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This is an odd opinion piece to have made it to HN front page. It's essentially a collection of unsubstantiated claims that would likely have no impact to polic

This is an odd opinion piece to have made it to HN front page. It's essentially a collection of unsubstantiated claims that would likely have no impact to policy even if they were demonstrably true because the driving factor is human safety and not efficacy or ease of teaching. Remote teaching may be harder, require more work, and have pitfalls that are quickly overcome in person. Much more useful would be a collection of ways to mitigate them, rather than an airing of grievances. Maybe I'm being too hard on this, and it's just a good serving up of the real conversation. So, what are other folks doing to overcome the difficulties outlined in the article? Reading the room, avoiding distraction, using humor, and inability to establish command. On the last note, I will say that I believe it's a red herring. The most soft spoken person, who clearly has a passion to share their subject, will be easily gifted this by a willing audience. Even over Zoom.

accurrent 6y ago
I spent the last semester teaching online. As a teacher it was not as fun. Also its a lot harder because you have to always be prepared for technical issues. What I found was that small class sizes are key. Additionally multiple monitors is a huge aid when teaching online.
- alchemism 6y ago
  I see the challenge is that in addition to traditional methods of effective pedagogy, a teacher for today must also be adept at running a broadcast studio in order to be effective.
kkylin 6y ago
I teach mathematics at a large R1 state university. His comments echo my experience. Online is really different, both for the instructor AND for the student. Most instructors don't know how to teach online, and most students (even very good ones) don't know how to learn online. - Reading the room: students, by default, turn off all their cameras and microphones, despite my request (we cannot require this) that they turn them on if there are no privacy, bandwidth, or other issues. Whereas in a classroom, a student can signal confusion merely by frowning or half-raising a hand, I now need to ask a prepared question or give them a real pause. - Avoiding distraction: there is not much one can do. The things one can use to hold attention in a live in-person lecture -- telling bad math jokes, etc -- don't translate easily. In particular, if you can't see or hear your audience, it can be a little dangerous to try to be funny. - Establishing command: did not have this problem. I would in any case say this differently: the issue is building rapport with students. Since we switched to online in March, I had half a semester to get to know my students (small class, 20 or so) which really helped. None of this says online is a non-starter, but it should be organized very differently. One can do recorded lectures and live structured problem sessions (i.e., flip the classroom), or give students more preparatory activity to do, etc. Many of these are sound things to do in a live in-person classroom anyway; online is just not so forgiving and exposes many of the flaws of the traditional lecture format. And students need to be taught how to learn in this environment from the get-go. Finally, I'll say that the technology has a ways to go. It would be really great if multiple people could talk over each other as if they were in the same room. If video degraded more gracefully (because many students do not have stable enough connections at home) while maintaining audio. If various apps with white boards gave students the ability to "see" your previous boards. (A couple programs do this, e.g., MS Teams, but AFAIK not Zoom.) And he didn't mention the nightmare that is assessment. I taught a small class to a group of bright, emotionally mature juniors and seniors. Teaching first year students is a completely different story. This is something we're working hard on, with a summer to prepare instead of just a week (our transition happened over spring break). But it's not easy. Edit: I suppose one way to summarize the above is to say that all the issues can be addressed, but online makes the energy barrier higher (or friction greater, whatever analogy you like) for both instructors and students.
- clueless123 6y ago
  VR Apps (Alt Space and others) can solve most of this issues right now. The soon coming generation of VR googles actually read your face expressions and replicates them online. IMHO, At the current pace of development, in less than a year, this will be the new reality.
- darkerside 6y ago
  These are great points. Running meetings (industry example) over Zoom is very different from running them in person, and for many of the same reasons that you point out. This is going to sound like a plug, but I took a LifeLabs course on Meetings Mastery, and one small part of it was a discussion of how to engage with people over Zoom. Some examples were using the chat to ask questions that merit chat responses, asking people to "+1" in the chat when they agree with something (maybe students could "?" when they are getting lost), and using polls and breakout rooms. As someone who's been frustrated by adapting to the remote environment from a meetings perspective, I can relate. But at least the people in my meetings are mature enough (or compensated well enough) that they will keep cameras on, stay engaged in the discussion, etc.
  - kkylin 6y ago
    Those are nice points; I quite agree there are things one can do to engage people over Zoom etc. But it's less spontaneous and takes more prior planning. Also, many students simply do not want to ask a question in front of their peers, online or in person. When in person, there are other cues I can use to detect student confusion -- frowns, someone trying to decide if they should raise their hand, a barely audible "um..." -- but online all of that is gone.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> that would likely have no impact to policy even if they were demonstrably true because the driving factor is human safety and not efficacy or ease of teaching. Why would it have "no impact to policy"? Let's imagine for a moment that we discovered remote learning was 100% ineffective for everyone. Students came out of remote learning programs with no more knowledge than they did going in. Should we: A) Continue with remote learning anyway, because in-person classes are unsafe. B) Stop remote learning, and accept that students will have to put their educations on hold for a year, despite all the implications that will have. Personally, I think option B is the obvious choice. There’s no point in doing anything if students don’t benefit. Okay, now let's say that remote learning was only 50% effective, or 60%. Is option A now the right answer? Putting everyone’s education on hold is going to have lots of dire consequences—but, is it worse than educating them inadequately? What does that mean for the next generation of high schoolers entering college, or college students entering the workforce? Alternately, perhaps the correct conclusion is that we really, really do need to reopen schools this fall. Why is so much of the country currently focused on reopening hair salons and outdoor restaurants while keeping schools closed? Maybe it should be the other way around—maybe schools are the most essential service, and we need to reopen them ASAP at the expense of other kinds of businesses.
- darkerside 6y ago
  I think you'd agree that any claim it's 100% ineffective is a straw man, and was just for purposes of the example. FWICT, most policy is being set with a baked-in assumption that remote learning is somewhat less effective than in-person learning. As I said, I don't see what the article does to add to that discussion, although it does possibly queue up a discussion on how we could make it better.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
doopy-loopy2 6y ago
Just because you don't agree doesn't mean it shouldn't be on HN. Personally, it seems blatantly obvious that Zoom cannot replace face-to-face interactions whether in a work setting or in an educational setting. The people advocating "100% remote and video calls for everything" are either just really short sighted or have some other motive going on.
- diag 6y ago
  The advocacy for 100% remote is motivated by the fact that there's the need to stay away from groups for an unknown amount of time. It's not short sighted, it's necessary.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Oh, I don't disagree at all. The reason I don't think it belongs on HN is because "It's essentially a collection of unsubstantiated claims that would likely have no impact to policy even if they were demonstrably true because the driving factor is human safety and not efficacy or ease of teaching." That has nothing to do with whether or not I agree with those claims, although in this particular case, it just so happens that I do.
empath75 6y ago
> Remote teaching may be harder, require more work, and have pitfalls that are quickly overcome in person. I'm not sure there's any reason to believe any of these things. What we do know is that we've trained almost every teacher to teach and learn in classrooms, and that using techniques developed in classrooms to teach remotely don't work well. We've barely spent any time at all developing techniques for remote learning, and we're already throwing up our hands.
- diag 6y ago
  People hate change, that's one thing I've come to expect.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Well, we need to operate from a baseline of where we are today. In a vacuum where we have been developing remote teaching techniques for just as long as in-person, you're right that perhaps remote teaching would be _even more effective_, but we simply have no way of knowing. Per the rest of my comment, I agree that rather than complain about the situation, we should be identifying ways to mitigate or exploit the situation to improve learning.

