00:00:00 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Hello and welcome to value driven data science brought to you by Genevieve Hayes Consulting. I'm your host, doctor Genevieve Hayes and today I'm joined by guest Doctor David Joyner to talk about Georgia Tech's pioneering OMSCS programme and the role of technology in learning data science.
00:00:21 Dr Genevieve Hayes
David, welcome to the show.
00:00:23 Dr David Joyner
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
00:00:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
David is the executive director of online education and the online Master of Science in Computer Science at Georgia Tech.
00:00:33 Dr Genevieve Hayes
's College of Computing and between 2019 and 2021 taught a total of 21,768 for credit college students.
00:00:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
More than any other person on the planet, he's also the author of the recently released teaching at scale and Co. Author of the distributed classroom.
00:00:58 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I am amazed you managed to fit in the time to sleep.
00:01:04 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Given the rapid pace of change in technology, continuous learning is becoming increasingly the norm, particularly in tech centric fields such as data science, and this has led to the rise of mook based learning platforms such as Coursera and Udacity, as well as.
00:01:24 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Online Masters degrees sitting somewhere in the middle is Georgia Tech's online Master of Science in computer science or OMSCS programme.
00:01:35 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I myself am an OMSCS graduate and I consider it to be one of the best experiences of my.
00:01:41 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Life, but for those listeners who have never come across OS, yes, before David, could you provide a bit of a background on the programme?
00:01:52 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, absolutely so OMSCS launched in 2014. It was started as an experiment based on.
00:02:01 Dr David Joyner
This growing MOOC movement, that was all these emerging massive open online courses.
00:02:07 Dr David Joyner
That were, you know.
00:02:09 Dr David Joyner
Really popular around the early side of the decade and there was a question as to whether or not those could then make an impact on the credit space.
00:02:18 Dr David Joyner
Most of the early mooks, very deliberately, did not count for credit, and in fact some of the early battles for were about how much credit you can attach to to completing a moot.
00:02:29 Dr David Joyner
And so it was a it started as an experiment to find out how much of what we do in Moocs can now be extended to what we do in the.
00:02:37 Dr David Joyner
Four credit space.
00:02:38 Dr David Joyner
So it launched in in 2014 with five courses, an initial cohort of 300 students started the programme that first spring 2014.
00:02:47 Dr David Joyner
It was kept small for that first cohort, just.
00:02:50 Dr David Joyner
Because we weren't sure how it was going to go. I say we I was barely involved at the time after that.
00:02:54 Dr David Joyner
It kind of took the took the reins off. I took the the CAP off and just went with the the original guiding principle, which was that it was intended to be a way to allow anyone who meets the minimum qualifications to earn a Master of Science computer Science degree.
00:03:10 Dr David Joyner
To be able to get one and so from there, we would get thousands of applications per semester. Let in thousands of students, and it's continued to to grow and grow. To this day. This semester we had 11,000 total students.
00:03:25 Dr David Joyner
Right now we've graduated so far 7500 or so students, and I say right now, because this semester students won't graduate until two days from now.
00:03:35 Dr David Joyner
So in a couple of days it'll be even higher, and so it's gotten gotten very, very large. Our course offerings have grown. We offer about 5050 or 60 courses now in all different.
00:03:45 Dr David Joyner
Kinds of feel.
00:03:46 Dr David Joyner
That's what makes the programme particularly unique from the beginning has been the affordability angle of it. It was started as a attempt to use scale to drive down the cost of this.
00:03:57 Dr David Joyner
Kind of programme.
00:03:59 Dr David Joyner
The entire programme now costs less than $7000 to get the entire degree, change it a little bit depending on how long you take.
00:04:06 Dr David Joyner
Not to complete it, but either way it's between 6:00 and.
00:04:08 Dr David Joyner
$7000.
00:04:10 Dr David Joyner
Which is 1/5 I think. Would it cost our in state students to do at Georgia Tech and 113th.
00:04:16 Dr David Joyner
Would it cost our out-of-state?
00:04:17 Dr David Joyner
Students at Georgia Tech to.
00:04:19 Dr David Joyner
Do and even our on campus programme is among the more affordable ones in the world. So it's a.
00:04:24 Dr David Joyner
A far more.
00:04:25 Dr David Joyner
For affordable way to get a programme at least compared to other US based degrees of the countries have very very different context for how much these kind of things cost.
00:04:37 Dr David Joyner
It's driven kind of an initiative to expand these kinds of programmes, so we host an annual affordable degrees at scale symposium. It brings together a bunch of different programmes that are trying to do.
00:04:48 Dr David Joyner
Not the same kind.
00:04:48 Dr David Joyner
Of thing, and so it's been. It's gotten very large, both in terms of students in our programme and in terms of other programmes trying to capture what we've done.
00:04:57 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, what you're saying about affordability. That also applies in Australia, so in Australian dollars my degree cost it was just under 10,000 Australian dollars and had I done a a Masters degree through an Australian university it would have cost me about $50,000.
00:05:16 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting too, because we've done a little bit of research to try and understand this space a bit more as well.
00:05:23 Dr David Joyner
What we found is that there have been programmes around for many years that are similarly priced to ours, but something about scale. They never really.
00:05:32 Dr David Joyner
Emphasised the idea of.
00:05:34 Dr David Joyner
Of of pursuing even greater affordability through scale and leveraging the idea that with enough students we can really drive down the individual cost heavily because our overhead is is very small compared to students that we have, and so almost every cost is very incremental that we do the math and figure out what kind of resources.
00:05:54 Dr David Joyner
Does an individual student add to the programme and?
00:05:57 Dr David Joyner
How do we compensate for that so?
00:05:59 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Because my target audience is data scientists, I just want to point out, even though this is a computer science course, it is very relevant. If you're interested in pursuing a career in.
00:06:11 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Of the sites. What are some of these specialisations that you can currently take with the programme?
00:06:17 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, so we currently offer four specialisations in machine learning computing systems, which is kind of a software engineering. Overall development specialisation, a computational perception and robotics specialisation, and an interactive intelligence specialisation which is kind of.
00:06:34 Dr David Joyner
Of artificial intelligence meets human interaction kind of thing. Does the four specialisations we offer right now and you mentioned you know your your data science audience?
00:06:44 Dr David Joyner
We also have our similar online Masters in analytics programme. It's around the same price point, it runs in very much the same fashion and in fact.
00:06:54 Dr David Joyner
Many of our courses in the OMSCS programme are available to students in the analytics programme and many of the analytics classes are available to students in CS programme.
00:07:05 Dr David Joyner
In fact, three of the four graduate courses I currently teach, I also have students join them from the analytics programme, so I get a lot of.
00:07:13 Dr David Joyner
A lot of students from over there as well, so it's it's very flexible. It's you did the CS programme is built such that you really kind of build your own curriculum.
00:07:23 Dr David Joyner
You have some places where you have to take a certain you know certain classes and certain categories to to qualify for the degree.
00:07:29 Dr David Joyner
But most of.
00:07:31 Dr David Joyner
The the choices you make you have.
00:07:32 Dr David Joyner
A lot of.
00:07:33 Dr David Joyner
Options available the analytics programme is a little bit more structured and what you take and when in what order?
00:07:39 Dr David Joyner
Because it's targeting people with a bit less of a technical background, so it accepts people who have not have as much prior CS experience.
00:07:47 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I I actually had no prior CS experience before I took OMSCS and I remember I took your knowledge based artificial intelligence course in my second semester.
00:08:00 Dr Genevieve Hayes
The first semester I took computability, complexity and algorithms, which is computer science theory and that almost killed me.
00:08:10 Dr David Joyner
Did you get that?
00:08:10 Dr David Joyner
Your first semester, yes.
00:08:15 Dr David Joyner
That's an intense way to.
00:08:15 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Start yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I hadn't heard that it had a bad reputation and I have the T shirt that says I survived CS 6505.
00:08:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And in your in second semester, I took your knowledge based artificial intelligence course and that was required Python coding and I thought I could code.
00:08:36 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Because yeah, I took the how to do intro to Python mook and I remember your first the first assignment you gave us this starter code and you said go build a artificial intelligence agent that can solve IQ puzzles and I remember opening the files and looking at it and thinking.
00:08:56 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I have no idea what this code does.
00:08:59 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Mm-hmm and and the first night I looked at it I thought, OK, I've got two choices. I can fail or I can learn very, very quickly.
00:09:11 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And I googled every single line of the starter code and figured out what it was doing and then worked from there and I got an A for that course, but.
00:09:22 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Oh I I I remember thinking Oh my God, my career at judge would take his over before it even began.
00:09:28 Dr David Joyner
Nowadays you could just drop that starter code into GPT and have it explain it to you directly there and.
00:09:36 Dr David Joyner
It's so easy.
00:09:37 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, had to use Stack Overflow instead, yeah. But yeah, I I did the machine learning specialisation and I was basically one course away from also satisfying the requirements of the interactive intelligence, specialisation and.
