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I think vocational education could have been better conveyed online, but with perfect pre-recording and editing. Coursera and Edx are a good example for a forer

by stevefan1999 6y ago

I think vocational education could have been better conveyed online, but with perfect pre-recording and editing. Coursera and Edx are a good example for a forerunner though. As a college student myself, this year, this semester is the worst for me -- I felt really lazy without any faith to keep me going, that with face-to-face activity I feel like I'm motivated to engage. But I hope this semester really is the exception.

protomyth 6y ago
Its a real struggle for us. The "doing" part of vocational education doesn't really work for at home because of the equipment needed. Its not like typical lecture classes, since it is damn hard to weld at home for example. Never mind the Commercial Drivers License Training which requires use of the simulator until we are confident you have the skill for the actual big rig. I would actually say vocational is much harder than traditional classes. Heck, laboratory assignments for the sciences are already computerized and don't lose as much value as vocational. We have to do hand-on appointments and book work remote.
- panzagl 6y ago
  I'm going to be generous and assume by 'vocational' the parent meant in a CS sense (things like database and network configuration that you usually learn after college) and not in the broader sense (like welding and hair cutting where hands-on is the majority of the value).
  - protomyth 6y ago
    Oh, well, sorry I got confused, but vocational has a very specific meaning in academics in the US and I guess its on my mind these days since this has been one of our big problems. I'm still hoping that there will be some industry acceptable solutions.
ghaff 6y ago
>Coursera and Edx are a good example for a forerunner though. Are they really though? Online lectures have been pretty much a solved problem since maybe the 80s. (Although, of course, video lectures didn't become widely available until digital and YouTube.) Arguably broadcast video should less faithfully replicate in-person lectures but it's a lot easier cheaper to point a video camera and add some Powerpoint than to do something more multimedia. See also virtual events. Automated grading of assignments works reasonably well for narrow classes of problems. (Like programming--and even then it can only give feedback for the most part if the answer is correct.) Discussions are mostly a tire fire--although they can be better for small groups with selective admittance criteria. A lot of people don't even like it when MOOCs stick to a schedule to provide some structure. So, I've taken some MOOCs and gotten some value out of them but I think on the whole you have to give them a pretty mediocre grade.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> As a college student myself, this year, this semester is the worst for me -- I felt really lazy without any faith to keep me going, that with face-to-face activity I feel like I'm motivated to engage. The in-person energy of a University environment isn’t given enough credit in these discussions about the relevance of Universities in modern times. Physically going into a building dedicated to education and sitting among peers who are also there to learn is a strong motivator for learning. The social cues of seeing your peers pay attention helps align everyone toward learning. Being among your peers is a good reminder that taking the education seriously is important for remaining competitive in the workforce after graduation. Contrast that with online courses, where students utilize the same device they use for gaming, social media, and browsing the internet to also view remote lectures. No one will notice if you’re chatting with your friends during the course, or browsing Reddit the whole time, or if you have the TV on in the background. Sure, some people are good at sitting down, focusing, and paying attention, but many others struggle without the context shifts, social cues, and social pressure of a traditional learning environment. HN has been having heated conversations about how self-teaching and free online courses are going to replace expensive universities for as long as I can remember. Yet in all of my experience interviewing candidates with an extra emphasis on giving self-taught and non-traditional applicants extra attention, I’ve never seen any self-taught candidates who come close to their University educated peers. I’m sure there are great self-taught people out there, but on average it appears that a real, in-person University education really does something extra to prepare people. I think there are a lot of intangible or hard to pinpoint aspects of a University education that won’t be replaced any time soon by pure online courses.
- stevefan1999 6y ago
  Yes. For online learning, distraction that is easy to reach is a problem. We can further generalize it to remote working, which surprisingly drew a same parallelism as you described for school/workplace. > I think there are a lot of intangible or hard to pinpoint aspects of a University education that won’t be replaced any time soon by pure online courses. I had mixed view on this. I think this is about the matter of authenticity, that whatever you read, taught and trained in school should be reliable, consistent & correct (doesn't mean it is the most up to date, however). It also served as a (referential) benchmark of your most of your skills. However, at the end of the day this is a matter of the ebb and flow of information -- You see that there are some people that can succeed with limited public information on LeetCode, Codeforces etc., they are truly successful and competitive, but most people also get preference for the background of their school, e.g. CMU, MIT, that they are offered more confidential information (like what type of algorithm question would Microsoft/Google present to you?), more trainings (better understanding/explanation of materials), more networks (alumni), etc. to begin with. If all of these information and assets are open to public and easily accessible, universities, or perhaps every centralized education facilities will truly met its demise -- their business advantages and potentials are almost totally zero.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "I think vocational education could have been better conveyed online, but with perfect pre-recording and editing. Coursera and Edx are a good example for a forerunner though." Completion rates for Coursera and similar online courses are notoriously poor. See, for example, https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/16/study-offers-data-show-moocs-didnt-achieve-their-goals https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019...

