is changing all aspects of our lives,

especially our access to education. My husband is an adjunct professor of
English and have always found he has been treated like a commodity by most
of his college employers. This gives him and his other adjunct colleagues a
way to supplement their regular income. These services are also a much
needed add-on to mainstream education. And BTW a good teacher, like my
husband, will make this work for his students.
3
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ruben_gamboa > Renee Jones
a day ago
Awesome. Encourage your husband to do this. I'd love to see more

good venues for good teachers.

donaldheller
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a day ago
"Professors are typically hired and promoted based on the quality of their
research."
True at research universities, but not true for the 40% of undergrads who
attend community colleges, and the millions of others who attend teaching
institutions.
2
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occprof2 > donaldheller
19 hours ago
Thanks for beating this dead horse. Amazing how much life the fallacy
of "publish or perish" has.

Debdessaso
Reply Share
a day ago
I don't know why so many people are upset about this newest development in
education and its implications for the future of higher education. Professors
have never been required to be teachers by training--a concept that I've never
quite understood. Perhaps the innovative ways of delivering higher education
discussed in this article will force the profession to require teacher certification
similar to the K-12 system. So-called academic freedom may go by the
wayside (and it should), but at least the professor standing in front of the class
will have been trained to do what he or she is expected to do: teach.
1
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ironyroad > Debdessaso
21 hours ago
Why is academic freedom -- generally, freedom within certain

boundaries of teaching and research -- "so-called"? It's not entirely
clear what you think it should be, or should be called.
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16/19
2/4/2015
green_for_Dean
a day ago
"Essentially you are hooked into sort of an addictive process where you hope
or youve been toldthat doing such a course will lead to an improvement in
your career," he says. "But often there is absolutely no evidence that this is
true."
People have been attending grad school for ages with just this in mind so
nothing new there! I think it's great to have so many platforms out there that
offer information and a path through learning, but most people are on
information overload right now and there is a lot competing for people's time
so even though we have all of these additional avenues and pipelines available,
many people have had enough already and just want to curl up with a good
book.
1
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123highered
a day ago
Being forthright about not checking for accuracy seems like a marketing
disaster! My course materials and activities are subject to scrutiny (for
accuracy among other things) not just by students who can compare the
information to others teaching similar content but also by faculty. Online
materials and activities at a mainstream university increase the odds that
course materials can be scrutinized for accuracy, substance and pedagogy.
This may be one reason why employers don't take such "education" from
Udemy and other such companies seriously.
Reply Share
tchas1949
a day ago
I suggest a new role for older or retired academics: Paid mentors and
evaluators of courses and instructors, both online and on campus.
Teachers can be anywhere in their academic life, but mentors and evaluators
should have significant experience in the subject area. I recommend a
minimum of twenty years of successful teaching in the subject area. Success
could be documented by average or better evaluations compared to other
twenty-year instructors, or teaching excellence awards during the past five
years.
Mentors provide constructive criticism based on experience to help younger
instructors (or older instructors in new courses) improve their teaching and
courses.
Evaluators are experts who grade the teachers and courses. An evaluation
rubric or rubrics would be necessary for consistent evaluations. A
teacher/course grade should be the average of several evaluations. Also, the
evaluations from two years ago may not be accurate for this year's course,
particularly if the teacher has updated his course with the help of mentors.
see more
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jamesrovira
a day ago
Udemy is great for what it does, but once the discussion moves toward
replacing college courses with Udemy courses it becomes banal and rather
stupid. It doesn't take into account the real differences between a basic
training course and a college-level course, or even between a 100 level and a
400 level college course -- and assessment differences.
Framing the issue in terms of anti-authoritarianism and anti-elitism is another
sign of thinly veiled anti-intellectualism at the service of the profit motive. They
want to take teaching away from colleges and professors only so that they can
make money with it.
Yes, in order to teach at a college level you actually need to know something,
and to be awarded college credit you need to be assessed by professionals
who are able to determine if your work is at the college level.
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who are able to determine if your work is at the college level.

