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Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
121–130 of 136 posts
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is there a need to blame anyone? The goal is for students to learn, not that they show up in class out of duty. If they found a more efficient way to learn from the class that involves not showing up in person, I think they should be encouraged to do it.
I have a fundamental belief that delivering a lecture is an active experience. I use and gauge student reactions to questions or comments to tell how well a class is receiving the information I am presenting. I also use it to pinpoint possible weaknesses of the class (did they miss the point of a prerequisite class, for example). If I am not doing that, what's the point of a "lecture"? Otherwise, you might as well re…
You may want it to be an active experience, but it will only be an active experience for those who choose to actively participate. Some students just don't learn that way and likely won't actively participate even if they show up to class. Those who want to actively participate will show up to class even if they have the option not to. There are other forms of getting feedback and interacting with students. Email and office hours for example. Also, I disagree that textbooks are faster. Maybe they are if you are an expert in the topic, but if you are not (and hence taking a course on it) in my experience the average lecture is still easier and quicker to learn from than reading the textbook (except for exceptionally well written textbooks).
I was one of those students who didn't learn by actively participating and I always felt like I had trouble learning in class. The school I did my PhD in started using online tools for some of the courses and I found that I learned way better when I watched the online lectures. A big issue I always had in class is when the lecturer explains something that is obvious to me in great detail, or just speaks slowly in general I find myself daydreaming and once I snap out of it I may have fallen behind and not be able to follow the rest of the lecture well. Online lectures at 2x speed are way more interesting for me and I almost never daydream. If I feel tired I can pause for a couple of minutes and stand up and stretch or walk around the room. If I miss a detail I can go back and replay it again. I would still attend office hours and email the professors though. What I learned from the online lectures also stuck with me much longer.
At the end of the day, students are paying an enourmous amount of money to learn, and I feel it shouldn't matter if the way they learn it by not showing up to class. Especially if they learn it better by not showing up to class.
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#123It 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…
Why are we doing these "privilege" callouts? What does this add to the discussion? Should Malan apologize? Should the New Yorker apologize for him? Individuals are regularly used metonymically to represent a larger system. And those systems need a "face", because without it we don't care about the story.
You’re too used to privlage being used as a pejorative I think. It’s highly relevant that if a school admin wanted to use Malan’s work as an example to base some classes off of, that they can’t just throw a teacher at their normal course load and expect anything close to that level of work. I know many teachers in the public school system who’s admins don’t seem to realize how difficult a good online syllabus is to put together, and those administrators could do to be reminded that you need to put a lot of resources behind someone if you want quality work from them.
It’s not a bad thing that Malan has the privilege to be in a position where he can successfully focus on perfecting a single class. In fact it’s fantastic for us all that he’s doing this work. It’s just important to acknowledge the privileges he has so we don’t look at normal teachers and say “if you only tried a bit harder, couldn’t you do something like this?” It’s not just about effort and intelligence, it’s also about the resources that are put behind the educator.
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#124I agree that Malan is an amazing educator and both energetic and energizing. I took CS50 via the Extension School, and got a chance to meet him when we showcased our final project. He is very approachable and down-to-Earth. But what was the point of contrasting his “glossy black hair” with the white hair of MIT’s Grimson/Guttag? Very cheap shot, and not even subtly ageist.
I don’t think the intention was to deliver a cheap shot, or at least I hope not. In many ways I liked MIT’s courses better but the contrast is clear. Ideally in the future everything will be online (at least partially) and students will be guided towards the style that serves them best. I have an in-person degree from a top public school with nearly 40k students and I also have an online cs degree from a mid level public school. I can do without the big lecture halls that have 300+ students. Just let me watch the video on my own schedule. I crave the small discussion sections where I can ask questions, draw on a board, hear other students questions etc...
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is there a need to blame anyone? The goal is for students to learn, not that they show up in class out of duty. If they found a more efficient way to learn from the class that involves not showing up in person, I think they should be encouraged to do it.
I have a fundamental belief that delivering a lecture is an active experience. I use and gauge student reactions to questions or comments to tell how well a class is receiving the information I am presenting. I also use it to pinpoint possible weaknesses of the class (did they miss the point of a prerequisite class, for example). If I am not doing that, what's the point of a "lecture"? Otherwise, you might as well re…
If I could have when I was in college, I totally would have just watched the 100+ people lectures online. If I wanted clarification office hours were always more useful, and most of my teachers and TAs were very pleasant to engage in that context. Thankfully most of my classes were more on the 20-30 person scale (all of them in CS) where attending felt much more valuable. The few 12 person classes I had were undoubtably the sweet spot though, with enough peers around to make discussion interesting but much more engagement between students and the professor. Not that I expect most classes to be at that size, it would just be a better world if they magically could be.
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#126Earlier 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.
Pretty sure this will help them move in that direction:
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#127It 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…
Yep. Tufts had a professor who was nationally recognized for incredible intro CS lessons: https://www.computer.org/profiles/benjamin-hescott They denied him tenure: https://tuftsdaily.com/news/2017/08/29/professor-computer-sc...
Malan is a "Professor of the Practice". That means teaching only. There may be some kind of job security for such teaching roles, but it's not a tenured nor tenure-track title. Usually just a fixed contract you have to repeatedly renew like visiting professor (but possibly with less degree requirements).
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I don't know whether to blame the professor or the students here--my gut feel is to blame the professor. I taught at a far less "prestigious" university and that wasn't my experience. I used to record all my CS lectures and practically all my students s…
Everyone went to discussions, and office hours were effectively mandatory, so there was still plenty of staff interaction. In the end I don't feel like I miss much by watching lectures online. I honestly believe asking questions during lecture is extremely disrespectful bordering on immoral when there are more than 100 people listening, so why show up?
What if it's a good question?
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#129Taking 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…
You are probably an exception: self motivated individual.
The rest of us, which I assume is a big majority: prefer video over text, are more engaged by visual interactions, and still found big parts of this material hard to grasp, not to mention the preference for the free availability of the material.
Re: Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having an entire production team at the ready? THIS. So much. Having just done an online talk, I can tell you that the audio-visual stuff was BY FAR the most annoying. More expensive webcam, add way more lighting to my office, get an expensive lavalier mic (highly recommended for lectures--earphones with boom mics drive me nuts as the monitoring has enough delay to be annoying--probably could remove that with a $50…
This begs to normalized and sold as a package for both providers and consumers.
The problem is that this effectively requires that you set up all the equipment in a place and make people come to that.
Not a great thing in the middle of Covid.
However, once Covid passes, perhaps WeWork should try this with all their real estate to avoid going bankrupt.