4 ms·
Mass distribution of learning material has been around for a few centuries and has yet to replace the process of guided learning. The problem is simple: while i
by aphyr 14y ago
Mass distribution of learning material has been around for a few centuries and has yet to replace the process of guided learning. The problem is simple: while it's possible to amass facts and skills from reading and listening, it's much more difficult to produce complex works of value without feedback on the process.
Doing mathematics isn't just applying rules and techniques. It's about knowing how to reason, and writing a proof in a way which communicates your reasoning clearly to others. You can get started by following along with proofs from a lecture, but in order to really ingrain the techniques in your brain, you have to write proofs of things you've never encountered before. Someone has to read those proofs, and give feedback on where your reasoning was unclear, incomplete, or flawed. They can suggest a different notation, or a shorter path to the same solution. Good teachers will leave notes: "this is a cool idea you've developed here, and it points towards this area of complex analysis we haven't talked about yet."
In psychology it's not enough to memorize a summary text and a smattering of papers. You need to be asked questions. "There's a critical flaw in this paper's sampling methodology. Can you find it? How would you improve it?" "What kind of systematic bias can we expect in these results?" If nobody asks those questions, and helps you hone in on the answers, you'll miss out on half the text. You'll be unprepared to evaluate the quality of others research--or to design experiments of your own.
This process can't be automated yet. Human beings have to read and respond to your work, preferably at interactive latencies.
- marknutter 14y agoThere absolutely can be a feedback loop. Look no further than the many self taught programmers that frequent HN. Effective learning can and does happen without high paid PHD level professors, large marble floored auditoriums, and football stadiums.
- CJefferson 14y agoThis is nothing new, through history there has been a large range of people who have self taught from books. However, and I agree with the basic point, many people have failed to self-educate through books, and it is not clear to me these people will suddenly do much better with MOOC.
- marknutter 14y agoMOOCs are much more directed than just picking up a book.
- aphyr 14y agoI don't claim the necessity of high paid professors, auditoriums, or football stadiums, but I'm dubious that autodidacticism is a broadly applicable strategy in isolation. The best teachers in my life have been public high school teachers, parents, six year olds, tenured professors, and other students. I've taught myself, learned by building, learned from working alongside peers, and learned from formal schooling. None is complete in itself--every time I think I'm proficient in a field because of my self-taught experience, a good teacher comes along and shows me how much I don't know; and vice versa, you never truly understand a skill learned from someone else until you've built something with it, on your own. Guided learning doesn't have to happen in a classroom, but I do believe feedback is essential.