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I am not sure why people are not adopting Khan Academy's reasonings and methods for teaching at almost all levels where the study material doesn't change and ha

I am not sure why people are not adopting Khan Academy's reasonings and methods for teaching at almost all levels where the study material doesn't change and has been static for years. Why are professors made to teach the same subject each year? Why not create a set of lectures by the best in the field or even setup a committee of professors on how best to craft a particular lecture and create a video, freeze it and distribute it. So many professors spend time in writing an equation on the board, hey why not latex it? I believe each university should hire a powerpoint / slideshow person who can translate professors material into modern format to avoid repeating of work. Once the foundational material is out in the open, the real fun can begin with discussions and other storytelling activities which incorporates philosophy, history and how the topic came about to be and future open-ended problems.

eddd-ddde 3y ago
I hate being forced to attend college classes in person, where I sit for 4 hours, hearing a person talk about something that I don't care about, and even if I cared, I could learn it myself in half the time by myself at home. I'm a firm believer that lectures should never be necessary, give me the recorded lecture which I'll watch if I want to, I'll read the content myself, and I'll ask the teacher questions over the time where lectures would usually be given, and it will be easier since not everyone has to be there at once.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  At my university the professors would record and upload all of their lectures. I would watch the videos at 1.5-2x speed, pausing/jumping back frequently whenever I started to drift off or anything was even slightly confusing, to think it through and ensure that I understood. I got way better comprehension that way. Another trick that worked for me: If there are high-quality lecture notes, download a note, set a timer for the length of the lecture, and aim to read through the entire note within the time period that it took to deliver the lecture. Being on the clock creates a little pressure that helps me focus. It's OK if I don't achieve 100% comprehension; I basically never achieve 100% comprehension during a live lecture anyways. The only problem with these techniques is that it's easy to fall way behind if you don't discipline yourself to consume lectures at about the same rate they're being delivered. Cal Newport's book How to Become a Straight-A Student has good tips like blocking out chunks of time during your week in advance to do study specific topics or do specific assignments.
wslh 3y ago
I agree with having a set of lectures as a foundational in some aspect because we are repeating the same things and be redundant. On the other hand, people learn in different ways and it is great that there are "teachers everywhere" with different strategies. YouTube and other services has show that, many people could learn easier matching with the right teacher(s).
tsumnia 3y ago
> Why not create a set of lectures by the best in the field or even setup a committee of professors on how best to craft a particular lecture and create a video... A few things: - Professors, even best in the field, may disagree. In the first lecture for my AI course I talk about how cognitive scientists still can't agree on a definition for what intelligence IS. Extend that to other domains and I'm willing to bet there'd be similar opinions in deciding "best" - Not every domain can be distilled into a lecture. While I can (and have) recorded videos for martial art techniques, they still need to attend class to drill technique. - This builds on the above point, but 'time on task' is still one of our most identifying features for determining student mastery. This doesn't mean we should revert to drilling endless worksheets, but rather 'learning' takes time to occur and can't be achieved via watching videos - Building on the prior point, Mickie Chi's ICAP framework labels "watching lectures" as a passive activity. While learning can happen, more learning gains can be made with more engaging activities (drilling [active], self-explanation [constructive], and revising drafts [interactive]). - I don't mean for this point to make me sound like a miser, but the majority of students just won't read or watch the material. Again, not an attack on 'the youths', none of us read TOS and user agreements. Even in flipped classrooms, if not well designed then you'll have students that need to review the material and miss out of the in-class discussion. - "I believe each university should hire a powerpoint / slideshow person who can translate professors material into modern format to avoid repeating of work". That's sort of what some professors do with textbooks I do agree that once you establish a student's foundational knowledge, then you can "play" (as I've described it). The issue is that establishing that foundation is hard and how do you do it in less motivated students? One option is to say they need more self-regulated learning, but how do you build THAT up?
- uolmir 3y ago
  Low content reply I know but it's great to see ICAP having the mindshare to appear in this discussion on HN. It's such a great paper and concept. I also think it has a lot to offer practitioners by making "active learning" a defined and delineated idea.
  - tsumnia 3y ago
obscurette 3y ago
Because that's not how teaching/learning works. At best it could theoretically work for highly motivated self-regulated learners, but most of learners are not such ones. Yes, even in higher education levels. But even then learning is a process that almost always needs reflection to avoid fixation of misconceptions etc.
jezzamon 3y ago
One minor note: From my experience when studying, if a lecturer used a powerpoint I immediately knew the lecture would be less engaging compared to if they were writing directly on a chalkboard/white. Powerpoints are just... Bad. But yeah I think the idea of preparing quality content (and potentially reusable content) and using the class time to instead get interactive feedback is the flipped classroom idea, which is popular.

