[HN Gopher] Things I learned from teaching
___________________________________________________________________
Things I learned from teaching
Author : claytonwramsey
Score : 217 points
Date : 2023-12-07 16:45 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (claytonwramsey.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (claytonwramsey.github.io)
| shae wrote:
| I went back to uni after a 15 year career writing software. I
| attended the all the office hours for all my classes. Instructors
| went from shocked to excited, and I learned so much!
| z3dd wrote:
| I think 18-24 is just way too young for most people to study at
| a university (at least math/physics-based ones). I don't have a
| better solution, but only about 6-7 years after graduating I
| realized I would then have enjoyed these classes and learned
| from them much much more.
| loganfrederick wrote:
| A big problem (from my experience) is the cultural shift from
| high school to university. Our high schools do a terrible job
| at preparing students for college. Just off the top of my
| head:
|
| - High school classes are typically too easy
|
| - So kids develop poor study habits which don't serve them
| well for college material
|
| - And most high school teachers are bad at getting kids
| excited about the subject because they're exhausted
| themselves from babysitting and treat the work as a job.
| College professors can be bad at "teaching" but for different
| reasons (being researchers first and foremost). This
| disconnect in the reasons for bad education being different
| in environments is also not taught well to kids ahead of time
| (because who in this formula would? Requires good parenting
| or very self-conscious teachers at all levels).
|
| There are definitely exceptions to this rule, but they are
| too few to solve the overarching problems.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > High school classes are typically too easy
|
| The UK based O/A system, which is used in many of the
| former colonies, is not as easy as the North American high
| school system. O levels is easy. But A levels content is
| almost as difficult as a typical first year university
| course.
|
| Yet, students from those systems also face an equivalent
| huge shock when they switch to university. The reason is
| fundamentally different. In school, students are
| infantalized and their own education is not considered
| their responsibility. In university, nobody used to care
| whether you sank or swam. So students struggled. But that
| has changed quite a lot now. Many universities have almost
| a "no child left behind" policy - yes they do think child
| not adult who chose to attend university.
|
| So even if students in the past used to attend office hours
| (I don't know), today they don't because it is no longer
| their responsibility to learn.
| sieste wrote:
| > Many universities have almost a "no child left behind"
| policy.
|
| That's true, it's difficult to encourage independent
| learning at undergrad level and we often end up hand
| holding and spoon feeding material like in high school.
| This is partly because it's an easy fix to avoid the most
| negative student evaluations from the "I won't put in the
| work and when I fail it's the teacher's fault" types.
| There aren't many of those but the vocal few can really
| ruin evaluation average of an otherwise great course. The
| downside of the policy is obviously that the can gets
| kicked down the road and employers have to deal with the
| inability to learn independently.
| nicoburns wrote:
| IMO the more fundamental problem is that the examinations
| typically won't measure how much students have learnt
| independently. If you want to do well in most university
| exams, then you need to pay very close attention to
| exactly what the professor wants you to learn and make
| sure you're learning exactly that.
|
| It is possible to design exams that actually grade people
| on their knowledge of the subject in general, but most
| universities seem to leave exam design to the course
| leader, so quality varies drastically.
| _heimdall wrote:
| There are benefits to this model too though. Centralized
| exam design will be slower to adjust and adapt as
| industries evolve and the skills needed change.
|
| When individual professors write exams, the good ones
| will have exams that better match what students will need
| to learn today. The bad professors that can't write
| quality exams honestly should just be trained and/or let
| go if the problem persists.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| I'm sure it depends greatly on subject, but my experience
| has been quite the opposite. If you do even a modicum of
| learning 'outside the classroom' many exam questions
| suddenly become a routine triviality. If you learn only
| what the lecturer intends you directly to learn, you end
| up at a point where the exam is optimally difficult.
|
| Looking at textbooks and other universities' lecture
| notes on your own is so effective it almost feels like
| cheating!
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| This is very re-assuring as someone that's been "taking a gap
| year" for as long as I wa in high-school
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I don't think it's an age thing, just maturity.
|
| A type of maturity that develops much more slowly while being
| in the education system.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| exactly. And it applies generally in life too. esp. in
| "western" well-off places.
|
| i have met (okay, seen eyes of) ~12y old kids with probably
| "35y-old"-grade experience behind... And i have met a few
| 38 or 43y old human exemplars that barely pass for 6-7-10y
| old at most.
|
| yeah, teaching is hard. You have to learn more than them,
| about them, in no time, in order to build the (different)
| bridge to everyone. Takes... time. And gumption.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think 18-24 is too young to choose what to study, but not
| too young to study.
| randomdata wrote:
| I expect is not age, but experience that is significant. 6-7
| years in the "real world" gave you the perspective to relate
| those classes to something meaningful that you didn't have
| before.
|
| We leave our children in a weird bubble where they don't get
| to experience the world much beyond school during primary and
| secondary ages, and those who go on to university typically
| don't deviate from that bubble until graduation. Better life
| balance through youth, perhaps especially with more
| involvement in the workplace, seems like one potential
| solution.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| I dropped out of uni when I was 19. Worked for about 5 years
| doing low skilled labor. This sent me back to school on my
| own dime with a fire inside to finish. For my personality
| type this worked well for me. I have to really buy into
| something before I put my heart into it.
|
| The only reason I wouldn't recommend this approach is that
| working full time and going to school was brutal.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >The only reason I wouldn't recommend this approach is that
| working full time and going to school was brutal.
|
| Note that in the US, it can be easier to get federal
| financial aid after age 25 (parental financial assets are
| no longer considered).
| sage76 wrote:
| Same here, I feel like I could have done a lot more at
| college, knowing what I know now. I couldn't see the big
| picture, and I felt uninspired most of the time.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I've had the same thought, but on the other hand, would you
| really feel ready for math and physics at 30 if you hadn't
| spent years struggling with it at 18-24? Maybe the only way
| to develop the maturity to feel ready is to dive in and
| struggle with it anyways, even when you _don 't_ feel ready.
| fud101 wrote:
| I enjoyed this article. A couple of points, if the
| interactive/handson way is the future, how do we solve the no-TA
| problem if that's a prerequisite? It's not really feasible to
| produce them for every class. Will it be chatbots?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I have taught such interactive classes/labs by myself. If you
| have prepared enough, i.e. have a very solidly laid out
| worksheet of appropriate difficulty, then a single person can
| handle about 20 people. About 5 students will have no problem
| and you just need to quickly check on them once or twice. 10
| will need quick interventions. 5 will need more support. You
| can probably do three rounds in that one hour.
| beckthompson wrote:
| I would kill for a class like this at my college! All the seminar
| classes are very boring (Intro to C++ etc...). I wish they would
| have super specific and interesting topics like this!
| janwillemb wrote:
| Nice read. What I like about teaching is that your always get a
| new chance to improve your own teaching: the next period you try
| better or try a different approach and see what works best. The
| frustrating part is that students have a veto over what they
| learn, because "you can lead a horse to the water but if they
| don't drink, they don't". If they don't show up, you can teach
| away whatever you want but no one learns anything.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| This really resonated with me. I taught computer science to
| middle/high school aged kids for several years, and had similar
| dilemmas on how to keep everyone engaged. There would always be a
| wide range of student aptitude, and it was always a bit
| discouraging to see how many students aren't ready to learn. But
| it's pretty awesome nowadays to get messages out of the blue from
| my former students entering the workforce and thanking me for the
| course.
|
| I am sure one of your students will build something amazing with
| Rust some day, because they worked on a practical application and
| had the resources to "level up" on this very useful skill.
| Hopefully they send you a message about it :)
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Engagement is also very environmental, I think, when you're
| teaching in middle/high school. Like, is there a schoolwide
| culture of students engaging in work? Is there an expectation
| that when you walk into the building you are a student, or is
| it just a place that you have to be because everybody says so?
| (Note: kids pick up lightning-quickly on whether teachers
| themselves give a shit. If half your teachers don't, you have a
| problem in your building.)
|
| Kids that age are still trying to figure out how to be their
| own selves. It's very new. I mean we all try to figure that out
| throughout our lives, but middle school and high school are
| when you first start to emerge as your own person. And a lot of
| figuring that out is done in response to your environment.
| k__ wrote:
| I was lecturing software development for information design
| students.
|
| Only 6 students signed up.
|
| At least it was an optional class, so the students did it on
| purpose.
|
| Still, it's hard to teach new people from the ground up. Skills,
| and motivation are just so different.
|
| Some learn fast and some slow and in the end you need to define
| what constitutes a good grade.
|
| I did online classes. They had to go through free code camp and
| every month, I would let them create a small project, to see what
| they learned. Some students built stuff that was way more than
| what I expected and some couldn't even do a basic form.
|
| In the end, two of them even got a job as frontend devs, so I
| guess I did an okay job.
| tgv wrote:
| It sounds very lofty, but also on a path to disappointment and
| burnout. You can't meet the needs of all students. Fortunately,
| your class is small, but even there you find that you can't
| please them all (let alone a class of 300). And I write "please",
| because that's what you appear to be aiming at.
|
| First, a course is there to convey knowledge and skills, not to
| please students. I'm not fond of hard rules in education, but
| some are simply right. Rule number one is: set the levels in
| advance: determine prerequisites and end goals. You may accept
| students outside the range, but it's their risk to take a class
| that's too easy or too hard, not your responsibility to overcome.
| You could always split it into multiple classes (basics and
| advanced), but that's already setting yourself up for more work.
|
| Second: try to use literature, books or articles, for material
| that takes too much time in class. It's better that they come
| with questions than that they leave with questions. However, I'm
| aware this doesn't work well, since students don't read before
| class.
|
| Third, I'm not teaching anymore, but my former colleagues and
| friends who teach and even direct programs, tell that the flipped
| classroom isn't only a nebulous concept, it also doesn't work.
| Covid has shown that. Developing a technically complex class that
| actually works is going to be very, very time consuming, and not
| rewarding at all. Cynically: when the department finds out you're
| not actually physically teaching, they'll assign you to something
| else. Or give your class to someone else.
|
| Fourth, try to be interactive in class: explain, then give short,
| direct assignments. Your topic is unfortunately too complex to do
| anything meaningful during class, but perhaps you can ask them to
| look at some code and write down what it does, compare two
| different position evaluators, find out why a certain move can't
| be returned by a certain algorithm, etc. The trick is to get them
| to actually work out and write down answers (and it can be wrong;
| there should be no scoring for these exercises), not wait for
| someone else to tell them, whether it's you or the bright,
| interested student who's going to pass anyway. Everyone should
| apply their full attention to the problem for a short time.
|
| Another cynical remark: it seems you're interested in knowledge
| transfer. You don't get high ratings for that. If your school
| evaluates teachers based on student feedback, it's a losing game.
| The only thing left, if you want to stay in that game, is to make
| it "fun."
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > Flipped classrooms are popular these days, so I might try that,
| but I also feel that pre-recorded lectures are a little soulless.
| I might try a hybrid approach, integrating lectures with
| assignments.
|
| My Physics I class in college was a bit of both. First part of
| class was lecture, then we did practice assignments in class as
| groups, then there was out-of-class lecture videos and
| assignments. The out of class lectures weren't very long, I'd say
| under 20 minutes per lecture day if memory serves. Just long
| enough to cover a small topic in enough detail.
| groby_b wrote:
| The thing that breaks my heart is that we have a much better
| understanding of adult learning. It didn't need to be that
| painful. That's not the lecturers fault. It takes a while to
| learn how to teach. It is the fault of our education system which
| thinks "let's throw seniors into a teaching situation without any
| grounding or support". We can also, simultaneously, fault the
| education system for a high school system that does not prepare
| people for college _at all_.
|
| Sure glad we spend a lot of money on football coaches, though.
| creesch wrote:
| In general, it is always interesting and disheartening to see
| how many educators feel like they need to re-invent the wheel.
| There has indeed been a ton of research into educational
| methods, didactic approaches, etc.
|
| There is no shortage of material available. Then again, as you
| say, without the proper support to get you grounded and pointed
| to the right entry level resources it is difficult to all
| figure out.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Our high school system doesn't prepare students for college at
| all because the way high school works here (in America) clearly
| isn't meant to prepare students for college. You have to go to
| high school. There are compulsory attendance laws everywhere.
| You don't have to go to college. It's a choice to be there.
| College professors expect students to have their own
| motivation, their own ability to study things, and so in. High
| school teachers have to deal with the fact that very often a
| very large percentage of our students would simply rather not
| come to school than be there. And if you just let them fail,
| you get everybody from the principal to parents to society at
| large, pointing their fingers at you as the problem. So we
| can't approach instruction with any expectation that students
| will care, try, stay awake, or do anything other than show up
| in class. (And I live in a district with really profound
| truancy problems because our district attorney doesn't give a
| shit and never holds truancy court, so I can't even expect
| students to show up on a regular basis.) But everyone then
| pointed us like we are failing somehow to prepare students for
| college.