00:09:55 Dr Genevieve Hayes
They almost specialised in that I changed at the last minute and yeah, but I mean that set me up really well for data science because basically I had machine learning and artificial intelligence.
00:10:07 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, I can see how those would kind of give you the the background to be able to not just kind of do the service level analysis, but to understand what's going.
00:10:14 Dr David Joyner
On under the.
00:10:15 Dr David Joyner
Hood, which I think is very often what separates.
00:10:18 Dr David Joyner
The the the analysis that you give results, but you don't really know what they mean from really knowing what does this actually represent about the underlying and a ground truth.
00:10:27 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, I'd agree with.
00:10:28 Dr Genevieve Hayes
That, and how did you first become involved in OMSCS?
00:10:33 Dr David Joyner
So I was doing my PhD at Georgia Tech. My advisor was Ashok Goyle, now of Jill Watson fame. And you know, they just announced they're gonna do this OMSCS programme and he decided he wanted to do a class for the programme and we were George Tech was collaborating with you facility at the time and he basically told him either we can assign you a course developer who's.
00:10:55 Dr David Joyner
Kind of someone to partner with you on developing the course.
00:10:58 Dr David Joyner
Or you can tell us who you'd like to hire. So he came to me as a PhD student. I was finishing up my dissertation at the time and said, you know, do you want to come be my course developer for this course and I said sure, it sounds like a great way to make more than the PhD stipend for the end.
00:11:14 Dr David Joyner
Of my my.
00:11:15 Dr David Joyner
Career so as I know.
00:11:16 Dr David Joyner
I got hired by audacity at the end.
00:11:18 Dr David Joyner
To mainly work with him to produce that course, and I expected that I would do that for that last year and then.
00:11:26 Dr David Joyner
Move on to something else in life because they said it. Take about a year to develop the course so I helped them develop.
00:11:31 Dr David Joyner
It was a TA for the very first semester and I figured that be the end and I I'd move on.
00:11:35 Dr David Joyner
I'd defend my dissertation at the end of that first semester I was teaching it actually, but what I discovered along the way was that I really loved teaching online in this environment.
00:11:46 Dr David Joyner
I've always loved teaching my my PhD specialisation was AI in education. I had a background in tutoring before that, which is how I worked through.
00:11:55 Dr David Joyner
Greece and I always loved teaching. I love education. I never loved the performance art component of teaching a live classroom though of having to get in front of 15 or 20 or 50 or 100 in at the college level and be engaging and entertaining and keep their attention, that's.
00:12:12 Dr David Joyner
Just that's never been my my strength.
00:12:16 Dr David Joyner
For for multiple reasons, I've always been more comfortable either being very organised and putting together a a process for learning.
00:12:24 Dr David Joyner
Or interacting with individuals and kind of teasing out the individual misconceptions. The individual issues that are are getting in the way of individual students learning.
00:12:33 Dr David Joyner
And when I discovered in teaching online was that we got to spend this nice long phase before we had any students to really put together the course the way we wanted to.
00:12:43 Dr David Joyner
To script it out.
00:12:44 Dr David Joyner
To create really engaging visuals to create active learning opportunities to inject some active exercises into the course content.
00:12:53 Dr David Joyner
And we got to sit down and do that really well once and then reuse it.
00:12:58 Dr David Joyner
For a while because.
00:13:00 Dr David Joyner
You know, at least in the field.
00:13:01 Dr David Joyner
That we were teaching.
00:13:02 Dr David Joyner
The core fundamentals don't change over time.
00:13:05 Dr David Joyner
Now other, you know other topics you have to revise it more often, but what we were talking about the core, really the core knowledge of the field.
00:13:13 Dr David Joyner
Is not something that you know changes very regularly, so you're able to sit down and really do that. Well, give that far more attention than we could ever give it for a single semester.
00:13:22 Dr David Joyner
Pass and then once the semester started, all we had to do was interact with individual students. Answer individual questions, give feedback on individual work, and really do that kind of 1 on one interaction.
00:13:36 Dr David Joyner
And so it was everything I loved about teaching without the stuff that I I I didn't enjoy. And so I discovered that I really liked it and I wanted to stick around and.
00:13:44 Dr David Joyner
Keep doing it.
00:13:45 Dr David Joyner
So first I stuck around working on other courses helping produce other.
00:13:48 Dr David Joyner
Courses and then I jump back over to the Georgia Tech side to kind of play a role in helping the student experience and programme as a whole. And then by then the programme had gotten big enough that it justified having its own dedicated director. And so they asked if I wanted to do it.
00:14:03 Dr David Joyner
And I said yes, absolutely.
00:14:04 Dr David Joyner
I would love to do that and I.
00:14:06 Dr David Joyner
Will do my.
00:14:06 Dr David Joyner
Retire because it's just it's everything I.
00:14:08 Dr David Joyner
Love about working in education.
00:14:10 Dr David Joyner
It's it's such a unique student body that you get when you do this with this kind of flexibility that you don't get a more traditional kind of.
00:14:19 Dr David Joyner
Right?
00:14:20 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, I I actually work in a more traditional kind of environment and I I love the performance arts side of teaching.
00:14:27 Dr David Joyner
I mean, I think that's The thing is that online lets us kind of pick and choose the things that we like.
00:14:32 Dr David Joyner
And then if there's a part of teaching that a person doesn't enjoy, scale justifies the idea of having someone else handle that part.
00:14:39 Dr David Joyner
So everyone can do with their best at and.
00:14:41 Dr David Joyner
What they, you know, enjoy.
00:14:42 Dr David Joyner
Most and then.
00:14:43 Dr David Joyner
Get the best of all possible worlds.
00:14:45 Dr David Joyner
They get the person who.
00:14:46 Dr David Joyner
Puts together a really compelling instruction, as well as the person who's really engaging and can facilitate a good course forum as well as the person who gives really insightful feedback on their individual work. It's no longer the case that one person has to wear all.
00:14:59 Dr David Joyner
Those different hats.
00:15:01 Dr Genevieve Hayes
But I think even for people who are teaching live classrooms, I think there's a lot that can be learned from online.
00:15:08 Dr Genevieve Hayes
But I mean, as someone who works in data science education, I can't see any way around making use of technology in order to help data scientists.
00:15:21 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Keep up to date with the latest in data science. I mean it's not practical.
00:15:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
For someone to keep running back to university and doing another face to face degree for I don't know. Once every five years for the rest.
00:15:34 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Of their career.
00:15:36 Dr Genevieve Hayes
If you want to stay up to date with this, you have to make use of online technologies and and I think I think a lot of data scientists understand that.
00:15:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I mean, data scientists were some of the first people to make use of Mooks. One of the most famous books of all time is Andrew Enge. I think that's how you pronounce his name. Yeah, he's a lecturer from Stanford who did the.
00:15:59 Dr David Joyner
I think so.
00:16:04 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Machine learning MOOC on Coursera that I'm sure every one of our listeners has either done or yeah, so I guess that's something I'd like to talk about. You know one of the criticisms that's often levelled at universities is that they can't keep pace.
00:16:11 Dr David Joyner
We've heard of, yeah.
00:16:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
With the rate of technological change and that the information they're teaching to students is often years out of.
00:16:33 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Rate, how do how do you as a lecturer and how do the lecturers in the OMSCS programme keep up to date with the latest technology and reflect that in your courses?
00:16:46
And I.
00:16:46 Dr David Joyner
Think you're absolutely right, it's a.
00:16:48 Dr David Joyner
It's a challenge of.
00:16:49 Dr David Joyner
Of how quickly technology is advancing, especially nowadays that used to be the case.
00:16:53 Dr David Joyner
You could go to college for four years and be set.
00:16:55 Dr David Joyner
For a 40.
00:16:55 Dr David Joyner
Year career that I think changed several years ago.
00:16:59 Dr David Joyner
It's been a couple of decades that was exactly true, but it was still the case that, you know, you would need to go back.
00:17:04 Dr David Joyner
For the occasional.
00:17:06 Dr David Joyner
Kind of thing. It's gotten to the point where you kind of need to constantly refreshing on what's new.
00:17:13 Dr David Joyner
And it's gotten to the point, in my opinion, where the challenge is.
00:17:15 Dr David Joyner
Exactly what you're.
00:17:16 Dr David Joyner
Saying it's that the knowledge that is being discovered and created.
00:17:21 Dr David Joyner
Initially is only ever held by that narrow group of only a few people were creating it, and the traditional model was, you know, they would create some knowledge and create some more knowledge and it would season and mature and trickle out in the industry and eventually it would be enough to justify a course in a degree. Then many years later there'd be textbooks and things like that. It would kind of.
00:17:42 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, this whole pipeline and it would you know a textbook would come out and most of the papers the textbook was referencing.
00:17:47 Dr David Joyner
Were a decade.
00:17:48 Dr David Joyner
Old by then.
00:17:49 Dr David Joyner
Because that's how long it took for the field to mature to the point of justifying that level of investment, and that was OK.
00:17:56 Dr David Joyner
Because things weren't you.
