8 ms·

I'm impressed more by the comments than the article itself. Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of

• bildung 5y ago
  This is a core problem in education, BTW: people, regardless of age, are essentially unable to properly evaluate whether they actually learned something from e.g. a course they just completed, and what helped with these learning effects. Those after-course feedbacks mostly just reflect whether they liked the presenter and/or the group. This of course has problematic consequences if that after-course feedback is used as evaluation of the course itself, because it can penalize courses where people would actually learn - because learning sometimes simply isn't fun.
  • nelgaard 5y ago
    Yes, it is often a matter of sympathy, atmosphere and ambitions more than actual learning. Many years ago as a grad student I was a teaching assistant. One year I was instructing two classes. One was an ordinary class. It was all very pleasant, cozy and relaxed. Students would often bake cake for the class. But I had trouble teaching because most of them did not do any homework and did not read the textbooks much. They all liked me. One even said in class that he would try to get me again next semester, meaning that he knew he would fail the exam. Which most of them did. The other class was a special class for students that had failed the previous exams and because the curriculum had changed this was their last chance. They were a lot more motivated. And they were quite critical about me as an instructor. At one point they even made a complaint about me be because I had tried to prove a theorem on the blackboard and failed because I made a silly mistake. They were absolutely right that I messed up that proof. But we did handle it in that same class and had a good discussion about that theorem and how to prove things. And their critical attitude kept me on my toes. I worked hard preparing the classes. And the classes were focused and tense. In the end, except for one that fell sick, everyone passed the exam with good marks.
  • lordnacho 5y ago
    It takes a huge level of maturity to know when you understand something. You have to take yourself away from how pleasant the interaction was, and ask yourself questions that are on the limit of what you think you can answer. That whole not-too-easy-or-hard balance is really difficult to nail down, especially if you have a grade depending on it. It's also hard when you have nothing but your own satisfaction depending on it, eg after you've graduated and are just reading for interest. The entertainment aspect is hard to get away from. It's like when you watch a good documentary, you're in awe of whatever field it's about. But have you really learned much? Hard to say.
  • parenthesis 5y ago
    Kind of a super power of mine is that I am very good at knowing whether or not I actually know or understand something. This made university pretty stressful: it was always on my mind how little I had yet retained and understood from my current courses; i'd only be happy when grinding material through my brain on my own (i.e. actually learning).
    • hansbo 5y ago
      I'd like to think I am good at it as well, but I doubt it. The number of times I've felt I've understood something, but then realized I could not answer follow-up questions or explain it properly to a third party, is uncountable.
    • Enginerrrd 5y ago
      I have the same thing! I've always found it deeply perplexing to see people that don't understand something but think that they do. Particularly, because when you actually understand something, it's so obvious. When I'm learning something, I have kind of a map in my head. I can just accurately keep track of the parts that are still fuzzy. In any subject, unknown unknowns are what will really trip you up. I think a big part of it is that I can use tiny context clues to predict and calibrate my understanding. Often, just knowing the NAME of a concept is enough for me to figure out what it's going to look like. (I did that with feynman path integrals for example.) SO I absorb those context clues and use them to try to keep some idea of what I DON'T know yet in that map. In fact, I think it's closely tied with prediction in general. I remember in math, I'd take what we knew, or had been learning, and just take it to the absolute limits of my knowledge, or find it's absolutely limits until the idea breaks. I did that constantly. In doing so, I could often predict the next section of study. I think that habit gives you lots of practice in self-assessment of what you really know. Conversely... when it comes to complicated subjects of complex systems like history/economics/geopolitics, where there is relatively poor feedback on "correctness" of ideas, I feel like ALL of my opinions are completely unfounded bullshit. People still seem to value them, but they have such a tenuous grip on reality.
  • underdeserver 5y ago
    In most cases you'd care about, it's easy: ask them to apply it.
• bsder 5y ago
  > Lectures are proved to be a bad way to learn things. This may be, but studies also show that you should review the material before the lecture so that you can engage the lecturer. I can count on a single hand and not use all the fingers the number of students I have taught who always reviewed the material before I lectured on it. Unsurprisingly, those students absolutely sailed through my class with very high grades. So, what should I, as a college lecturer, do about this? Everybody claims they want "active learning", but there are two parties to that bargain.
  • rfrey 5y ago
    If they worked through the material prior to the lecture, perhaps the lectures were spurious for them, and the credit for the high grades goes to the individual work.
