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Does anybody have examples of the Socratic method applied to technical writing? I write the Chrome DevTools docs, and my big focus is to make the docs as interactive as possible. For example, in my JS debugging tutorial, I give you a demo with a bug, and then you actually follow along and use DevTools to debug the demo. One problem with this, though, is that I'm still just telling my readers what to do. I'd like to c…
I run my coding camp to teach adults how to code. Although not entirely similar to the Socratic method, we focus on asking questions to teach because it is the most effective and it scales incredibly well (so far). Here's a glimpse of how our teaching system works, hope it helps someone: 1. Each lesson starts with a maximum of 5 definitions and concepts: (What is a function, how to pass parameters into a function, ho…
> Teaching by asking questions scales really well in 1-1 interactions. This quickly disintegrates in a group setting though... in what sense does something that only works 1-1 "scale"?
The other alternative is: one person learns to reproduce and has 1 million kids. That person dies, population dies. That doesn't scale.
To counter the positive feedback about this technique, I'd like to point that when the person on the learning side (answering the questions) has not asked to be taught anything, the teacher (asking questions) can come across as a condescending prick. This is especially true if the content is a matter of opinion, not statements of fact. I have become sensitized to this and it makes my blood boil when I notice it happe…
That's true regardless of the teaching technique though, isn't it? Having someone lecture at you because they assume your knowledge is lacking is the part that makes it condescending, IMO.
There’s a classic book called The Goal [1] which is an outstanding example of teaching using the Socratic method. The basic lessons of the book can also change the way you think about business in general and software engineering in particular, as a bonus. One important concept for example is to liken unreleased software to a big pile of inventory in a warehouse: the inventory doesn’t do the company any good until it…
i just learned about the goal a few days ago. there's also a graphic novel version of the book: the goal: a business graphic novel https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Business-Graphic-Novel/dp/088427...
In many of the Socratic dialogues, the person Socrates is talking to ends up frustrated and finds some excuse to leave. They did that because the method is annoying in large doses.
It's complicated. I teach for living, and I want to do this all the time. But too often, we cover a tenth of the material in the same time because it takes much longer. Things sink in better, and this teaches the students how to think, but still… Watch a David Attenborough documentary where there's little hinting and foreshadowing, he just knows that he's got 50 minutes to tell you all about the way, e.g., different…
Yes, and I suspect the main complication is the learner. I instinctively teach socratically, even when I don't mean to. But when I was a post-doc, I had a student who usually couldn't answer my questions or make any progress no matter how much I tried to break a problem into bite sized pieces. Then along came the proffessor, who would just calmly and simply tell the guy the thing that I had been trying to explain soc…
I am familiar with the Socratic method from law school, where it is generally used by the professors. I found it painfully slow, but engaging and insightful. I think a mix of lecture and Socratic method would be optimal, where the teacher begins by lecturing the structure of the lesson, then uses Socratic dialog to hone the fine points.
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I think that the issue isn't the questions themselves, it's the interaction that results. Student: "why is my Java application crashing", "That's a stack trace. Does it say anything useful?", Student: "No I don't see anything.", It looks like we aren't seeing the whole trace. Have you scrolled up?" etc... the more this goes on, the more it feels quite awkward even if the result is positive. Maybe I'm bias having been…
I'd love to see an alt site called SocraticOverflow, where people answer everyones programming questions like this :) I know a lot of the time people on stackoverflow only have a problem because they haven't asked themselves the right question. Of course, there's still a lot where it's just a gap in knowledge that needs filling in.