00:17:57 Dr David Joyner
Know moving as fast nowadays it's the case.
00:18:00 Dr David Joyner
Of you know if.
00:18:01 Dr David Joyner
We wait that long. Then by the time you learn the material, it's.
00:18:04 Dr David Joyner
Already nine years.
00:18:05 Dr David Joyner
Out of date. If it took ten years.
00:18:06 Dr David Joyner
To to hit a book. The challenge is that.
00:18:09 Dr David Joyner
Like you said, the people who are creating the knowledge don't have time to also be the ones who teach a giant.
00:18:17 Dr David Joyner
You know, even a giant class of it two or three times a year, and so the rate at which that knowledge is disseminated is always going to be limited by the availability of the people creating it.
00:18:27 Dr David Joyner
To to teach it.
00:18:28 Dr David Joyner
The nice thing about this environment is that it's no longer the case that you know someone doing research. Machine learning has to teach that class every single year, or every single semester in order to continue to disseminate that that knowledge.
00:18:41 Dr David Joyner
They can do it once quite well and have that then have a very broad impact and then either you know have that.
00:18:48 Dr David Joyner
Be durable if it's the kind of thing that.
00:18:50 Dr David Joyner
Like I was saying that for the class that we.
00:18:52 Dr David Joyner
Which it is, you know, durable enough that it can last for a while and be kind of a a big kind of pillar in the community.
00:18:58 Dr David Joyner
Or if it's something that's changing more often, it's still far more efficient to be able to quickly redo the course, redo a couple lessons, do a new lesson on whatever that new information is, and have that immediately go out.
00:19:12 Dr David Joyner
This is one of the things that I think is is still one of the, UM, the somewhat unsolved challenges of of teaching online is it makes that that core learning experience at or instructional experience into something of a commodity.
00:19:26 Dr David Joyner
It is fantastic and since it can be shared and you know last out of the world and reach scale.
00:19:32 Dr David Joyner
But it does create this pressure to have it be very durable that maintenance component of how we keep that content persistent in in the face of things that new information, new findings that are coming out still is the big challenge.
00:19:46 Dr David Joyner
But it's not a new challenge. It's always been the kind of challenge of of new information.
00:19:51 Dr David Joyner
At scale, in the past it's been taken care of somewhat passively, by the fact that a fact the Member isn't going to get up in front of a live audience and present content they know is outdated.
00:20:00 Dr David Joyner
It's a lot easier to refer to a a video lecture that you know is a bit outdated, but it's the alternative is completely record it. You know it's it's easier to justify that, but the fact is that same faculty member.
00:20:12 Dr David Joyner
Wasn't going to be the one getting up and teaching something that was outdated. They're too busy to be doing that.
00:20:16 Dr David Joyner
They're busy actually out doing the research and creating the knowledge in the 1st place, so it creates kind of at least.
00:20:22 Dr David Joyner
A way it's kind of a.
00:20:24 Dr David Joyner
A platform to disseminate that that new knowledge at scale.
00:20:28 Dr David Joyner
And then putting the knowledge into that platform becomes a challenge, but a more resolvable challenge that we've.
00:20:35 Dr David Joyner
Had in the past.
00:20:36 Dr Genevieve Hayes
One thing I thought worked very well when I took the reinforcement learning class as part of OMSCS, you had your call or video lectures which were created by Charles Isbell, who I believe is now the Dean of the programme.
00:20:50 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And Michael Littman, who I believe is a lecturer at Brown University. And so they're going through, you know, core reinforcement, learning theory, much of which is, you know, foundational material that's probably been around for several decades. But you also had the teaching assistants who were.
00:21:10 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Managing the day to day of that course. They had actually developed one of the assignments for that course, which involved using open AI and building a reinforcement learning agent that would play this lunar land video.
00:21:27 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And it was really good because you had the foundations that were set there by these very experienced, very knowledgeable academics.
00:21:35 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And then you had these TA's who were developing material to keep it up to date. I mean, I took that course just because I wanted to do the Lunar Lander project.
00:21:44 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, I heard such good things about it too, yeah?
00:21:47 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Horribly difficult to do, but I loved it and it was great because you got the best of both worlds. It kept up to date.
00:21:54 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And you got solid foundations, and I think that's something because the TA's didn't have to bother about. You know, developing the foundations they were able to focus on keeping the course up to date.
00:22:08 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, now so I think that's also the that.
00:22:10 Dr David Joyner
Relationship there is that.
00:22:12 Dr David Joyner
And it's something we learned early on.
00:22:13 Dr David Joyner
Find it the hard way, especially in the AI class is that there's a relationship between what material is durable, which I think exists for pretty much every field, every field I think has some material that five years from now it's it's not going to change unless you're.
00:22:28 Dr David Joyner
Playing with core physics research where you know 20 years from now, there might be a complete paradigm change. Every field has some things that are are pretty fundamentally set in stone, and they also have development of of new ideas, and so I think disentangling those where to the point where you have the the content that you know is durable, I can really invest really heavily.
00:22:50 Dr David Joyner
In teaching that really, really well in a way that's gonna last because you know the content is is is worth devoting that attention to and then have this other component that's able to be more rapidly retooled. And very often, that's the assessment angle.
00:23:04 Dr David Joyner
And so I think we've learned.
00:23:06 Dr David Joyner
That the way to do this in.
00:23:07 Dr David Joyner
A way that.
00:23:08 Dr David Joyner
Captures the best of.
00:23:08 Dr David Joyner
Both worlds is to isolate that material that we're comfortable using for the foreseeable future, and then have the assessments able to adapt to new changes in the field such that you're taking the core concepts and applying them to new problems. So an example of that would be.
00:23:25 Dr David Joyner
In my one of the classes I teach, seeming to be in our interaction and the core fundamental principles of HCI.
00:23:32 Dr David Joyner
Have been around for for many years and they're pretty. They're pretty stable. I mean we discovered new things as time goes on, but some of the core principles are not going to go away.
00:23:40 Dr David Joyner
It's not going.
00:23:41 Dr David Joyner
To suddenly be the case that we want to design interfaces where the user can't figure out.
00:23:45 Dr David Joyner
What options are available to?
00:23:47 Dr David Joyner
A very strange context where that would be desirable, but.
00:23:52 Dr David Joyner
The environment which we're applying that.
00:23:54 Dr David Joyner
Changes and a great example of that.
00:23:56 Dr David Joyner
Is the emergence of kind of audio menus since we our audio interfaces since we first developed that course, it's become much more common to interact with an audio menu than it was when we started.
00:24:08 Dr David Joyner
Because you know, voice recognition has gotten better. Voice generation has gotten better, and so you know you call a tech support line. It's no longer.
00:24:16 Dr David Joyner
Press 1 for this 2 for that it's you know, say what you need. It tries to map you.
00:24:20 Dr David Joyner
Up and they could get better.
00:24:22 Dr David Joyner
Of course, because.
00:24:22 Dr David Joyner
I think even enjoy interacting with those things, but they certainly gotten.
00:24:25 Dr David Joyner
Better than what they used to be.
00:24:26 Dr David Joyner
Series and so in our class we can now say let's write an assignment where we ask students to apply these principles that we've taught lectures now to audio interfaces, and it brings up some really.
00:24:36 Dr David Joyner
Unique kind of.
00:24:37 Dr David Joyner
Challenges because like I said, one of the principles we teach is that a user using a new interface should be able to discover what options are available to them as a principle of disco.
00:24:47 Dr David Joyner
Ability and with a visual interface that's you know.
00:24:51 Dr David Joyner
It's a very simple, but it's it's relatively straightforward. If you want something to be discoverable, make it available somewhere and give the user the licence to poke around and find it with an audio interface.
00:25:02 Dr David Joyner
How do you poke around in the audio interface? It's not that it doesn't lay out the information to you in the same way that you can give them a list of options, but now you're forcing them to sit through like a 3 minute.
00:25:12 Dr David Joyner
Recording of all the things they can do when they already know what.
00:25:14 Dr David Joyner
They want to do, they just want to shut up and go out of their way.
00:25:16 Dr David Joyner
And so it it creates interesting opportunities for.
00:25:19 Dr David Joyner
Us to say.
00:25:20 Dr David Joyner
Take those core principles that.
00:25:21 Dr David Joyner
Haven't changed and apply them to a new, you know a new problem.
00:25:26 Dr David Joyner
Virtual reality gives us another great example of this. It was really in its infancy when we started that class. Now it's still kind of in its it's more than infancy, but it's not.
00:25:36 Dr David Joyner
Mainstream yet, but it's common enough that we can start to examine.
00:25:40 Dr David Joyner
Things like how do you deal with?
00:25:42 Dr David Joyner
Some of these principles deal, especially with principles of of comfort and equity in this environment that requires certain physical.
00:25:49 Dr David Joyner
Abilities and so that that relationship between your core content that you know is going to be durable and what you can rapidly change as you go forward is is pretty key.
00:26:01 Dr David Joyner
What I like to do?
00:26:02 Dr David Joyner
Very often is have students have access.