|
| I put it in reverse: colleges are failing to understand what
| high schools deal with and what we have to do in response. We
| are the ones who have laws constraining what we can and can't
| do (especially in public school), how we have to approach
| certain things, and even what content we have to teach. (I am
| required by law, for example, to teach the content standards
| promulgated by the state. If I wander outside my standards,
| that's good cause for being fired. Now, fortunately, I teach a
| subject where our standards are extremely broad and loose, so I
| can fit almost anything under them. But history is a core
| subject that isn't a focus of testing regimes, so they
| generally ignore us.)
|
| By the way, I'm not saying it's a good thing that high schools
| don't prepare students for college. But literally the response
| from our administration when a faculty member points out that
| our policies aren't helping prepare students for college is
| that "not all our students will go to college." Maybe half-ish
| of our students do.
| groby_b wrote:
| Note that I point to the education _system_. I know a lot of
| teachers bend over backwards to make sure their students
| learn something. (Often even at personal cost, because heaven
| forbid we give them or students decent supplies)
|
| We as a society just don't seem to give a damn about that
| outcome. (Cf teacher salaries, the truancy issue you mention,
| standardized testing, content standards as strict
| prescription instead of a minimum,....)
|
| And you're right, maybe colleges need to adapt to that
| reality as well. Or maybe there's a step missing between high
| school and college. But, again, we don't seem to particularly
| care about fixing that as a society.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| I like the idea that there's a step missing in between.
| Like, after high school, you spend a year minimum doing
| college prep at some sort of extended school. Or you could
| test out of it and enter college immediately (if, say, you
| went to a college-prep-type high school). I don't know who
| would fund it and that's half the battle, but it would be
| miles better than what we do right now.
|
| Part of the issue with public schools right now is that we
| aren't really just education anymore. We're like a social
| service agency. And I'm not saying we shouldn't be but
| people need to understand that what we do is so much more
| than just content. Every day last week, I was in the
| offices of the guidance counselors, or our behavioral
| interventionist, because kids had come to talk to me
| privately about different struggles they're having (all
| mental health-related in one way or another). Whether it
| was anxiety, depression, panic attacks, or not being able
| to get through the day without smoking weed because of how
| bad they feel. Who else is going to help these kids deal
| with that? They don't have community resources to help
| them, and they often don't tell anyone at home about it.
| And that's just extra stuff on top of what every normal
| teenager goes through during their development. I've had to
| have so many conversations with boys AND girls this year
| about using protection if they're having sex that it's
| terrifying, because of the shit I hear. But people on the
| outside just see me as, like, giving history assignments.
| claytonwramsey wrote:
| In my case, at the very least, I had a fair amount of support.
|
| First of all, I explicitly signed up to teach. At my
| university, fewer than ten undergraduates per semester teach a
| class, and typically it's for students who want to hang out and
| teach something they like. In order to teach, they have to take
| an introductory class on pedagogy first, which mostly covers
| assignment and syllabus design.
|
| The student-taught-course program at my university exists far
| more for the (undergraduate) instructors' benefit than to teach
| students; its job is to give students a chance to experiment
| with teaching early on.
| groby_b wrote:
| No offense, but "assignment and syllabus design" scratches
| the surface at best. And while I understand the desire to let
| students experiment with teaching, it's worth keeping in mind
| it's an experiment on other human beings. (So, technically,
| subject to IRB review.)
|
| Again, this isn't your fault. This is a massive failure of
| the education system in general. We pretend that as long as
| somebody knows the subject, they're decent teachers. (We
| pretend that because it's cheaper, and we pretend it because
| otherwise established faculty would have to admit that a
| large number of their members are extremely bad teachers)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| What I've learned is that trying to teach others something will
| help you better understand what you are teaching. Not only you
| have to analyze different aspects you never considered, but you
| have to reply to questions you would never ask. You also have to
| put things in order before explaining to seome and chances are
| you will never do it otherwise because you are convinced you know
| it well enough.
| lysecret wrote:
| I used to work as a teacher in a kind of bootcamp. Over the years
| my my view on teaching has changed massively. I think there are
| only two generic things and the rest is situation dependent.
|
| - There is just no way around the struggle. The students have to
| struggle. Your job is not to take the struggle away but to show
| them why it is worth struggling and instil the belief that they
| can do it.
|
| - The most important teaching skill is to level with them. Talk
| about how difficult it was for you to understand it, what helped
| you. Never put yourself above them. I honestly believe this is
| where most people fundamentally fail. Respect them. Don't treat
| them like babies. Forced attendance is imo the worst symptom of
| this.
| placebo wrote:
| Although there is no way around the struggle, there is a way
| around how the struggle is perceived and experienced. A good
| teacher shows the struggle is worth it, but I believe a great
| teacher makes the struggle something you enjoy doing, and not
| something you have to put up with so you can enjoy the
| compensation at some point in the future.
| justinclift wrote:
| > I believe a great teacher makes the struggle something you
| enjoy doing
|
| What's a good example of this? :)
| placebo wrote:
| I think there are two main factors in doing this: The first
| is creating the passion for the subject matter by making it
| both fascinating and accessible and by that generating even
| more curiosity and motivation that I believe are innate in
| everyone. The second is never letting anyone feel that they
| are treading water (although this can be seen as a by-
| product of making things accessible).
|
| Even when babies learn how to walk (assuming a healthy and
| secure environment) they do not need (or would understand)
| any assurance that the struggle will be worth it. They go
| for the struggle because the instinct/motivation to explore
| is already there - it gives a sense of autonomy, of being
| in control, of making progress, of being involved, of being
| alive.
|
| But no need to make assumptions about what motivates babies
| - you can look at how people feel when playing games,
| solving puzzles etc. They don't see it as a struggle, it is
| something that is a joy to participate in, even though it
| might be very challenging. A great teacher is someone that
| makes learning a by-product of having fun. I believe this
| is possible for any subject, no matter how "difficult" or
| "boring".
| justinclift wrote:
| > A great teacher is someone that makes learning a by-
| product of having fun.
|
| No disagreement with any of what you're saying.
