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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

#81

Post by Avicebron »

marianov wrote: post #79
nanna wrote: post #36

It should be noted that such a slick class has had the priviledge of being granted the kind of institutional suport which is extremely rare across higher education today, at least in the West. Being allocated the same module for 13 years? Having it be the only module you teach? Having an entire production team at the ready? It's a mistake to think this is one man's achievement, and a model to universities everywhere…

I think states could produce such quality lessons, for free. The ROI of these would be enormous if proper internet access given to schools and households. Why have 10.000 poor versions of a lesson accross the country instead of teachers or parents guiding classes based on curated, great online classes? Gilbert Strang comes to mind as an example of great explanations without the TV Show production quality. I wish my c…

I wish there was a huge push into Khan academy, but for more advanced topics e.g. graduate level with clear course structure.

I really think this could feed into a rich ecosystem of free, online distributed research and publications. Ideally that could lead to public grants and funding for research outside of the university system.

Maybe one day.

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

#82

Post by bachmeier »

aspaviento wrote: post #70
bachmeier wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This research, out of Harvard, disagrees:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/09/study-shows-t...

That's certainly not the only evidence that passive lecturing isn't particularly effective:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/lectures-arent-just-...

It's not hard to find other papers showing the same thing.

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

#83

Post by jacobolus »

Arete314159 wrote: post #75
sukilot wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Word. The 1990's CS50/CS51 course enrolled both students who'd gotten a "5" in the CS AP and students who didn't know what a for loop was. It felt like learning to swim while simultaneously drowning.

The even sillier split-audience course in the mid 2000s was CS121, the intro CS theory course.

More or less a math course, but required for CS students, the audience included a mix of advanced math students (including e.g. some IMO winners) and programmers without any math background.

The result was that half the class felt it was incredibly easy and slow-paced (at least for the first month; later the problems got tedious and fiddly for everyone), and the other half was completely overwhelmed.

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

#84

Post by jessaustin »

Arete314159 wrote: post #75
sukilot wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Word. The 1990's CS50/CS51 course enrolled both students who'd gotten a "5" in the CS AP and students who didn't know what a for loop was. It felt like learning to swim while simultaneously drowning.

CS51 in 1997 (to specify the version to which I was exposed) was a great deal of work, but it wasn't beyond the capability of the average Harvard student. After all, as mentioned ITT, the Great Pointer Winnowing had taken place in CS50. Maybe I'm speaking from privilege, since I had coded some BASIC in 8th grade...

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

#85

Post by erikbye »

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'm not bashing the lecture style, but if I were a student, I'd prefer a good textbook to those lectures.

There are supplemental textbooks listed for the course:

https://cs50.harvard.edu/college/2020/spring/syllabus/#books

Also, confused why you expect depth from something with "intro" in its title.

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

#86

Post by nogabebop23 »

wastedhours wrote: post #62
randcraw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is totally backwards, as these classes are the point of contact where energetic, motivated new students get that magical passion that pushes them into an entire life in the field. When I was in grad school and expressed a desire to focus on teaching, primarily 100 & 200 level courses my supervisor said "that's the punishment we reserve for those who are failing in their research". Totally crushed my desire to work at converting tangential students into future leaders in our field.

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

#87

Post by bakuninsbart »

nanna wrote: post #36

It should be noted that such a slick class has had the priviledge of being granted the kind of institutional suport which is extremely rare across higher education today, at least in the West. Being allocated the same module for 13 years? Having it be the only module you teach? Having an entire production team at the ready? It's a mistake to think this is one man's achievement, and a model to universities everywhere…

I'm studying CS in Germany at a relatively prestigious institution, and I've gotta say that this online semester has been by far my most productive. Usually I have big problems juggling work, personal life (in 3 different countries) and university education, with everything moving online this has been far easier. Cutting out a 2 hour daily commute has given me a substantial amount of freetime, and the ability to rewatch lectures, pause them, make a coffee in between etc. has given me a much deeper understanding of the topics covered this summer.

An online university would have probably been a better fit for me in the first place, but at the time I didn't want to do it due to the reduced prestige associated with it.

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

#89

Post by colinmhayes »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #87
nanna wrote: post #36

It should be noted that such a slick class has had the priviledge of being granted the kind of institutional suport which is extremely rare across higher education today, at least in the West. Being allocated the same module for 13 years? Having it be the only module you teach? Having an entire production team at the ready? It's a mistake to think this is one man's achievement, and a model to universities everywhere…

I'm studying CS in Germany at a relatively prestigious institution, and I've gotta say that this online semester has been by far my most productive. Usually I have big problems juggling work, personal life (in 3 different countries) and university education, with everything moving online this has been far easier. Cutting out a 2 hour daily commute has given me a substantial amount of freetime, and the ability to rewa…

I just graduated from a top ten computer science program in the world. The department recorded all the lectures. By the time you got to the upper level classes completely booked 200+ person lecture halls would have less than 50 students show up because everyone watched online. The recording system allowed you to watch at 1.5 or 2x speed and skip to the next slide when someone asked a stupid question. The math department had a similar system for the calculus courses except they modeled the schedule around MIT's and just posted the MIT lectures that corresponded to each class.

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

#90

Post by MiroF »

Avicebron wrote: post #81
marianov wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think states could produce such quality lessons, for free. The ROI of these would be enormous if proper internet access given to schools and households. Why have 10.000 poor versions of a lesson accross the country instead of teachers or parents guiding classes based on curated, great online classes? Gilbert Strang comes to mind as an example of great explanations without the TV Show production quality. I wish my c…

I wish there was a huge push into Khan academy, but for more advanced topics e.g. graduate level with clear course structure. I really think this could feed into a rich ecosystem of free, online distributed research and publications. Ideally that could lead to public grants and funding for research outside of the university system. Maybe one day.

This seems so obviously important to me and yet there is pretty much no will to do it in the government.
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