    • bsder 5y ago
      Credit for high grades always goes to individual work. I like to think my lectures are good, but you can't learn material without doing the work yourself. As for being spurious? They didn't have to show up for my lectures--they did anyway. I have never made that a condition for any of my classes.
  • culebron21 5y ago
    I also taught at commercial courses and in a university, trying to apply active learning, but it didn't go well, so I haven't an answer to this problem either.
  • HPsquared 5y ago
    That requires the material to be available in advance, which often isn't the case.
    • bsder 5y ago
      Every class I have ever taught required a syllabus and text/reading assignments to be available--generally the entire semester is laid out at the first class.
• asimpletune 5y ago
  > if you enjoy a lesson, it usually means you make no progress If you learned something at all, then you should feel a tad bit dumber than before you started. A lot of people though actively avoid ever feeling dumb, so they want "edutainment". I think both are useful, but obviously not in the same proportions. If I were to make a language course, I would definitely try to make people feel smarter with the sample lessons. That being said, so much content is basically 95% this and 5% the important stuff. So I think it's important to find a balance. You need to sell to your audience, you do that by making them feel better after sampling the content, but there's actually negative value if the content never dips into the "you're going to feel dumber for a little while but it's ok" territory. I've never taken Masterclass, but is it all just edutainment? The people I know who take them seem to really prefer to feel good after learning stuff.
• _aaed 5y ago
  Are you referring to Noam Chomsky?
  • zeckalpha 5y ago
    Unlikely, his specialty is syntax rather than phonology
  • culebron21 5y ago
    I refer to Andrey Zalyznyak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Zaliznyak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Zaliznyak
• twic 5y ago
  > “When I began disciplined reading, I was reading at a rate of four thousand words a minute,” the girl said. “They had quite a time correcting me of it. I had to take remedial reading, and my parents were ashamed of me. Now I’ve learned to read almost slow enough.” > Slow enough, that is, to remember verbatim everything she has read. “We on Camiroi are only a little more intelligent than you on Earth,” one of the adults says. “We cannot afford to waste time on forgetting or reviewing, or pursuing anything of a shallowness that lends itself to scanning.” -- Primary Education of the Camiroi, R. A. Lafferty [1] [1] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/text-patterns/reading-at-speed https://www.thenewatlantis.com/text-patterns/reading-at-spee...
• ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  I wonder the quality of learning if you listen to/watch something at 2x speed twice. Bonus if there is a delay in which your mind may formulate questions. I'm guessing it would be superior unless it was a very high difficulty piece. Having a basic understanding and then formulating questions allows you have an input on the learning, as opposed to simply listening. I would also say that with some material (esp. fiction), your "comprehension" may go up if you listen to it faster, because you don't give your mind a chance to wonder if something makes sense; I often fall for the trap of asking what I would do in a given situation, and then when the character does something nonsensical, I go looking for a good reason. I lose sight of what the author is trying to say because they made a mistake when trying to forward the plot.
  • culebron21 5y ago
    Try this: after listening to a story or to a lecture, retell it to someone else in as much detail as possible. Or try defending lecturer's position or what their information implies. You'll be shocked to discover, you don't know enough details. You'll have to listen another time, and off goes the profit of x2 speed. But even after listening multiple times, it's still very hard to argue for, or retell in details what's been said. Unless it's a radio show, where information is sparse.
    • TchoBeer 5y ago
      >and off goes the profit of x2 speed I'm unconvinced. Is it better to listen to something once at 1x speed or twice at 2x speed?
      • imtringued 5y ago
        It's better to think about what you have listened to. If 2x lets you do that then you are better of vs 1x. I personally only use 2x when the person is talking very slowly.
  • ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    I believe the research supports fast reading as being better, because you get more of an overview, but presumably this peaks at some point, same as audio.
• jordic 5y ago
  This is one of the firsts principes of critical thinking: it's not only about understanding something, it's about being ready to challange it.
• naasking 5y ago
  This lends credence to the educational reform that I always found the most compelling: kids/people should be reading the chapters for the lecture ahead of time as their homework, and doing the practice problems in class instead of a lecture, so the teacher can actually help students work through problems (rather than parents who don't know the material). A brief review/lecture at the end to tie together all of that practice intoa coherent story then wraps it all up.
  • smitop 5y ago
    This is called a flipped classroom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
  • rmah 5y ago
    Many teachers/professors I had in my youth asked the class to read the material before lecture so the lecture could be a summary and then most of the time spent asking questions/discussing the topic. Few students actually did so.