accurrent 6y ago

I spent the last semester teaching online. As a teacher it was not as fun. Also its a lot harder because you have to always be prepared for technical issues. What I found was that small class sizes are key. Additionally multiple monitors is a huge aid when teaching online.

alchemism 6y ago
I see the challenge is that in addition to traditional methods of effective pedagogy, a teacher for today must also be adept at running a broadcast studio in order to be effective.

kkylin 6y ago

I teach mathematics at a large R1 state university. His comments echo my experience. Online is really different, both for the instructor AND for the student. Most instructors don't know how to teach online, and most students (even very good ones) don't know how to learn online. - Reading the room: students, by default, turn off all their cameras and microphones, despite my request (we cannot require this) that they turn them on if there are no privacy, bandwidth, or other issues. Whereas in a classroom, a student can signal confusion merely by frowning or half-raising a hand, I now need to ask a prepared question or give them a real pause. - Avoiding distraction: there is not much one can do. The things one can use to hold attention in a live in-person lecture -- telling bad math jokes, etc -- don't translate easily. In particular, if you can't see or hear your audience, it can be a little dangerous to try to be funny. - Establishing command: did not have this problem. I would in any case say this differently: the issue is building rapport with students. Since we switched to online in March, I had half a semester to get to know my students (small class, 20 or so) which really helped. None of this says online is a non-starter, but it should be organized very differently. One can do recorded lectures and live structured problem sessions (i.e., flip the classroom), or give students more preparatory activity to do, etc. Many of these are sound things to do in a live in-person classroom anyway; online is just not so forgiving and exposes many of the flaws of the traditional lecture format. And students need to be taught how to learn in this environment from the get-go. Finally, I'll say that the technology has a ways to go. It would be really great if multiple people could talk over each other as if they were in the same room. If video degraded more gracefully (because many students do not have stable enough connections at home) while maintaining audio. If various apps with white boards gave students the ability to "see" your previous boards. (A couple programs do this, e.g., MS Teams, but AFAIK not Zoom.) And he didn't mention the nightmare that is assessment. I taught a small class to a group of bright, emotionally mature juniors and seniors. Teaching first year students is a completely different story. This is something we're working hard on, with a summer to prepare instead of just a week (our transition happened over spring break). But it's not easy. Edit: I suppose one way to summarize the above is to say that all the issues can be addressed, but online makes the energy barrier higher (or friction greater, whatever analogy you like) for both instructors and students.

