As a former Googler myself, I’m excited to see what’s up next from the company that leads in search, innovates in mobile applications, poineers in computer controlled vehicles and and is expanding into clean technologies. These new-hires will support the next big Wave of technology at Google, though I hope it fares better than some recent products which barely launched before being dropped. It will be this new crop of engineers that support the development and adoption of successful products in the coming years.

As just about everyone knows, Google has ranked among the top five best places to work in Fortune’s annual list since 2007 and has created a unique environment that fosters experimentation and freedom in its employees. From 20 percent time that engineers can use to tinker with new ideas to ping pong tables that promote fun breaks to organic food, author talks and even dances, Google is undoubtedly a great place to work. It’s no coincidence however that Google has put so much into its culture. It has to compete with the likes of SAS, Dreamworks, NetApp, and Qualcomm which were also in the top 10 best places to work for 2010 and who also need to attract top engineering talent.

As resources continue to be directed into computer related fields worldwide, Turing College is dedicated to producing leading engineers to meet the hiring needs of companies like Google. Beyond education and training, TC will support a lifelong community of highly skilled creative minds that will build new companies and confront emerging challenges. Long before Google was number one it was Hewlett Packard and in between there have been many other leaders in the high tech space. No matter who’s in first, we’ll be pushing hard to create the most relevant, enjoyable and engaging courses in computer science curriculum for years to come.

In any sort of marketplace the best products, services and ideas rise to the top of the heap as they gain positive recognition. In marketplace education, when material is voted up, teachers receive monetary or reputation benefit which fuels expansion. The key to helping these systems flourish is transparency and efficiency, the avoidance of taxation and artificial promotion by the system itself. As with traditional economies, the invisible hand of the market will respond as new concepts are sought out by students and again as better content becomes available from teachers. Thorough, relevant content is just one part of the equation however. The marketplace can also design better ways of teaching to suit different learning styles and the whole thing evolves as new generations come of age.

There are clearly many benefits to be had by opening systems up to competition. For this to work properly systems must provide ownership, protection and some form of moderation. This has been demonstrated time and again all across the world by governments, organizations and ultimately television and the Internet which has empowered individuals to give and in turn receive for their effort and unique ability.

Consider the Public Broadcasting Service. This American television network, which launched in October of 1970, is made up of 354 member TV stations which hold collective ownership. Individual stations’ shows rely on pledge drives to fund their work. Pledge drives often take the form of a commercial between episodes of a popular show or special. These, often live, video segments urge viewers to phone in and donate money to fund development of similar shows. This direct voting helps to steer PBS stations while limiting the self-interested influence of commercial investors or sponsors with a controlling share.

A marketplace really shines when it can respond quickly and accurately to individual votes by its users, each individual “channel” has a unique and flexible response. At the same time, it can provide tremendous value when it leverages economies of scale, bringing all the channels together, to provide something consistent to a large group of people. PBS does both of these things by recognizing and supporting member stations that work on the micro level and bringing them together under one large, powerful institutional umbrella.

At Turing College we are tapping into the power of markets to drive our own course material. Professors can rely on the traditional invisible hand to steer their efforts along with more direct voting systems and open communication tools built right in for student use. Topics are relevant and because the same material can be used again and again the price per class is kept low. As the system itself grows, even more value can be captured in the form of joint research. We believe in the power of markets and are excited to deliver something truly unique and powerful to the education space.

What’s most impressive to us here at Turing College is the notion that OU overcame widespread criticism based on its open admissions policy when it first launched. This policy did not limit acceptance of students based on any level of prior academic achievement. Furthermore, the radio and TV programs that have since been airing on BBC networks are open to anyone with a TV or radio that wishes to learn. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once famously said, The English never draw a line without blurring it. This must have been the feeling for many onlookers as the institution first launched and ultimately became a pioneer in distanced learning.

As we move forward here at TC, the Open University and similar institutions stand as strong positive examples. Our long term goals of sharing curriculum with ambitious young audiences and providing flexible enrollment options reflect our notion that higher education is a valuable resource for humans of all types. To this end we are building new ways of presenting material that will resonate with different minds. We aim to create systems that are open, adaptive and innovative just as OU has done for over forty years.

With these goals in mind, we want to acknowledge 40 years of Open University on the BBC. May there be many years to come!

In certain employment verticals internships are mandatory and placement is governed by academic institutions. This is the case in American medicine where students often completely uproot their lives to attend multi-year paid work programs before being awarded Doctor status. Three institutions of higher learning in the UK are following this trend as they consider ways to begin awarding accreditation to students who have participated in internships relevant to their area of study. This designation would help students who complete internships to stand out to employers in much the same way that students with high marks or honors already do.

