Udacity Cancels Free Online Math Course, Citing Low Quality

Jeffrey Young:

Udacity, a start-up company offering free online courses, last week canceled a course, "Logic and Discrete Mathematics," that was due to begin this summer, saying the lectures and materials it had prepared on the topic did not live up to its quality standards.

"We recorded the entire class and edited most of it, but in our internal tests it didn't meet our quality bar," said Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, in an e-mail interview on Sunday. "We have an enormous respect for our students' time and don't want to release anything that wouldn't meet our bar."

He declined to say how many students had signed up for the course or to answer further questions about the future of the offering.

The course had originally been slated to start in June. At first Udacity officials announced that it would be delayed a few weeks. But last week they said they would "not be launching this course."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 22, 2012 1:28 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas