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Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire

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

#61

Post by programmertote »

cosmodisk wrote: post #55

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 gu…

Agree. I have taken classes with over 40+ professors (close to 50, but I have also taken two or three classes with some profs) in my undergrad and grad school. Out of them, I can recall ~5 being pretty good instructors. Being a professor does not guarantee one is a good teacher/instructor.

The thing that sets apart good instructors from mediocre ones is the passion they have toward teaching (esp. the good ones seem to have empathy as in they want students to succeed and understand the materials that the instructors themselves probably took a good amount of time digesting when they were in students' shoes).

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

#62

Post by wastedhours »

randcraw wrote: post #46
AlexCoventry wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the institutional incentive to switch up the teacher of a module?

Usually it frees up the prior instructor to a) teach a more advanced course or one that's closer to their research interests rather than teach the same beginner level course over and over, or b) conduct research, which is why most tier 1 research uni profs took the job anyway. Most major research uni profs are obliged to teach 2-3 courses per semester. Most would prefer to teach fewer or more advanced courses. Only t…

> that's less than 10% of profs at big name research-driven schools

From my experience that extends quite a bit further than that too even for a university that wasn't research heavy. I'd argue about half of my lecturers at university back in the day saw Level 1 classes not only as a hassle, but had active disdain for teaching them.

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

#63

Post by paulcarroty »

I've ended Harvard CS50 course and should say he's definitely one of the best, rockstar-like. Also seen tons of MIT, Berkeley and another courses from Coursera & Edx, so maybe can do the basic comparison.

Secret maybe in very good covering of complex stuff and teaching style: pressure, fast moving between topics, playing with auditory in tv-show format, and nearly screaming to get attention while needed.

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

#64

Post by sseagull »

CydeWeys wrote: post #60
jimhefferon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In theory, yes. However teachers need to adapt materials to their own style of teaching and to their audience. It can be very hard in practice to teach someone else's materials and have it be 'good' and engaging.

Think of it like cover bands. They don't play it exactly the way the original band does - they adapt it to their own style. So while the original work is 'done', there is still a lot more work to do.

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

#66

Post by compscistd »

I met Professor Malan once and asked him for some advice on overcoming imposter syndrome. His advice was a matter-of-fact, learn the things you feel like you don't know and it shouldn't be an issue. I still feel like that sometimes, but the way MOOCs are today makes it easier to approach anything I feel like I don't know.

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

#67

Post by sukilot »

arcturus17 wrote: post #37
bachmeier wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1. There’s a companion C book for the course 2. The labs go into much more detail compared to lectures 3. The psets can be Nintendo-hard; you’ll be doing devilish pointer stuff by week 3 or 4. The happy-go-lucky, flashy tone of the course is completely misleading. It is a challenging course, so much so that it’s been the subject of numerous cheating scandals from students caving under the pressure over the years. As…

You are conflating the pre-Malan intense weedout "I survived CS50" CS50 with Malan's kinder gentler easier more superficial CS50.

Malan's innovation was to change "Intro to CS" from "let's see who knew CS before they got here" to "Intro to CS"

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

#68

Post by mettamage »

programmertote wrote: post #61
cosmodisk wrote: post #55

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 gu…

Agree. I have taken classes with over 40+ professors (close to 50, but I have also taken two or three classes with some profs) in my undergrad and grad school. Out of them, I can recall ~5 being pretty good instructors. Being a professor does not guarantee one is a good teacher/instructor. The thing that sets apart good instructors from mediocre ones is the passion they have toward teaching (esp. the good ones seem t…

Can confirm this. I taught for a bit (coding bootcamp, 1 year). I was super excited my first 3 months (it normalized after that) and during the whole year I had a lot of empathy in the sense that I felt their pain. It’s easy to feel someone’s pain when you yourself felt it a great deal as well back then.

I was at my best during those first months. Experience and empathy all help but I could notice how being only slightly enthusiastic was hindering my performance.

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

#70

Post by aspaviento »

bachmeier wrote: post #45
arcturus17 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There’s a companion C book for the course 2. The labs go into much more detail compared to lectures 3. The psets can be Nintendo-hard; you’ll be doing devilish pointer stuff by week 3 or 4. The happy-go-lucky, flashy tone of the course is completely misleading. It is a challenging course, so much so that it’s been the subject of numerous cheating scandals from students caving under the pressure over the years. As…

My comments were focused specifically on the lecture style - I just don't see the CS50 lectures as particularly effective. The students are almost certainly doing their learning by reading the textbook, attending the labs, and doing the problem sets that you mention. I have trouble seeing how the lectures contribute to truly learning the material. They're designed for passive consumption. I wasn't referring to depth…

> Passive consumption of an entertaining lecture doesn't help much.

I wholeheartedly disagree. It's said on a video linked in another comment, students can learn by associating the emotions they are experiencing with the content they are receiving. Specially if his classes are that outstanding.

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