The University of Leicester is considering a program that would award credits to students for demonstrating the ability to run workshops and perform well in presentations. University College London is investigating ways it may be able to qualify “employment skills” in addition to academic marks through internships and Durham University may begin awarding grades based on workplace experience alone. These institutions are seeking ways to recognize and reward hard working students and they are doing so in a way that would qualify students from many different majors, not just engineering or medicine.

At Turing College we’re interested in this trend because our goal is to prepare students to win top positions at leading organizations in cases where that is the student’s chosen direction. As internship completion becomes an increasingly important credential in the world job market, our students will be leaders. The TC environment fosters teamwork because many of our professors themselves are founders or top employees at leading companies. Our system functions as a dynamic think tank by connecting students to real world projects and even those helping to drive the school itself. By combining focused teaching systems with live projects and highly searchable material, more time can be spent in the role of an active apprentice and participant than just a student. Upon graduation, the system is left open so our students can come back to catch up on the latest material in their field and in turn provide real world projects to active students.

However misguided, many leading institutions structure all of their curriculum, and entire degrees, into fixed time periods. Consider the value we place in the the phrase “Four Year Degree” then consider the following statements. Going for a philosophy degree? Four Years. History? Four Years. Mechanical Engineering? Four Years. Underwater Basket Weaving? Four Years… Ignoring graduate studies for now, is there something magical about this time period so that every conceivable subject just happens to fit perfectly, or is it a side effect of one nation’s rigid educational system? Possibly an artifact from lower levels in a system that resembles daycare as much as training and enrichment. It seems more likely that making a degree fit into a commonly accepted time span has more to do with convenience for institutions than performance and benefit for students.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with educating oneself over the course of four years, the problem is that shoehorning every degree program into this common time span leads to compromises. First, what happens to a degree when it doesn’t quite fit? Logically, one of two things: Either the course material is shrunk or stretched to fit into the common time line. In Computer Science, it is obvious there is way more which could be taught that would better prepare students than there is time enough for presenting. Even at the best schools in the country, the actual curriculum leaves gigantic holes that are left up to the student to fill on the job or on their own. We needn’t blame these institutions, they do their best with the system they have, but at Turing College we believe there is a better way.

We acknowledge that learning and achievement is correlated with time spent practicing under good instruction. Practice makes perfect and this philosophy has been demonstrated with extended hours in primary schools such as SEED and others discussed in the recent movie Waiting for Superman. This is all well and good but in reality, time required to mastery varies per individual and this can be optimized with the right, more focused, environment.

Before going deeper into solutions, we should address the other annoying compromise that the “Four Year” mentality creates. No two students have ever, or will ever, learn at the same pace. If you take a class of 100 students, you will have exactly 100 different optimal learning rates. We don’t really know the standard deviation on that plot of learning rates, but anecdotal evidence says it is quite high. Anyone who has worked with groups of students has seen this natural range present itself, from the savant who gets every complex concept in seconds to the more deliberate learner who takes days or weeks to reach the same level of understanding. This is one of those classic problems in educational theory that has one very simple, yet nearly impossible to implement, solution. The solution is to present each student with one infinitely patient, flexible and understanding teacher who can focus on them to maintain engagement and learning at an individualized pace. Of course, it doesn’t work economically in the physical classroom (think tuition is high now, try funding a 1:1 student teacher ratio), but in theory it makes perfect sense. In fact, that’s the same reason good parenting plays such an important role in the success or failure of individual humans and why we have evolved physically and culturally to nurture and spend time with our kids.

If we were able to implement this theoretical solution it makes sense that the “Four Year” standard would quickly go away. Naturally, some children learn to walk sooner than others and it is the same all the way through to computer science and beyond. Instead, students would be measured by what they actually learned and how well they were able to put that knowledge into practice. The amount of time needed for a “Four Year” degree could vary from less than a year to 8 or 10 years, depending on the student’s abilities, goals, motivation and the degree in question. The college level experience would no longer be standardized but instead fully customized.

What would we gain, and what would we forgo with this model?

We gain:

• Ability to format education to the degree in question versus cramming and amputating curriculum to fit into a set time frame
• Ability to teach at an ideal rate for each individual student versus an acceptable average
• Students that are constantly challenged instead of cruising or drowning
• An abnormally top heavy bell-curve where time is variable versus level of success
• A fluid degree that can expand or contract with changing technology, research or market demands, one that could grow and continue as time passed
• A new emphasis on the end result of education (knowledge, capability, maturity) versus the process itself

We forgo:

• A social structure that depends more on cohorts and choice of dorm than common interests and goals. This is not all good (sometimes philosophy major roommates are really interesting)
• The whole concept of class scheduling. No more compromising on class choices because of time or day, conflicts or prerequisites, personal obligations or work schedule.

