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Simply: The average person can read at ~300 words per minute, and listen at ~150 words per minute. I'm not a big fan of video as a tool for conveying informati

Simply: The average person can read at ~300 words per minute, and listen at ~150 words per minute. I'm not a big fan of video as a tool for conveying information in general. Not only can I read faster than I can listen, but I can skim and skip around as well. There are situations where video is the best way to impart certain information, but those seem to be the rare cases. I hate it when websites make me sit through a 3 minute video in order to get an answer to one simple question, or to understand "What does this thing do?" I've never taken a MOOC course because I can't imagine having the time to watch X hours of someone talking at a camera. If this video-less trend catches on I might actually be able to benefit from online education.

wyclif 12y ago
You can always speed the video up. While I realise that this is a suboptimal solution and I also prefer text, I don't think I've ever watched a MOOC video on normal speed.
- NhanH 12y ago
  Pausing and thinking is extremely distracting. I've always feel like I tend to gloss over the details whenever I'm watching the videos, along the opposite that I'm being bored and distracted because it's too slow. Since both could happen in the same speed, moving speed up and down is not an option.
  - axlprose 12y ago
    > I tend to gloss over the details whenever I'm watching the videos That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you think about how many times your reading is slowed down because you feel you have to re-read a passage to 'get it', audio/video sources totally help do away with that. It may sound like that weakens your learning, but if you've ever researched anything on improving reading speed, you'll know that it's better to not focus on 'getting' things on the first pass anyway, and instead continue plowing through the entire content just trying to get the jist of it, relying on multiple passes to really understand things better instead (this probably works for the same reasons spaced-repetition works). Obviously you can do that with reading as that's where the tip originated, but clearly auditory/visual input helps facilitate that if only because rewinding is less tempting than re-reading due to it being a chore. > along the opposite that I'm being bored and distracted because it's too slow Seems like a personal preference thing. To me, I get this with reading as well. It's just not stimulating enough for me, even when I read fast, cause it's easy for competing thoughts to take over and distract me. Audio/video on the other hand, work for me precisely because I can't think with that much stimulation going on. I'm too busy listening and watching to really have the resources to process any distracting thoughts, so it's easier to focus. Just my $0.02
freehunter 12y ago
I recently picked up a video series on Udemy with a 90% off coupon I found, and this is my exact problem. If I'm following along, I have to pause and rewind the video so often, and other times I'm flipping through reddit because he's dragging on about something or having technical difficulties while recording. Every time I need to rewind the video, it buffers for several seconds, or sometimes freezes and needs me to reload the tab. Never mind that I can't go back to a lesson and Ctrl+F to find something that was referenced later on. It seems like everything I search for these days, I find as a YouTube video. Why? I was trying to take the center console out of my truck and needed to find out what size the bolts were on the back of the driver's seat. Only results were YouTube videos. So I'm sitting in my garage streaming a five minute YouTube over my limited LTE just so I can find out it's a 17mm wrench. Most of that five minutes is the guy telling me who he is, how to subscribe, what website he's with, and why I need to watch the video that I'm already watching. Google can tell me the up-to-the-minute March Madness scores but the only way to find out what size wrench is needed for a Chevy Silverado, one of the most common trucks in the US, is a YouTube video from a guy with an accent so thick I can't understand him. Useless. Some days I feel the world would be better off without YouTube. Until the day when we can index and search video and voice the way we can text, YouTube is nothing but entertainment to me. Stop making "educational" videos, I don't want to watch them.
- jghn 12y ago
  100% agree with this. What makes me really scratch my head is that I talk to people regularly who prefer this! If I have to watch a video to answer my question, I'll just figure it out some other way.
  - mgkimsal 12y ago
    we're a video culture - most people are consumers, and video is the easiest way to consume. reading takes too much time for most people. I agree with the frustration, but we've got a system now that rewards video makers for this stuff, and doesn't reward people posting this information in text format.
  - SilasX 12y ago
icefox 12y ago
Agreed, I would be more inclined to watch videos if they were highly edited. If you want to watch a MOOC on linear algebra the videos you will find are little more than a camcorder stuck in the corner of a classroom and dumped online. For a topic that really doesn't change decade after decade at some point someone is going to come along and produce a highly edited video that contains all of the key points, presented in a clear manor and it will become the defacto set of videos for these type of topics.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  The best videos are both highly edited and extremely well scripted. Some time back there was a bit posted by a university lecturer (I want to say Harvard or Yale or similar) who described his process for preparing a lecture. It's about 10:1 prep time vs. lecture time, including multiple rehersals. Once you've got a given lecture prepared, it's easier to edit and modify it. But getting there is the hard part.
- SilasX 12y ago
  Despite being relatively early and ad hoc, Khan academy got it mostly right: don't just tape someone giving a lecture; give a close up of the instructor writing out the logical profession of ideas. In a classroom, it's too hard to do it fast enough; they either have to write very little, or use static slides. Khan wisely used the virtual whiteboard, in effect, to accelerate the writing speed while having infinite space and instant jump-around. I still prefer the mostly-webpages approach, but Khan definitely did a lot more to make use of the format than "dump a camcorder in a lecture hall".
  - gshrikant 12y ago
    Exactly. I used KA to review some differential calculus and was surprised to see how effective the basic chalk-to-the-blackboard (digital pen, in this case) approach still was. It is also the reason why I prefer MIT's OCW video lectures over their edX ones. I like how most of the lecturers often take the time to write down the terms and ideas on the blackboard in the old-school way. I find learning that way helps drive home the concept in a more concrete way than flipping slides with voice-over. I believe this is especially important in case of subjects like math where 'doing' is perhaps the only effective way I am aware of learning the material. But then again, it may just be me.
deleted 12y ago
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axlprose 12y ago
It appears I'm in the minority here somehow, but I am a strong auditory learner. Like to the point where I sometimes suspect I'm borderline dyslexic, but I don't have any of the usual symptoms of it. Meanwhile, I can listen to audio at 3x speed with ease. With a regular book for example, I'd take about nearly a year to finish just 1 probably, if I can even stand to read it consistently, and even then I wouldn't remember most of the information from it, making the entire time spent on it seem like a large waste. With audiobooks on the other hand, I can read a large book in about 2-3hrs, and have read about 25 books per year because of them. I even use text-to-speech on ebooks for titles that don't have audio versions -- it's just that much more efficient for me. I can go out for walks while listening, do laundry, cook, whatever, and still get my learning fix, all while retaining about the same [albeit poor] amount of information as I would with reading normal books. Now whenever I can, the first thing I do when trying to learn about a topic, is go to youtube and watch long lectures on it at 2x speed, or download them and watch them at 3-4x speed. That seems pretty efficient to me if what I want is a good overview of something. If I want to reference back to specific factoids, then text is better of course, but for a completely new subject I'm not familiar with at all, audio/video is a godsend for me. Dense texts like wikipedia might as well not even exist as learning materials for me, cause they just cause me endless headache trying to parse them if I don't know what I'm looking for ahead of time.
- mattlutze 12y ago
  Off-topic: I wonder sometimes at the use of "read" for audiobooks. I don't mean it as a slight -- 25 books a year is honestly more than I take in in any medium, unfortunately -- but it feels like the wrong verb for the action. "Listen" doesn't really feel like it conveys the active retention process generally going on, either.
rohitarondekar 12y ago
I've started many MOOC's but never finished because I couldn't keep up with watching the videos. Not being able to flip back and forth is really limiting. The only courses[1] I've finished had good quality notes and completely depended on them and avoided the lecture videos. [1]: Roughgarden's Algorithms part I, Programming Languages by Dan Grossman and Machine Learning by Andrew Ng.
- the_af 12y ago
  Yes! I find Dan Grossman a good teacher, but his extremely slow speaking rythm drove me mad. I had to fast forward his lectures at max speed, and even then I ended up skipping them entirely. No disrespect meant for Prof. Grossman. His course was very interesting and, as you said, the course notes were so good the videos were completely redundant.

