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This is what I worry about the MOOC's: a lot of the best teachers I've had personally, and observed (with children), drew a vast tree of pedagogical techniques,
by yourapostasy 10y ago
This is what I worry about the MOOC's: a lot of the best teachers I've had personally, and observed (with children), drew a vast tree of pedagogical techniques, but used their evaluation of a student's individual personality/psychology to inform them of which node/branch to select next. The most sophisticated MOOC's ever get is to brute-force try one node after another, if they support presenting the same material in a different way at all. And there isn't a classification system that I'm aware of to organize all the branches, especially around annotations that say "this branch appropriate if personality/psychology tends towards <this>" (yet another ontological terra incognita, I'm not aware of any classification system to describe students' pedagogical personality/psychology, which can change even depending upon context like subject matter, mood, etc.).
MOOC's are a step in the right direction, but far, far from a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer idealized vision that I would like to see.
- agumonkey 10y agoIf I may add my 2 cents, I almost never interacted positively with teachers at the College level. Mostly because I became borderline sociophobic tbh. MOOCs removed a big barrier between teacher judgement and politics (they're human, they can be prejudiced). Also gave me way more opportunity to collaborate and exchange with other students (mostly through IRC channels).
- yourapostasy 10y agoVery good point. I strongly suspect as an individual's autodidactic capabilities increase, the need for highly-attuned teachers decreases, and by college-level academics MOOCs may be far more effective in that context. I think ironically however, that the need for high-attuned mentors comes up later, as the academics segues into field practice.