Massive open online courses seem to be marching towards total world domination like some kind of educational singularity (at least in the case of Coursera). At the same time, there are still relatively few courses available, and each new added course is a small happening in the growing MOOC community.
Needless to say, this seems like a perfect opportunity for SI and CFAR to advance their goals via this new education medium. Some people seem to have already seen the potential and taken advantage of it:
One interesting trend that can be seen is companies offering MOOCs to increase the adoption of their tools/technologies. We have seem this with 10gen offering Mongo courses and to a lesser extent with Coursera’s ‘Functional Programming in Scala’ taught by Martin Odersky
(from the above link to the Class Central Blog)
So the question is, are there any online courses already planned by CFAR and/or SI? And if not, when will it happen?
Edit: This is not a "yes or no" question, albeit formulated as one. I've searched the archives and did not find any mention of MOOCs as a potentially crucial device for spreading our views. If any such courses are already being developed or at least planned, I'll be happy to move this post to the open thread, as some have requested, or delete it entirely. If not, please view this as a request for discussion and brainstorming.
P.S.: Sorry, I don't have the time to write a good article on this topic.
Konkvistador brought up the idea about two months ago, but to the best of my knowledge the idea is still being researched.
There are a few primary issues to consider:
One big issue for CFAR in particular is it seems like this could compete with the educational offering of their camps; indeed, a potential first course would just be to tape the minicamp materials and expect people to watch an hour a week. The trouble is that the educational value of the camp is not its sole value, and CFAR might end up cannibalizing the market for its camps by offering free videos.
There's also a question of how much advertising is worth. Supposing there are, say, three courses worth of rationality material, and that camps and courses teach a comparable amount of material, then one could imagine putting the first course online and having the second course taught at camp. This would drastically increase the demand for the camps- but I get the impression that they already have years worth of demand lined up, and so investing in supply improvements will have far higher returns on their end.
I'd hate for this to be the reason why CFAR decides not to pursue putting out an online course on rationality. Even if demand really is as high as you say, doing an online course would dramatically increase the number of people able to go through the curriculum at all, which I assume would be good progress toward CFAR's mission. Even if CFAR couldn't fully take advantage of the extra demand for camps that this would drive, I still think Konkvistador & Wrongnesslessness' idea is worthwhile for the organization.