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Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

newyorker.com

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Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#51

Post by superhuzza »

bachmeier wrote: post #33
cjf4 wrote: post #7

Taking CS50 feels similar to watching a movie that has an auteur’s fingerprints all over it. Every word in the lecture, every technology, and every problem set has been carefully crafted to fit together to create a cohesive experience. College instructors everywhere should take the course to see what the zenith of multimedia online education looks like.

I've watched some of the lectures of CS50 in the past, and the one question that has always come into my mind is this: "How do these lectures help you learn at a deep level?" I already knew most of the material, so I found it to be an entertaining review, but that's different from a beginner needing to learn new material at a deep level. I kind of think it'd be a nightmare to take good notes while watching his lectur…

>I've watched some of the lectures of CS50 in the past, and the one question that has always come into my mind is this: "How do these lectures help you learn at a deep level?"

I learned basic programming by doing CS50x. The purpose of the lectures is to introduce the concepts in an engaging way, and spark interest in doing it yourself. Then the learning happens in the weekly assignments, where you have to actually implement the ideas and get your code past the automated testing. I'd say the assignments are 3/4 of the course.

It's a very nice introduction to programming for someone who hasn't done any before. And in the end that's what it is - an introduction, not a deep dive.

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#52

Post by cosmodisk »

bachmeier wrote: post #33
cjf4 wrote: post #7

Taking CS50 feels similar to watching a movie that has an auteur’s fingerprints all over it. Every word in the lecture, every technology, and every problem set has been carefully crafted to fit together to create a cohesive experience. College instructors everywhere should take the course to see what the zenith of multimedia online education looks like.

I've watched some of the lectures of CS50 in the past, and the one question that has always come into my mind is this: "How do these lectures help you learn at a deep level?" I already knew most of the material, so I found it to be an entertaining review, but that's different from a beginner needing to learn new material at a deep level. I kind of think it'd be a nightmare to take good notes while watching his lectur…

That's why it's called an intro course: it covers a lot but none of it too deep. From what I understand the course is taken not by those who've been doing programming since childhood but also by those in almost completely unrelated fields. There's plenty of courses that can be taken later that go very deep.

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#53

Post by ashtonbaker »

valuearb wrote: post #47
jcq3 wrote: post #35

Perhaps people appreciate this course because the prestigious Harvard school is behind it. I would traduce that bias by "a good school involves necessarily good courses" . Is it true though?

My wife watched his class on the architecture of the internet. She’s not technical at all but was absorbed by it to the end. And I never told her it was from Harvard.

Which course is this? I feel like I've seen it but I'm not able to find it with an internet search.

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#54

Post by jimhefferon »

CydeWeys wrote: post #38

> Malan sees it differently: it is wasteful, he said, to have thousands of teachers, in computer science or other fields, all doing the work of devising similar curricula. Good programmers spend much of their time “refactoring” software—editing it to reduce inefficiencies, or “code bloat.” Malan’s teaching method pursues a similar objective. “I don’t think we want just one introduction to computer science and one int…

An awful lot of good teaching is interpersonal. There is a long history of didn't-work's in educational tech and often it is because the hard part is not the material, it is having students form the right mental models. That involves motivating them, adjusting the flow of information, and helping them as they go through a sequence of successive approximations. Basically, at least until now, it involves working with people.

Of course, things can change and this course is certainly very admirable. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#55

Post by cosmodisk »

Take aside the crew that does all the filming and editing and the fact that they can have guests like Zuckerberg or Ballmer,and you have a passionate tutor,who is willing to go extra mile. When I was at school, I only had 2 teachers like this- won't forget them for my entire life. At uni, most were so so( as the whole uni itsel) and often more interested in anything but teaching. However, briefly,we had an ex HSBC guy,who was the finance professor. The guy was funny, captivating and knew his shit inside out. When asked why he left banking,he did say he was finding academia more interesting. And he was a perfect fit. A lot of people are good at doing research but they may not be very good teachers,or not at least in the setting most of us are familiar with( large audiences,one guy delivering knowledge). I had a chance to watch som recorded lectures from MIT, Harvard,and some other famous institutions and the quality of teaching some( not all though) manage to deliver is exceptional.

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#57

Post by zaphod4prez »

mathattack wrote: post #56

I took the class. What didn’t scale were the TAs. It took 2 months to get anything graded. Malan’s response was “The TA will grade it within a week.” I suspect they’ve automated since.

Yep, grading is fully automated now!

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#58

Post by CydeWeys »

bachmeier wrote: post #50
CydeWeys wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not bashing the lecture style, but if I were a student, I'd prefer a good textbook to those lectures. I suspect you're in the minority here. The majority of students are more engaged by a good professor lecturing on material than by reading a textbook. This is especially true for introductory classes which CS50 is, because a lot of the students are from other majors and are being introduced to the entire field…

> I suspect you're in the minority here. The majority of students are more engaged by a good professor lecturing on material than by reading a textbook. Me too. I'm not saying that in general textbooks are better than lectures, I'm saying the lecture style of this class is sufficiently ineffective that I don't see how it's worth anyone's time to watch. In contrast, Martin Odersky's lectures are designed to effectivel…

> I'm saying the lecture style of this class is sufficiently ineffective that I don't see how it's worth anyone's time to watch.

Again, you're incorrectly extrapolating from your minority view and making global statements about how it's not worth anyone else's time. This lecture style is very effective for most people and is absolutely worth their time. Witness how highly rated the class is, and how successful it is at drawing people in to the major.

> The style definitely doesn't work for me.

That is a fair statement. But saying it's not worth anyone's time absolutely isn't, and is directly contradicted by the fact that this class is in fact highly successful, well-rated, and does a good job of accomplishing its goal of introducing people to the field.

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#59

Post by tijuco2 »

"you don't need to attend Harvard" says the guy who attended Harvard. It sounds like a guy from a rich family who after failing some business, finally succeeded and then says: "if you fail, try again, don't give up". They just forgot that most people can't fail. That's a stupid advice

Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

#60

Post by CydeWeys »

jimhefferon wrote: post #54
CydeWeys wrote: post #38

> Malan sees it differently: it is wasteful, he said, to have thousands of teachers, in computer science or other fields, all doing the work of devising similar curricula. Good programmers spend much of their time “refactoring” software—editing it to reduce inefficiencies, or “code bloat.” Malan’s teaching method pursues a similar objective. “I don’t think we want just one introduction to computer science and one int…

An awful lot of good teaching is interpersonal. There is a long history of didn't-work's in educational tech and often it is because the hard part is not the material, it is having students form the right mental models. That involves motivating them, adjusting the flow of information, and helping them as they go through a sequence of successive approximations. Basically, at least until now, it involves working with p…

Absolutely, and it would be great if teachers were able to fully dedicate themselves to optimizing the inter-personal aspects of it rather than also having to do all this other work of lecture/lesson planning, coming up with curricula, etc. We ask far too much of our teachers/professors, and realistically, most of them are not going to do remotely as good of a job as Dr. Malan has here on CS50. So if you're teaching an intro CS class, use his materials rather than coming up with your own! Same for any other subject; we just need all these ideal materials to be available for every imaginable class targeting every possible age level (elementary on up). Admittedly it's a big a lift, but a seemingly necessary one.

And yes, I know a lot of this already exists to some extent, but where it gets lost is in its availability, centralization, and being targeted at teachers only rather than also being available to the students.

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