The fallout and critique has begun from Stanford’s experiments in the fall with their online engineering courses that were available to non-Stanford students. One of the Stanford students who took the course, Ben Rudolph, posted on his blog about his negative experience with the course. He was less than impressed and that got noticed.

The Chronicle’s blog Wired Campus picked up the story with some commentary about the critique and the course itself. One point to note is that the use of the term “flipped classroom” in the article is heavily critiqued in the comments by educators who are teaching in more productive models of a flipped classroom. In fact, the article itself has resulted in a very healthy debate in the comments about the format of the class and how well it was executed. The concerns raised include how effective the format of online lectures with optional weekly time with the professor actually is, and whether the course requirements were actually rigorous enough to be up to Stanford standards.

So where do you weigh in? Do you think the student is correct that the design of the course is flawed and that the standards may not hold up? Was the professor on the right track adjusting the course to make it even easier for students to spend less time in the classroom? How would you adjust the model of such a course to make it fit with best teaching practices?

Tags: learning, open course, students, teaching