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I've seen many postdocs creating & recording online class material. I wonder if this will be used to turn some classes into recorded classes, reducing staff for

I've seen many postdocs creating & recording online class material. I wonder if this will be used to turn some classes into recorded classes, reducing staff forever.

throwawaygh 6y ago
I've been lead staff on a course with pre-recorded lectures, pre-covid. Teaching well is super labor intensive. Running a large-enrollment course is more like running a small business/group than most people realize. You need dozens of staff doing repetitive stuff that looks easy to automate from the outside but really isn't. Teaching doesn't scale well, even in CS where things like auto-graders can do a lot of the work. And even in the most automatable set of CS courses (intro programming courses). And teaching poorly has negative value add. The original SICP recordings have been online for decades and are 100x better than some random post-doc's first attempt at teaching python. For that matter, CS50 has been online for years. For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. Active teaching doesn't scale.
- NateEag 6y ago
  > Active teaching doesn't scale. This is so very true. > For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. I strongly disagree with this. I was homeschooled through high school and taught myself for most subjects during high school - my parents gave me textbooks and teacher's manuals, said "ask us when you get stuck," and I went to town. That's largely how I approached college, too - attended lectures, did the assignments and read the textbooks. That was a big mistake on my part - I could have gotten so much more out of my education if I'd really developed relationships with my college professors and worked with them more. Nonetheless, I did manage to learn most of what was in my CS program that way. I'm no genius, and I really think anyone with a normal brain can do what I did (given the time and resources to focus on study). Is self-teaching plus active teaching better than self-teaching plus lectures? Absolutely. You'll spend far less time struggling and being stuck, and your teacher will be able to communicate new ideas directly to you so much better than they can to a whole crowd. Nonetheless, I think for most subjects it just isn't actually necessary. It's a luxury, lovely when you can get it, but not required for learning.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    I also taught myself to program in 3rd grade and read the classics on my own as a child. But also, I've taught thousands of students. Your claim might be true in some abstract sense. I could believe that if we give all students personal tutors from a young age then most any student can learn how to learn on their own by age 10 or 15 or so. Having educated and involved parents certainly made that possible for me and I'm nothing special. But conservatively 90% of students don't arrive at college ready for that level of self-directed learning. Consider e.g. that about half of college students are first generation college students.
  - bo1024 6y ago
    It sounds like your homeschool environment prepared you very well for that style of learning in college. > I'm no genius, and I really think anyone with a normal brain can do what I did I'm a big believer that almost anyone is smart enough to learn almost anything if they are motivated and have the time and energy. There are two problems. One is that people don't necessarily know how to learn (and we may not be good at teaching them this). The other is that schools have to meet students where they are -- not just in terms of smarts about the subject, but in terms of motivation and commitment level.
- bo1024 6y ago
  Just chiming in that your post matches 100% with what I've heard, seen, and read. I'll add that it's one thing if some of the best self-motivated students are able to learn just by watching videos, submitting assignments, and seeing their autograde. It's another thing to expect this to work for 95% of the freshman class at Random University. Many will ignore the videos or not mentally engage, muddle through the assignments or cheat. Others won't have the meta-learning skills to identify where they're stuck and resolve the confusion. So I'm not quite sure what you have in mind when you say "active teaching", but I completely agree at least with "interactive". At least the TA staff hours-per-student has to scale linearly. Professor time probably does too, but as you say, it's managerial.
barry-cotter 6y ago
Most online classes are just really crappy small scale closed MOOCs and most people are incapable of profitably completing a MOOC. Those who can, perhaps 10-15% of the population, are the same people who could have done reasonably well given a textbook and told to complete all the exercises and the test is in three months. Learning materials are not the limiting factor on learning.
jsemrau 6y ago
That's an interesting point literally merging offline and online education.

I've seen many postdocs creating & recording online class material. I wonder if this will be used to turn some classes into recorded classes, reducing staff forever.

throwawaygh 6y ago

I've been lead staff on a course with pre-recorded lectures, pre-covid. Teaching well is super labor intensive. Running a large-enrollment course is more like running a small business/group than most people realize. You need dozens of staff doing repetitive stuff that looks easy to automate from the outside but really isn't. Teaching doesn't scale well, even in CS where things like auto-graders can do a lot of the work. And even in the most automatable set of CS courses (intro programming courses). And teaching poorly has negative value add. The original SICP recordings have been online for decades and are 100x better than some random post-doc's first attempt at teaching python. For that matter, CS50 has been online for years. For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. Active teaching doesn't scale.

NateEag 6y ago
> Active teaching doesn't scale. This is so very true. > For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. I strongly disagree with this. I was homeschooled through high school and taught myself for most subjects during high school - my parents gave me textbooks and teacher's manuals, said "ask us when you get stuck," and I went to town. That's largely how I approached college, too - attended lectures, did the assignments and read the textbooks. That was a big mistake on my part - I could have gotten so much more out of my education if I'd really developed relationships with my college professors and worked with them more. Nonetheless, I did manage to learn most of what was in my CS program that way. I'm no genius, and I really think anyone with a normal brain can do what I did (given the time and resources to focus on study). Is self-teaching plus active teaching better than self-teaching plus lectures? Absolutely. You'll spend far less time struggling and being stuck, and your teacher will be able to communicate new ideas directly to you so much better than they can to a whole crowd. Nonetheless, I think for most subjects it just isn't actually necessary. It's a luxury, lovely when you can get it, but not required for learning.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  I also taught myself to program in 3rd grade and read the classics on my own as a child. But also, I've taught thousands of students. Your claim might be true in some abstract sense. I could believe that if we give all students personal tutors from a young age then most any student can learn how to learn on their own by age 10 or 15 or so. Having educated and involved parents certainly made that possible for me and I'm nothing special. But conservatively 90% of students don't arrive at college ready for that level of self-directed learning. Consider e.g. that about half of college students are first generation college students.
- bo1024 6y ago
  It sounds like your homeschool environment prepared you very well for that style of learning in college. > I'm no genius, and I really think anyone with a normal brain can do what I did I'm a big believer that almost anyone is smart enough to learn almost anything if they are motivated and have the time and energy. There are two problems. One is that people don't necessarily know how to learn (and we may not be good at teaching them this). The other is that schools have to meet students where they are -- not just in terms of smarts about the subject, but in terms of motivation and commitment level.
bo1024 6y ago
Just chiming in that your post matches 100% with what I've heard, seen, and read. I'll add that it's one thing if some of the best self-motivated students are able to learn just by watching videos, submitting assignments, and seeing their autograde. It's another thing to expect this to work for 95% of the freshman class at Random University. Many will ignore the videos or not mentally engage, muddle through the assignments or cheat. Others won't have the meta-learning skills to identify where they're stuck and resolve the confusion. So I'm not quite sure what you have in mind when you say "active teaching", but I completely agree at least with "interactive". At least the TA staff hours-per-student has to scale linearly. Professor time probably does too, but as you say, it's managerial.

barry-cotter 6y ago

Most online classes are just really crappy small scale closed MOOCs and most people are incapable of profitably completing a MOOC. Those who can, perhaps 10-15% of the population, are the same people who could have done reasonably well given a textbook and told to complete all the exercises and the test is in three months. Learning materials are not the limiting factor on learning.

jsemrau 6y ago

That's an interesting point literally merging offline and online education.