[avsbst]

I agree, with time the amount of content could drastically increase and Udacity could become a more interactive, education oriented version of Wikipedia. Which would be amazing. Imagine tutorials for everything you could ever dream of!

But I also think it lacks mechanisms comparable to those found in higher education when it comes to fostering students problem solving and critical thinking skills.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to teaching is figuring out how to help a student solve a problem without giving them the answer outright. Having been a TA at Stanford for two years now, I can say that I have never helped two students work through the same problem in the exact same way.

I fear that with Udacity, users will often reach points where they are stuck, even after hours of trying, and instead of being taught, they will receive the answer.

I can see it already happening in the forums and wikis there. Students can't solve a problem, and they get a solution posted for them. The value of in person education comes from having someone poke you and prod you just enough so that you figure out the problem, but not so much that you can't honestly say the answer wasn't given to you.

If Udacity can figure out how to do that, then I believe that it would rival any higher education system.

[ippisl]

Great comment.

A question: in regular universities, students form learning groups. does the kind of learning you describe(somebody teaches somebody) happen inside those groups, or mostly happen only through TA's ?