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The big aspect you can't replace with software (yet) is the element of spotting the student's weakness and being a guide. It's a pretty general statement, and w

The big aspect you can't replace with software (yet) is the element of spotting the student's weakness and being a guide. It's a pretty general statement, and would require a tome to defend, but I think the spirit of the article is close.

hershel 13y ago
Knewton.com claims it spots student weaknesses and adapts to it. And since it can offer full attention for each student it can offer better performance than teachers. What do you mean by being a guide ?
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Knewton.com has claimed a lot of things and should have stayed in test prep. What they are now is a glorified ed publisher (basically, Pearson's technical arm) with crappy management but a lot of VC cash. You're talking about a very hard problem. Something like Knewton will never replace human teachers. And why is replacing human teachers desirable, anyway? If anyone succeeded at it (and no one will) it would probably be bad, on the whole, for society. If no one can make money teaching, the value of knowledge goes down. That would just lead to ignorance and bolster the already obnoxious anti-intellectualism of American society.
  - hershel 13y ago
    Why is it so hard ? At least in math, spotting areas of difficulty for students based on data on previous exercises and data from other students does seem possible.
    - thebooktocome 13y ago
      Based on my experience working on a couple different online homework systems, it's actually a hard problem to determine what kind of wrong answers belong to what kind of conceptual difficulty, even in mathematics. These systems rely on humans to curate the conceptual difficulties associated with each problem separately, but those lists are never complete and often just confuse the student further. Some systems don't even try to do what you're suggesting, and just give students the "right" way to solve the problem at hand after a certain number of attempts. These are by far the worst, as it's painfully easy to game the system.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      It's probably possible. With the leadership team they have, they won't be up to it.
    - acjohnson55 13y ago
      Even in math, this isn't really the case. THere are numerous reasons a student might arrive at an incorrect answer. I've seen systems that provide specific feedback on certain anticipated errors, but tailoring the remediation to individual students is just as hard as teaching the material successfully in the first place. It's often not just a case of "oh, I did this one step wrong", but a deeper issue of misunderstanding the abstraction. We haven't mastered bridging that gap with real-life teachers and tutors, let alone automated software.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  That's nothing. Pessimizer claims he can step over a skyscraper with a single bound, and that he beat Mike Tyson in a Philippine streetfight. For what it's worth.

hershel 13y ago

Knewton.com claims it spots student weaknesses and adapts to it. And since it can offer full attention for each student it can offer better performance than teachers. What do you mean by being a guide ?

michaelochurch 13y ago
Knewton.com has claimed a lot of things and should have stayed in test prep. What they are now is a glorified ed publisher (basically, Pearson's technical arm) with crappy management but a lot of VC cash. You're talking about a very hard problem. Something like Knewton will never replace human teachers. And why is replacing human teachers desirable, anyway? If anyone succeeded at it (and no one will) it would probably be bad, on the whole, for society. If no one can make money teaching, the value of knowledge goes down. That would just lead to ignorance and bolster the already obnoxious anti-intellectualism of American society.
- hershel 13y ago
  Why is it so hard ? At least in math, spotting areas of difficulty for students based on data on previous exercises and data from other students does seem possible.
  - thebooktocome 13y ago
    Based on my experience working on a couple different online homework systems, it's actually a hard problem to determine what kind of wrong answers belong to what kind of conceptual difficulty, even in mathematics. These systems rely on humans to curate the conceptual difficulties associated with each problem separately, but those lists are never complete and often just confuse the student further. Some systems don't even try to do what you're suggesting, and just give students the "right" way to solve the problem at hand after a certain number of attempts. These are by far the worst, as it's painfully easy to game the system.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    It's probably possible. With the leadership team they have, they won't be up to it.
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    Even in math, this isn't really the case. THere are numerous reasons a student might arrive at an incorrect answer. I've seen systems that provide specific feedback on certain anticipated errors, but tailoring the remediation to individual students is just as hard as teaching the material successfully in the first place. It's often not just a case of "oh, I did this one step wrong", but a deeper issue of misunderstanding the abstraction. We haven't mastered bridging that gap with real-life teachers and tutors, let alone automated software.
pessimizer 13y ago
That's nothing. Pessimizer claims he can step over a skyscraper with a single bound, and that he beat Mike Tyson in a Philippine streetfight. For what it's worth.