Surprising Things About School • Hacker News Board

Re: Surprising Things About School

#151

Post by throwawayjava » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #147

astrodev wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do most people learn well from traditional methods though? If dropping out of a MOOC involved a big financial hit, social humiliation, and the loss of a great deal of personal freedom, the completion rates would skyrocket. Completely different incentives. The reasoning that traditional education is successful because it has high completion rates because of external pressures is a bit circular, isn't it?

Perhaps. The question is which of those things really move the needle; can you have some, not all? For example, our completion rates are 90%+ - better than universities, but there is no social humiliation, loss of personal freedom, or financial hit.

What is the typical demographic of your cohorts? How do you compare to college programs that have similar cohort demographics?

I think all educational outcomes should be measured with respect to the answers to these two questions.

K12 schools in extremely wealthy areas can compare themselves to like peers, but comparing themselves to high-poverty areas is a useless comparison. Neither institution would do well under the other's constraints.

For-profit higher ed is definitely the same way.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#152

Post by dpark » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:00 PM UTC

lambda_lover wrote: post #143

dpark wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For people where the $15K difference matters a great deal, the tuition at the elite school is increasingly likely to be greatly reduced or free. This isn’t entirely true. Tuition aid for most students is based on the parents’ income. My parents are (and were when I went to school) upper middle class on paper. They have never been great with money, though, so they couldn’t cover tuition out of picket and hadn’t set…

Exactly the same experience here -- my mother got a bachelor's right before my brothers and I went to college, which just ended up penalizing us because it looked like we should have a lot more savings than we really had. I think there's a very very small portion of the population who gets their tuition reduced enough to be comfortable. Loans end up covering the rest, so yeah, your average student really does pay clo…

The real issue is that we want "means testing" for tuition but almost no students have significant "means". So you either make (at least public) universities free, or you make the rather strange assumption that a bunch of adults will be handed tens of thousands of dollars from their parents. In pretty much no other case do determine social program eligibility of an adult by means testing different adults.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#153

Post by austenallred » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #151

austenallred wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. The question is which of those things really move the needle; can you have some, not all? For example, our completion rates are 90%+ - better than universities, but there is no social humiliation, loss of personal freedom, or financial hit.

What is the typical demographic of your cohorts? How do you compare to college programs that have similar cohort demographics? I think all educational outcomes should be measured with respect to the answers to these two questions. K12 schools in extremely wealthy areas can compare themselves to like peers, but comparing themselves to high-poverty areas is a useless comparison. Neither institution would do well under…

We're very spread out, general lower income, more black/latinx than white, so it's not a case of us just grabbing the rich kids.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#154

Post by andreykurenkov » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:27 PM UTC

" 99% of people, when left long blocks of time alone to work on something without anyone to be accountable to, will watch Netflix."

Do people on here agree with this? I think that is far too cynical... education (even this guy's education) tends to be misaligned from a person's actual interests, and so most would rather not do it in their free time. But I do think people want to do work/productive things and not just watch Netflix.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#155

Post by andreykurenkov » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:29 PM UTC

tsumnia wrote: post #100

artimaeis wrote: post #79

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a singl…

Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms. However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to tak…

I suspect something like Udacity (on which classes rae not free and there are more structures 'degree' programs) has far higher completion rates, since it's not reasonable to just impulsively sign up and then stop. That is certainly true for something like Georgia Tech's OMCS. I still think the hype was justified in that stuff like OMCS is legitimately the future of education.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#156

Post by neves » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:31 PM UTC

Chathamization wrote: post #136

tsumnia wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms. However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to tak…

> some never even log in to take MOOCs they register for I've done this many times. Why? On some platforms (like Coursera) you retain access to the content of a course you have registered for, but that content isn't available for people who didn't register once the class is over. If I think I might ever want to view that content, my best bet is to register (there's no cost) and then have that content available when I…

I still miss the excellent Dive into Python. Last commit was 7 years ago.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#157

Post by ebiester » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:43 PM UTC

andreykurenkov wrote: post #154

" 99% of people, when left long blocks of time alone to work on something without anyone to be accountable to, will watch Netflix." Do people on here agree with this? I think that is far too cynical... education (even this guy's education) tends to be misaligned from a person's actual interests, and so most would rather not do it in their free time. But I do think people want to do work/productive things and not just…

It depends. Most people are exhausted at the end of the workday. It isn't the time that is the key component; it's the energy.

Give me a few days to a week of pure relaxation, and my creative juices start to flow.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#158

Post by tsumnia » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

Chathamization wrote: post #146

tsumnia wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the big failings of MOOCs is that they try to copy university classes, and university classes just aren't that good a lot of the time We are still trying to understand what makes for better "learning". If I practice the piano everyday, I will no doubt have a better ability to play, but I may not understand music theory. As a shameless plug, I am trying to add practice to be a core part of learning Computer Science…

> This is ultimately student preference. Sure. But the last time I checked, almost all MOOCs were lecture focused. Like I said, I've yet to find any with a text component as good as Dive Into Python or Learn C the Hard Way or other free online textbooks. Perhaps there's are a few out there, but every time I've browsed MOOCs I've found just about everyone to be lecture focused. Out of the dozens I've looked at (on mul…

(I will ask if you could define "community building" a little more. You did not in your original post, and it seems my assumption was incorrect. Before trying to address better, I'd like to have a more concrete definition)

While I cannot speak for all MOOCS, I have not had the same experience. MIT's CS 6.00x course on EdX was work heavy, Udacity's Web Development course was work heavy, and even Coursera's Design of Everyday Things had participation components. In the only (barely a) MOOC that was video only, it was predominantly a "follow along with me" coding process.

For instructor lectures, I give more positive responses than negative about my anecdotes. At the end of the day, I'm human and I'm trying to enjoy my job (which students can tell if you don't). Development of tutoring systems is still in research phases as we identify knowledge components for different subjects. A history course operates different than a computer science course.

I will say EdX has produced research on instructor lecture videos. Users prefer 3-5 videos and so instructors should design courses like that. Instructors that simply upload a classroom lecture are not appropriately transitioning their material for online use. This satisfies your being able to flip from topic to topic.

I will end the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that students are not the best at assessing what they know and that a professional instructor has a better idea of what "knowing" something means. This again gets back to my discussion on vocational vs. graduate school and again, humans are flawed, imperfect beings. While an intelligent tutoring system can alleviate this issue, humans are still building them for the foreseeable future.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#159

Post by watwut » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #105

watwut wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the "let's see if this person is serious" task?

Something very basic, such as "comment what you're working on so I can help" or "just write me a brief email outlining what you want to learn" or "you are aware learning to be a developer takes more than 2 or 3 months from zero knowledge, right?"

6% success rate does not seem to be that bad result, honestly. Good work I guess :). It sounds to be good preliminary test, sort of primary checks whether that person is suitable for this kind of mentoring.

I remember myself testing waters or getting interested/curious in multiple things dropping out of most rarely keeping only some. Even within same general area sometimes I was motivated to continue and other times not.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#160

Post by Chathamization » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

tsumnia wrote: post #158

Chathamization wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is ultimately student preference. Sure. But the last time I checked, almost all MOOCs were lecture focused. Like I said, I've yet to find any with a text component as good as Dive Into Python or Learn C the Hard Way or other free online textbooks. Perhaps there's are a few out there, but every time I've browsed MOOCs I've found just about everyone to be lecture focused. Out of the dozens I've looked at (on mul…

(I will ask if you could define "community building" a little more. You did not in your original post, and it seems my assumption was incorrect. Before trying to address better, I'd like to have a more concrete definition) While I cannot speak for all MOOCS, I have not had the same experience. MIT's CS 6.00x course on EdX was work heavy, Udacity's Web Development course was work heavy, and even Coursera's Design of E…

> Users prefer 3-5 videos and so instructors should design courses like that. Instructors that simply upload a classroom lecture are not appropriately transitioning their material for online use. This satisfies your being able to flip from topic to topic.

In my personal experience, it really doesn't. Breaking something into segments can make things a bit easier, but it still leads to a lot of wasteful time if there's a minute and a half of useful information within an 8 minutes block. You can't scan through it the way you can with a book, and it's much more difficult to review a difficult piece of information you just received (it's easy to re-read a sentence slowly, whereas rewind a video to the beginning of the last sentence is more cumbersome and you're going to be watching it at the same speed).

Text also tends to be much more succinct, where as lectures are often repetitive and meandering.

I think the assumption that multiple video segments solves the problem is instructive. Might not a large part of the problem be instructors saying "We've done X, which has solved Y issue" instead of saying "We've done X, let's look at whether or not it has solved Y issue"? I appreciate the fact that people are attempting to solve these issues, but if there's no differentiation between attempting to solve something and successfully solving something than it shouldn't be a surprise

> I will end the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that students are not the best at assessing what they know and that a professional instructor has a better idea of what "knowing" something means.

This is a pretty big assumption, and one that I don't think is accurate (based on personal experience, and my experience talking with both students and professors). The best way I've found to test one's ability is to actually apply it to a task, where it usually becomes quickly clear to the individual where the holes in their understanding are.