Students and professors alike have a lot of reasons to learn with Udacity. Most recently, Michael Littman, a computer scientist, joined the Udacity team to record brand new classes for our ever-growing course list. He said that he had as much to learn from this experience, as he had to teach students about computer science.
Littman, 1982. Caption reads, “…he used to love shopping malls”
Littman will be teaching Algorithms:Crunching Social Networks, a class that will unpack what goes on behind the scenes of social connections. But before we talk any more about Littman’s class, there are some things you should know about this guy:
Computer Science: A Love Story
Michael Littman is one of the most outgoing computer scientists you will ever meet. He is beaming with energy and eager to share everything he knows about computer science with the world. As a youngster growing up on the outskirts of Philly, Littman decided to forgo his Bar Mitzvah, a traditional Jewish coming of age ceremony, and instead received a computer for his 13th birthday. Littman recounts, “From age 13 to 15, I don’t think I saw anyone, I just programmed. And then at 15, I walked out of my room, blinking in the sunlight, like, ‘Okay, I think I’m ready now!’ Then, I reengaged with society.” He refers to this period as the beginning of his “long love affair with computer science.”
Littman has been faithful to computer science, as a student, professional, and professor and chair at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and soon-to-be professor at Brown University in Providence, RI. What drew him to computer science in the first place was the fact that, when you know how to program, you can translate ideas into something useful. The majority of the work that Littman has focused on in recent years has been reinforcement learning, an area of machine learning that is concerned with helping programs learn to get better at something through experience: “In a reinforcement learning setting, performance is measured in terms of profits or rewards and not just in terms of successful predictions.”
On Algorithms
Littman describes his upcoming class as a version of an Alogrithms class you would find at most universities teaching computer science. Beginning June 25, students can learn to organize programs so that they can solve really difficult problems correctly and quickly:
“It is how you organize the data so that you get the information fast! For most students it can be very challenging because this will be the first time they will really have to think mathematically and algorithmically about computer programs. But it is a great skill to have.”
With respect to Littman’s class, the focus will be on algorithms that are important in the analysis of social networks. This means that, given the data you have about how individuals are connected, using algorithms enables you to think about what sorts of connections you can make and how to do so efficiently. Littman describes an example of this: “Given who’s connected to whom, find me a group of at least 10 people who know each other.” Another example of how algorithms can be applied to social networks is the Kevin Bacon game — but you will have to take the class to find out how that works!
Learning to Teach
At Udacity, instructors design classes specifically for the web, creating short videos that that include embedded quizzes and programming problems. In this way, teaching a class at Udacity is very different than teaching in a classroom. When asked if he thought his teaching could evolve through this experience, Littman replied with conviction, “I agree wholeheartedly.”
A while back, when he was thinking about changing universities, Littman reached out to Udacity founder and CEO, Sebastian Thrun. Littman wanted to know how he could think differently about teaching people. More specifically, how to reach more people and get them to actually learn the material.
Udacity itself continues to search for answers to these questions, so naturally Thrun invited Littman to teach a course. Littman describes his reaction to the invitation, “I said, ‘absolutely!’ Not only is this exciting, but I’m getting to see the future of education, and I am right on the front lines. How could I think of saying no to that?”
Littman sites interactivity as a cornerstone to what he is getting out of his Udacity teaching experience. In the past, he said he has used clickers – little electronic response devices, like remote controls – but found them limiting because you could only have five response options and no way to pose programming problems. However, with the Udacity format, students are able to write programs as they learn new concepts. Programs are graded instantly, allowing students to know whether they have completely digested the information and whether or not they should move on. Littman says, “So designing this class has been fun. During lectures I’ve been stopping to say, ‘hey, why don’t you write some code to do that,’ and then you know that students are getting the opportunity to sit down with the material, work through it, try a couple of times, see that it works and then proceed.”
At Udacity everyone has something to learn. Whether it is the student learning a new skill, or an instructor learning how to better guide a student through the online learning process, Udacity is laying the foundation for a revolution in learning. As Littman concludes, “There is reason to believe that this is a very good way for people to learn, and if I do not use these ideas, I’m not teaching my students effectively and that would be wrong.”
If you are interested in taking Michael Littman’s course on Algorithms, ENROLL TODAY!