|
| But do you have any real life (adult) examples rather
| than just the equivalent of platitudes? :)
| placebo wrote:
| I see nothing wrong with platitudes if they are true :)
|
| I'm not sure what examples you're looking for or would
| find convincing. I can speak about my own experiences of
| learning new things, where the speed of what I learned
| were always proportional the how interesting and
| accessible the material was made to be. In the cases
| where it was made enjoyable, I usually had more than
| enough motivation and curiosity to dig deeper using new
| materials that were less fun to learn (but could have
| been made fun too).
|
| I can also speak of my experiences teaching young people
| with no knowledge about programming who had
| preconceptions about how boring and difficult it is,
| which illustrated the degree of how you teach something
| has an effect on the perception of struggling.
|
| I assume you have your own examples as well, but if you
| can offer a counterexample I'll reconsider my opinion :)
|
| There is another important thing I'd like to point out
| though. What makes something fun or accessible for one
| person is not always what will do it for another. Having
| to teach groups, and especially large groups of people
| will make it very challenging if not impossible to be the
| ideal teacher. I'm not judging anyone for not being to be
| an ideal teacher under these constraints. Just pointing
| out that this should be the objective - not saying it is
| always possible.
| hackermailman wrote:
| Flipped classroom style maybe. Lectures are prerecorded
| then you as a group struggle with the problem sets in
| class. A few schools have entire courses for learning the
| struggle like MITs freshman problem solving course for
| figuring out Puerto Rico's power grid problems you are
| given some small area to research yourself and bring that
| to your student meetings and struggle to a solution.
|
| https://terrascope.mit.edu/nextyear/
| justinclift wrote:
| Thanks, that looks like a good approach. :)
| sethammons wrote:
| > Forced attendance is imo the worst symptom of this
|
| I taught in an inner city title one school. While it would have
| made teaching those who showed up easier, I'd bet that over
| half the students would not show up without forced attendance.
| We had under 2% of students who would go on to graduate a four
| year college and something like an 80% transitory rate (meaning
| 20% would complete all four years at the school - this might
| have been up to 95% transitory, it has been a while since I was
| there). Gangs, violence, and poverty and no examples of school
| helping anyone in their lives.
|
| What do you do with kids in that kind of situation?
| lysecret wrote:
| Oh, first of all, I truly respect this kind of teaching work.
| My only experience is in graduate or post-graduate level
| teaching. So really don't what is ideal in your situation.
| sethammons wrote:
| fwiw I've never heard of forced attendance post secondary;
| attendance is a legal requirement in k-12.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Some classes have an attendance requirement, but usually
| that's set by the department or the individual
| instructor.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| In Spain it became common after the last university
| reform, about 15 years ago. IMO it's counterproductive.
| If a student doesn't want to go to class and you force
| them, they probably won't be paying attention but just
| wasting time with social networks or whatever other
| distraction, and they can even distract those that _want_
| to attend. And I don 't even feel morally justified to
| tell them to stop wasting time (as long as they're
| silent, at least) if they're forced to be there.
| Levitz wrote:
| You can force a student to be in class, you can't force
| them to care about class.
|
| Forced attendance would work if students cared for their
| education but their parents didn't. That's just not the
| case, even if students don't care _because_ their parents
| don 't, it just doesn't fix the problem.
| jmrm wrote:
| From experience, in the last 5-10 years most lecturers
| won't care if you go to classes or no. The will only
| require you to do continuous evaluation tasks.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I've taken and assisted for classes that had "mandatory"
| attendance. In the sense that missing classes would come
| out of your grade.
|
| Sometimes it was implemented as a direct role-call. Some
| classes have a "participation" component which is really
| just a fuzzy attendance grade. Some classes have random
| graded in-class quizzes, which also function as a
| stochastic attendance check.
|
| Generally I hate all of these things IMO low attendance
| is the instructor's last, most dramatic barometer to
| indicate poor instruction, and subverting this
| measurement is a terrible idea. But it is definitely
| different for k-12!
| _rm wrote:
| Get them into trades that can make them money right now
| rather than calling textbooks & college the OnlyWay(tm)?
| Solvency wrote:
| Err, wrong. We must feed the industrial debt complex.
| iteria wrote:
| Even with trades you need to know how to read, write and do
| basic math (and honestly algebra). Kids who don't show up
| likely haven't hopped that hurdle and are unfit even for
| trades. There is a disconnect where kids dont understand
| that classes are often not about the class but some
| underlying skill you're practicing via something they
| consider worthless.
|
| It's a waste for schools to put an unprepared kid in a
| trade class only for them to realize oh. They actually have
| zero skills for that. And then backtrack. You'll also never
| convince most kids that they'll need algebra for a trade
| because most people can't connect that you need algebra to
| budget and other basics of life.
|
| Vocational track was a thing when I was a kid. And it
| didn't matter much because kids who could do it were
| capable of doing college track if they wanted and kids who
| could nevet do collegr track and needed mandatory
| attendance couldn't even read. Maybe the gap is narrower
| these days, but i don't think a vocational track is
| encourages the bottom. I do think it's a good thing to
| expose kids as an option, just to explain that nowadays
| even trades require schooling after high school if you want
| to get certified, etc. It's just shorter with more lab type
| classes a la engineering.
| kcplate wrote:
| Amen to this. Frankly i would go a step further and say
| that any student that doesn't show a real interest and
| propensity for STEM should be equally encouraged and
| introduced to trade school and apprenticeship options as
| well as college with equal emphasis.
|
| You will serve those students better and society as a
| whole.
| bigallen wrote:
| Trades still include hard work and rule following for a
| long time. And many trades have a culture of crusty old
| assholes being in charge and then turning the young
| entrants into the crusty old assholes. I think there will
| still be a large segment of the population that will see
| gang and criminal activities (fraternity, high-reward,
| party lifestyle) as a more compelling career choice
| LouisSayers wrote:
| That sounds like a difficult environment, and as they say
| "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".
|
| However, here's a few things I'd be trying:
|
| 1) Stories. One of the best uni professors I had was always
| breaking up his lessons with Stories. The time some people
| exploded a whale with dynamite, the Lawnchair Larry flight,
| the time he was held at knife Point while travelling. It just
| made the lectures more fun and made you feel good for having
| showed up.
|
| 2) Inspiring examples. I'd be inclined to work to find people
| who had been in their situation and gotten out. Bring them to
| class, get them to tell their stories.
|
| 3) Relevance. Making teaching examples that are edgy and
| somewhat relevant to their interests. If you're teaching
| English, use street slang in your examples. If you're
| teaching math, make examples about making money etc, getting
| creative and meeting your world with theirs.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Agree with all this. The key is to make it relatable to the
| students in some way.
