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Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

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Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#191

Post by souprock »

We don't, at least not with general-purpose computers. There are too many distractions. It's a disaster.

Students need to access school web sites which include links to book publishers and YouTube. There might be math videos on YouTube, but everything else is far more interesting. Video games get to be an enormous problem. Just having web access is enough to support a game addiction. Even something like Khan Academy or Scratch becomes a gaming platform, because programming is available and people have written games there.

Right now I'm relying on time-intensive and error-prone supervision. The computer is unlocked, observed while in use, and then locked. It's miserable for everybody. If the parent looks away, the gaming begins. Forgetting to lock the computer means that it will get used all night long, leaving the kid sleepy for the next day.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#192

Post by qwerty456127 »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #136
qwerty456127 wrote: post #59

> Yet my recently hired collegue insists he spent more time learning from Youtube than from lectures at "proper" university. Unless you go to an elite university like Stanford or MIT (whose lectures actually are among those on YouTube), an ordinary university lectures usually are garbage (in both how deep and how easy to understand they are) compared to what is available on YouTube. It is common (among people I knew)…

University degrees are totally doable without going to lectures, or attending any classrooms at all. People of univeristy age should be able to self-learn, and I see no difference to a video of a lecturer vs sitting in a hall. As long as questions can be emailed to them. Schools on the other hand...plenty of students are unable to learn on their own. "Self learning" is a skill, that even at the ago of 40 I'm still tr…

> University degrees are totally doable without going to lectures, or attending any classrooms at all.

Nevertheless universities require you to attend about 90% or fuck off.

In my opinion examination/certification should be done by an independent institution and require no prerequisites. So people could get the knowledge from anywhere they prefer (YouTube, books, private educators, paid or free lectures, commercial companies, experience) at any pace they feel comfortable then just come to pass a standardized exam and get a diploma.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#193

Post by unreal6 »

noobly wrote: post #159
randomsearch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Listening to a professor speaking to himself from a distance of 10 meters is an awful experience compared to a video recording that you can stop/rewind. Heck, you can even take some proper notes that you will actually understand! Ok. That's a win for remote. Now my turn: how easy is it to gauge the mood of your entire class, turn to the person next to you and whisper a question or look at their notes? Go for coffee…

What I would want, and what makes sense to me, is a system that uses online material and lectures in conjunction with an in person, immersive physical meeting place where questions may be asked and problems worked through or tips given. I think that's the best of both worlds and utilizes the low-latency environment of a classroom best, while still capturing the in-person benefits you mentioned. Unfortunately, class t…

Some of my courses in college have just flipped to this model where most of class time is spent problem-solving (to greater or lesser degrees) and it's been incredibly effective. Granted, this is at a small liberal arts college, but learning through collaboration has been much more effective than just attending lectures (that I and many others zone out of)

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#194

Post by omginternets »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #188
omginternets wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Different people have different modes of learning The empirical evidence rejects that idea.

So why do I learn things better in a different way than most other people? You can sit me down at a handful of basic math problems and it will take me literally 3 hours to work through them, and I'll still screw them up. Or you can give me a block of wood, a hand saw, a ruler, square, and I can teach myself some trig in a few hours.

Literally everyone finds concrete reasoning (block of wood) more intuitive than abstract reasoning. Some people have a relative (often cultivated) skill for abstract reasoning, but they improve that skill in very much the same way you do.

I invite you to read some peer-reviewed literature on the subject. If you prefer a non-peer reviewed book by an accomplished researcher, I would recommend Stanislas Dehaene’s “How we Learn”.

In any case: there is no evidence for “learning styles”.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#195

Post by souprock »

dangoor wrote: post #49

Khan Academy (where I work) is definitely trying to help people achieve mastery[1][2], and we have people who create studies to test our efficacy and help inform future course development. We care about proving the efficacy of our approaches and constantly improving. We've been putting in a lot of effort over the past few years specifically to help teachers help their students achieve mastery in their subjects. One p…

Khan Academy is no longer motivating for kids.

It used to work great. It was mainly math. Each lesson was marked out in a big 2D map, with arrows connecting lessons. Kids would earn meteorites, stars, comets, and other sky object badges.

