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See, I've had the opposite experience. I can't remember anything from the vast majority of lectures - I either make notes, which means I'm missing material whi

See, I've had the opposite experience. I can't remember anything from the vast majority of lectures - I either make notes, which means I'm missing material while I'm writing, or I don't take notes, and don't remember much of anything at all. Lectures are nothing but a huge waste of my time. Now, recorded lectures, on the other hand, are superior. Combined with the ability to directly contact the lecturer, it would be an infinitely more successful method of learning for me. Perhaps the way forward is the way my medical school does it - 3 different pathways: lecture-based, problem-based, and self-study. Let each student choose the path best for them.

pixelmonkey 9y ago
I agree. Not to be too cute about it, but I think "multi-paradigm" education, rather than single-paradigm, is definitely the way to go, as we've even learned in programming. We all remember what happened in programming when people suggested we write 100% of programs in an object-oriented style (Java, EJBs, etc.). These days, we are much more mature about "best tool for the job" -- OO design for state/behavior binding APIs or data structures; FP for concurrency/parallel computation; simple imperative style for mission-critical code that needs to be read/reviewed by many, etc. (among other examples.) I don't think it's controversial to think that in something as complex as human education, there may be multiple learning tools available to us. We should avail ourselves of each of them. The recorded lecture, the live lecture, the class Q&A, the take-home assignment, the group study, the deep reading, the thoughtful essay, etc. Put it all on the table. Don't ban any one form out of some trend while declaring, "the lecture is dead!" I also agree with you that it might also be the case that by allowing some amount of tailoring/personalization per student (a la Khan), we could probably get very good average results, since students can smooth over some of the rough patches where the more dominant teaching style is failing them individually. For example, I personally found it much easier to learn Linear Algebra by working through my problems in Matlab. I noticed other students did just fine with working out the math on pen-and-paper, but I needed the iterative and visual feedback to really grok what was going on. It feels "obvious" to me that different students learn differently -- and different topics demand different learning environments! Why are we trying to shoehorn every student and every topic into a single dominant style?

pixelmonkey 9y ago

I agree. Not to be too cute about it, but I think "multi-paradigm" education, rather than single-paradigm, is definitely the way to go, as we've even learned in programming. We all remember what happened in programming when people suggested we write 100% of programs in an object-oriented style (Java, EJBs, etc.). These days, we are much more mature about "best tool for the job" -- OO design for state/behavior binding APIs or data structures; FP for concurrency/parallel computation; simple imperative style for mission-critical code that needs to be read/reviewed by many, etc. (among other examples.) I don't think it's controversial to think that in something as complex as human education, there may be multiple learning tools available to us. We should avail ourselves of each of them. The recorded lecture, the live lecture, the class Q&A, the take-home assignment, the group study, the deep reading, the thoughtful essay, etc. Put it all on the table. Don't ban any one form out of some trend while declaring, "the lecture is dead!" I also agree with you that it might also be the case that by allowing some amount of tailoring/personalization per student (a la Khan), we could probably get very good average results, since students can smooth over some of the rough patches where the more dominant teaching style is failing them individually. For example, I personally found it much easier to learn Linear Algebra by working through my problems in Matlab. I noticed other students did just fine with working out the math on pen-and-paper, but I needed the iterative and visual feedback to really grok what was going on. It feels "obvious" to me that different students learn differently -- and different topics demand different learning environments! Why are we trying to shoehorn every student and every topic into a single dominant style?