A Q&A With Udacity's Pioneering CEO Sebastian Thrun
Join the discussion with Fast Company writer Max Chafkin and Udacity's Sebastian Thrun on Tuesday, December 3rd at 3pm (ET). Thrun will be answering your questions--submit them now using the "Make a comment" box below!
Sebastian Thrun
In 2011, Sebastian Thrun ignited an education revolution when he offered to let anyone in the world take his Stanford University class on artificial intelligence for free. At the time Thrun was arguably the world's foremost expert in the field--his robotic car won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and he founded Google X, the secretive research lab responsible for Google's self driving car and Google Glass--and his class quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of students.
Thrun eventually left his job at Google to launch Udacity, an online education start-up that as of this fall had educated some 1.6 million students. Some think the company--and others like it--could ultimately replace traditional college education for many students, while helping to arrest skyrocketing tuition prices.
As reported in Fast Company's December/January feature story, Thrun has recently turned his attention to improving completion rates, a problem that has plagued companies that provide these so-called Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOCs, and partnering with large tech companies to offer courses in hot subjects like big data and mobile web development. He has also emerged as one of the most important voices in the debate about the future of education.
He'll be with us right here, starting at 3 p.m. (ET) on December 3rd. You can submit your questions ahead of time using the box below.
As reported in Fast Company's December/January feature story, Thrun has recently turned his attention to improving completion rates, a problem that has plagued companies that provide these so-called Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOCs, and partnering with large tech companies to offer courses in hot subjects like big data and mobile web development. He has also emerged as one of the most important voices in the debate about the future of education.
He'll be with us right here, starting at 3 p.m. (ET) on December 3rd. You can submit your questions ahead of time using the box below.
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Hi Everyone. Sebastian will be in here in about half an hour. We've got some great questions coming in--and we'd love to get more. Put your questions in the comment box on this page.
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If you haven't read the Fast Company story from our December/January issue. Here it is.
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Hey everybody. We’re honored to have Sebastian Thrun with us. He’s the founder of Udacity, which is a pioneering online education company. Before Udacity, Sebastian was a tenured Stanford professor specializing in artificial intelligence. He’s one of the foremost experts in that field--he led the team that won the Defense Department’s self-driving car competition. Along the way, he joined Google where he founded Google X and helped create Google Street View, Google Glass, and of course the Google Self Driving Car. He’s here to talk to us today about education.
Sebastian, thanks so much for being here. -
Hi, Great to be here with you, Max. I love Fast Company!
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I thought I’d ask why you would leave Google X, arguably the most exciting division of the world’s most exciting company, to sit in front of a camera and teach people statistics? (I’m oversimplifying but you know what I mean). Why launch Udacity?
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To me, making education accessible to everyone is EXTREMELY exciting. I also believe the world needs new approaches and new solutions, to change the access equation in higher education. This is a great challenge for me, and I enjoy it tremendously.
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What about the business opportunity? How does that factor?
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According to McKinsey, 58% of employers report that graduates are not adequately prepared for work. By 2020, they estimate, there will be a shortfall of 85 million jobs in the high and middle-skilled work level globally. And this is just some of the data here. Think lifelong learning, and how our skills are shifting over a lifetime.
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Interesting. One more question from me and then I'd like to bring some readers in.
So here goes: Over the past few years we’ve seen a proliferation of new forms of online learning. We’ve had things like Khan Academy--and even more basic how-to videos--that focus on a narrowly defined subject or skill, as well companies like yours, Udacity, that try to teach entire classes.
I’d like to know where you feel that online education has been most successful and where has it failed to live up to the hype. What should we be proud of and what should we improve? -
We are still in the early days. Obviously, online education has been around for a long time, and has really changed the lives of millions of people. But there is still a lot to learn. I am excited to see so much experimentation right now. At Udacity, we have learned that our students succeed at much higher ratios when we add people into the mix - in the form of mentors and coaches.