|
| My son was struggling with Romeo and Juliet because of the
| archaic language, and the teacher never explained what many
| of the words and phrases meant. I would sit down with him
| and explain a scene in modern terms eg "OK, so basically
| the boys are going to a party, and one of Romeo's friends
| is telling him not to be a stick in the mud and sulk off in
| the corner, but to actually have fun and talk to people".
|
| At the beginning the play was completely alien to him. By
| the end, working together, he came to understand that the
| play engaged in timeless themes that are as true today as
| they were 400 years ago (love, prestige, ego, jealousy,
| anger, despair, remorse, etc).
| rayiner wrote:
| > What do you do with kids in that kind of situation?
|
| Probably something different and specialized compared to kids
| in the other 80% of schools. Like residential boot camp.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think most of the people here (myself included) only have
| experience teaching at a university level (since it is a
| website for tech professionals, most of us only have teaching
| experience in grad school or as professors). So the scenario
| is just totally different. Mandatory attendance doesn't make
| sense for adults that are supposed to be trusted to make
| their own decision and who are paying lots of money to be
| there (If people don't show up to my discussion section, it
| is a sign I'm failing paying customers, and I need to sort
| that out, so forcing them to attend will destroy my
| measurement).
|
| If you are teaching k-12 and especially if some of the kids
| have a rough situation outside of the school, at least
| mandatory attendance puts them in an environment insulated
| from those outside pressures.
| jskherman wrote:
| Seconded. On this, I think the book "A Mind for Numbers" by
| Barbara Oakley summed up the lessons when it comes to learning
| the best. The effort/struggle to learn a topic is a signal to
| the brain that this particular information is salient and worth
| remembering; like some sort of feedback/anchor. People more
| should reframe and be thinking on how should they approach a
| subject to make getting to "the click" and understanding
| _faster_ (not necessarily easier).
| atomicnature wrote:
| Your first point is the truth, although I've found that there
| are very few takers for this truth :)
|
| In HN itself, I've argued with people numerous times on how
| challenge is a necessity for advancing in learning, but I've
| met with stiff resistance to this point often.
|
| So just want to say, glad to see a practicing teacher state the
| obvious (to practicing teachers) in HN.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| > The students have to struggle
|
| Perhaps it's just the wording, but I really disagree here.
|
| Yes, there's a natural stress process we go through while
| learning where our boundaries are expanded, but to struggle...
| it's often a sign of bad teaching.
|
| I say this as a best selling Udemy instructor and having been a
| university CS tutor. Your job IS to take away the struggle. You
| do this by being the student, leading them to confusing
| situations and then overcoming that situation with them in a
| series of steps that are built up over time, and then having
| them apply that knowledge to build skill.
|
| The thing is, that teaching a subject well takes a lot of time
| and effort. There are very few really great teachers out there.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Maybe a better word is "toil", or just "hard work".
|
| No matter how good the teacher is, there's almost no student
| in the world that can learn effectively without actually
| putting in the effort of working through problems on their
| own. The best teachers and curricula are the ones that dose
| out the hard work to maximize learning.
| dkqmduems wrote:
| Few good teachers...few good engineers? 10x cough cough...
| NotOscarWilde wrote:
| The author writes about himself:
|
| > Hi! I'm a PhD student studying computer science at Rice
| University.
|
| This means that we are on the same career path (I am currently an
| assistant professor in theoretical CS in Europe). I wish you of
| course best of luck!
|
| Here is the harshest truth about teaching I learned during my
| PhD:
|
| If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting
| yourself up for failure.
|
| This sounds cruel, and in fact I am much like you, I love
| teaching and I love self-improvement and it is quite easy for me
| to invest time into my teaching prep, presentation, and more and
| see measurable results in class quality and usually also student
| feedback.
|
| However, at least in my neck of the woods (i.e. Europe), almost
| all gates and gatekeepers for you as a PhD student, and later
| postdoc, are checking your research. At some places they really
| do expect you to have K publications in the top 3 CS conferences
| or you will not be considered at all -- and it seems these
| thresholds are only getting higher. Here I mean for example
| invitation-only workshops, postdoc positions with top advisors,
| and later also permanent positions.
|
| On the other hand, if you are a talented scientist, they usually
| only care that your teaching skills are at the bare minimum --
| have you taught something? Yes? Great.
|
| Now orator/presentation skills are critical and presenting a
| coherent lecture plan might be useful for a final presentation at
| an interview for a permanent position. But even there, it is more
| about you knowing what you want to teach and how it complements
| the department than about your past achievements (i.e., how much
| you have put in a course previously).
|
| My PhD advisor usually said that he likes to dig into teaching
| when research is not going well. I agree with that -- teaching
| really is fulfilling to me and I love to improve my class and see
| people happy with it, and research is all about global ranking
| (which is tough on anyone's psyche) and generating progress which
| is the fun part but sometimes takes a long time. However, at your
| stage of your career, the research really _can 't_ go slow.
|
| ---
|
| PS: If the author reads this, since it is a self-post, your class
| sounds really nice and it is actually one I would have loved to
| attend. My research is in online algorithms -- a field which you
| can rephrase as seeing some theoretical problems as two player
| games between a solver and an adversary -- and among other things
| I would like to consider utilizing all the techniques of chess
| solvers (which cannot evaluate the game fully, but "almost") and
| transfer it to other areas of online algorithms.
| kettleballroll wrote:
| Just as a counterpoint: this very much depends. I probably
| spent at least a year (probably more) of my PhD (in Europe)
| just teaching a class I built up from the ground up myself. I
| barely got any research done the first year I gave that class,
| and every subsequent year it still took a large chunk of my
| time. It's part of the reason I spent a total of 7 years doing
| a PhD (which is long, considering I already had an MSc), during
| 5 of which I taught my class, and grew it from 10 students in
| the first year to 200 in my last. But I don't consider that
| time wasted. I had a blast and found that teaching helped me
| understand the fundamentals of my fields at an extremely deep
| level that I'd never reached otherwise. It didn't improve my
| research output, but I feel that the soft skills and
| understanding of fundamentals was a real advantage. My future
| career also didn't suffer, I'm now working as researcher at a
| FAANG AI lab.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| > I had a blast and found that teaching helped me understand
| the fundamentals of my fields at an extremely deep level that
| I'd never reached otherwise
|
| You spent 5 years teaching a class that, judging from your
| words, you probably prepared and improved very thoroughly.