00:26:04 Dr David Joyner
To a library of recent research, and.
00:26:07 Dr David Joyner
Recent news that's kind of saying.
00:26:08 Dr David Joyner
You know?
00:26:09 Dr David Joyner
This is what we present to you. The fundamentals of this field.
00:26:13 Dr David Joyner
And now cheque out.
00:26:13 Dr David Joyner
What's going on right now in this field?
00:26:15 Dr David Joyner
How it relates so it becomes?
00:26:17 Dr David Joyner
A way to keep.
00:26:17 Dr David Joyner
Them up to date on on new initiatives and the new the new developments.
00:26:23 Dr David Joyner
In a way that doesn't supersede the earlier stuff, it just builds on the earlier.
00:26:27 Dr Genevieve Hayes
What you've just described is 1 particular paradigm for how people can come up can keep up to date, and you know, I I think about a alternative paradigm which is the Udemy course you know. Anyone can just create a course on Udemy on any topic and I'm guessing the.
00:26:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
You could produce a normal person like me could probably produce Udemy course in a relatively short period of time.
00:26:55 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I'm sure if I put my mind to it I could have a Udemy course produced within 6 to 12 months.
00:27:01 Dr David Joyner
Oh yeah, I thought you said weeks.
00:27:03 Dr David Joyner
That'd be.
00:27:03 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure I could, I'm I'm I'm being generous here but but you know so you've got one paradigm where you've got ordinary people can just churn out you to be courses.
00:27:16 Dr Genevieve Hayes
But you know, I might produce the world's greatest you to me course, but I might also produce something that's.
00:27:23 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Completely dog.
00:27:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And so I don't have that same credibility that a university has.
00:27:31 Dr Genevieve Hayes
On the on the other side, a university like Georgia Tech couldn't churn out. Of course, as quickly as you to me, but you've found a way so that yes, you can keep it as up to date.
00:27:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And and you've also got that stamp of approval that the university provides so that you know me completing a course at Georgia Tech carries a lot more weight to it than me.
00:27:58 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Having the nice little certificate of completion from you to me, which I never actually bothered to print out.
00:28:05 Dr David Joyner
Right? Yeah, it's it's. It's both the the.
00:28:08 Dr David Joyner
Most exciting and most terrifying thing about some of these open education initiatives?
00:28:13 Dr David Joyner
Is it anyone in the world right now can sign up and start teaching a topic which in some ways is really exciting because there's really gifted people out there who can explain things really well.
00:28:22 Dr David Joyner
There's people who are doing this for a career who in many ways are better suited to instruct on some topics because they know what it's like to actually do it.
00:28:31 Dr David Joyner
You know, in practise, many of our faculty they know the theories, they know the fundamentals of.
00:28:35 Dr David Joyner
The field.
00:28:36 Dr David Joyner
But they haven't worked as a data scientist.
00:28:38 Dr David Joyner
They can tell you all about you know the the math and the the theories and the equations that go into.
00:28:43 Dr David Joyner
Some of those analysis.
00:28:44 Dr David Joyner
But they haven't been there on.
00:28:45 Dr David Joyner
The ground doing on a day to day basis.
00:28:48 Dr David Joyner
But that also means that because anyone can can do it, you don't know exactly.
00:28:52 Dr David Joyner
What someone's bringing?
00:28:54 Dr David Joyner
To the table and so you could have people teaching you.
00:28:57 Dr David Joyner
Know things that are fundamentally.
00:28:59 Dr David Joyner
Wrong, you know I I think, especially in the realm of statistics where you get into some areas where it was the old phrase. If you torture the data long enough.
00:29:07 Dr David Joyner
Eventually it.
00:29:08 Dr David Joyner
Talk, which is to to reference the fact that if you analyse the same data often enough or over and over.
00:29:13 Dr David Joyner
With different analytical methods, eventually you'll find something.
00:29:16 Dr David Joyner
That doesn't mean that something is true, it just means that all data has enough wrinkles that something will come out.
00:29:22 Dr David Joyner
If you look at it hard enough and say you could have people who could teach a course on how to make your data say whatever you want.
00:29:29
Just say that's.
00:29:30 Dr David Joyner
Not a good thing.
00:29:32 Dr David Joyner
This especially gets significant, you know, get into other fields as you know as well.
00:29:36 Dr David Joyner
Where perspective has a, you know this much less objective, right and wrong and have many different perspectives. People can teach something as if it is the known truth in a field, but you don't know is.
00:29:46 Dr David Joyner
That actually what that field?
00:29:48 Dr David Joyner
Believes or is that just?
00:29:49 Dr David Joyner
What I'm getting from from this person I I won't name names, but I once took a an education book that actually came from a university.
00:29:58 Dr David Joyner
And it had an entire unit on how valuable it would be to diagnose.
00:30:03 Dr David Joyner
Whether your learners are visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners.
00:30:06 Dr David Joyner
Which, if you don't know, there's no research to defend the idea. In fact, learning styles have been one of those pervasive myths in education for the past numerous years. And yet here's this course being taught by university.
00:30:18 Dr David Joyner
Saying that this is a good and research back thing to do when there is no research for that and so.
00:30:24 Dr David Joyner
It's it's a.
00:30:25 Dr David Joyner
Little scary that you don't necessarily know.
00:30:27 Dr David Joyner
Ohh what you're getting from a particular a particular course or a particular source, but it's exciting also that no longer do you have to jump through all these hoops and devote your entire life to teaching just to have an impact.
00:30:40 Dr David Joyner
My hope is that things like our you know, our messiest programme, the
00:30:43 Dr David Joyner
Same way it.
00:30:44 Dr David Joyner
Kind of balances staying current with creating really reusable.
00:30:48 Dr David Joyner
Content it kind of strikes that balance as well. Where because we hire soon we teaching assistants who don't know.
00:30:55 Dr David Joyner
We hire about 500 teaching assistants in the programme and calling in teaching.
00:30:59 Dr David Joyner
Assistance really does them a disservice.
00:31:00 Dr David Joyner
They're you know they're working professionals most often who have experience in their fields and they're joining this programme on STA's.
00:31:07 Dr David Joyner
To give back.
00:31:08 Dr David Joyner
To it because they believe.
00:31:10 Dr David Joyner
And this isn't just speculation.
00:31:11 Dr David Joyner
We actually have research to.
00:31:12 Dr David Joyner
Support the idea that that's what motivated.
00:31:14 Dr David Joyner
Some to join and stick around and they stick around forever. My longest 10 year TA has now been with me 7 years I think.
00:31:21 Dr David Joyner
So they they they stick around for ages, but I think they it kind of starts to get this middle ground in a nice way because these are working professionals who can inject their their real world experience and their perspective.
00:31:34 Dr David Joyner
Into the courses they help out.
00:31:35 Dr David Joyner
With, but they're put into.
00:31:37 Dr David Joyner
A framework that has the safeguards to ensure this is still a course that is worth credit.
00:31:42 Dr David Joyner
That Georgia Tech that is representing the state of the art of the field and has all the guarantees that.
00:31:47 Dr David Joyner
Go with being a.
00:31:49 Dr David Joyner
Traditional college course.
00:31:50 Dr David Joyner
Without being, as you know, just at the whims of what an individual professor can provide the way a traditional course has been to kind of.
00:31:57 Dr David Joyner
Get hopefully the best.
00:31:59 Dr David Joyner
Of both worlds.
00:32:00 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, I'm I. I found when I was a student, me personally and many of my fellow students. We all preferred the online TA's to the ones who were the on campus ones because the online ones actually understood the online experience. Whereas the on campus ones they just didn't quite get it.
00:32:20 Dr David Joyner
Yeah it was. It's kind of.
00:32:21 Dr David Joyner
I mean, I think.
00:32:22 Dr David Joyner
I, I'm sure the same thing applies the other way around.
00:32:24 Dr David Joyner
That the on campus TA's, I'm sure, are great TA's for on campus students because they're all operating within the same kind of modality.
00:32:31 Dr David Joyner
I remember we had an early experience with scheduling office hours and the on campus TAS all wanted to schedule office hours.
00:32:40 Dr David Joyner
During the nine to five, because that made.
00:32:42 Dr David Joyner
Sense this.
00:32:42 Dr David Joyner
Was kind of.
00:32:43 Dr David Joyner
Their day job and it was between their own classes.
00:32:45 Dr David Joyner
And things like.
00:32:46 Dr David Joyner
That and no one would ever come because the online.
00:32:49 Dr David Joyner
Students all work.
00:32:50 Dr David Joyner
For a living, and so they would all go to the other one. But the nice thing was the online TA's.
00:32:55 Dr David Joyner
They would schedule alphas hours after hours or on the weekends because they also worked for a living and so that was when they could do office hours so you not only had.
00:33:03 Dr David Joyner
The benefit of.
00:33:04 Dr David Joyner
The online TV's work professionally in their fields and can lend that perspective.
