6 ms·

In my experience, in-person educators often do a rather poor job with online education. There's often a lot of effort to emulate in-person learning, instead of

by bnralt 4y ago

In my experience, in-person educators often do a rather poor job with online education. There's often a lot of effort to emulate in-person learning, instead of an acceptance that online education is its own thing. They also often approach online education with a bias against it, which I doubt helps things. In-person educators trying to do online learning, getting poor results, and then saying it's the fault of online education is a bit like a YouTube educator teaching in person classes, doing poorly, and then declaring that in-person education is inferior. Also worth noting that students who have spent years being conditioned with in-person learning might have an adjustment period when starting online education, one that might not go smoothly if it's happening during a crisis and guided by people inexperienced with and predisposed against this form of education.

jamal-kumar 4y ago
This is a really important insight and I think everyone should take note of it for pedagogy going forward for the next years
photochemsyn 4y ago
In both online and inperson, a major choke point occurs when students get stuck on a problem and have nowhere to go to get help, or when students don't get useful feedback after submitting their work. This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. I imagine a huge factor is also parental involvement, when it comes to encouraging students to set aside several hours each night for study and homework. In the absence of parental involvement or in cases of parental neglect and indifference (woefully common in many situations), the role of the teacher becomes far more important in encouraging the student to develop good study habits. This might be more difficult in the online situation.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  That's why you should use a "flipped classroom" model, to focus in-person effort on these limited chokepoints. That still leaves everything else that can largely be done non-interactively and at the best pace for each student.
- padobson 4y ago
  This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. One of Malcolm Gladwell's books made a convincing argument that reducing class size quickly runs into the issue of diminishing returns. A cursory Googling suggests there's plenty of research to back it up[0][1] The effectiveness of in-person learning may have more to do with social interaction and peer motivation. A teacher with about 20 students who is able to create a general excitement for learning in the class seems to be the most effective. A classroom where the "spirit" of learning is alive is ideal for a lot of kids. [0]https://edcentral.uk/reading-list/431-what-we-have-learned-about-class-size-reduction-in-california https://edcentral.uk/reading-list/431-what-we-have-learned-a... [1]http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/evidence-class-size http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/evidence-class-siz...
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    In some of these online classes I've heard of >1000 students signing up with one professor and maybe two assistants. In that case, maybe a model would be to recruit the top students (selected early in the course based on their submitted) work) to act as tutors for say groups of 10 or so. Pitch them on the idea with "the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else."
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      And what happens if they don’t want to do it?
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Make their course completion contingent upon doing so? That’s a bit draconian of course, but you could also provide something positive to juice the deal instead. Incentives 101.
        endisneigh 4y ago
        So the education system is contingent on making students teach other students, or else? Lol
- odessacubbage 4y ago
  part of the problem is that homework is just treated as a given obligation rather than something students should be able to do voluntarily, as-needed. combine this with teacher quotas [students MUST do 10-20 hours of homework a week] you end up with bloat and students being tasked with just as much unneeded busywork as actual crucial practice for the areas they are struggling. this also exacerbates the treadmill effect where students who are struggling are perpetually falling further and further behind under a pile of red marked assignments they simply do not understand. the best model i experienced as a student was where homework (and class for that matter) were treated as entirely opt-in and classrooms served more as a centralized hub for ad-hoc tutoring/study hall. in this model, in person class time primarily served as a resource for unstucking and freed up everyone else to get on with their day. also what no one wants to hear is that good study habits are primarily driven by student investment in what they are learning and said investment is the product of learning things they actually care about.
huitzitziltzin 4y ago
I don't entirely disagree, but I partially disagree. Personally I was desperate in March 2020 (as were my colleagues) for any tips about what would work online. I didn't want my classes to suck, nor did my colleagues. There was very little information available at the beginning about what worked. But what's worse (and what makes me disagree with your comment) is that even after a year of being online it still wasn't clear how to make it not suck! Basically no one had discovered anything which made students like it OR perform well. I polled my students every midterm and final exam (and gave them actual points for their answers!) on whatever they had found to work in any of their online classes. Collectively they were exposed to several hundred other professors at my university. While they did have some suggestions (which I did implement), nothing really worked.
- xyzzy21 4y ago
  Could it be that since humans are social primates, online simply can never work as well as face-to-face. I work in sales and direct face-to-face sales ALWAYS has better close rates, happier customers, etc. than indirect sales through phone or internet.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    As a customer, I much prefer online shopping in no small part because I don't want to deal with salespeople.
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    There is Zoom and other stuff involving faces.
  - greedo 4y ago
    Close rates are better because a captive customer is at a severe disadvantage to the psychological tactics used in sales.
    - cseleborg 4y ago
      Objection, your honor! I sold private whisky casks to individuals or groups. Before the pandemic, I would sit down at the table with them and guide them through a tasting, several hours long. My close rate was close to 50%. With the pandemic, I switched to shipping samples and moderating the tasting online via Zoom or Teams. My close rate dropped to noise level. I don't think I fundamentally changed my "tactics", and since it involved drinking more than a few sips of alcohol, I never required the customer to sign the order form in my presence. In my experience, physical presence was waaaay more conducive to sales.
e40 4y ago
> In my experience, in-person educators often do a rather poor job with online education. This 1000x. My son is at UCSD. Very few of the online lectures were better, majority were worse. I think online can be better, but it requires expertise that doesn't exists in most teaching professionals.
v_london 4y ago
I think there's something to comparing education (especially when delivered remotely) to YouTube. There's a huge variance between the teaching skills of teachers, just as there is variance between how entertaining YouTubers are. The difference is, the best teachers get paid the same as average ones, while nobody knows the name of an average creator. I wrote briefly about the topic in a blog post, titled "Professors as Creators". It explores the idea briefly, and how treating teachers as "creators" could add value not just to remote learning, but to in-person lessons as well. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/professors-as-creators-how-the-creator-economy-could-transform-education-99f6bef678f8 https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/professors-as-creators-h...
Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
If there's a choice between online/offline school, Then one could choose what works for their kid. But it's not a choice anymore in India where the online-school-education started out as a necessity during pandemic lock-down and now kids are enrolled in it due to peer-pressure; Parents in India already spent >40% of their income on their kids education before pandemic. What's worse is that these online school education startups copied Khan Academy's coursework and some even became an unicorn during pandemic with fraudulent practices(False advertising: E.g. 'Kid who took our course got employed by Google', Untrained/Unqualified teachers etc.); So I wouldn't think twice about enrolling my kid into an online-school run by Mr.Khan if I had one.
raarts 4y ago
I teach CS in college (in NL, not the US). In the discussion about online teaching many forget to take age into account. Age differences are huge. Let me repeat that: Age makes a huge difference. Especially below 21. Take my 18-yo and 22-yo students. They have responded to my online teaching in a very different way. The 18 year olds responded much better to physical teaching - most vocally preferred it - while older students generally preferred online. I could write a lot more about the details here but I'm on my phone My daughter teaches math in high school and what she sees can be summed up as: kids are social and need supervision, and a different approach depending on age. 12-year olds are basically still kids but as soon as puberty kicks in kids are overwhelmed by a series of physical, psychological and social changes. This makes life hard to navigate for them and for this reason they need guidance. So in my opinion remote learning (without local adult supervision) is the worst option for high school.

