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> In intro classes in our department, mean grades have been a whole standard deviation lower than the long run pre-pandemic average. Have you ever considered t

> In intro classes in our department, mean grades have been a whole standard deviation lower than the long run pre-pandemic average. Have you ever considered that the digital teaching methods you employed are subpar compared to those a dedicated online only teaching platform might have. I don't mean to suggest you did not try.

itronitron 4y ago
> a dedicated online only teaching platform Can you provide links to any?
huitzitziltzin 4y ago
I think it's obvious that the digital teaching methods we employed were not effective, but there was no information available at all about what worked. Also: we tried many different things. Certainly I did! Moreover (as I replied to a different comment above) even after a year of being online the students were unable to identify things that made any of their online classes work. At that point they had resigned to their classes sucking. (Not just my class - I asked my students to tell me what worked in any of their online classes. Collectively that's asking about the teaching methods of a few hundred professors.) If you have information about some methods which work, I would have loved to have them. I would still love to have them! (If you can provide some evidence about whether and how they are known to work that would be better still.)
- freemint 4y ago
  I don claim to have a good answer but i would ask myself a chain of questions: Were learning materials which cover the required material made available to students? Were those materials made available on an approachable platform? Were those materials made available on a platform which encouraged habit formation for students to work on the material? Are students able to track their progress? Are students able to confirm their progress and check with where they are supposed to be if the exam dates are fixed? Is the progress of student embedded into a (meta) narrative which ties together the lecture and provides topical humor (like a lecturer would when cleaning the blackboards)? Are means in place to ensure passive diffusion of important information if students are stuck? Are means in place to encourage or enforce formation of student learning groups and cooperation between students? The traditional lecture hall model has a lot of mechanism which need to be replicated in the digital sphere.
LanceH 4y ago
The bigger effect is that kids getting sent home due to the pandemic weren't being enrolled in online learning. They went on vacation with occasional check-ins online. That's about how I would describe my kids' experience and they were solidly grounded, with supervision at home at a school well prepared technologically. Most kids had no interest in working without supervision forcing them to work. Now that they're back in school, they are continuing to not work and it's a disaster, with teachers and staff quitting or retiring en masse. Again, this is in a school district that people had been trying to get into for years. It's really not the coursework delivery style, it's about forcing kids to do what they don't want to do. This force just isn't a component of online learning -- it has little to do with content delivery, imo. The upside is that those kids that actually want to learn are freed up more than ever before and can actually thrive.
- greedo 4y ago
  This tracks with what my daughter experienced. At her age (HS Junior), she had classes that she wasn't particularly interested in. In-person classes have that social/peer pressure to actually study and turn in work. For dull/uninspiring classes, this helps to push students to pay attention, read the texts, turn in assignments, and participate. With the online classes, she had an easier time shrinking into the background and not participating as much as in-person.

itronitron 4y ago

> a dedicated online only teaching platform Can you provide links to any?

huitzitziltzin 4y ago

I think it's obvious that the digital teaching methods we employed were not effective, but there was no information available at all about what worked. Also: we tried many different things. Certainly I did! Moreover (as I replied to a different comment above) even after a year of being online the students were unable to identify things that made any of their online classes work. At that point they had resigned to their classes sucking. (Not just my class - I asked my students to tell me what worked in any of their online classes. Collectively that's asking about the teaching methods of a few hundred professors.) If you have information about some methods which work, I would have loved to have them. I would still love to have them! (If you can provide some evidence about whether and how they are known to work that would be better still.)

freemint 4y ago
I don claim to have a good answer but i would ask myself a chain of questions: Were learning materials which cover the required material made available to students? Were those materials made available on an approachable platform? Were those materials made available on a platform which encouraged habit formation for students to work on the material? Are students able to track their progress? Are students able to confirm their progress and check with where they are supposed to be if the exam dates are fixed? Is the progress of student embedded into a (meta) narrative which ties together the lecture and provides topical humor (like a lecturer would when cleaning the blackboards)? Are means in place to ensure passive diffusion of important information if students are stuck? Are means in place to encourage or enforce formation of student learning groups and cooperation between students? The traditional lecture hall model has a lot of mechanism which need to be replicated in the digital sphere.

LanceH 4y ago

The bigger effect is that kids getting sent home due to the pandemic weren't being enrolled in online learning. They went on vacation with occasional check-ins online. That's about how I would describe my kids' experience and they were solidly grounded, with supervision at home at a school well prepared technologically. Most kids had no interest in working without supervision forcing them to work. Now that they're back in school, they are continuing to not work and it's a disaster, with teachers and staff quitting or retiring en masse. Again, this is in a school district that people had been trying to get into for years. It's really not the coursework delivery style, it's about forcing kids to do what they don't want to do. This force just isn't a component of online learning -- it has little to do with content delivery, imo. The upside is that those kids that actually want to learn are freed up more than ever before and can actually thrive.

greedo 4y ago
This tracks with what my daughter experienced. At her age (HS Junior), she had classes that she wasn't particularly interested in. In-person classes have that social/peer pressure to actually study and turn in work. For dull/uninspiring classes, this helps to push students to pay attention, read the texts, turn in assignments, and participate. With the online classes, she had an easier time shrinking into the background and not participating as much as in-person.