wyclif 12y ago

You can always speed the video up. While I realise that this is a suboptimal solution and I also prefer text, I don't think I've ever watched a MOOC video on normal speed.

NhanH 12y ago
Pausing and thinking is extremely distracting. I've always feel like I tend to gloss over the details whenever I'm watching the videos, along the opposite that I'm being bored and distracted because it's too slow. Since both could happen in the same speed, moving speed up and down is not an option.
- axlprose 12y ago
  > I tend to gloss over the details whenever I'm watching the videos That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you think about how many times your reading is slowed down because you feel you have to re-read a passage to 'get it', audio/video sources totally help do away with that. It may sound like that weakens your learning, but if you've ever researched anything on improving reading speed, you'll know that it's better to not focus on 'getting' things on the first pass anyway, and instead continue plowing through the entire content just trying to get the jist of it, relying on multiple passes to really understand things better instead (this probably works for the same reasons spaced-repetition works). Obviously you can do that with reading as that's where the tip originated, but clearly auditory/visual input helps facilitate that if only because rewinding is less tempting than re-reading due to it being a chore. > along the opposite that I'm being bored and distracted because it's too slow Seems like a personal preference thing. To me, I get this with reading as well. It's just not stimulating enough for me, even when I read fast, cause it's easy for competing thoughts to take over and distract me. Audio/video on the other hand, work for me precisely because I can't think with that much stimulation going on. I'm too busy listening and watching to really have the resources to process any distracting thoughts, so it's easier to focus. Just my $0.02

freehunter 12y ago

I recently picked up a video series on Udemy with a 90% off coupon I found, and this is my exact problem. If I'm following along, I have to pause and rewind the video so often, and other times I'm flipping through reddit because he's dragging on about something or having technical difficulties while recording. Every time I need to rewind the video, it buffers for several seconds, or sometimes freezes and needs me to reload the tab. Never mind that I can't go back to a lesson and Ctrl+F to find something that was referenced later on. It seems like everything I search for these days, I find as a YouTube video. Why? I was trying to take the center console out of my truck and needed to find out what size the bolts were on the back of the driver's seat. Only results were YouTube videos. So I'm sitting in my garage streaming a five minute YouTube over my limited LTE just so I can find out it's a 17mm wrench. Most of that five minutes is the guy telling me who he is, how to subscribe, what website he's with, and why I need to watch the video that I'm already watching. Google can tell me the up-to-the-minute March Madness scores but the only way to find out what size wrench is needed for a Chevy Silverado, one of the most common trucks in the US, is a YouTube video from a guy with an accent so thick I can't understand him. Useless. Some days I feel the world would be better off without YouTube. Until the day when we can index and search video and voice the way we can text, YouTube is nothing but entertainment to me. Stop making "educational" videos, I don't want to watch them.