I've seen this in action with multiple kids. The interest just died, almost 100%.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#196

Post by lgvld »

noobly wrote: post #159
randomsearch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Listening to a professor speaking to himself from a distance of 10 meters is an awful experience compared to a video recording that you can stop/rewind. Heck, you can even take some proper notes that you will actually understand! Ok. That's a win for remote. Now my turn: how easy is it to gauge the mood of your entire class, turn to the person next to you and whisper a question or look at their notes? Go for coffee…

What I would want, and what makes sense to me, is a system that uses online material and lectures in conjunction with an in person, immersive physical meeting place where questions may be asked and problems worked through or tips given. I think that's the best of both worlds and utilizes the low-latency environment of a classroom best, while still capturing the in-person benefits you mentioned. Unfortunately, class t…

Exactly what I am dreaming of. :-)

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#197

Post by Geee »

personlurking wrote: post #70
impendia wrote: post #13

I'm a professor at a US university. The honest answer (at least at the university level) -- probably we don't. From what I can tell, there's very little enthusiasm for online education, on the part of either professors or students. Pretty much everyone is eager to get back to normal, and I'm fairly confident that this is exactly what is going to happen. For a dissenting perpsective, read Joshua Kim's columns at Insid…

Personally I've always wanted to see two things in education, or rather one thing in two parts: to be able to verbally "test out" of a written exam or even an entire semester-long class. This can be handled over Skype/Zoom, if need be. That is, allow students to have a discussion with the professor to see if they know the test material. If so, "great, here's your grade". Same with entire semester classes ("great, her…

That sounds like cheating.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#198

Post by nvarsj »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #131
nvarsj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of OMSCS? The online revolution is already happening. Many schools are moving to copy the model. I've been in OMSCS for almost 5 years now. I can assuredly say that remote university education works incredibly well. Even better than in person in many respects. Not only that, but I truly believe it is vital to ensuring equal access to high quality education. The current university system with 5% accepta…

Two comments: First, what's OMSCS? Could you supply a bit more detail rather than just "have you heard of it"? What is it? What's good about it? Second, 5% acceptance rates are not typical of "the current university system". That's only a few "elite" schools. 40k/year may be more typical, but you can easily find less than half that.

5-10% for top schools typically is where I got my number from. MIT, Stanford, Caltech, UCLA, UCB all are around this range for CS. Slightly more accepting schools jump up to 10-20% range. But all these schools are rejecting huge swaths of qualified candidates, simply because they don't have the space in a traditional campus setting.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#199

Post by nvarsj »

mbil wrote: post #161
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two comments: First, what's OMSCS? Could you supply a bit more detail rather than just "have you heard of it"? What is it? What's good about it? Second, 5% acceptance rates are not typical of "the current university system". That's only a few "elite" schools. 40k/year may be more typical, but you can easily find less than half that.

OMSCS is Georgia Tech's Online CS Master's program[0]. I'm starting my ninth class this term. Here's my take... Pros: - video lectures are generally pretty polished, and include animations and other visual aids to help build intuition - the course material is mostly high quality. this is the same material that on-site graduate students are presented, and the graded projects are challenging. - there is opportunity to…

I mostly agree with this.

I'd say compared to my undergrad, the teaching quality is overall better. Which makes sense, since pedagogy is much more of a deliberate focus for OMSCS. I think this is a big advantage to online programs actually. There are definitely some rough patches, but the program is still young, and constantly improving.

Networking is much better too in my opinion, compared to my undergrad - you are in a class with full time professionals in a wide range of companies and industries - from software engineers to execs. There are many opportunities for networking. You do need to be involved in Slack/Piazza though, which takes time.

Becoming a TA is also the path to getting involved in research and even going into a PhD program after OMSCS. Very few people do this as it is a very large time commitment - but it is possible and professors generally are open to it.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#200

Post by dorchadas »

pirocks wrote: post #189
dorchadas wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm a secondary school teacher, and I have tried this. Several times, with several classes (math and introductory chemistry/physics). The issue is the kids think of it as not having any work. So they do nothing while at home, which then means I end up having to teach the content anyway. It just doesn't work because the kids are responsible and refuse to do stuff at home, meaning I have to teach what they should've…

I sometimes was one of the students who didn't do the reading. Almost always one or more of the following was true: 1. The reading wasn't immediately relevant to getting a decent grade in the class. 2. The class was obscenely boring and in no way relevant to my future life. 3. The whole class didn't do it either so we where going to repeat the whole thing in class anyway.

> 2. The class was obscenely boring and in no way relevant to my future life.

This is the attitude that I think is the problem. It comes down to what we think the purpose of education should be, and that's where there's a fundamental disconnect. For what it's worth, I see the point, but I think the purpose of education should be producing a student with basic understanding of a variety of subjects, not just teaching what is relevant to their future life.

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