| That is _a lot_ of hours of work. Are you sure if you devoted
| all those hours to reading textbooks, papers, doing
| experiments, etc. on your field, you wouldn 't have achieved
| an even deeper understanding?
|
| Maybe yes, but if so, I honestly think you're in a minority.
| As an academic myself, I like teaching and I do learn things
| from it, but it's far from the most efficient way to learn a
| scientific field. If I had a pure research position I'm
| pretty sure that my research productivity would be better.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting
| yourself up for failure.
|
| This is good advice. And this is true even once you become a
| professor. All time spent on teaching will go against your
| career progression. Even if you're tenured and don't care about
| promotion, you'll feel like an imposter in your department if
| you're not somewhat competitive research wise.
|
| Generally speaking, there's no recognition in teaching in
| general, and at university level it's often not even considered
| as a job by itself.
|
| Maybe it's different in Asia, but that was my experience in the
| western countries where I worked.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Bret Deveraux[0] did a really good blogpost on the difference
| between the tenure track and the teaching track for postgrad
| students.
|
| [0] https://acoup.blog/2023/04/28/collections-academic-ranks-
| exp...
|
| /me not an academic at all. I had no idea it was such a
| struggle.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| _> However, at least in my neck of the woods (i.e. Europe),
| almost all gates and gatekeepers for you as a PhD student, and
| later postdoc, are checking your research._
|
| While I'm also in Europe, my bet is that this is universal and
| won't change in the foreseeable future.
|
| The reason is that teaching is practically impossible to
| evaluate. How do you quantitatively measure which professors
| provide high-quality teaching? By grades? No, easiest course
| wins. By employability? No, it depends a lot on the field, a
| philosophy professor can be amazing but that won't create jobs
| in philosophy. Student polls? Correlation with actual quality
| is really weak, and I say this as someone who has good polls -
| there is a strong influence of difficulty as well as the
| subject itself (a CS student will almost always prefer
| programming to physics, and it's not the physics professor's
| fault), apart from gender bias.
|
| In my country they _try_ to give an equal weight to teaching
| equally with respect to research in applications for positiosn
| and tenure, but since there is no realistic metric, the bulk of
| the score ends up being about "years teaching" or "number of
| hours taught" which is the only objective number that they can
| come up with. So it becomes basically a seniority factor and
| since your seniority is what it is and preparing high-quality
| lectures won't give you more hours or years, the outcome is
| still that focusing too much on teaching is bad for your
| career.
| althea_tx wrote:
| There are different types of universities. While R1
| institutions are more focused on research than teaching, there
| are smaller liberal arts universities which revolve around the
| undergraduate student experience. These universities still have
| research expectations as part of tenure and promotion, but
| faculty aren't required to crank out research publications.
| Teaching is hugely important at these schools, both during the
| hiring process and when evaluating candidates for tenure and
| promotion.
|
| I have been fortunate enough to work at such a university for
| the past 20 years. We have a deep endowment, small class sizes,
| and extensive support for our faculty research projects.
| Undergraduates at our school are often engaged in research
| projects as well.
|
| For me, this is like an academic utopia: a blend of teaching
| and research with a primary focus on teaching. There are many
| other universities like mine.
|
| Keep it up, OP. This is a wonderful post!
| claytonwramsey wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words!
|
| Yes, I'm fully aware of the fact that teaching isn't really a
| priority in academia - for that reason, I probably won't be
| reviving my class in the near future. I really do like
| teaching, but it doesn't get me much closer to any of my
| current goals.
| snoopsnopp wrote:
| When I would go to my Professor's office hours they would be
| swamped but about a half dozen students just trying to get
| passing grades. I feel like colleges now self-select for
| laziness. The less work you actually have to do, the less
| opportunity to fail.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| Here are some things I tell young professors:
|
| 1. The students are not like you. For you, the topic is
| fascinating, and something you've pondered for much of your adult
| life. For the average student, the topic is moderately
| interesting, and likely quite confusing, in the first exposure
| that is this class.
|
| 2. Teach to the middle of the class. Be aware that the weakest
| students will be perplexed much of the time, and the strongest
| will be bored. This range is hard for you to comprehend, given
| your path. Note that the range is not something you can alter. It
| is established by the university Registrar, not by you and also
| not by the students.
|
| 3. Expose the students to your enthusiasm for the material. Be
| direct, and be personal. "The next topic is" will not motivate
| students as much as "Now we ready for the exciting part" or "This
| next bit is what I like best about this topic", etc.
|
| 4. Make the decision to enjoy your time with the students.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > 2. Teach to the middle of the class. Be aware that the
| weakest students will be perplexed much of the time, and the
| strongest will be bored.
|
| True for the weakest students, but it's always possible to give
| harder material/exercises to the strongest students. And it
| doesn't even take much time for the teacher because these
| students are more autonomous. I only taught CS and maths, but
| it's very easy to keep the good students busy.
|
| I personally like teaching CS lab classes. The key is to design
| projects with gradual difficulty. Even the weakest students
| should manage to complete a few tasks.
|
| But overall, I think that heterogeneity makes teaching much
| more complicated that what it could be, especially when basic
| pre-requisites aren't met. It's a bit heartbreaking when you
| get students which are obviously losing their time and money.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I've been quite curious how to "divide and conquer" the
| problem by weaponizing the bored genius into teaching the
| perplexed and lagging. It may save teacher time for teaching
| the middle group while also teaching the genius what it is to
| explain something so intuitive to someone who doesn't. But it
| may backfire ..
| nequo wrote:
| Upper-year students often work as teaching assistants which
| is something to this effect. That is, if they hold tutoring
| sessions or office hours and not just do grading.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> by weaponizing the bored genius into teaching the
| perplexed and lagging.
|
| This seems like a great idea but should be used very
| sparingly. Your "bored genius" isn't necessarily a great
| teacher, and that's not their job anyway. I've found you're
| better to give them more challenging options. If they want
| to be bored that's on them; if they pursue it they'll
| likely do it independently.
| schneems wrote:
| > Now we ready for the exciting part" or "This next bit is what
| I like best about this topic", etc.
|
| Personal excitement for the material is one piece, but it's not
| enough. The most important thing a teacher should do is help
| the students internalize *why* they're learning the material.
| What they can do with it.
|
| Baking shows don't start off telling the history of the
| maillard reaction, they show you the delicious cake you're
| going to make. Then you make the cake. Then (if it's a class
| and not the food network) you learn the important details.
