For the most part it's intensive and immersive with enough learn-at-your-own-pace aspects to accommodate full-time jobs, families, hobbies, etc. I feel like I come away from every class like I've actually learned something that's embedded in me.
Udacity is what it is: a platform for watching videos with some minor ability to interact with coding examples / quizzes throughout. I have no issue with it, but agree that most of the meat of the courses come from other parts of the classes.
My hunch here, through Thrun's quotes and some in this, is that there were some aspects of CEO at this level that really didn't appeal to him. How many CEOs truly get to be personally creative in their position?
As a current Georgia Tech student, I welcome you.
I've often wondered what on-campus students think of the program given there are a lot of competing elements to having both at an esteemed CS school. I've tried thinking about my undergrad days and how I'd feel if there were an equivalent program.
I'm not too far into the program, but the courses I've seen are built around readings, projects, and Piazza (a student forum for us to talk to each other in). Piazza is where most of the interesting stuff happens. For my class, there's the professor but also 5-10 TAs who are swarming Piazza at most hours of the day responding to questions. Once a week, there are office hours for a couple hours hosted on Hangouts. There's your normal midterm and final exam, but the courses seem very much structured around deadlines rather than mandatory participation week to week.
It's been good thusfar.
The technical infrastructure from Udacity is a low key here. But the partnership, enablement and opportunity in providing 1000s of qualified students to pursue masters is a phenomenal achievement.
Forever grateful to Udacity and Sebastian Thrun for this program.