protomyth 6y ago

Its a real struggle for us. The "doing" part of vocational education doesn't really work for at home because of the equipment needed. Its not like typical lecture classes, since it is damn hard to weld at home for example. Never mind the Commercial Drivers License Training which requires use of the simulator until we are confident you have the skill for the actual big rig. I would actually say vocational is much harder than traditional classes. Heck, laboratory assignments for the sciences are already computerized and don't lose as much value as vocational. We have to do hand-on appointments and book work remote.

panzagl 6y ago
I'm going to be generous and assume by 'vocational' the parent meant in a CS sense (things like database and network configuration that you usually learn after college) and not in the broader sense (like welding and hair cutting where hands-on is the majority of the value).
- protomyth 6y ago
  Oh, well, sorry I got confused, but vocational has a very specific meaning in academics in the US and I guess its on my mind these days since this has been one of our big problems. I'm still hoping that there will be some industry acceptable solutions.

ghaff 6y ago

>Coursera and Edx are a good example for a forerunner though. Are they really though? Online lectures have been pretty much a solved problem since maybe the 80s. (Although, of course, video lectures didn't become widely available until digital and YouTube.) Arguably broadcast video should less faithfully replicate in-person lectures but it's a lot easier cheaper to point a video camera and add some Powerpoint than to do something more multimedia. See also virtual events. Automated grading of assignments works reasonably well for narrow classes of problems. (Like programming--and even then it can only give feedback for the most part if the answer is correct.) Discussions are mostly a tire fire--although they can be better for small groups with selective admittance criteria. A lot of people don't even like it when MOOCs stick to a schedule to provide some structure. So, I've taken some MOOCs and gotten some value out of them but I think on the whole you have to give them a pretty mediocre grade.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> As a college student myself, this year, this semester is the worst for me -- I felt really lazy without any faith to keep me going, that with face-to-face activity I feel like I'm motivated to engage. The in-person energy of a University environment isn’t given enough credit in these discussions about the relevance of Universities in modern times. Physically going into a building dedicated to education and sitting among peers who are also there to learn is a strong motivator for learning. The social cues of seeing your peers pay attention helps align everyone toward learning. Being among your peers is a good reminder that taking the education seriously is important for remaining competitive in the workforce after graduation. Contrast that with online courses, where students utilize the same device they use for gaming, social media, and browsing the internet to also view remote lectures. No one will notice if you’re chatting with your friends during the course, or browsing Reddit the whole time, or if you have the TV on in the background. Sure, some people are good at sitting down, focusing, and paying attention, but many others struggle without the context shifts, social cues, and social pressure of a traditional learning environment. HN has been having heated conversations about how self-teaching and free online courses are going to replace expensive universities for as long as I can remember. Yet in all of my experience interviewing candidates with an extra emphasis on giving self-taught and non-traditional applicants extra attention, I’ve never seen any self-taught candidates who come close to their University educated peers. I’m sure there are great self-taught people out there, but on average it appears that a real, in-person University education really does something extra to prepare people. I think there are a lot of intangible or hard to pinpoint aspects of a University education that won’t be replaced any time soon by pure online courses.

stevefan1999 6y ago
Yes. For online learning, distraction that is easy to reach is a problem. We can further generalize it to remote working, which surprisingly drew a same parallelism as you described for school/workplace. > I think there are a lot of intangible or hard to pinpoint aspects of a University education that won’t be replaced any time soon by pure online courses. I had mixed view on this. I think this is about the matter of authenticity, that whatever you read, taught and trained in school should be reliable, consistent & correct (doesn't mean it is the most up to date, however). It also served as a (referential) benchmark of your most of your skills. However, at the end of the day this is a matter of the ebb and flow of information -- You see that there are some people that can succeed with limited public information on LeetCode, Codeforces etc., they are truly successful and competitive, but most people also get preference for the background of their school, e.g. CMU, MIT, that they are offered more confidential information (like what type of algorithm question would Microsoft/Google present to you?), more trainings (better understanding/explanation of materials), more networks (alumni), etc. to begin with. If all of these information and assets are open to public and easily accessible, universities, or perhaps every centralized education facilities will truly met its demise -- their business advantages and potentials are almost totally zero.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

> "I think vocational education could have been better conveyed online, but with perfect pre-recording and editing. Coursera and Edx are a good example for a forerunner though." Completion rates for Coursera and similar online courses are notoriously poor. See, for example, https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/16/study-offers-data-show-moocs-didnt-achieve-their-goals https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019...