|
| Teaching is storytelling. The main character is the student.
| What challenge will they overcome? How will they grow as a
| result? If the teacher makes them hungry to know the answer,
| then students will not just tolerate the information, they'll
| seek it out, challenge it, and ask for more.
| pmichaud wrote:
| Love this. My version is wanting to know what problem I would
| face on my own that would lead me to independently generate
| the solution I'm about to learn. That gives me motivation and
| context for the information so I can form a complete
| orientation in the problem space.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| > The most important thing a teacher should do is help the
| students internalize _why_ they're learning the material.
| What they can do with it.
|
| Depending on the topic there is often no "why". Most classes
| a student takes are required and they have absolutely zero
| interest in them and they will willfully forget them as soon
| as the semester is over
| kmoser wrote:
| There is always a "why", else what would be the use of
| teaching the subject in the first place, even to
| enthusiastic students?
|
| OP's point is that helping the students understand the
| "why" might spark interest in them. Even if you reach one
| kid, you will have achieved your intended result.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| The why the course is useful to know may not actually
| ever be relevant to the students why they're taking the
| class, and no amount of informing the student how it's
| useful will assist them. Knowing firsthand the value of
| tax knowledge doesn't mean I have any level of enthusiasm
| about my taxes...
|
| Btw, for your baking example: the great British bake off
| is a wildly popular show and yet almost none of the
| people I know who are fans care to even try to learn
| baking themselves. I just don't think it's a think that
| happens to any degree you think it does.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > the great British bake off is a wildly popular show and
| yet almost none of the people I know who are fans care to
| even try to learn baking themselves.
|
| You're missing the point of teaching anything. Teaching
| is (literally) the act of grooming someone to be
| receptive to an idea. It's different from _training,_
| which is the act of coaching someone into _doing_
| something.
|
| When the day comes where one of those fans _does_ try to
| bake something, everything they saw on the show is going
| to resonate in a way it wouldn 't for someone without the
| exposure.
|
| I don't bake, but I now know two ways in which greasy
| meat leads to a soggy bottom.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Most people go to college for training; they could not
| care less about receptivity to ideas. There is this myth
| that college is about expanding one's mind and worldview.
| It is not. It is about improving and ensuring one's
| economic class. Only professors forsake a job in the real
| world for these ideals. Everybody else is there to secure
| their spot in the middle class, and they don't care about
| superfluous information
| jstarfish wrote:
| > Most people go to college for training; they could not
| care less about receptivity to ideas
|
| And they come out of it disappointed that they don't
| actually know how to _do_ anything.
|
| > There is this myth that college is about expanding
| one's mind and worldview.
|
| I used to think that was a myth too. So much so I did it
| twice. College is wasted on the young.
|
| It took decades of experience for me to recognize how
| much of my college experience consisted of being fed
| blatant lies meant to foster critical thought.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| > what would be the use of teaching the subject in the
| first place, even to enthusiastic students?
|
| This is something which you should always ask yourself in
| a class. What use is this class?
|
| Usually the "why" is: "nobody would take this class
| unless we forced them to, and the English department
| would starve to death without forced pre-requisites"
|
| > Even if you reach one kid, you will have achieved your
| intended result
|
| If you reach 1 kid in a class of 30 you have objectively
| failed
| nonameiguess wrote:
| At least some of the time the reason is the canon of that
| subject requires it and you either care about that subject or
| you don't. If it's a distribution requirement the school
| imposes or the student simply doesn't know yet what they
| enjoy studying and are still major-shopping, there isn't
| necessarily much a professor can do about that. It's not like
| cooking. Everyone has to eat. Not everyone needs to become a
| chemist, but if at some point you think you might want to
| become one, you're going to have to learn common foundational
| material that all chemists must know to succeed as chemists.
| If you end up not actually becoming a chemist, it will never
| be useful to you.
|
| Or if you're pre-med, it still may never be useful to you to
| learn all the different ways atoms can arrange themselves
| into molecules unless you're going to someday do novel drug
| research, but medical school admissions and clinical
| licensing boards have not yet figured out a way to craft pre-
| requisites based on the specific unknowable future paths of
| individual applicants and they have to require everything
| that might be needed by _any_ kind of doctor.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| This is good advice - it is good to keep all of these things in
| mind.
|
| I would add: Let them see you sweat a bit. When they see you
| are working hard to make a great class for them, they too put
| in more work.
| d-lisp wrote:
| My student life has been an awful boring existence because of
| number 2. There was nothing more frustrating than going to
| school. A few sentences were enough for me to understand
| concepts that were explained during several weeks.
| dkqmduems wrote:
| Are these technical university level courses you are talking
| about? If so, you should just be taking higher level courses.
| d-lisp wrote:
| That's a long time I'm out of school. The truth is you
| should read books about subjects you're interested in to
| solve a lack of understanding on one subject, and from
| there teach yourself anything you want, if you were in my
| situation. What I did is taking the highest level course I
| could find on X subject, and trying to understand from
| other lower level sources the high level concepts I
| couldn't understand from intuition by the sole reading of
| the high level syllabus.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Expose the students to your enthusiasm for the material.
|
| This makes a huge difference to me. There were subjects that
| were exceedingly boring and difficult to me at first but I
| managed to find joy in them because teachers were so
| enthusiastic about them it was like they were filled with
| childlike wonder and it inspired me to give it a chance instead
| of just going through the motions.
|
| I've had teachers who seemed to be there just for the paycheck
| and it made me be there just for the grades too, thoroughly
| depressing.
| avg_dev wrote:
| Definitely thought this was an interesting article. Recalled some
| of my own thoughts on "struggle" as a way to learn. And am
| somehow interested in the subject of pedagogy too. Also a
| software developer. Thanks for the article.
| smogcutter wrote:
| The author has the makings of an excellent teacher if they keep
| at it. I say so more because of the form of this reflection than
| the content: seeing things from your students point of view
| really is the core skill that makes everything else possible.
| mondocat wrote:
| Thoughts on teaching students:
|
| 1. Nobody wants to admit they don't know. Not in front of you,
| certainly not in front of their peers. Related, almost nobody
| that needs to goes to office hours.
|
| 2. Teaching the right way to do something is the minimum.
| Teaching how to avoid all traps; the appealing and intuitive but
| incorrect or inefficient ways to do something is better. Students
| will amaze you with all the ways there are to fail to solve a
| problem.
