Here’s how classes work: Holakou Rahmanian turns on his computer early in the morning or late at night. He goes to a website whose address is known only to students, faculty and administrators of his university. Sometimes he's in his pajamas when he logs in. Sometimes, he guesses, his professors are also in their pajamas. In his four years of classes, he has only seen his online teachers' faces once or twice. The bandwidth is saved for their voices and online whiteboards. Rahmanian, 23, completed a degree in computer science last fall and is close to finishing his second major in ... Read More
A Whole New U
May 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
I decided to go back to school because I was underemployed and mind-achingly bored. I decided to study computer science because I was tired of not knowing how the Internet worked. And I decided to go to Udacity because I was broke. Udacity is a free university (of sorts) that offers “massive open online courses”—or, MOOCs—to anyone with a decent Internet connection and a little self-discipline. Founded by Stanford roboticist Sebastian Thrun—of the self-driving car fame—Udacity’s first class offerings appeared this February. The way Thrun tells it, he resigned his tenure at ... Read More