00:33:09 Dr David Joyner
But also that the online TAS knew just the experience of being an online student and kind of understand it's it feels isolating to ask a question on a forum and not get a response for three days on campus, TA might observe it as well. The assignment isn't due for another week, so they don't need a response any sooner.
00:33:27 Dr David Joyner
But you know?
00:33:29 Dr David Joyner
That's the only human interaction they're having in this course. It's an upcoming office hours and so online tea is kind of understood that rapid response is a key part of feeling like there's somebody on the other end of that screen. Who cares about?
00:33:41 Dr David Joyner
My my success.
00:33:43 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, I I remember one time I was in the I was in a car going between Melbourne and Canberra.
00:33:50 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I wasn't the driver. Be clear about this and and I was doing my reinforcement learning assignment and I had a question for one of the TA's and I typed into one of the forums, you know?
00:34:03 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Don't know, let's say 2 hours.
00:34:04 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Melbourne and by the time we got to Canberra, I'd actually gotten a response.
00:34:12 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, I I just it's it's it again. It's what I love about teaching online is that if you do it correctly, it can feel very interactive and very personal because it's like having a classroom that never closes and anytime I can pop onto the the course forum for my courses and there's something going on there, most likely.
00:34:31 Dr David Joyner
And what I've always loved.
00:34:32 Dr David Joyner
Is that you know?
00:34:33 Dr David Joyner
When you're a faculty member teaching in person.
00:34:36 Dr David Joyner
When you try to get a collaborative conversation going, there's always that kind of you know. I am the faculty member kind of thing.
00:34:43 Dr David Joyner
People direct everything to you. You kind of have to facilitate because people just naturally defer to you when you're there online.
00:34:50 Dr David Joyner
You know it's a double edged sword in some ways, but this is nice effect where students don't inherently know if you're there.
00:34:56 Dr David Joyner
End Quote.
00:34:56 Dr David Joyner
Or not, so they'll have their own.
00:34:59 Dr David Joyner
Discussions and conversations and go back and forth on.
00:35:01 Dr David Joyner
Something, and so we.
00:35:02 Dr David Joyner
As faculty can come in.
00:35:03 Dr David Joyner
And chime in much more organically on a conversation. Students are having amongst themselves rather than feeling like everything is running, you know, through us, and we're the central person in this conversation and it lends itself to such nice.
00:35:16 Dr David Joyner
More casual interaction. I feel like I get to know students better because I can meet them on their terms.
00:35:21 Dr David Joyner
It's not always, you know every interaction we have isn't mediated through this lens of I am the person who holds your grade in my hand kind of thing. You can just jump into their conversations and talk.
00:35:33 Dr David Joyner
More casually and then everything is persistent after that, so you know, I I I I had an experience recently where a student, a a former student of mine, asked me for a letter recommendation and he graduated in 2017 and that you know that was five years ago.
00:35:47 Dr David Joyner
He took my class in.
00:35:49 Dr David Joyner
2016, and so if it was an in person student where most of our interaction was.
00:35:54 Dr David Joyner
Is live and in.
00:35:54 Dr David Joyner
And it kind of be a struggle.
00:35:56 Dr David Joyner
To remember, even if it.
00:35:57 Dr David Joyner
Was the the Rock star student in my class who was the most active?
00:36:00 Dr David Joyner
Most impressive student.
00:36:02 Dr David Joyner
Six years ago I've had a lot of students since said it'd be hard to piece together what exactly was.
00:36:06 Dr David Joyner
Like in his case I was able to say oh let me go look up the course file in 2016 and I'll pull your project document and you know, OK, it's been a couple of minutes and I have all the.
00:36:15 Dr David Joyner
Work you did and all the interactions we had at my fingertips.
00:36:18 Dr David Joyner
And I could write him a letter that talked really in depth about the fact that you know when he was in my.
00:36:23 Dr David Joyner
Class this was the kind of stuff he provided. He made his.
00:36:26 Dr David Joyner
Classmates experience better through things like this. This project was really innovative and did this whole virtual bartending.
00:36:34 Dr David Joyner
Which actually was the project he he built a a virtual bartending training simulation and so you know I could.
00:36:40 Dr David Joyner
I could do that in.
00:36:41 Dr David Joyner
A way that would be difficult.
00:36:43 Dr David Joyner
To do if it was a more traditional class.
00:36:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
One thing I I found, and you touched on this earlier is with online education. You get a very different demographic of people from on campus with on campus students, and this is what I've found with the ones I've taught. Often you'll have people who just go straight from bachelor's degree to masters.
00:37:05 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Three, so your average the average age of the students that I've taught, I'd say, would probably be, you know, bachelors degree obviously just out of high school Masters degree. Probably early to mid 20s, and many of those students. They're very they're either.
00:37:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Only in their first job ever, or they're they've haven't had a full time job yet, whereas I think one of the great things about online education, and I think this is gonna be important for people and keeping up with data science is.
00:37:42 Dr Genevieve Hayes
It provides a vehicle for keeping your skills up to date without actually having to attend campus, which might be impossible if you have a full time job.
00:37:52 Dr Genevieve Hayes
What's the demographic of the people who are taking OMSCS?
00:37:57 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, it's like you're absolutely right. We did a a more in depth comparison early on. We taught the same class.
00:38:03 Dr David Joyner
Simultaneously to both online and on campus, students with same TA's. It was when we discovered that online students were actually doing better on our assessments than on campus students.
00:38:13 Dr David Joyner
Which is it's?
00:38:13 Dr David Joyner
All own whole box.
00:38:15 Dr David Joyner
To unpack, because when you really get down into the the nitty gritty of it, it's apples to oranges, even if you're giving them the same assessments and the same graders.
00:38:22 Dr David Joyner
Because different professional backgrounds, different competing.
00:38:26 Dr David Joyner
Interest and things like that. I give that caveat just to say I don't think it's necessarily important for to be able to say that the online students do better than the on campus students, but for that particular analysis, that's that's what we found.
00:38:38 Dr David Joyner
But at the time we found exactly what you're saying. Our on campus demographics. Average age was 23. I think it was 2324, you know?
00:38:48 Dr David Joyner
Fresh out of undergrad, 85% of our on campus students are actually international students which is non intuitive.
00:38:56 Dr David Joyner
So at the time we did that analysis, 85% of our on campus students were international. 80% of our online students were domestic.
00:39:04 Dr David Joyner
Since then, that's changed. We're now closer to 5050 in the online programme, but the on campus programme has stayed predominantly international, so the on campus is very predominantly international students who finished their undergrad at an international institution the year before and are coming over to Georgia Tech as their first.
00:39:24 Dr David Joyner
As their masters directly after their undergrad, and as their first educational.
00:39:29 Dr David Joyner
Experience in the United States, whereas our online students they were average age was 3637 early on and mostly we're we're here in the US. Since then, it's gradually shifted to be a bit more.
00:39:45 Dr David Joyner
Representative I'd say of the of the world as a whole. Nowadays we're at, I think so. Right now we're at.
00:39:52 Dr David Joyner
1/3 of our online students are U.S. citizens. One third are US residents. I'm sorry, 1/3 are U.S. citizens who were born in the US.
00:40:03 Dr David Joyner
1/3 are people who immigrated to the US and maybe citizens may happen, but they live in the US, but they're from somewhere else and 1/3 are current.
00:40:11 Dr David Joyner
International students who are currently living outside the United States average age has dropped to about 30, which I think a lot of that comes from.
00:40:22 Dr David Joyner
The kind of the latent demand.
00:40:23 Dr David Joyner
That we see, which is that when you first.
00:40:25 Dr David Joyner
Launch this kind.
00:40:26 Dr David Joyner
Of thing you're getting a whole swath of people who would have, you know, would have done this ten years ago if it was there.
00:40:32 Dr David Joyner
But now's their first opportunity, and as we've gone on, we've seen it drift more and more. You know they did their undergrad since it launched, and now it's their way of upscaling or rearing their career.
00:40:42 Dr David Joyner
But they still are more mid career individuals, so that's been interesting to see as well. It's interesting to think.
00:40:48 Dr David Joyner
That now that.
00:40:49 Dr David Joyner
We're we're finishing up right now, our.
00:40:52 Dr David Joyner
Oh, can I do math? We're finishing our 8th year.
00:40:56 Dr David Joyner
Fish Year 9th year. Yes, we're finishing our ninth year of doing this off by one air and and so if our average age is now around 30 that means our you know our average student.
00:41:09 Dr David Joyner
Nowadays we're doing their undergrad. When we launched this programme, and so they actually could have jumped straight into this, they just didn't at the time.
00:41:18 Dr David Joyner
So that's been interesting to see.
00:41:20 Dr David Joyner
But I think averages only tell part of the story, because what's also fascinating is that you know, although our average is is older, more experienced, the distribution is incredibly wide.
00:41:31 Dr David Joyner
Our oldest student that I know of this semester is 68. As far as I know, our oldest student ever, I think was 74.
00:41:40 Dr David Joyner
Uh, and then our youngest student was 16 and so we've.
00:41:44 Dr David Joyner
Got a a?
