One of the major shifts in education that we’ve seen over the past few years has been the increased use of online education. One of the biggest questions that schools and teachers have when introducing online learning or technology in general to their classrooms is, “Will it work?” A further breakdown of this question is as follows:
- Will students enjoy and be engaged with this new type of learning?
- Will they learn effectively from these new methods?
Luckily, there are some math leaders out there who have already made these transitions and can offer us their thoughts on what works and what doesn’t.
Andrew Ng
The co-founder of Coursera, an online learning platform that has an enormous influence on education right now, Ng also taught at Stanford University for two years. He is currently working as a chief scientist for Baidu. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and bachelor’s degrees from both UC Berkeley and McGill University.
Susanne Bruyere
For Bruyere, online learning is a complement to—not a replacement for—in-person teaching. As an administrator at Northern Essex Community College in Massachusetts, she has firsthand experience with different types of learners: Many students don’t want to leave their homes to get an education, but aren’t interested in a traditional classroom setting either. It’s a huge opportunity, she says. Many other teaching platforms such as QuestMath classes online are already providing these facilities to children to learn from the comfort of their homes.
Daphne Koller
She is one of Stanford University’s top math professors, the founding president of Coursera, and a noted expert in developing online learning technologies. Here are her thoughts on what makes for a successful online learning experience: We envision that one day, every single human being in every single place will have access to an education that will transform their lives as well as contribute meaningfully to global knowledge.
Peter Thiel
As you know, Peter Thiel is a co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, an investor in Facebook, and the founder of Founders Fund. Thiel also co-founded Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund firm. He also founded Valar Ventures LLC in 2004, which was a $500 million fund used to make investments in technology start-ups. Currently, he’s still one of the most well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalists around because of his success story at age 24, when he founded Paypal with just $1 million worth of Yahoo stock he obtained from Pierre Omidyar.
Sebastian Thrun
Thrun, a renowned leader in artificial intelligence, created a course called Introduction to Artificial Intelligence at Stanford. This course was one of many that were offered online for free through Coursera. Thrun revolutionized higher education with over 160,000 students enrolled in his class. Today, he is running Udacity, an online learning platform where he can help others reach their potential by sharing what he has learned from his past successes and failures. the formalized paraphrase
Conclusion
When it comes to online learning, it’s an exciting time for students. Technology has created new opportunities that have never existed before—this is especially true in math, where there is a high demand for professionals who can solve complex problems.