I'm not opposed to using Udemy as "companions" to college courses -- to fill
in tech gaps, for example, or as supplemental instruction, etc.
1
11274135
Reply Share
a day ago
This mostly describes something like a "micro education." That is, learning
how to do this, that, or the other thing as needed. Not bad, in fact, very useful.
Especially the courses I can get at Home Depot on home carpentry or
plumbing. It certainly has a place in education, somewhere. But it is not
necessarily a substitute for a college education, although it probably is a part
of it. A traditional college education has two in parts. One is to acquire general
cultural (lower case c) knowledge that may have no particular use except to
help one understand the context in which one lives. This is not the kind of
knowledge that you get from day to day experience. The other is to learn how
to approach some particular body of knowledge (it often doesn't matter what it
is) and over a reasonable period of time to become something of an expert in
that area, able to understand what other experts are talking about, able to write
and speak from a base of knowledge as an expert, and even to contribute
something to the body of knowledge. But what's really important is to be
cognizant of the general process that you have gone through to gain expertise
in a particular area. That's important because you are going to have to do it
over and over again as life progresses. What you "major" in doesn't matter all
that much. It's "majoring" that matters. Basically, this is learning how to learn,
that is, to learn something of much great complexity than how to lay bathroom
floor tile. This is "macro education" and it is much bigger than the sum of its
parts. WE don't want to confuse micro and macro education, or we shall surely
lose the forest in the trees.
2
occprof2
Reply Share
19 hours ago
Just what is education? It seems that these podcasts and videos are supplying
information.
For me, education occurs when students take information, create an artifact
(in my field, English, an essay), get feedback on it, revise, feedback,
revise, and then submit for someone with experience and expertise to
evaluate.
It's that feedback that students want and pay for. My wife, currently working
on a Master's in Clinical Microbiology, complains about her class where the
students run their own discussions and summarize each other responses. She
says "I'm paying for the TEACHER to instruct me, not classmates."
More broadly, most of my classes involve open or directed group discussion.
The emphasis isn't on the "sage on the stage," but provoking the students to
figure out the answers on their own. You know, work. Im confused now:
doesnt the Chronicle and other publications currently look askance at the type
of pedagogy at the center of this approach?
This seems like a slightly more interactive "Great Courses" series.
Caveat Emptor. Just cuz' something is labeled "new and improved" -- even
with the imprimatur of the reigning god of all that is righteous and noble and,
most importantly, profitable, in the world (all bow down before the
entrepreneur), don't mean it's new -- or good.
1
Reply Share
digithead99163
2 hours ago
From the article: "He knew there were plenty of how-to videos and short inperson workshops run by certified coding wizards, but he viewed their very
expertise as their weakness. "Almost every one of these tutorials or classes
assumed you had some kind of programming experience," he says. For people
like him who didnt consider themselves computer nerds but who wanted to
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2/4/2015
like him who didnt consider themselves computer nerds but who wanted to
build things, "it was super hard to pick up stuff." "
This attitude is exactly why we have so many bugs, errors and issues with
software. There's a good reason why those designing and building bridges
don't learn this way because if you can't handle things like calculus and
physics and, gasp, Boolean logic, then you have no business participating in
such endeavors other than as a laborer lifting heavy objects.
Not that this attitude is anything new, the late computing scientist Edsger
Dijkstra over his career lamented this perspective of these so-called
entrepreneurs which he outlined here: http://dsc.ufcg.edu.br/~dalton...
My favorite quote from it is: "If you carefully read its literature and analyze what
its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has
accepted as its charter, How to program if you cannot. "
Of course, people will point to people like Gates and Jobs who never took a
programming class as evidence that it's unnecessary to be educated in
programming to be good at it. But that's the same as saying some people get
rich playing the lottery. Making millions playing the lottery happens but that
doesn't make it a good retirement plan unless you're the one running the
lottery.
My question for all of those folks developing these courses and those that take
them: How do you know when you're wrong if you never learned to identify
what is wrong from the beginning?
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The Chronicle Review

Here Comes Professor Everybody

hen Nick Walter graduated with an information-systems

create the next big iPhone app, as so many twenty-somethings

$48-million in venture-capital investment. And Google has

that new. For years, aspiring computer programmers have relied

industry has emerged, including sites like Lynda.com.

college system, the marketplace doesnt decide the best teaching,

oday online-teaching marketplaces focus on what Yang calls

cant play a role in college courses. There are already professors

teaching platform, called Fedora, to build what is essentially his

the classroom. But 1 percent of 1.6 million is 16,000."

lines between formal and informal education are blurring.

arent enough. The biggest example of that is another Google

wanted someone to talk to about Jane Eyre. About half of his

colleges will have to reckon with itand college professors may

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Join the discussion

Let's crowd-source advanced degrees.

TerribleEddie > wclibrary

"The free market has spoken." -- Stephen Colbert

So Prof. del-aplante makes $2500 per month in addition to his salary as an

Kevin deLaplante > johnkuhlman90

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happyprof > Kevin deLaplante

That's very kind, I appreciate it.

Edit Reply Share

Kevin deLaplante > happyprof

Regarding taxation, I need to report all this as "additional

Edit Reply Share

Majo Jacinto > Kevin deLaplante

Professor deLaplante - I'd be more than happy to share

jamesrovira > Kevin deLaplante

Right -- I think that's the best comparison to a Udemy course: a

happyprof > Nick Walter

Good on you, Nick! Time to spruce up that apartment a bit, though,

Nick Walter > happyprof

Nah it's right where it should be :)

pbrown1991 > Nick Walter

What kind of teaching it is when you "dont have the ongoing

Kevin deLaplante > JPvonGundling

Edit Reply Share

happyprof > Kevin deLaplante

It even plagues traditional publishing. See, for instance, the great

madamesmartypants > Kevin deLaplante

"In the absence of credentialed peer review, the only alternative

Kevin deLaplante > madamesmartypants

I don't know how they would practically implement

Edit Reply Share

occprof2 > Kevin deLaplante

Kevin deLaplante > funthinker

Edit Reply Share

22279475 > funthinker

Um isn't Fox entirely about "completely made up news, with no

occprof2 > funthinker

The marketplace is a nice theory. However, when I go shopping I like to use

People spend $199 for this?

Kevin deLaplante > pbrown1991

a course, sign up at a much lower price point. Instructors make their

Edit Reply Share

Kevin deLaplante > pbrown1991

Edit Reply Share

I am in awe of how modern technology is changing all aspects of our lives,