00:41:45 Dr David Joyner
Huge variety of people in the programme.
00:41:48 Dr David Joyner
Just based on the scale of everything and the unique thing about that online platform is that there's so much more opportunity for them to impact the experience of one another as compared to the in person class where you can get in Group projects in a really.
00:42:03 Dr David Joyner
Good teacher will.
00:42:05 Dr David Joyner
Pull out the individual experiences and use them to.
00:42:09 Dr David Joyner
To impact.
00:42:11 Dr David Joyner
That in person class, but that's difficult to do when you have a kind of a a synchronous audience captive, and you know you have a limited amount of time to to have them interact with another, and it's also difficult when your personal audience is very homogeneous.
00:42:25 Dr David Joyner
Very largely you know that narrow age range and that you know very specific kind of background online. That scale we have, you know much more varied.
00:42:32 Dr David Joyner
Background and then that 24 hour classroom that lets them interact with each other organically at any time. Those are in discussion topics that.
00:42:40 Dr David Joyner
They're on articles.
00:42:41 Dr David Joyner
It would be.
00:42:43 Dr David Joyner
It'd be awkward for a student in an in person class. Just raise their hand and say, hey, Doctor Joyner
00:42:48 Dr David Joyner
And then you've got a Lesson plan for today, but I've got something I want to talk about. We should do that instead.
00:42:53 Dr David Joyner
It'd be great, but you know it's awkward.
00:42:55 Dr David Joyner
Do online they can do that. You know they can go onto the course four and say hey.
00:42:59 Dr David Joyner
I came across this really interesting article.
00:43:00 Dr David Joyner
And put it up, and they're not competing with me delivering my lecture in and and you know others can then chime in and have their own discussion.
00:43:08 Dr David Joyner
Really, take the class where they want to go with it, and so you get this.
00:43:11 Dr David Joyner
Unique combination of.
00:43:12 Dr David Joyner
A platform that makes it easier for students.
00:43:15 Dr David Joyner
To dictate the class themselves in the.
00:43:18 Dr David Joyner
Drive and to.
00:43:18 Dr David Joyner
Contribute to the class themselves and a student.
00:43:21 Dr David Joyner
Body that is uniquely suited to do so.
00:43:24 Dr David Joyner
Because they have such a very backgrounds and they can say things like, you know we're I mean my favourite examples.
00:43:29 Dr David Joyner
Are always when you have the.
00:43:30 Dr David Joyner
It's like we're talking about, you know, something in in human interaction. And we talked about.
00:43:35 Dr David Joyner
The idea of.
00:43:36 Dr David Joyner
You have to understand what is the risk of your design, how confident you have to be.
00:43:40 Dr David Joyner
It's an improvement before you roll it out and.
00:43:43 Dr David Joyner
If it's a video game, maybe you.
00:43:44 Dr David Joyner
Don't have to be that the.
00:43:45 Dr David Joyner
Confident if it's.
00:43:47 Dr David Joyner
A surgical you know tool a surgical interface.
00:43:50 Dr David Joyner
You need to be pretty darn confident before you roll that out to real people, and we hear.
00:43:54 Dr David Joyner
Stories from students.
00:43:55 Dr David Joyner
Will say Oh yeah.
00:43:56 Dr David Joyner
I was working.
00:43:56 Dr David Joyner
On a project and we, you know, made this mistake, and this was the the effect.
00:44:01 Dr David Joyner
Or we could do this because we knew that the worst case.
00:44:03 Dr David Joyner
Scenario was going.
00:44:04 Dr David Joyner
To be this and actually hear their their real world experiences.
00:44:08 Dr Genevieve Hayes
One of the things one of the criticisms I'd make about the way machine learning is taught in a lot of universities, and I see this reflected in textbooks so clearly this is a global problem is that people who are teaching machine learning don't know how to programme properly. They're writing in a.
00:44:28 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Mary, I forget the word for it, but they're basically just. They're not writing good production quality.
00:44:35 Dr Genevieve Hayes
The coat, and they're just writing it one line at a time. Machine learning textbook that has a very good reputation that I recently purchased is doing it exactly this way, whereas when I was studying at Georgia Tech, a lot of my fellow classmates were software developers or software engineers, so when I was interacting with them in the forums.
00:44:57 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Any examples they were giving? They were doing them with. You know, good software development principles and you you rose up to the standard that they were set.
00:45:08 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Looking and I feel like I'm. I learned software development, not from the actual lecturers in that course, but from the students around me, and I think that makes me a lot stronger as a data scientist than had I learned it from any in any other environment.
00:45:26 Dr David Joyner
That that's what we were saying before about that. That interaction between the the faculty and teaching assistants. And I mean the teaching assistants are themselves former students in the classes. So it's the same kind of thing as you get that.
00:45:36 Dr David Joyner
Kind of academic view, but the professor very often won't have worked in that field. But you get that from from classmates and and TA's, and they have this ability to impact what you do.
00:45:48 Dr David Joyner
You know, at least maybe you know maybe it's different nowadays. I did my my undergrad in the late. What do we call them? Nine say late 2000s because that sounds like 80 years from now.
00:45:57 Dr David Joyner
You know 2007, 2008, at least back then you know there was there weren't course forums and things like that.
00:46:05 Dr David Joyner
The the.
00:46:06 Dr David Joyner
Maximum interaction you.
00:46:07 Dr David Joyner
Have with your classmates was.
00:46:09 Dr David Joyner
Maybe talking during class or maybe forming a study group on your own.
00:46:13
Now they you.
00:46:14 Dr David Joyner
Know they have.
00:46:15 Dr David Joyner
Course forums nowadays, so maybe some in person.
00:46:17 Dr David Joyner
Courses use them.
00:46:18 Dr David Joyner
My what I've heard, at least from students, has been that they really don't. In fact, I I remember very strongly when the mitas once said so I, in addition to doing whatever it is I do in in OMSCS, I also teach them an online undergraduate class, which is a really interesting experience because you get to see kind of how.
00:46:35 Dr David Joyner
The online environment intersects with different student bodies and the big difference there is that students don't talk to each other nearly as much on the forum in that online undergrad class and early on, I asked for my TA's why is that and her response was, oh, we all being the undergrads.
00:46:51 Dr David Joyner
We all hate the.
00:46:51 Dr David Joyner
Forum because it's usually just populated.
00:46:53 Dr David Joyner
By really mean.
00:46:54 Dr David Joyner
People who will tell us how awful we.
00:46:56 Dr David Joyner
Are at this and like really?
00:46:57 Dr David Joyner
Well, yeah, because the faculty don't usually use the forum like you use the forum. Apparently for all her other classes, the forum was just there for students to use as they would, but the teacher wasn't considering it a core part of learning experience, whereas for us the form is really the classroom.
00:47:12 Dr David Joyner
And so it's been interesting to see that.
00:47:15 Dr David Joyner
That that that kind of impact doesn't necessarily come just from making this available. I wonder to what extent this is different post pandemic should say post pandemic, but you know three years into the pandemic when more people had to do things online and you know more in person classes have had to use forums and things like that, and maybe now it's got a bit different.
00:47:35 Dr David Joyner
But there's something about putting the forum in such a prominent place in the learning experience that lets some things happen that don't happen if you have it, but don't make it a a first class object. Let it be kind of the.
00:47:49 Dr David Joyner
The the fall back for stuff.
00:47:52 Dr Genevieve Hayes
My experience in teaching an on campus course last year, so I was Co teaching it with another academic. We got zero questions on the forum even though a number of our students were in overseas countries and couldn't come back to Australia.
00:48:08 Dr David Joyner
So I teach about 2000 masters students.
00:48:11 Dr David Joyner
Semester yeah, I've had 3000 I guess 2500 somewhere in there over 2000 and about 500 undergrads per semester.
00:48:19 Dr David Joyner
And yet the 500 undergrads probably send me 10 times more emails than all the master suits put together, I.
00:48:23 Dr David Joyner
Think it's that that comfort interacting on a forum with.
00:48:26 Dr David Joyner
The master students.
00:48:28 Dr David Joyner
Of interacting with other classmates and asking questions there where they know they'll hear from others.
00:48:32 Dr David Joyner
Whereas the undergrads very often they want to hear from the faculty member themselves, and we see a lot of things about that. We see my undergrads post anonymously almost 50 or 60% of the time. My graduate students almost.
00:48:47 Dr David Joyner
Never post anonymously, and so there's a a different kind of community feel there as well, and I I I I could speculate on why this is in a lot of different places, but I think a lot of it does come from that that networking angle you're talking about that interacting with classmates is such a valuable part of that.
00:49:07 Dr David Joyner
Graduate experience and why people come to OMSCS. It's not just for what we teach, but it's for the chance to join a community of others who are already doing the kind of things that you want to do and can help you learn to do.
00:49:20 Dr David Joyner
It can introduce these people can hire you. Some of my favourite stories from the programme have.
00:49:25 Dr David Joyner
Been stories of you know.