At Turing College, our approach to achieving better education is to use computer assisted learning. Our learning system assumes that a student is best served by the infinitely patient one-on-one teacher who will keep them constantly challenged and engaged. We are able to make this approach work physically and financially by partially automating two key parts of the learning process, explanation of new concepts and sequencing of classes. We are also able to improve on the personal aspect of education by tapping into professors who are purely focused on working through difficult problems with the students, evaluating progress and developing iterative material.

By detaching fixed time requirements from course material, more energy and focus can be placed on the value of teaching in and of itself. Less time is wasted, courses that need to go long can go long and student’s are not bored with filler material. This approach empowers teachers, invigorates students and improves education.

Step 1: Identify new knowledge or skills required to complete a task
Step 2: Learn said knowledge or skills
Step 3: Use knowledge or skills to complete said task

The time gap between these steps, especially between steps 2 and 3, tends to be very small. Even skills that would seemingly require months or years of traditional education to master become bite sized as they are made up from smaller subsets of skills which follow the identify, learn and execute model. Rarely, if ever, is the gap between steps 2 and 3 measured in months or years, and for good reason. The longer the gap between 2 and 3, the more of 2 we tend to forget and the worse we do at 3. Knowledge approaches zero as time approaches infinity. Alternatively, when learning on the job, gaps between use and reinforcement are small, we can call this pattern Just in Time learning.

In the college setting we teach our students incredibly complex concepts, filling them full of vast amounts of information not days, or weeks, or months before they will be able to use that knowledge, but years. In addition to teaching multiple subjects at once, we often introduce large gaps between similar subject matter which allows concepts to fade and atrophy further. In many cases the subjects available to students are dependent on outside factors such as registration time, year ranking or even fellow peers that have nothing to do with each individual students’ interest or readiness to progress themselves. We acknowledge that a majority of students will forget a majority of this knowledge (more than 90% according to some studies), but instead of figuring out a way for them to forget less, or reducing the gap between 2 and 3, our solution has been to pile on more knowledge, hoping that minimal retention will be enough. We tend to justify this gap in retention by accentuating the value of “learning how to learn”. In the most effective settings we encourage or even require reinforcements through internships and multi-year projects.

The following data was published on WIRED in an article discussing memory, learning and retention in 2008.

Retention, challenging as it may be, isn’t even the biggest problem students face. They also have to overcome lack of direction. On a macro level, step 3 (how students will use their knowledge) often lacks definition. A Computer Science graduate might go on to write Operating Systems, MMO’s, or design Databases, or any one of a thousand other specialties. So, how on earth do we optimize step 2 if we don’t have any real idea what, or even when, step 3 will be?

Well, we don’t. Instead we find the subset of the skills required in the most popular specialties in the field (especially the academic field). We figure out how much of that subset we can teach in 4ish years and we call it a curriculum. If we have really smart students (think MIT) we can make that subset larger, but we still use the same basic formula of stuffing more in. Since we don’t know exactly what 3 is, we have to teach the broadest skill-set possible, Just in Case students might need that knowledge.

The practice of Just in Case education is defensible under a few cases. First, for liberal arts education and second, for the somewhat vague concept of a well-rounded student. In these cases the lack of a well defined step 3 isn’t necessarily a negative. A larger subset of learning paired with “curing time” might actually be the best possible approach.

Defensible or not, Just in Case education is on the brink of extinction. The Internet, with its breadth and depth of instantly available information, is quickly killing much of the perceived value this structure presents. Especially in fields like Computer Science where a new technology can be born, live a full life, and die an honorable death in less time than it takes to build a Level 80 Paladin. Teaching a technology 4-5 years before it could be used in real life is difficult to justify. Even without a guide, or a degree, many students are opting to go it alone, choosing an imperfect Just in Time over a well refined Just in Case. This has been the case for many of the worlds most recognized and successful entrepreneurs working in the CS space.

Of course, there is a better way. With computer assisted learning, it is possible to sequence and pace curriculum and individual courses so that the gap between 2 and 3 is drastically reduced, greatly increasing the value of 2. Imagine an infinitely patient tutor who knows every subject and is aware of each student’s current place and desired endpoint. The tutor knows exactly what students will need to understand and master in order to achieve their next step 3, and is very careful to teach exactly that, just before it is needed.

This is the aim and philosophy behind Turing College. Highly focused education exactly when you need it.