So for talking about online education, I can think of few people more
interesting and qualified to talk about than Dr. Sebastian Thrun.
So thank you so much for talking to us for a few minutes today.
>> It's a pleasure.
>> So the first thing I wanted to ask is Udacity's mission
is democratizing education.
For those students that we have that aren't too familiar with what that
means, can you give a rundown of what that means in practice?
>> Well, I would say today we live in a world that good education
is extremely locked up and inaccessible.
It's expensive.
It's hard to get in.
And it's not geographically distributed,
which means the institutions aren't in Africa or places like these.
Democratization means everybody should have access.
We should have access to clean drinking water, to security, and
to good education.
I think education is fundamental in giving people a chance to
play in this world.
>> I think that's very, very relevant to what we do in the LMS program,
as you know, because it's so low cost, it's so flexible, so distributed that we
have people, especially people in this class who could never take a class or
do a program like this, traditionally, because they can't take a couple years
off work or they can't, pay six figures just to get a Master's degree.
And one fo the reasons, especially since this is an educational technology class,
is technology a necessary part of that?
Does it enable us to do something now that we couldn't do before or are we
just the only ones who are finally coming around and say let's do this?
>> Absolutely.
It's a necessary but not a sufficient component.
I don't think alone will be a education.
But I think we live in a world with the knowledge that we have now
more better devices.
We have ability to record video, to do interactive things like video games.
And those ought to play a role.
We've done this quite a bit and
we're exploring what's the best way to deliver education.
And to have interaction with students and foster interactions but
technology plays a huge part in this.
>> Is technology mostly about getting the access to the education, or is
there other things that technology does for us that we couldn't do in the past?
>> Every time you move to a different medium I think everything changes.
So the way we do lectures today, a single professor speaking to many,
many students Is because the technology they're using is a natural human voice.
As we change this into a more recorded technology and
digital technology, we can really change the entire idea of lectures.
We don't need lectures anymore.
We can do it much more interactive, it turns out.
In technology, you can actually make class as much fun as a video game.
And a video game is clearly enough to select to us.
A student can do something to exercise their own skills.
>> I would like to think that that kind of technology is something what allows
this class to happen.
It allows us to have the kind of communication between instructors and
TAs and students that we really can't have in person where everything is very
guarded in terms of how much time you have to give to it.
So we have a lot of people in the class and
I bet that there are some out there who are wondering do I want to go into
research or do I want to go into business?
And the class project we have for this class is very much built around either
doing something that could become a research project or doing something
that could become a start up or a tool that we use in the program.
You're one of the only people I know that succeeded in both realms.
So do you have any thoughts for anyone who might be struggling with
whether they want to go the research route or the business route?
>> I wouldn't struggle about research versus business.
I think it's kind of very much the same, to be honest.
I would struggle about impact and about willingness to experiment and to learn.
I think so much has not been discovered yet.
I think we would look back a hundred years from now and
ask what did we [INAUDIBLE] at the time,
we probably concluded was probably gutsy to do what we're doing.
But it wasn't that good.
It think it's going to get much better.
And it's going to get much better by you students doing great experiments and
trying things out even non-conventional things.
And if you're able to make a dent in people's ability to learn using
digital technology, and do it in a way that it's, financially viable.
Doesn't require having a thousand professors sit there and
watch your hand.
Then you might turn to research paper or you might also turn to start up company.
Or you might join Udacity and work with us to make the world a better place.
>> Sounds fantastic to me.
That's really guiding principle behind why we started this class.
So, do you have any final thoughts for
students taking a masters level educational technology class?
>> I think the key thing is really experimentation.
I have this very deep belief in my heart that we can make the world a better
place by democratizing education and that with fire-stick technology.
Otherwise we couldn't afford doing it.
And what you can do as students, the students in your class can do,
is to really kind of do crazy things.
Do something that looks like it's going to fail.
Do something that's audacious.
Do something that is really out of the world no one has tried before.
Go to Twitter, go to Facebook.
Make something crazy happen.
And make it happen in a short amount of time so
you don't waste too much of your own time.
And look at the data coming back.
I think there is a lot of surprises in there.
You can discover a lot of good stuff.
And when you find something great come back to us and send us the application.
We'd love to hire you.
>> Sounds great. Well thank you again so much for
talking with us and yeah, thank you.
>> Pleasure.