00:49:27 Dr David Joyner
I got this new job the way I got this new job is I was in this class and I answered a lot of forum questions and I answered a forum question for this one person and then she emailed me privately.
00:49:36 Dr David Joyner
Saying hey, are you?
00:49:37 Dr David Joyner
Looking for a job.
00:49:38 Dr David Joyner
Because, you know?
00:49:39 Dr David Joyner
That that's it's a much different environment. Get people who are hiring and looking for jobs and it's done all these different things. It's fun.
00:49:47 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, one of the previous guests on this programme are Romeo Cabrera Arevalo. Do you remember him? Yeah he he got his job from someone he met during OMSCS.
00:50:00 Dr David Joyner
That's wonderful, yeah, one of one of my head TA's got his job when he was talking to somebody who just moved into his new.
00:50:06 Dr David Joyner
And had shared that he was doing this Masters programme and the person who had just.
00:50:09 Dr David Joyner
Moved in said oh I.
00:50:10 Dr David Joyner
Just started that programme and not talking and ended.
00:50:14 Dr David Joyner
Up hiring the other so.
00:50:16 Dr Genevieve Hayes
When I started OMSCS, one of the things that caused me concern before I applied for it was, you know, will people think less of this because it's an online degree and you know historically, online education has been seen as the second class cousin of on campus education. And yeah, I was.
00:50:34 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Always a little bit, you know.
00:50:36 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Reticent about telling people that I was doing a degree online?
00:50:39 Dr Genevieve Hayes
But you know, after doing it there, I proudly say I did my degree at Georgia Tech through the OMSCS programme, which was an online programme and I will defend that to the grave as being not only just as good as any on campus programme but better than any on campus programme.
00:50:59 Dr David Joyner
I'm so glad to hear that and.
00:51:00 Dr David Joyner
I, I mean it, it's it's.
00:51:03 Dr David Joyner
Flattering and humbling to hear those kind of things because it's, you know, we feel that way.
00:51:06 Dr David Joyner
Obviously that we have to feel that way because if we didn't feel that.
00:51:09 Dr David Joyner
Way we wouldn't be doing it, so it's kind of.
00:51:11 Dr David Joyner
It's pretty supposed that we feel that way, but we've heard the same kind of thing from other. Like I mentioned to start.
00:51:17 Dr David Joyner
We've run this annual symposium where a bunch of others are doing these same kind of affordable at scale degree programmes.
00:51:23
And one thing.
00:51:23 Dr David Joyner
We hear often from them is they're grateful for this programme, in part because it has such a reputation for being rigorous that they're able to offer new things and not worry as much about you. Know this kind of reputational issues.
00:51:38 Dr David Joyner
Because they're able to say well what we're doing is we're more like what George Tech is doing, more like, more like what the University of Illinois is doing as well.
00:51:45 Dr David Joyner
They were another one early in this space. Our programme is meant to be more like those where it's meant to be kind of this this environment where.
00:51:55 Dr David Joyner
We can be accommodating with admissions because we know that once you're in the programme, we're really going to test you and push you.
00:52:03 Dr David Joyner
There's so many.
00:52:04 Dr David Joyner
It it's that.
00:52:05 Dr David Joyner
Every you know every once in a while we'll get a a question from someone who will say something. The effective how can that programme be considered prestigious when as an 85% admission rate?
00:52:15 Dr David Joyner
I guess 8580%.
00:52:17 Dr David Joyner
Great and our responses to the effect of why are you judging programmes by who they let in and not who they let out?
00:52:24 Dr David Joyner
You know is is that your point of pride that you got into a programme? If that is go apply to a prestigious programme, get admitted and then be able.
00:52:30 Dr David Joyner
To say for.
00:52:31 Dr David Joyner
The rest of your life I got into that programme. Who cares if I actually attended it? Because getting in was the achievement.
00:52:36 Dr David Joyner
That these programmes these these new affordable ones are really geared towards the idea of.
00:52:41 Dr David Joyner
Of if there's any, if we think you have a chance of succeeding, we will let you in and prove it because.
00:52:48 Dr David Joyner
That's what we're here to do.
00:52:49 Dr David Joyner
We're here to open up opportunities, expand access. These kind of things beyond what they've traditionally been, where you have to be.
00:52:54 Dr David Joyner
You know, affluent enough to take two years off of work and devote 6 figures to going and getting a master's degree.
00:53:01 Dr David Joyner
If that's the only audience we're reaching, what are we? What are we doing?
00:53:05 Dr David Joyner
The the wrinkle to this is that in order to do that in order to have that accommodating emissions policy, which for those who don't know, we we say anyone who meets our minimum criteria gets into the programme and there is no caps so you know we'll let in whatever fraction we have to and whatever number we have to and figure out how to handle everyone later. Fortunately, we we've seen the the growth has been linear so we've been able to.
00:53:27 Dr David Joyner
Just scale up in a more controlled fashion, but you know it's never been a case. If we let it or rejected anyone because we didn't have have rooms.
00:53:34 Dr David Joyner
But the only.
00:53:35 Dr David Joyner
Reason why we can do that is because we also have that affordability angle. And when I say we I don't just need Georgia Tech. I mean this can you?
00:53:42 Dr David Joyner
As a whole, the only reason you can do that is if you're affordable is if you're not affordable and you let in a bunch of.
00:53:48 Dr David Joyner
People that you.
00:53:48 Dr David Joyner
Know could succeed, but you're not really confident.
00:53:51 Dr David Joyner
That they will.
00:53:52 Dr David Joyner
Think you're just being predatory? You're just taking people's money.
00:53:54 Dr David Joyner
For something you know they.
00:53:55 Dr David Joyner
Don't have a chance.
00:53:56 Dr David Joyner
But if you're you know, a low tuition point for us, it's, you know.
00:53:59 Dr David Joyner
$500.
00:53:59 Dr David Joyner
Per class can afford to take chances.
00:54:02 Dr David Joyner
People and say, you know come join the programme.
00:54:05 Dr David Joyner
If you take the 1st.
00:54:06 Dr David Joyner
Class and find out this isn't for.
00:54:08 Dr David Joyner
You're out 500 dollars 500 isn't a small amount of money, especially for international students, but it's not the $10,000 you'd have for a single semester of tuition in a, you know, traditional programme.
00:54:20 Dr David Joyner
It's not going to set you back financially for the rest of your life because you've got you know student loans on this programme and as a result you know my my mantra is.
00:54:28 Dr David Joyner
Boys, I'd rather except nine people who won't finish than reject one person.
00:54:34 Dr David Joyner
Who would have?
00:54:35 Dr David Joyner
Because it's about expanding that opportunity and giving it to people who haven't had all the advantages before they've gotten to our programme. But again, you can only do that if you're not going to.
00:54:46 Dr David Joyner
Irreparably damage the future financial, you know options of those nine people who got in and ultimately weren't able.
00:54:52 Dr David Joyner
Able to persist.
00:54:54 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And and it's a very much a mook approach to admissions.
00:54:58 Dr David Joyner
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's the other thing we've discovered in the process is that it's really hard to predict who's going to succeed at these programmes because, you know, we'll have students who on paper this person is, you know, a shoe.
00:55:10 Dr David Joyner
And of course they you know they did a batch as computer science. They've worked in software engineering for 15 years. They're going to be one of our best students.
00:55:18 Dr David Joyner
And they'll fail out after a semester. And the reason is because they did a batches in CS.
00:55:23 Dr David Joyner
And had to use a software engineer.
00:55:25 Dr David Joyner
And thought they were going to be able to skate through and got in and discovered ohh I'm still gonna have to work.
00:55:30 Dr David Joyner
And that's not what I.
00:55:31 Dr David Joyner
Was signing up.
00:55:31 Dr David Joyner
For and then on the other side, you'll have the student who you know they did their undergrad in psychology 30 years ago have been out of college for that long.
00:55:39 Dr David Joyner
Took a couple Community College classes in computer science.
00:55:42 Dr David Joyner
And on paper, they're just. They're just barely over that line.
00:55:46 Dr David Joyner
But they're entering.
00:55:46 Dr David Joyner
The programme knowing OK, I don't have a strong.
00:55:49 Dr David Joyner
Science background if.
00:55:50 Dr David Joyner
I'm gonna succeed. I have to devote in 203040 hours a week to succeeding in this programme, and they're ready for it and.
00:55:57 Dr David Joyner
They really devote them.
00:55:58 Dr David Joyner
Selves and they get through, and those are the kind.
00:56:02 Dr David Joyner
Of things they don't you.
00:56:02 Dr David Joyner
Know they don't come out on an application and you can't gauge commitment on the application.
00:56:08 Dr David Joyner
On its own.
00:56:09 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And and that was exactly my experience I I know my background was in statistics and actuarial. I could programme in SAS. I could programme very poorly in R and Python.
00:56:22 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I was actually told by some other programmes that I would not meet their admissions criteria because they did not have an undergraduate computer science degree.
00:56:32 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And Georgia Tech admitted me and my first year in Georgia Tech was absolute hell.
00:56:40 Dr David Joyner
But don't let that stop you listening.