jghn 12y ago
100% agree with this. What makes me really scratch my head is that I talk to people regularly who prefer this! If I have to watch a video to answer my question, I'll just figure it out some other way.
- mgkimsal 12y ago
  we're a video culture - most people are consumers, and video is the easiest way to consume. reading takes too much time for most people. I agree with the frustration, but we've got a system now that rewards video makers for this stuff, and doesn't reward people posting this information in text format.
- SilasX 12y ago

icefox 12y ago

Agreed, I would be more inclined to watch videos if they were highly edited. If you want to watch a MOOC on linear algebra the videos you will find are little more than a camcorder stuck in the corner of a classroom and dumped online. For a topic that really doesn't change decade after decade at some point someone is going to come along and produce a highly edited video that contains all of the key points, presented in a clear manor and it will become the defacto set of videos for these type of topics.

dredmorbius 12y ago
The best videos are both highly edited and extremely well scripted. Some time back there was a bit posted by a university lecturer (I want to say Harvard or Yale or similar) who described his process for preparing a lecture. It's about 10:1 prep time vs. lecture time, including multiple rehersals. Once you've got a given lecture prepared, it's easier to edit and modify it. But getting there is the hard part.
SilasX 12y ago
Despite being relatively early and ad hoc, Khan academy got it mostly right: don't just tape someone giving a lecture; give a close up of the instructor writing out the logical profession of ideas. In a classroom, it's too hard to do it fast enough; they either have to write very little, or use static slides. Khan wisely used the virtual whiteboard, in effect, to accelerate the writing speed while having infinite space and instant jump-around. I still prefer the mostly-webpages approach, but Khan definitely did a lot more to make use of the format than "dump a camcorder in a lecture hall".
- gshrikant 12y ago
  Exactly. I used KA to review some differential calculus and was surprised to see how effective the basic chalk-to-the-blackboard (digital pen, in this case) approach still was. It is also the reason why I prefer MIT's OCW video lectures over their edX ones. I like how most of the lecturers often take the time to write down the terms and ideas on the blackboard in the old-school way. I find learning that way helps drive home the concept in a more concrete way than flipping slides with voice-over. I believe this is especially important in case of subjects like math where 'doing' is perhaps the only effective way I am aware of learning the material. But then again, it may just be me.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

axlprose 12y ago

It appears I'm in the minority here somehow, but I am a strong auditory learner. Like to the point where I sometimes suspect I'm borderline dyslexic, but I don't have any of the usual symptoms of it. Meanwhile, I can listen to audio at 3x speed with ease. With a regular book for example, I'd take about nearly a year to finish just 1 probably, if I can even stand to read it consistently, and even then I wouldn't remember most of the information from it, making the entire time spent on it seem like a large waste. With audiobooks on the other hand, I can read a large book in about 2-3hrs, and have read about 25 books per year because of them. I even use text-to-speech on ebooks for titles that don't have audio versions -- it's just that much more efficient for me. I can go out for walks while listening, do laundry, cook, whatever, and still get my learning fix, all while retaining about the same [albeit poor] amount of information as I would with reading normal books. Now whenever I can, the first thing I do when trying to learn about a topic, is go to youtube and watch long lectures on it at 2x speed, or download them and watch them at 3-4x speed. That seems pretty efficient to me if what I want is a good overview of something. If I want to reference back to specific factoids, then text is better of course, but for a completely new subject I'm not familiar with at all, audio/video is a godsend for me. Dense texts like wikipedia might as well not even exist as learning materials for me, cause they just cause me endless headache trying to parse them if I don't know what I'm looking for ahead of time.

mattlutze 12y ago
Off-topic: I wonder sometimes at the use of "read" for audiobooks. I don't mean it as a slight -- 25 books a year is honestly more than I take in in any medium, unfortunately -- but it feels like the wrong verb for the action. "Listen" doesn't really feel like it conveys the active retention process generally going on, either.

rohitarondekar 12y ago

I've started many MOOC's but never finished because I couldn't keep up with watching the videos. Not being able to flip back and forth is really limiting. The only courses[1] I've finished had good quality notes and completely depended on them and avoided the lecture videos. [1]: Roughgarden's Algorithms part I, Programming Languages by Dan Grossman and Machine Learning by Andrew Ng.

the_af 12y ago
Yes! I find Dan Grossman a good teacher, but his extremely slow speaking rythm drove me mad. I had to fast forward his lectures at max speed, and even then I ended up skipping them entirely. No disrespect meant for Prof. Grossman. His course was very interesting and, as you said, the course notes were so good the videos were completely redundant.