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Classes are too big. If I dump my GCSE computer science classes that's 16,13,25,19,21. In a 60 minute lesson if you waste no time logging on/off or presenting

Classes are too big. If I dump my GCSE computer science classes that's 16,13,25,19,21. In a 60 minute lesson if you waste no time logging on/off or presenting that's at best 4.5minutes per student and worst 2.5min. How much do you think you can debug over an hours worth of problems given 4 minutes. Including reading and figuring out the problem before explaining. So we plan to put a child in a room with a teacher knowing pretty much full well it's at best a 50% chance they'll be the one to get help with a question. Individual play is individual problems, which needs individual help. Much deeper there is a conflict with education and day-care. That's just CS of course, the non-gcse sizes are: 26,27,29,28,26,28,29,31,27,28,27,26,30 if you were wondering.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
That is assuming that each student needs help on every problem each lesson. Presumably at least some of the lessons should be on how to diagnose problems I assume your talking about the programming side. Though back when I did Computing in school (70's) in my second year I knew more than the teacher did. ironically as I was dyslexic I wasn't allowed to take the O level as I was dumped in the CSE stream. Even though I maxed out at CSE in maths and computing I wasn't allowed to take A level computing
mfer 7y ago
Research has been done on this. There is a sweet spot range. Too few or too many decreases results. This is looking at grade school classes. Not sure how this plays out at the university level where the expectations are different and teachers have office hours to discuss questions outside of class
- mr_gibbins 7y ago
  I can answer that one for you having recently taught a semester of postgraduate database systems to a cohort of just 6 students. It was a blast. I followed a pre-planned course of lectures, but due to the low class sizes it didn't work out that way a lot of the time. An example, following a question about relations, I ended up doing a chalk n' talk on set theory and explained how set theory could be represented as first-order logic. Filled the wall full of Greek letters and drilled down into the topic. Then started talking about axioms. The students joined in - you could see them taking an interest, as the conversation had turned. In the event we spent 90 minutes (it was a 60 minute session) working through axiomatic set theory on the board. I had to look things up as we went. It was great, the students learned a ton (and some of the content turned up in their assignments, too) - I learned a fair bit, as Feynman will attest, there's nothing like teaching a topic to make you understand it better yourself - and it was productive and interesting. I'm not sure I could repeat the same trick with a cohort of 20 or 30.
watwut 7y ago
Student should not need individual attention every single class nor should they need help to debug each time.
- em-bee 7y ago
  they shouldn't, but they do because they are not learning to solve problems by themselves. they are not given the time or the motivation. to work on a problem until they can actually understand it. this is what montessori for example does differently. there students work on a problem until they get it and only then they move on to the next. different students work on different problems and older students help younger ones. as a result a single teacher can manage a full classroom, and still help every student when they actually need it, because most of the time the students help themselves
  - Already__Taken 7y ago
    Any why that doesn't work is my point about day-care. There's a % of students in that room because they can't be anywhere else. And we're all part of that % at some point in time, no one is always accomplishing something. But school is between this and that time only.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      why what doesn't work? montessori works. if you don't use montessori or similar methods obviously that doesn't work. montessori training takes about a year, half of which is spent in class (from what i remember). shouldn't be to hard to add that to traditional teacher education, so it not a problem of not being able to scale the training to more teachers. it's down to the political will to actually improve education.

C1sc0cat 7y ago

That is assuming that each student needs help on every problem each lesson. Presumably at least some of the lessons should be on how to diagnose problems I assume your talking about the programming side. Though back when I did Computing in school (70's) in my second year I knew more than the teacher did. ironically as I was dyslexic I wasn't allowed to take the O level as I was dumped in the CSE stream. Even though I maxed out at CSE in maths and computing I wasn't allowed to take A level computing

mfer 7y ago

Research has been done on this. There is a sweet spot range. Too few or too many decreases results. This is looking at grade school classes. Not sure how this plays out at the university level where the expectations are different and teachers have office hours to discuss questions outside of class

mr_gibbins 7y ago
I can answer that one for you having recently taught a semester of postgraduate database systems to a cohort of just 6 students. It was a blast. I followed a pre-planned course of lectures, but due to the low class sizes it didn't work out that way a lot of the time. An example, following a question about relations, I ended up doing a chalk n' talk on set theory and explained how set theory could be represented as first-order logic. Filled the wall full of Greek letters and drilled down into the topic. Then started talking about axioms. The students joined in - you could see them taking an interest, as the conversation had turned. In the event we spent 90 minutes (it was a 60 minute session) working through axiomatic set theory on the board. I had to look things up as we went. It was great, the students learned a ton (and some of the content turned up in their assignments, too) - I learned a fair bit, as Feynman will attest, there's nothing like teaching a topic to make you understand it better yourself - and it was productive and interesting. I'm not sure I could repeat the same trick with a cohort of 20 or 30.

watwut 7y ago

Student should not need individual attention every single class nor should they need help to debug each time.

em-bee 7y ago
they shouldn't, but they do because they are not learning to solve problems by themselves. they are not given the time or the motivation. to work on a problem until they can actually understand it. this is what montessori for example does differently. there students work on a problem until they get it and only then they move on to the next. different students work on different problems and older students help younger ones. as a result a single teacher can manage a full classroom, and still help every student when they actually need it, because most of the time the students help themselves
- Already__Taken 7y ago
  Any why that doesn't work is my point about day-care. There's a % of students in that room because they can't be anywhere else. And we're all part of that % at some point in time, no one is always accomplishing something. But school is between this and that time only.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    why what doesn't work? montessori works. if you don't use montessori or similar methods obviously that doesn't work. montessori training takes about a year, half of which is spent in class (from what i remember). shouldn't be to hard to add that to traditional teacher education, so it not a problem of not being able to scale the training to more teachers. it's down to the political will to actually improve education.