eddd-ddde 3y ago

I hate being forced to attend college classes in person, where I sit for 4 hours, hearing a person talk about something that I don't care about, and even if I cared, I could learn it myself in half the time by myself at home. I'm a firm believer that lectures should never be necessary, give me the recorded lecture which I'll watch if I want to, I'll read the content myself, and I'll ask the teacher questions over the time where lectures would usually be given, and it will be easier since not everyone has to be there at once.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
At my university the professors would record and upload all of their lectures. I would watch the videos at 1.5-2x speed, pausing/jumping back frequently whenever I started to drift off or anything was even slightly confusing, to think it through and ensure that I understood. I got way better comprehension that way. Another trick that worked for me: If there are high-quality lecture notes, download a note, set a timer for the length of the lecture, and aim to read through the entire note within the time period that it took to deliver the lecture. Being on the clock creates a little pressure that helps me focus. It's OK if I don't achieve 100% comprehension; I basically never achieve 100% comprehension during a live lecture anyways. The only problem with these techniques is that it's easy to fall way behind if you don't discipline yourself to consume lectures at about the same rate they're being delivered. Cal Newport's book How to Become a Straight-A Student has good tips like blocking out chunks of time during your week in advance to do study specific topics or do specific assignments.

wslh 3y ago

I agree with having a set of lectures as a foundational in some aspect because we are repeating the same things and be redundant. On the other hand, people learn in different ways and it is great that there are "teachers everywhere" with different strategies. YouTube and other services has show that, many people could learn easier matching with the right teacher(s).

tsumnia 3y ago

> Why not create a set of lectures by the best in the field or even setup a committee of professors on how best to craft a particular lecture and create a video... A few things: - Professors, even best in the field, may disagree. In the first lecture for my AI course I talk about how cognitive scientists still can't agree on a definition for what intelligence IS. Extend that to other domains and I'm willing to bet there'd be similar opinions in deciding "best" - Not every domain can be distilled into a lecture. While I can (and have) recorded videos for martial art techniques, they still need to attend class to drill technique. - This builds on the above point, but 'time on task' is still one of our most identifying features for determining student mastery. This doesn't mean we should revert to drilling endless worksheets, but rather 'learning' takes time to occur and can't be achieved via watching videos - Building on the prior point, Mickie Chi's ICAP framework labels "watching lectures" as a passive activity. While learning can happen, more learning gains can be made with more engaging activities (drilling [active], self-explanation [constructive], and revising drafts [interactive]). - I don't mean for this point to make me sound like a miser, but the majority of students just won't read or watch the material. Again, not an attack on 'the youths', none of us read TOS and user agreements. Even in flipped classrooms, if not well designed then you'll have students that need to review the material and miss out of the in-class discussion. - "I believe each university should hire a powerpoint / slideshow person who can translate professors material into modern format to avoid repeating of work". That's sort of what some professors do with textbooks I do agree that once you establish a student's foundational knowledge, then you can "play" (as I've described it). The issue is that establishing that foundation is hard and how do you do it in less motivated students? One option is to say they need more self-regulated learning, but how do you build THAT up?

uolmir 3y ago
Low content reply I know but it's great to see ICAP having the mindshare to appear in this discussion on HN. It's such a great paper and concept. I also think it has a lot to offer practitioners by making "active learning" a defined and delineated idea.
- tsumnia 3y ago

obscurette 3y ago

Because that's not how teaching/learning works. At best it could theoretically work for highly motivated self-regulated learners, but most of learners are not such ones. Yes, even in higher education levels. But even then learning is a process that almost always needs reflection to avoid fixation of misconceptions etc.

jezzamon 3y ago

One minor note: From my experience when studying, if a lecturer used a powerpoint I immediately knew the lecture would be less engaging compared to if they were writing directly on a chalkboard/white. Powerpoints are just... Bad. But yeah I think the idea of preparing quality content (and potentially reusable content) and using the class time to instead get interactive feedback is the flipped classroom idea, which is popular.