    • naasking 5y ago
      It's not a matter of asking, it's mandatory. Reading is your homework, and if you don't read the night before you won't be able to do your problems and get help of you need it the day of.
      • aidenn0 5y ago
        But it's far simpler to check if students did 20 math problems then if they read a section of their textbook
        • robotresearcher 5y ago
          There’s no need to check.
          • 5y ago
• dan-robertson 5y ago
  At conferences, people will say they liked and learned from talks that were complicated and largely incomprehensible, and that they found trivial and boring the talks that managed to explain the thing well enough that it was actually understood.
• zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  100%! This reminded me of a similar lesson beaten into us _repeatedly_ in college. I would study for a test and feel like everything was crystal clear. Then i walk into the exam and get absolutely destroyed by stuff i thought i understood.. over and over again. It was (unfortunately) a common experience. Seeing the answers afterwards, they usually involved facts i knew applied in a way i could not. That experience convinced me that your internal assessment of how well you understand something can be wildly off without an objective yardstick. Like nothing teaches epistemic humility quite as forcefully as getting rekt in an exam.
  • maximus-decimus 5y ago
    The only thing that taught me is imposter syndrom and how to wake up in sweat after dreaming of still being at university.
  • turdnagel 5y ago
    I also had a similar experience in college, but I'm having trouble understanding what the lesson you learned was. Did you eventually improve?
    • opportune 5y ago
      I think this is a problem solvable by doing practice problems. For me with Math this is something I learned the hard way many times. In more advanced math tests you will be asked to prove something novel (to you) using skills/material from the covered subject. So it’s not enough to know the theorems, you need to understand them at a deeper level so you can apply them in new situations or use a similar practice from the theorem to prove something similar. This is pretty straightforward for most math/physics/other stem courses since they’re usually accompanied by problem sets in their textbooks, and it’s rare to have to do absolutely all of them as HW.
  • dqpb 5y ago
    For me, the act of programming has taught me epistemic humility much more forcefully and consistently than exams.
  • 5y ago
• BurningFrog 5y ago
  You can think of lectures as showing the extremely conservative education industry not being able to reform itself since before the printing press.
• tomxor 5y ago
  > Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of own skills. Perception is a strong force, and being good at "evaluating your current ability", and more broadly being good at "evaluating how good you are at evaluating your current ability", is a skill in itself. Awareness that you may currently be incapable of measuring these things in an unbiased way is a big step on this path, the next step being the realization that you probably are incapable.
• fouric 5y ago
  > A nice experiment showing that if you enjoy a lesson, it usually means you make no progress, meanwhile hard practice actually does make you progress There was a post a few weeks ago whose comments had discussion about whether video learning was useful or worked better for some people than textual learning. I saw a lot of people claiming that they enjoyed videos more and learned more from them...but, as the linked study shows, enjoyment doesn't imply learning effectiveness (if anything, there's a negative correlation).
• petters 5y ago
  It is very clear to me that listening at 3x works after some training. (Not surprising, since almost everyone already reads way faster than normal speech) The proof for this is e.g. blind people. Listen to what their screen readers sound like! I bet it will be hard to know even what language it is.
  • mcguire 5y ago
    I have listened, and it's amazing, but I'm not sure they are understanding more than I would if I were scanning the page for the navigation options. (I haven't heard someone listening to a long-form text for understanding.)
    • petters 5y ago
      But people reading a long-form text faster than normal speech should be common and uncontroversial, I think.
• enominezerum 5y ago
  Yea, this is why my IT program had such poor students in the higher grade levels. I would spend 8 hours on Saturday on labs and other students would breeze through them in a couple hours. I asked them if they really knew what they were doing and they claimed they did, until after summer break when they forgot everything but I had literal muscle memory from typing commands and performing sequences. I'd complete my labs for credit and then either reset and try to break them or complete the lab again. In IT we call the 3x speed folks "Paper Tigers" they may have accreditations and exam certs that say they know a lot, but throw them a curveball and they can barely pass muster.
• hdjrudni 5y ago
  This makes me feel better about myself. I don't like reading or listening a ton before diving it. Just give me a spoonful and then I'll do what I can with that, and come back for the next spoonful when I'm ready. The downside is that sometimes there's a better solution in the next spoonful that I didn't think of/knew existed and then I have to redo some work to integrate the next tidbit of knowledge, but hey..at least it sticks in my noggin and I fully understand why that next bit came into existence.