Sebastian Thrun, tenured professor at Stanford, offered his artificial intelligence course online in 2011 - and 160,000 students signed up. It was a paradigm shift for Thrun. Inspired, he started Udacity to provide online courses.
photo: businessweek.com
Fortunately, Thrun understands that new concepts always need tweaking.
So Udacity has been working with big employers like AT&T in science/technology fields to tweak the model, and they are now introducing something they call "nanodegrees." It seems that online courses work especially well in a job context to increase skill. The companies work with Udacity to teach and, importantly, to set up evaluation and confer qualification in certain areas.
Creativity, passion, persistence, Thrun needs them all in this challenging new market. So what does he look for in people to help him turn his vision into reality? "I look for people who are enthusiastic and humble." Don't we all.
No comments:
Post a Comment