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This is why I believe that MOOCS will not “disrupt” traditional education in any meaningful way. Learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon. Apart from a few

This is why I believe that MOOCS will not “disrupt” traditional education in any meaningful way. Learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon. Apart from a few genius auto didacts the vast majority of people learn in social settings. Even some of the geniuses were helped by social settings and peer groups that served as a constant source of ideas and feedback. For years I’d tried to learn algorithms to clear big 4 style interviews. But for reasons ranging from subject matter difficulty to motivation I’d fail again and again. When I got an interview call I had a competitive programmer teach me over chat every night one problem at a time explaining his thinking. I improved by leaps and bounds within weeks and also cleared the interview. What’s being imparted isn’t just mere knowledge but an enthusiasm for the subject. The fact that it can be a lot of fun to work on such problems even though they’re not of any “practical” use. The journey of the instructor and how they themselves learned to overcome difficult topics. The multiple ways they have learned to look at a topic which are too long for a textbook to cover. Customized feedback on how to improve, the right problems to work on, motivation when you’re losing interest. It’s very difficult to replace all of this. Now to be fair a lot of real life teachers fail this bar and MOOCS can probably replace them but both are incomplete in any case. This showed me once and for all that if you’re chasing true expertise then mere reading books or watching videos will never get you as far as people learning the subject from each other in a social setting with motivational instructors and incentives.

apcragg 8y ago
I've noticed the best "online" teachers excel in predicting what questions students will have and addressing them preemptively. I think the person behind 3Brown1Blue on YouTube does a fantastic job doing this. Throughout their explanations, they interject with things such as "Now, you might ask why I did it this way... well here is that reasoning" and then "but you also may have observed this and here's why you did". In some ways, I feel like the ability to anticipate student's questions and hangups and respond to them is a far better predictor of their efficacy as an instructor than how well they understand the material or the quality of the lecturing.
- thewarrior 8y ago
  3Blue1Brown is the rare exception to most online video stuff I’ve seen. It’s quite good. But even then it doesn’t mean I’m actually doing the math like if a real person were on the other side expecting an answer.
- sametmax 8y ago
  It's not anticipation. It's experience, either from questions you received during lectures you gave, questions you asked yourself in lectures you attented to, or just road blocks you encountered while learning it on your own. Every time I get a question about something in a training I give, I make sure people will never have to ask me again (unless it's part of the flow of the lecture). Every time I asked myself something, or blocked on something, I make a mental note of it, whatever the subject is. Sometimes, years later, I just happen to teach that subject, and it comes back to me. I don't know why good teachers do that. Personnally, I started to do it out of anger. I felt like it was so unfair somebody failed to understand something because of a missing piece of information. I found it infuriating, it's a pain that has no reason to exist. We have been teaching things for centuries, why do we keep not communicating knowledge correctly ? Eventually I made peace with human imperfection, as I battled too much with my own, but the habit remains. Maybe obsession is what makes anybody great. It's not sane, but it's a hell of a motivation.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  There is software being developed that does the same thing though. I've seen a technology being demoed where the student is basically able to ask questions to the instructor (which is just an algorithm). As more and more students use the software...a database of questions gets created which is then used to modify the course and to also create new answers to the question. Overtime, the course gets better and better through a sort of continuous improvement system.
anonymous5133 8y ago
Truth be told, the job market will just refocus to better find the people that are autodidact learners because the truth is those people are the ones that end up being the most productive. They are able to learn stuff much quickly compared to other people and end up knowing significantly more than others due to being able to just self-study the material and "get it". Also you are looking at the first generation of MOOCs...which I agree...aren't that great but overtime...new technologies will get added to them. Better algorithms, better learning tools and probably even live streaming lecture similar to what you see on twitch. The basic MOOC will be free and then if you want the "social interaction" element of it then you can pay for it.
- lelandbatey 8y ago
  I'd disagree with the statement "they're able to learn things much more quickly compared to other people." I've universally observed that autodidacts may appear to learn faster, but in reality they're spending an order of magnitude more effort and time. If you applied 10% of the time reading that an "autodidact" applies reading, then took the other 90% of the time an autodidact spends reading and instead spent that time speaking with experts in a social and exploratory way, you'd learn many times faster than the "autodidact" would who spent all their time only reading and consuming learning material. When you consume learning materials, you are adapting your thoughts and knowledge to what you're learning, but when you don't understand something, without someone who can answer questions in a highly individualized way, you may have a really hard time finding answers to questions purely from material. Having a person to talk to though can bridge gaps in understanding faster than even the best written textbook.
  - ek750 8y ago
    Not to disagree with what you said, I think that can definitely be the case, that autodidacts aren’t learning in the most efficient manner. The flip side is that people who spend most of their time asking questions and getting answers may not ever get the experience of struggling through problems and never fully learn to exercise those skills, ime But, limited time and energy makes both approaches useful.
nexus2045 8y ago
> For years I’d tried to learn algorithms to clear big 4 style interviews. But for reasons ranging from subject matter difficulty to motivation I’d fail again and again. When I got an interview call I had a competitive programmer teach me over chat every night one problem at a time explaining his thinking. I'm stuck in the same rut of lack of motivation. Interested to hear what clicked after he explained it to you?
- thewarrior 8y ago
  Someone who actually knows their stuff knows how to make it interesting and relevant. Carefully building you up.

