I agree with the author's sentiment 100%. As others have stated, the reason that video is worse than text for learning is because A. The rate at which you can read is faster than you can listen B. Video technology is often a hassle when you need to skip around. C. It's cheaper to write and revise text than video. D. Videos consume large amounts of data. But I'm going to add another point. E. Lecturers most often don'…
> My ideal alternative would be to remove lectures entirely and to have interactive labs where teachers and TAs help students complete assignments based on assigned readings. The instructor for the course would be responsible for overseeing the teaching assistants and preparing the course outline. The TAs would help guide the students in completing the assignments or mini projects. Then a couple of time a semester th…
Often nobody knows what's going on. You can argue that confusion is good, but it's not fun and it feels wrong. You can argue that class should be challenging and active, but this method led to a minor student revolt.
Discrimination and prejudice happen. Women are underrepresented (with respect to the ratio in the class) in the conversations that happen.
We haven't figured out the right incentive structure to make people actually do the readings yet. Sometimes people don't do them.
Personally, I love this new method. It has problems on the scale of a 60ish person class in a technical subject (nonlinear dynamics). When we're working in small groups, that helps, but whenever we try to do something as a class it devolves into an impromptu lecture (most of the time by a student).
If we want to learn this way we need to know how to scale it. It seems drastically more effective, and I think that college would be so much better if this method was normal.