A World Where Grades Will Be Left Behind

A World Where Grades Will Be Left Behind,
An Interview of Sebastisn Thrun by Mary Beth Marklein
Summary:
The USA Today is celebrating it's 30th anniversary. Mary Beth Marklein, as part of that celebration, is interviewing some of the USA"s most visionary people to talk about what we can expect in the next 30 years. One of these visionaries is Stanford professor and Google VP Sebastian Thrun. Sebastian Thrun was so moved by the experience he had teaching 160,000 students in an online artificial intelligence course that he vowed to never again teach in a traditional classroom. What he did instead was to found Udacity an online education company. Thrun's dream is to use Udacity and several other online education companies, that he controls, to create a series of free online courses that would be taught by star professors from all over the world. Thrun believes that the world of education needs a revamp and that in the next 30 years internet based educational programs will play a big part. Online courses will be free, available to thousands of students and will be personalized to the individual student. Grades will be a thing of the past. There will not be time limits for students to master skills but rather each student will be mastering them at their own pace.
Reaction:
I enjoyed reading what Sebastian Thrun had to say in his interview with Mary Beth Marklein. I think that Thrun's dream of offering online classes taught by the best professors available free to perhaps tens of thousands of students is highly commendable. I think Thrun's vision is great but only targets a narrow scope of the educational world. The issue is student accountability. I just don't see students below the college level being personally accountable to do what is needed with out oversight from teachers or parents. In order for an educational program to work you have to have accountability.
I also found it interesting when Thrun makes the statement that he wants to do away with grades yet is planning on having a system of quizzes and tests attached to his courses. What is he going to give students who take these quizzes and tests, a pass or fail? I do like his proposal of letting each student master skills at their own pace.
I think Thrun is on to something with his idea of free high quality education and it will work at the upper educational level. In my opinion, what needs to happen at the lower levels, is to have a classroom in which students are being taught primarily online via courses like those proposed by Thrun. However each classroom would be under the direction and monitoring of a technology savvy teacher who would hold their students accountable for completing their tasks. This could eventually change and become an entirely online class with the teacher monitoring remotely. I think that teachers will have a role to play in education for many years to come but the type of role they play will change drastically. I just pray, for the students sake, that teachers will embrace the change!