apcragg 8y ago

I've noticed the best "online" teachers excel in predicting what questions students will have and addressing them preemptively. I think the person behind 3Brown1Blue on YouTube does a fantastic job doing this. Throughout their explanations, they interject with things such as "Now, you might ask why I did it this way... well here is that reasoning" and then "but you also may have observed this and here's why you did". In some ways, I feel like the ability to anticipate student's questions and hangups and respond to them is a far better predictor of their efficacy as an instructor than how well they understand the material or the quality of the lecturing.

thewarrior 8y ago
3Blue1Brown is the rare exception to most online video stuff I’ve seen. It’s quite good. But even then it doesn’t mean I’m actually doing the math like if a real person were on the other side expecting an answer.
sametmax 8y ago
It's not anticipation. It's experience, either from questions you received during lectures you gave, questions you asked yourself in lectures you attented to, or just road blocks you encountered while learning it on your own. Every time I get a question about something in a training I give, I make sure people will never have to ask me again (unless it's part of the flow of the lecture). Every time I asked myself something, or blocked on something, I make a mental note of it, whatever the subject is. Sometimes, years later, I just happen to teach that subject, and it comes back to me. I don't know why good teachers do that. Personnally, I started to do it out of anger. I felt like it was so unfair somebody failed to understand something because of a missing piece of information. I found it infuriating, it's a pain that has no reason to exist. We have been teaching things for centuries, why do we keep not communicating knowledge correctly ? Eventually I made peace with human imperfection, as I battled too much with my own, but the habit remains. Maybe obsession is what makes anybody great. It's not sane, but it's a hell of a motivation.
anonymous5133 8y ago
There is software being developed that does the same thing though. I've seen a technology being demoed where the student is basically able to ask questions to the instructor (which is just an algorithm). As more and more students use the software...a database of questions gets created which is then used to modify the course and to also create new answers to the question. Overtime, the course gets better and better through a sort of continuous improvement system.

anonymous5133 8y ago

Truth be told, the job market will just refocus to better find the people that are autodidact learners because the truth is those people are the ones that end up being the most productive. They are able to learn stuff much quickly compared to other people and end up knowing significantly more than others due to being able to just self-study the material and "get it". Also you are looking at the first generation of MOOCs...which I agree...aren't that great but overtime...new technologies will get added to them. Better algorithms, better learning tools and probably even live streaming lecture similar to what you see on twitch. The basic MOOC will be free and then if you want the "social interaction" element of it then you can pay for it.

lelandbatey 8y ago
I'd disagree with the statement "they're able to learn things much more quickly compared to other people." I've universally observed that autodidacts may appear to learn faster, but in reality they're spending an order of magnitude more effort and time. If you applied 10% of the time reading that an "autodidact" applies reading, then took the other 90% of the time an autodidact spends reading and instead spent that time speaking with experts in a social and exploratory way, you'd learn many times faster than the "autodidact" would who spent all their time only reading and consuming learning material. When you consume learning materials, you are adapting your thoughts and knowledge to what you're learning, but when you don't understand something, without someone who can answer questions in a highly individualized way, you may have a really hard time finding answers to questions purely from material. Having a person to talk to though can bridge gaps in understanding faster than even the best written textbook.
- ek750 8y ago
  Not to disagree with what you said, I think that can definitely be the case, that autodidacts aren’t learning in the most efficient manner. The flip side is that people who spend most of their time asking questions and getting answers may not ever get the experience of struggling through problems and never fully learn to exercise those skills, ime But, limited time and energy makes both approaches useful.

nexus2045 8y ago

> For years I’d tried to learn algorithms to clear big 4 style interviews. But for reasons ranging from subject matter difficulty to motivation I’d fail again and again. When I got an interview call I had a competitive programmer teach me over chat every night one problem at a time explaining his thinking. I'm stuck in the same rut of lack of motivation. Interested to hear what clicked after he explained it to you?

thewarrior 8y ago
Someone who actually knows their stuff knows how to make it interesting and relevant. Carefully building you up.