by bnralt 4y ago

jamal-kumar 4y ago

This is a really important insight and I think everyone should take note of it for pedagogy going forward for the next years

photochemsyn 4y ago

In both online and inperson, a major choke point occurs when students get stuck on a problem and have nowhere to go to get help, or when students don't get useful feedback after submitting their work. This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. I imagine a huge factor is also parental involvement, when it comes to encouraging students to set aside several hours each night for study and homework. In the absence of parental involvement or in cases of parental neglect and indifference (woefully common in many situations), the role of the teacher becomes far more important in encouraging the student to develop good study habits. This might be more difficult in the online situation.

zozbot234 4y ago
That's why you should use a "flipped classroom" model, to focus in-person effort on these limited chokepoints. That still leaves everything else that can largely be done non-interactively and at the best pace for each student.
padobson 4y ago
This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. One of Malcolm Gladwell's books made a convincing argument that reducing class size quickly runs into the issue of diminishing returns. A cursory Googling suggests there's plenty of research to back it up[0][1] The effectiveness of in-person learning may have more to do with social interaction and peer motivation. A teacher with about 20 students who is able to create a general excitement for learning in the class seems to be the most effective. A classroom where the "spirit" of learning is alive is ideal for a lot of kids. [0]https://edcentral.uk/reading-list/431-what-we-have-learned-about-class-size-reduction-in-california https://edcentral.uk/reading-list/431-what-we-have-learned-a... [1]http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/evidence-class-size http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/evidence-class-siz...
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  In some of these online classes I've heard of >1000 students signing up with one professor and maybe two assistants. In that case, maybe a model would be to recruit the top students (selected early in the course based on their submitted) work) to act as tutors for say groups of 10 or so. Pitch them on the idea with "the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else."
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    And what happens if they don’t want to do it?
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Make their course completion contingent upon doing so? That’s a bit draconian of course, but you could also provide something positive to juice the deal instead. Incentives 101.
      - endisneigh 4y ago
        So the education system is contingent on making students teach other students, or else? Lol
odessacubbage 4y ago
part of the problem is that homework is just treated as a given obligation rather than something students should be able to do voluntarily, as-needed. combine this with teacher quotas [students MUST do 10-20 hours of homework a week] you end up with bloat and students being tasked with just as much unneeded busywork as actual crucial practice for the areas they are struggling. this also exacerbates the treadmill effect where students who are struggling are perpetually falling further and further behind under a pile of red marked assignments they simply do not understand. the best model i experienced as a student was where homework (and class for that matter) were treated as entirely opt-in and classrooms served more as a centralized hub for ad-hoc tutoring/study hall. in this model, in person class time primarily served as a resource for unstucking and freed up everyone else to get on with their day. also what no one wants to hear is that good study habits are primarily driven by student investment in what they are learning and said investment is the product of learning things they actually care about.