clueless123 6y ago
VR Apps (Alt Space and others) can solve most of this issues right now. The soon coming generation of VR googles actually read your face expressions and replicates them online. IMHO, At the current pace of development, in less than a year, this will be the new reality.
darkerside 6y ago
These are great points. Running meetings (industry example) over Zoom is very different from running them in person, and for many of the same reasons that you point out. This is going to sound like a plug, but I took a LifeLabs course on Meetings Mastery, and one small part of it was a discussion of how to engage with people over Zoom. Some examples were using the chat to ask questions that merit chat responses, asking people to "+1" in the chat when they agree with something (maybe students could "?" when they are getting lost), and using polls and breakout rooms. As someone who's been frustrated by adapting to the remote environment from a meetings perspective, I can relate. But at least the people in my meetings are mature enough (or compensated well enough) that they will keep cameras on, stay engaged in the discussion, etc.
- kkylin 6y ago
  Those are nice points; I quite agree there are things one can do to engage people over Zoom etc. But it's less spontaneous and takes more prior planning. Also, many students simply do not want to ask a question in front of their peers, online or in person. When in person, there are other cues I can use to detect student confusion -- frowns, someone trying to decide if they should raise their hand, a barely audible "um..." -- but online all of that is gone.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> that would likely have no impact to policy even if they were demonstrably true because the driving factor is human safety and not efficacy or ease of teaching. Why would it have "no impact to policy"? Let's imagine for a moment that we discovered remote learning was 100% ineffective for everyone. Students came out of remote learning programs with no more knowledge than they did going in. Should we: A) Continue with remote learning anyway, because in-person classes are unsafe. B) Stop remote learning, and accept that students will have to put their educations on hold for a year, despite all the implications that will have. Personally, I think option B is the obvious choice. There’s no point in doing anything if students don’t benefit. Okay, now let's say that remote learning was only 50% effective, or 60%. Is option A now the right answer? Putting everyone’s education on hold is going to have lots of dire consequences—but, is it worse than educating them inadequately? What does that mean for the next generation of high schoolers entering college, or college students entering the workforce? Alternately, perhaps the correct conclusion is that we really, really do need to reopen schools this fall. Why is so much of the country currently focused on reopening hair salons and outdoor restaurants while keeping schools closed? Maybe it should be the other way around—maybe schools are the most essential service, and we need to reopen them ASAP at the expense of other kinds of businesses.

darkerside 6y ago
I think you'd agree that any claim it's 100% ineffective is a straw man, and was just for purposes of the example. FWICT, most policy is being set with a baked-in assumption that remote learning is somewhat less effective than in-person learning. As I said, I don't see what the article does to add to that discussion, although it does possibly queue up a discussion on how we could make it better.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

doopy-loopy2 6y ago

Just because you don't agree doesn't mean it shouldn't be on HN. Personally, it seems blatantly obvious that Zoom cannot replace face-to-face interactions whether in a work setting or in an educational setting. The people advocating "100% remote and video calls for everything" are either just really short sighted or have some other motive going on.

diag 6y ago
The advocacy for 100% remote is motivated by the fact that there's the need to stay away from groups for an unknown amount of time. It's not short sighted, it's necessary.
darkerside 6y ago
Oh, I don't disagree at all. The reason I don't think it belongs on HN is because "It's essentially a collection of unsubstantiated claims that would likely have no impact to policy even if they were demonstrably true because the driving factor is human safety and not efficacy or ease of teaching." That has nothing to do with whether or not I agree with those claims, although in this particular case, it just so happens that I do.

empath75 6y ago

> Remote teaching may be harder, require more work, and have pitfalls that are quickly overcome in person. I'm not sure there's any reason to believe any of these things. What we do know is that we've trained almost every teacher to teach and learn in classrooms, and that using techniques developed in classrooms to teach remotely don't work well. We've barely spent any time at all developing techniques for remote learning, and we're already throwing up our hands.

diag 6y ago
People hate change, that's one thing I've come to expect.
darkerside 6y ago
Well, we need to operate from a baseline of where we are today. In a vacuum where we have been developing remote teaching techniques for just as long as in-person, you're right that perhaps remote teaching would be _even more effective_, but we simply have no way of knowing. Per the rest of my comment, I agree that rather than complain about the situation, we should be identifying ways to mitigate or exploit the situation to improve learning.