00:56:42 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, don't let us don't let them stop but the thing was because I was admitted to a programme that you know I was way behind anyone with those CS undergraduate software development.
00:56:56 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Experience it forced me to raise myself up to that level, and I know that if I had have done a degree where you know there are similar type degrees where they teach you introduction to Python as part of the masters, you know Georgia Tech. There are approach was you don't know this language. Go learn it yourself.
00:57:16 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yep, so students sweating gonna waste our time teaching you.
00:57:16
You must.
00:57:21 Dr David Joyner
It's also I.
00:57:22 Dr David Joyner
Mean it's also the nice thing about the flexibility too of being online and asynchronous is that you don't have this dynamic where you know you're here on campus for 18 months and that's how long you have.
00:57:31 Dr David Joyner
To learn this.
00:57:32 Dr David Joyner
It's like you said, you know if you need to take a semester off to go brush.
00:57:35 Dr David Joyner
Up on Python And.
00:57:36 Dr David Joyner
Come back and then take the class you.
00:57:38 Dr David Joyner
Go for it.
00:57:38 Dr David Joyner
You've got six years to finish the programme.
00:57:41 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Hold on I could.
00:57:41 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Have done that.
00:57:42 Dr David Joyner
Yes, you could taken six years.
00:57:45 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Now I I finished mine in.
00:57:47 Dr Genevieve Hayes
7 semesters and I didn't take any breaks, and.
00:57:51 Dr David Joyner
That's fast even for someone.
00:57:52 Dr David Joyner
Who you know has a has a strong background in this field. Our our average is on an average, graduate will finish programming 10 semesters, one class per semester.
00:58:02 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Well, what happened was I took computability, complexity and algorithms in my first semester, which is computer science theory. I was spending 30 hours a week.
00:58:12 Dr Genevieve Hayes
On it because I was like, you know, going from zero and then when I took your course in second semester, I was doing 25 hours a week and I basically normalised 25 to 30 hours a week.
00:58:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So then I decided OK, I'm just gonna. I'm used to that now so I'll just keep working at a pace of 25 to 30 hours a week so.
00:58:32 Dr Genevieve Hayes
If I saw that in the reviews at one of the courses I was taking only required 10 hours a week, it's like I could.
00:58:38 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Do a second call.
00:58:41 Dr David Joyner
I'll regret here, but Yep.
00:58:43 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, final semester. I wanted to get outside two courses left and it's like yeah, the total expected course load for this is 40 hours a week. But yeah, that'll be fine.
00:58:55 Dr David Joyner
It's the end, so at least there's a light.
00:58:57 Dr David Joyner
At the end.
00:58:57 Dr David Joyner
Of the tunnel. It's it strikes me as more of the advice I've.
00:59:00 Dr David Joyner
Heard for having.
00:59:01 Dr David Joyner
Kids of having multiple kids.
00:59:04 Dr David Joyner
The advice I've heard is never let yourself get out of diapers, which is that once you have, you know your youngest is out of diapers.
00:59:10 Dr David Joyner
You'll never want to go back to changing diapers again, so if you want to have another one, make sure that the second one or the third one.
00:59:15 Dr David Joyner
Comes before the previous ones out of diapers because you won't want.
00:59:18 Dr David Joyner
Back I feel the same kind of thing applies if you take a class and spring and fall, you take summer off.
00:59:25 Dr David Joyner
And how you just you're used to having.
00:59:27 Dr David Joyner
That time back again, you're not ready.
00:59:28 Dr David Joyner
To go back in the the following fall so.
00:59:31 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, that was exactly it. Yeah, I I knew if I dropped down to below 25 hours a week I'd never be able to do it again.
00:59:37 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And I knew if I took a semester off, I'd never be able to do it again. So it's like I'm just gonna make my life hell for two and a third years.
00:59:45 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And I'll get through this.
00:59:47 Dr David Joyner
And I think I I've heard.
00:59:49 Dr David Joyner
That from many people, and that's what reissue. So I don't know. I'm a three time Georgia Tech graduate myself in my math, my bachelors, masters and.
00:59:57 Dr David Joyner
PhD all there.
00:59:58 Dr David Joyner
So I I.
00:59:59 Dr David Joyner
Have a very strong personal motivation to make sure that the OMSCS programme represents the authentic George Tech rigour and experience, and nothing represents the Georgia Tech authentic experience.
01:00:11 Dr David Joyner
More than that, philosophy of ohhh my gosh, it was so hard while I was there, but now that I'm past it, I'm so glad I did it.
01:00:20 Dr David Joyner
That's what what George Tech has always been. It's always been a place of, you know, we'll give people chances we'll, you know, let you prove yourself here because we don't, you know, put a whole lot of stake into whatever you did before because different schools are so different, different backgrounds and people you know people go through different things. One of my best students is someone who had, you know, had a poor undergrad transcript just because.
01:00:40 Dr David Joyner
Wasn't ready for for college at the time it's.
01:00:43 Dr David Joyner
Been 15 years.
01:00:44 Dr David Joyner
He wouldn't have.
01:00:44 Dr David Joyner
Gotten anywhere else with those.
01:00:46 Dr David Joyner
Course, but who you know? Who cares about your undergrad GPA 10 or 15 years ago? It's like asking for your SAT scores for for graduate admissions, you know.
01:00:55 Dr David Joyner
Give him a chance.
01:00:57 Dr David Joyner
And if you're a highly selective programme.
01:00:58 Dr David Joyner
And you only have 100 spots? Yeah, absolutely.
01:01:02 Dr David Joyner
You have to use every data point you can and you you bet on the sure things. That's why it shouldn't.
01:01:07 Dr David Joyner
You know it's not good to have to be highly selected. I say have to be very specifically because if you're in person, you're limited by the size of.
01:01:14 Dr David Joyner
Your classrooms and.
01:01:16 Dr David Joyner
Like that and so it's not good to have to be selective. We've kind of turned it into this point of pride where you know, I got into this highly selective school, but they're selective because of constraints that were there, you know, decades ago, they don't have to be there any.
01:01:30 Dr David Joyner
And so I think pivoting it to this angle instead, where it's not about where you get in, because where you get in.
01:01:37 Dr David Joyner
Just reaffirms what you've already done in life, but what?
01:01:39 Dr David Joyner
You've already done in.
01:01:40 Dr David Joyner
Life is what you've already done in life. You know the acceptance.
01:01:44 Dr David Joyner
A a a summation a a verdict on that? That's not why you go to college is not what you get a graduate degree.
01:01:51 Dr David Joyner
It's not just about getting into the programme, it's about what you learn and prove while you're doing it.
01:01:56 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And that's what I found with Georgia Tech. It wasn't about me getting a certificate. That said, congratulations, you got into Harvard, Yale, whatever it was about.
01:02:05 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I I did not care, all I cared about is you know, how much did I learn and I remember I was taking the machine learning course that Charles Isbell teaches and.
01:02:16 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I was taking it the same semester as a work colleague of mine was taking a machine learning course.
01:02:22 Dr Genevieve Hayes
At Australian University, or maybe as one semester before whatever. Anyways, comparing the syllabus for that and we we learned three times the amount that she did in what in an equivalent semester in Georgia Tech. Then she learned at this.
01:02:43 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Diversity and yeah, that semester was hell, but.
01:02:49 Dr David Joyner
But you'll learn and you learn. I think under under the kind of conditions that that transfer too.
01:02:54 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I, one of my favourite movies ever is GI Jane have have you.
01:02:59 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Seen it, yeah.
01:03:01 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, and that that is just the perfect metaphor for going through.
01:03:05 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Your tech, I mean your life is hell, but if you don't ring that bell and go out you know you are so damn proud of yourself.
01:03:12 Dr Genevieve Hayes
At the end.
01:03:13 Dr David Joyner
Yep, there's there's a reason why George Tech graduates. We don't ask each other. When did you graduate. We ask when did you get out?
01:03:20 Dr David Joyner
It's getting out is the see achievement it's you know, surviving and escaping and looking back on the experience and seeing how it shaped you.
01:03:29 Dr David Joyner
You know, understanding that, yes, it was very difficult and there were times I want to quit. And if that wasn't the case, you wouldn't be getting something valuable for your life.
01:03:38 Dr David Joyner
Out of it.
01:03:39 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah exactly, and I mean I remember during my final two semesters I had a countdown of the number of weeks that had taken till I.
01:03:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I graduated and I remember when I got down to zero. I wrote on my countdown calendar. I got out.
01:03:54 Dr Genevieve Hayes
For our listeners, this conversation was originally meant to be just a single episode, but shortly after this point in the conversation, David and I got to talking about chat GPT and ended up running to almost 2 hours.
01:04:09 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So I've decided to break this conversation in two and now the second part, next time. Thanks for joining me, David.
01:04:15 Dr David Joyner
Absolutely thank you so much for having me.
01:04:18 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And thank you also to our listeners. I'm doctor Genevieve Hayes and this has been value driven data science brought to you by Genevieve Hayes Consulting.