Reflektorium: Professor Sebastian Thrun lämnar Stanford

24 jan. 2012

Professor Sebastian Thrun lämnar Stanford

Bloggarna går varma i världen inför nyheten att Sebastian Thrun lämnar Stanford. Han var ansvarig för Stanfords nätkurs i AI som lockade 160 000 studenter. Detta förändrade hans syn på lärande och utbildningspolitiken.

Thrun was eloquent on the subject of how he realized that he had been running “weeder” classes, designed to be tough and make students fail and make himself, the professor, look good. Going forwards, he said, he wanted to learn from Khan Academy and build courses designed to make as many students as possible succeed — by revisiting classes and tests as many times as necessary until they really master the material. And I loved as well his story of the physical class at Stanford, which dwindled from 200 students to 30 students because the online course was more intimate and better at teaching than the real-world course on which it was based.