Education 2.0

This bit from Mark Zuckerberg’s interview in the WSJ is really getting me going:

In fact, the success of Facebook may well underscore a major shift in the way we gather information, a trend that Mr. Zuckerberg picked up early on. He describes a class he took at Harvard called Rome of Augustus: “For the final exam, we had to learn the historical significance of something like 500 pieces of art from that period. Having not really read that stuff, I was in a lot of trouble, spending my time building Facebook instead of studying.”

Right before the final, Mr. Zuckerberg went to the course Web site, downloaded all the images and made a new site with a page for each image, along with a box to add comments. Then he forwarded the site’s link to the class list. Within an hour or two, a bunch of his classmates visited the site and filled out all the information about the photos. Mr. Zuckerberg went back and “kind of absorbed it all,” eventually getting an A in the class. He believes that the grades on that final were much higher than they have ever been.

“By taking the understanding that all the individuals have and pooling that knowledge together, you get a better set of knowledge,” he explains, which perhaps is what Facebook is all about. “That’s kind of what we are doing here, but with ‘What’s going on in the world with these people that I care about?’”

Is this cheating? Or is it a mass technology-enabled study group? And does it matter?

My wife and I are expecting two girls in the next few weeks. And I can’t help but think that school is going to be a radically different experience for them than it was for me. Will Wikipedia be accepted as an authoritative source in term papers? (Is this already happening?) Why use textbooks, when the stuff that’s available online is probably 1) just as accurate, in the aggregate, and 2) much, much, much more comprehensive. Also: won’t the exclusivity of Harvard get diluted if lectures can be put online (as I believe MIT and Berkeley are already doing?).

Moreover, absorbing rote knowledge won’t be much of an individual challenge anymore. Looking at Zuckerberg’s example, students seem more than happy to put competition aside to enhance the knowledge of the group. Looking forward, I see an exercise where a class is asked to build an in-class wiki on an obscure subject. Students are judged on the overall quality of the article, and also their individual contributions (how many times did you contribute? were your contributions of high quality?). That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The key difference is that arriving at a common kernel of knowledge will be much less the end goal, and much more of a jumping off point to the next level. After all, much of the stuff I used to have to go to the library for (particularly in middle school and high school) is now on Wikipedia. Why should teachers expend as much time and effort assigning and grading 30 virtually identical papers on the French Revolution, when a much more complete understanding can be arrived at via a wiki. If you wanted to challenge their individual knowledge, students could then be given (personalized? computer-generated?) assignments on more advanced or comparative subjects leveraging the class’s common knowledge base.

And the kids will get this stuff. They are the original “early adopters” because they aren’t burdened by crappy old technology.

Tagged: education facebook mark zuckerberg

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