huitzitziltzin 4y ago

I don't entirely disagree, but I partially disagree. Personally I was desperate in March 2020 (as were my colleagues) for any tips about what would work online. I didn't want my classes to suck, nor did my colleagues. There was very little information available at the beginning about what worked. But what's worse (and what makes me disagree with your comment) is that even after a year of being online it still wasn't clear how to make it not suck! Basically no one had discovered anything which made students like it OR perform well. I polled my students every midterm and final exam (and gave them actual points for their answers!) on whatever they had found to work in any of their online classes. Collectively they were exposed to several hundred other professors at my university. While they did have some suggestions (which I did implement), nothing really worked.

xyzzy21 4y ago
Could it be that since humans are social primates, online simply can never work as well as face-to-face. I work in sales and direct face-to-face sales ALWAYS has better close rates, happier customers, etc. than indirect sales through phone or internet.
- leereeves 4y ago
  As a customer, I much prefer online shopping in no small part because I don't want to deal with salespeople.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  There is Zoom and other stuff involving faces.
- greedo 4y ago
  Close rates are better because a captive customer is at a severe disadvantage to the psychological tactics used in sales.
  - cseleborg 4y ago
    Objection, your honor! I sold private whisky casks to individuals or groups. Before the pandemic, I would sit down at the table with them and guide them through a tasting, several hours long. My close rate was close to 50%. With the pandemic, I switched to shipping samples and moderating the tasting online via Zoom or Teams. My close rate dropped to noise level. I don't think I fundamentally changed my "tactics", and since it involved drinking more than a few sips of alcohol, I never required the customer to sign the order form in my presence. In my experience, physical presence was waaaay more conducive to sales.

e40 4y ago

> In my experience, in-person educators often do a rather poor job with online education. This 1000x. My son is at UCSD. Very few of the online lectures were better, majority were worse. I think online can be better, but it requires expertise that doesn't exists in most teaching professionals.

v_london 4y ago

I think there's something to comparing education (especially when delivered remotely) to YouTube. There's a huge variance between the teaching skills of teachers, just as there is variance between how entertaining YouTubers are. The difference is, the best teachers get paid the same as average ones, while nobody knows the name of an average creator. I wrote briefly about the topic in a blog post, titled "Professors as Creators". It explores the idea briefly, and how treating teachers as "creators" could add value not just to remote learning, but to in-person lessons as well. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/professors-as-creators-how-the-creator-economy-could-transform-education-99f6bef678f8 https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/professors-as-creators-h...

Abishek_Muthian 4y ago

If there's a choice between online/offline school, Then one could choose what works for their kid. But it's not a choice anymore in India where the online-school-education started out as a necessity during pandemic lock-down and now kids are enrolled in it due to peer-pressure; Parents in India already spent >40% of their income on their kids education before pandemic. What's worse is that these online school education startups copied Khan Academy's coursework and some even became an unicorn during pandemic with fraudulent practices(False advertising: E.g. 'Kid who took our course got employed by Google', Untrained/Unqualified teachers etc.); So I wouldn't think twice about enrolling my kid into an online-school run by Mr.Khan if I had one.

raarts 4y ago

I teach CS in college (in NL, not the US). In the discussion about online teaching many forget to take age into account. Age differences are huge. Let me repeat that: Age makes a huge difference. Especially below 21. Take my 18-yo and 22-yo students. They have responded to my online teaching in a very different way. The 18 year olds responded much better to physical teaching - most vocally preferred it - while older students generally preferred online. I could write a lot more about the details here but I'm on my phone My daughter teaches math in high school and what she sees can be summed up as: kids are social and need supervision, and a different approach depending on age. 12-year olds are basically still kids but as soon as puberty kicks in kids are overwhelmed by a series of physical, psychological and social changes. This makes life hard to navigate for them and for this reason they need guidance. So in my opinion remote learning (without local adult supervision) is the worst option for high school.