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One thing that you have pointed to is the low completion rates of these courses--at Udacity and it's competitors? (Industry statistics suggest it's below 10 percent, I believe.) How serious a problem is that? Is it fixable?
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Bill Gates, at the World Economic Forum, took me aside and pointed out to me that the students finishing out MOOCs were those who were extremely self-motivated. There is nothing bad about this, but I aspire to have Udacity be a good productive learning environment, not just for the most self-motivated people. I really don't want to rest until every learner makes it all the way to the end of a class. This is why I care so much about completion rates.
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While Sebastian answers that I thought I'd post his talk at DLD launching Udacity. It's a great speech--and it helped start a revolution in the way people think about education:
www.youtube.comby Max Chafkin via YouTube 12/3/2013 8:09:03 PM -
Dear Sebastian, I was one of the students of the first "introduction to AI class". I strongly appreciate and support (with a modest word of mouth) your initiative. I am considering enrolling to one/two course(s) of the new #BigData track. To which extent do you think this could help me finding a job in Silicon Valley, one of the most competitive places for IT engineers? Do you have any track record of Udacity alumni in terms of employment? Are the companies participating in the Open Alliance interested in people successfully completing the course? Does the certificate give real chances on the job market?
Thank you and good luck! -
About that AI class: roughly 160,000 people took it. Many students scored higher on the final exam than Sebastian's students at Stanford
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Please do enroll in our new data track! Some of the most exciting companies in Silicon Valley have worked with Udacity to make these classes happen: Cloudera, Facebook, MongoDB, and others. And these are just the beginning - we have more rolling out in January. The companies believe this is the stuff to know to be productive in the global workplace - so don't just take our word for it :) The Facebook class, for example, contains the same material that incoming Facebook engineers have to master. But big data is relevant to nearly all companies. It is revolutionizing entire fields, like medicine, where big data is changing the way we design and deliver treatment. Of Government. Or banking. The list is LONG.
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BTW, thank you for your question, 'motionlessness' :)
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Just to pick up on that for a sec: Don't you think though that degrees still matter. Isn't Facebook always going to prefer someone with a BS from say Stanford than a certificate from
Udacity? -
I don't see us in competition with the degree. In fact, Georgia Tech is now offering a degree with us, at an unprecedented low tuition level. But I don't think the degree is the solution for everyone. Often students can pick up skills much faster than spending 2+ years in college. And the need to learn doesn't go away past the degree. Many of our Data Science students are working professionals with degrees, and they come to us to learn the latest and best in their fields.
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After the Master from GeorgiaTech, are there any plans to offer a Bachelor's in Computer Science in the foreseeable future?
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A BS degree is NOT in the works at Udacity. Having taught many Bacherlor students myself, I think there is a level of critical thinking skill and character development that would be hard to achieve for us. We really focus much more on the skills needed on the job. You can learn with us how to code in HTML5, or how to understand and work with big data. Most of our Udacity students already have a BS degree.
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I love teachers! I am a teacher myself. I just spent the morning at Stanford with my own students in my research lab. Brian, you make great points. At Udacity, we started out with computerized MOOCs, but they didn't keep most students engaged. We experimented a lot with peer interaction, mentoring, and customized content, and are now offering a much improved experience. It's still important to remember, though, that these are still the early days. We are learning a lot, and we are improving our classes by the day.
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A couple of people have touched on this--but I'd thought I'd dig in a bit more. You've talked (and we talked for the article) about moving towards teaching skills that are most relevant to employers. What skills do you think are going to matter most in the next decade?
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Some of the biggest skills that employers ask us about are of course Big Data, but also general front end engineering, mobile, and cyber security. With various tech companies in Silicon Valley (like Salesforce, Intuit, Cloudera, Google, etc) we are now building up these classes. I have to admit this has been a lot of fun to me. The companies in the Valley are really eager to help. This is a time where industry wants to play an active role in education - and we are giving them the opportunity.
