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I've taught English to undergrads (mostly freshmen), on and off, for 13 years, and it's apparent that no one I'm aware of has a great model for teaching reading

I've taught English to undergrads (mostly freshmen), on and off, for 13 years, and it's apparent that no one I'm aware of has a great model for teaching reading and writing skills online, at least to college students. Most of the efforts I've seen attempt, mostly unsuccessfully, to replicate the classroom model, or attempt what looks mostly like a busywork model. College students are likely more motivated on average than K-12 students. It's possible for the highly motivated to learn a lot, but, for the median student, things look much grimmer. I'm not a luddite and would love to see successful online education that works at least as well as offline. So far, I'm not hugely optimistic, for the median student: https://seliger.com/2013/08/19/computers-and-education-an-example-of-conventional-wisdom-being-wrong/ https://seliger.com/2013/08/19/computers-and-education-an-ex....

qsort 5y ago
To be fair that's a very hard problem. I have no formal teaching experience, but I taught several competitive mathematics seminars for elite high school students. Transposing the classroom model is unsatisfactory, working remotely strongly encourages you to pursue asynchronous models. But on the other hand a lesson is more than just a youtube video, you definitely want some degree of interactivity. It sounds really silly, but I wonder if internet-first models like Twitch streams with rich interactive chats are actually closer to the solution.
toast0 5y ago
I think there's this expectation that online/computer based education would reduce/eliminate teachers and allow for mostly unsupervised learning, and I just don't see how that would work for reading and especially writing. Maybe reading, a bit, because a lot of people will get most of the way there with learn by example and a couple check ins. And then lots of practice. Writing seems difficult to computerize. And having a classroom full of students doing roughly the same thing seems a lot less labor intensive than each student at their own pace with a teacher available with enough context to appropriately critique and encourage and provide useful resources. The arithmetic portions of elementary mathematics seem a lot more amenable to computerization. The computer can easily judge the answers, and while it takes a lot of time and practice to master some of the skills, the breadth of skills is really not that deep, so there's not a whole lot of context that needs to be considered when help is needed. I don't know that this still holds at higher level math, but there's parts that might. On the other hand, group instruction can allow for peer assistance with tricky things which may help both parties understand the material more.
908B64B197 5y ago
> It's possible for the highly motivated to learn a lot, but, for the median student, things look much grimmer. I'm starting to think most classes could be split in two when doing online education. There's a percentage of students that are highly motivated and that don't really need a lot of supervision. A teacher could split them into a group and assign them (a lot) of reading and follow up at a regular cadence. They should be encouraged to have a daily conference call, not necessarily with the teacher, to work together on problems or discuss books. Else these students are stuck in a lecture where, let's face it, half the time is spent doing "classroom management" for problematic students.

qsort 5y ago

To be fair that's a very hard problem. I have no formal teaching experience, but I taught several competitive mathematics seminars for elite high school students. Transposing the classroom model is unsatisfactory, working remotely strongly encourages you to pursue asynchronous models. But on the other hand a lesson is more than just a youtube video, you definitely want some degree of interactivity. It sounds really silly, but I wonder if internet-first models like Twitch streams with rich interactive chats are actually closer to the solution.

toast0 5y ago

I think there's this expectation that online/computer based education would reduce/eliminate teachers and allow for mostly unsupervised learning, and I just don't see how that would work for reading and especially writing. Maybe reading, a bit, because a lot of people will get most of the way there with learn by example and a couple check ins. And then lots of practice. Writing seems difficult to computerize. And having a classroom full of students doing roughly the same thing seems a lot less labor intensive than each student at their own pace with a teacher available with enough context to appropriately critique and encourage and provide useful resources. The arithmetic portions of elementary mathematics seem a lot more amenable to computerization. The computer can easily judge the answers, and while it takes a lot of time and practice to master some of the skills, the breadth of skills is really not that deep, so there's not a whole lot of context that needs to be considered when help is needed. I don't know that this still holds at higher level math, but there's parts that might. On the other hand, group instruction can allow for peer assistance with tricky things which may help both parties understand the material more.

908B64B197 5y ago

> It's possible for the highly motivated to learn a lot, but, for the median student, things look much grimmer. I'm starting to think most classes could be split in two when doing online education. There's a percentage of students that are highly motivated and that don't really need a lot of supervision. A teacher could split them into a group and assign them (a lot) of reading and follow up at a regular cadence. They should be encouraged to have a daily conference call, not necessarily with the teacher, to work together on problems or discuss books. Else these students are stuck in a lecture where, let's face it, half the time is spent doing "classroom management" for problematic students.