“Will this be on the test?” – Rethinking online education • Hacker News Board

Re: “Will this be on the test?” – Rethinking online education

#11

Post by Joof » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 7:05 AM UTC

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #7

skywhopper wrote: post #2

I never fail to be surprised at the venom reserved for lecture as a core part of education. Sure there are poor lectures, but the good, engaged lectures an be remarkable learning opportunities. I learned the most in my college classes that had great lectures.

The available evidence shows that lectures are extremely poor at delivering conceptual understanding to students, even when delivered by relatively accomplished professors. In a wide range of lecture-based introductory physics courses, for example, if you measure conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics before and after the course, you find that students only learn about 25% of what they didn't understand at t…

Saving this. I've said it for years and people just think I'm whiney because I despise lectures.

Re: “Will this be on the test?” – Rethinking online education

#12

Post by Joof » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 7:09 AM UTC

Why not give them accreditation? Clearly completing them is an accomplishment.

There are other reasons to 'drop out'. I like to save courses on coursera because I can't do them during the imposed timeframe. Sometimes I don't really need the full course and only bits and pieces. Maybe I just want to check it out and the opportunity cost was very low.

Don't solve problems when there aren't any. The biggest one is accreditation. I was trapped in college far longer than I would have been if MOOCs were accredited courses.

Re: “Will this be on the test?” – Rethinking online education

#13

Post by zaccus » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 7:24 PM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #2

I never fail to be surprised at the venom reserved for lecture as a core part of education. Sure there are poor lectures, but the good, engaged lectures an be remarkable learning opportunities. I learned the most in my college classes that had great lectures.

If I'm going to get anything out of a lecture, I need to be able to effectively take notes on it. To do that, I need to be able to parse an hierarchy of concepts, aka an outline. You know:

I. Blah A. Sub-blah 1 B. Sub-blah 2 II. Foobar A. Sub-foobar 1

etc. If I can't determine how to organize my notes, then it's not really a lecture. It's just someone talking haphazardly about something they know way more about than I do. If they're introducing any concepts that I'm not already familiar with, I'll be lost pretty quickly.

This isn't a huge ask is it? I don't need an explicit outline written on the board for me. All I need is a little recognizable organization, and I can figure it out from there. Otherwise, I'm usually better served by reading a good textbook.

The hardest class I ever had in school wasn't hard because of the material, it was hard because there was no textbook and the lectures were extremely disorganized, just random ideas that weren't linked together in any obvious way. There's no need for that.

Re: “Will this be on the test?” – Rethinking online education

#14

Post by vinchuco » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 3:56 AM UTC

kdkooo wrote: post #9

Why does the percentage of dropouts from an online class matter? Do the issues raised in this article really need to be addressed? There are still so many people benefiting from successfully completing these courses, and learning new information. Do the people who don't, or who try and then give up, really affect the value of the opportunity online education brings?

It depends. What is the final purpose of education?

Re: “Will this be on the test?” – Rethinking online education

#15

Post by gergoerdi » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 7:15 AM UTC

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #7

skywhopper wrote: post #2

I never fail to be surprised at the venom reserved for lecture as a core part of education. Sure there are poor lectures, but the good, engaged lectures an be remarkable learning opportunities. I learned the most in my college classes that had great lectures.

The available evidence shows that lectures are extremely poor at delivering conceptual understanding to students, even when delivered by relatively accomplished professors. In a wide range of lecture-based introductory physics courses, for example, if you measure conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics before and after the course, you find that students only learn about 25% of what they didn't understand at t…

But a good lecture is exactly one that enables you to do the prediction/explanation/result checking feedback on your own.

For example, a good maths lecture is one where you can always have an idea of what you would do for the next step in a proof, so every step actually taken is something you can compare against what you would have taken.

Re: “Will this be on the test?” – Rethinking online education

#16

Post by Joof » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #7

skywhopper wrote: post #2

I never fail to be surprised at the venom reserved for lecture as a core part of education. Sure there are poor lectures, but the good, engaged lectures an be remarkable learning opportunities. I learned the most in my college classes that had great lectures.

The available evidence shows that lectures are extremely poor at delivering conceptual understanding to students, even when delivered by relatively accomplished professors. In a wide range of lecture-based introductory physics courses, for example, if you measure conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics before and after the course, you find that students only learn about 25% of what they didn't understand at t…

Looking at [4] they use it to say that a teacher / professor is necessary over coursera or similar.

Given that almost all courses I took in college were the lecture / hw / exam model, I don't think that conclusion fits their claim.

Video games are excellent at teaching in a similar manner (the witness is very much like a math course that just happens to be made up). I see no reason why the digital medium can't have an equal or better experience. Good coursera courses often seem fairly interactive and the lecture itself isn't necessarily the focal point of the class.