|
| 3. There may be steps you are not articulating, because you're
| not aware you're doing them. If one student gets it wrong, it's
| probably them, if most of them get it wrong, it's probably you.
| As a new teacher, you will learn as much from their struggles as
| they do.
|
| 4. Related, there are steps you have mastered, like a tightrope
| walker, than can not be immediately emulated, despite the
| apparent simplicity of the instructions.
|
| 5. You chose this material, they may not have.
|
| 6. Related, you want to share the material and your enthusiasm
| with them, which is good, but they may only want to get the
| minimum they need to get by.
|
| 7. As a teacher, despite the lack of respect you may feel, they
| see you as an authority figure. You are the institution. You are
| not one of them, even if you are. They don't want to see you in
| the hall or at the grocery store; it does not matter your
| respective ages.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Let me respond to a couple of your points, although overall I
| loved your comment.
|
| 1. This is absolutely true. But you _can_ cultivate an
| environment where students feel safe enough to admit they don't
| know. It takes time and effort. It requires you to be honest
| when _you_ don't know something. But it can be done. That said,
| I suspect that is going to be more difficult in a college
| environment just because you have class less often. I see my
| (high school) kids more often, so I can establish that safe
| environment in, say, a month or so. And then I have them for
| the rest of the year.
|
| 2. "Students will amaze you with all the ways there are to fail
| to solve a problem." This is so true! And they will also amaze
| you with all the ways they misunderstand instructions or
| directions. You'll receive back an answer that you just don't
| even understand how they came to it and when you talk to them,
| you realize they read your instructions a certain way. Then you
| realize that you could write your instructions more clearly
| than you did. So I'd add to this: don't assume that a bizarre
| answer that you receive is because the student is dumb or high
| or something. Ask how they came up with it. Listen to their
| thought process. And be open to the possibility that you could
| modify your instructions (or content teaching) to avoid a
| similar misunderstanding in the future.
|
| 3. Yes! Again, yes!!
|
| 6. I would only add this: enthusiasm is never a bad thing to
| express towards your material. (I mean, I'm a history teacher,
| so it's going to look different when I'm teaching, like, the
| Industrial Revolution than when I'm on the Holocaust, but
| yeah.) Just realize that there will be plenty of students who
| do not share your enthusiasm and never will, and don't be hurt
| or offended by it. But don't be afraid to be enthusiastic!
|
| 7. This is one that I sort of just disagree with, but it could
| be because I teach high school, not college. Students always
| run up to me if they see me out and about. I'm not saying they
| all love me. But they do tend to take special pleasure in
| seeing you around. It's almost like they're surprised that you
| actually exist outside of the school building. (I'll stop with
| that, although there's a much larger discussion to be had
| around high school teachers being involved in community
| activities. If you want to maximize your impact, teaching in
| high school is so much more than just delivering content.)
|
| Like I said though, great comment!
| adverbly wrote:
| > In my experience, I learn the most when I struggle; if a
| student can shortcut through all the hard parts on, for example,
| and assignment, they're not going to learn very much. On the flip
| side, when most students struggle, they just give up.
|
| This. 100% this. How do you make someone understand that
| struggling is good? That - more than anything else - is what I
| want to be able to teach.
|
| Any tips?
| dmvdoug wrote:
| They have to have the experience of being successful on the
| other side of the struggle. And they have to have someone
| showing them the connection. Look at where you were before
| this. You struggled but persevered. Now look at where you are
| (in terms of either what you know or what you can do). That's
| called growth, and it only happened because you stuck with it.
|
| Also, frankly, positive reinforcement will get you a lot of
| mileage.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Building perseverance, and more broadly motivation, is still
| only partially understood in cognitive science. However, Carol
| Dweck's 'growth mindset' can help bridge the gap by shifting
| students' opinions away from "some people just get this" to "I
| don't understand this _yet_ ". Other motivation elements
| outside the scope of the material include intrinsic/extrinsic
| motivations, role models in the field, self-regulated learning,
| mindfulness, Baker et. al.'s affect model [1], etc.
|
| It's something I usually mention to my students during the
| later part of the semester - humans are one of the hardest
| problems out there! We're irrational, something that works for
| one person won't for the other, even if we know something's bad
| we'll keep doing it.
|
| [1] https://busynessgirl.com/better-to-be-frustrated-than-
| bored/
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > Somehow I need to make assignments which thread the needle
| between being too hard to solve and too easy
|
| The author is describing precisely what ever video game designer
| learns to do: build the right scaffolding at every step so people
| can be in Flow [1]
|
| I've always enjoyed this symmetry between teaching & video game
| making. They both try to do the same thing in that way. (after
| all, video games are really just "voluntary work" when you think
| about it)
|
| [1] See figure 1 https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/cognitive-
| flow-the-psyc...
| passion__desire wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Absolutely! I based my dissertation on analyzing how
| students selected different lower level CS exercises
| (typing exercises, Parson Puzzles, output prediction, etc.)
| based on ICAP. What I observed was lower Active exercises
| benefit all students, the general order of exercise
| selection follows a sawtooth wave (work upwards to
| assessment, then reset for the next week), completers and
| non-completers in a MOOC selected 'next exercises'
| similarly, and no one likes pop ups recommending you to
| 'downgrade' if you're struggling on a problem. There are
| limitations to my work, like the order of how exercises
| were presented primed their selections, but the overarching
| theme I tried to convey was that lower-level drilling is an
| absolute necessity for learning.
| obscurette wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| makeitshine wrote:
| What I've learned from teaching is exactly what these comments
| exhibit, a hundred different solutions. For me the best teaching
| tool has been being able to read the room. If you can do that,
| then you can figure out which of the hundred solutions you need
| to use.
| pdm55 wrote:
| A suggestion: I enjoyed one short online computer course I
| studied, because we were given other students' submissions to
| assess. I recall using both my own code and the code of another
| student to suggest improvements in a third student's code. I am
| talking mainly about small tasks such as coding a function.
|
| To me this is just formalising what students do anyway: namely,
| help each other understand and complete tasks in a course. The
| difference is that the instructor is actively giving students
| access to other students' code. I found the process motivated me
| to get stuck into a task, rather than leaving it to the last
| minute.
| tomcam wrote:
| > I was teaching a blow-off class... only about half of my
| students were really paying attention at a time, which is pretty
| bad if you want them to actually learn anything.
|
| I think most teachers would consider half the students paying
| attention to be a roaring success.
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