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It is. Every single employer I talk to brings up Cyber Security as one of their most important hiring needs. The problem here is that cyber security is so new, most colleges don't even teach it yet. And it's even worse for people in mid-career, who finished college a while back. Udacity is working quite actively to make classes in this area available, some time in early 2014. We see a really big opportunity here to reduce the worldwide skills gap in this important new area.
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Really interesting. A reader asks in the comments, "Why dont normal universities learn from this and listen to what industry needs?"
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@SebastianThrun live Q&A on #Udacity article @FastCompany http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Balmnf_CUAAy8s9.jpg
by Clarissa Shen via twitter 12/3/2013 8:32:21 PM -
I'm curious what you think given that you've spent a lot of time on college campuses
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The universities I have worked at (and with) do listen to what industry needs. Georgia Tech, for example, listened to AT&T and many other companies by making its own education available online. And as a result,they received record applications for their new online Computer Science Master's program (over 2,300, 85% from within the US). But at the same time, I feel that corporations like Cloudera are perhaps in a better position to offer the latest in skills education. This is a bit different from degree programs, in that it is more focused on skills. Being in the center of Silicon Valley certainly helps us at Udacity to make classes that are at the bleeding edge.
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Do you see online learning as primarily beneficial for demonstrable skills as opposed to cognitive or softer skill development (which are also need on the job)?
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HoHa's question has been posed by a lot of people--and I think it's really valid. Traditional liberal arts education has focused on teaching people how to think as opposed to teaching specific skills. Where will do think that will happen in the future?
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I don't think that online works for every field equally well. I can't imagine how to teach philosophy well. I feel our approach is much better suited for computer skills, since it's much easier to automatically give feedback on a computer program than a philosophical argument. So Udacity has always focused on computer skills, and it will do so even more going forward.
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Could you use a combination of the following equipment like the oculus rift and kinect to have an immersive environment for learning, in effect a virtual holodeck for project based learning or discovery learning for example.
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Okay there's a lot there, but Sebastian, you've worked on headsets (at Google). Do you think there's a place for virtual reality in education? I'd love to hear what you imagine the distant future of education looking like. Feel free to go sci fi on me
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I don't think that virtual reality technology is central to what we are trying to achieve at Udacity, but I would love to see a fully immersive learning experience using perhaps the Oculus Rift or similar technologies. How much fun would it be to learn history at the places where the American Revolution or the Storming of the Bastille actually took place. As we dive deeper into using technology in education, these things should all be possible. And f-u-n !
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So we've got one last question from a reader and then we have to let Sebastian go
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How do you see customization of learning evolving in the future?
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That's a great one. And, I mean, more broadly, what's next for Udacity? For online education more generally?
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Personalized education. At Udacity, you can already proceed at your own pace. You can do your favorite exercises over and over again, and effortlessly skip over stuff that you don't care about. And learning has become much more active and student-centric, with the computer patiently waiting for your answer. But this is just the beginning. The next big step will be personalized learning paths. Our mentors already work with individual learners to supplement materials and exercises that meet their needs. With computers, we can automate the composition of learning materials, and tailor them to the needs of individual learners. This will be the biggest revolution. And like Udacity, many companies in the e-learning space are already doing this. No more sitting through boring classes :)
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Wow, there's a lot to unpack there, and I could do this all day. Unfortunately, I think we have to let Sebastian get back to work.
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Thank you big time for conducting this Q&A, Max. It's been a real pleasure talking to you, and I am excited about the work you do. And thanks for great questions from the audience. If you are out there... feel free to follow us on Twitter or Facebook. We always love feedback from our students, so send me emails with thoughts, questions, or the occasional compliment :). Wishing you all a happy holiday season!
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Thanks so much for all your time today.
I know we didn't have time to answer everyone's question (there are more than a hundred still in our queue) but hopefully we can continue this discussion sometime soon. -
Thanks for joining us, everyone -- if you haven't yet, be sure to read Max's feature on Udacity and Sebastian Thrun in this month's issue of Fast Company!
