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I've always loved the concept, and yet was always the student that would scoff when lecturers mentioned reviewing. The problem is "active learning" doesn't work

I've always loved the concept, and yet was always the student that would scoff when lecturers mentioned reviewing. The problem is "active learning" doesn't work outside of small groups at a similar "level" so to speak (as in background knowledge, dedication, and interest). Very few college classes meet these requirements. When they did, they were amazing. But otherwise, reviewing just makes it nearly impossible to pay attention as the lecturer slowly speaks the material you already know. And then any questions you may have require too much detail to actually answer in the lecture. It's really quite miserable. Why would you do that to yourself?

dr_zoidberg 5y ago
In a course I teach when the isolation measures started in my country we got 2 weeks in advance to turn everything from in-person classes to virtual "maybe for a month, and then we'll go back" (you can imagine how that turned out). So during 2020 we moved into a model where we recorded the lectures for students to watch on their own time, and then they'd have a questions-only class (or so they were told). This turned out to get 80-90% of the students to actually view the material before class, and then they'd ask questions about what they didn't understand. On a few difficult topics, we ended up having yet another lecture (but focused on the parts they had trouble following). On some occasions where they didn't engage with many questions (I think it was the first few classes under this model, which was novel to the students) we the teachers picked up on doing a quick recap and focusing on what we knew beforehand tends to be hard to understand, and engaged them in the class (questions, explain the concepts themselves, etc). Here's my take: it takes a lot of effort to do this, from recording the material beforehand, to "lying" that the class will be questions-only for clearing up (and we know we'll end up explaining yet again if they don't bring questions), to actively engaging and changing the pace of the lectures/classes. Because of all this effort, out of 5 different courses I teach, I only managed to pull this in 1, and we're still tweaking a lot of content to make it work better under this model. But we're planning to keep it even after the restrictions are gone (we're still not giving in-person classes at my university, in theory they'll be back for 2022).

dr_zoidberg 5y ago

In a course I teach when the isolation measures started in my country we got 2 weeks in advance to turn everything from in-person classes to virtual "maybe for a month, and then we'll go back" (you can imagine how that turned out). So during 2020 we moved into a model where we recorded the lectures for students to watch on their own time, and then they'd have a questions-only class (or so they were told). This turned out to get 80-90% of the students to actually view the material before class, and then they'd ask questions about what they didn't understand. On a few difficult topics, we ended up having yet another lecture (but focused on the parts they had trouble following). On some occasions where they didn't engage with many questions (I think it was the first few classes under this model, which was novel to the students) we the teachers picked up on doing a quick recap and focusing on what we knew beforehand tends to be hard to understand, and engaged them in the class (questions, explain the concepts themselves, etc). Here's my take: it takes a lot of effort to do this, from recording the material beforehand, to "lying" that the class will be questions-only for clearing up (and we know we'll end up explaining yet again if they don't bring questions), to actively engaging and changing the pace of the lectures/classes. Because of all this effort, out of 5 different courses I teach, I only managed to pull this in 1, and we're still tweaking a lot of content to make it work better under this model. But we're planning to keep it even after the restrictions are gone (we're still not giving in-person classes at my university, in theory they'll be back for 2022).