Note: Everything I write below about pedagogy is anecdotal, and I don’t have much experience outside of being a student.
This is a really cool idea! I think it’s a good way of bringing people in the community closer together!
That being said, I’m worried the classes might not turn out to be very good because good teaching seems generally pretty hard. (Which isn’t to say that I don’t think LWers can’t rise to the challenge, just that this means my priors on “Video tutoring will turn out well” are low.) (Or perhaps I just didn’t have many good teachers).
I think personalization could be a very important niche role we could exploit here to make things better. So rather than the Teacher spending time going over the subject, they could chat individually with Learners to assess where they are at, suggest materials, and then follow up after each iteration. (Think something like the flipped classroom model where we’re counting on people to be self-motivated learners, and these video sessions would be more for supplementing self-studying.)
Everything I write below about pedagogy is anecdotal, and I don’t have much experience outside of being a student.
As a former teacher I complete agree with your approach. One critical component of teaching is determining your students’ next inferential step. Which is easier in a “one to one” setting, and almost impossible in a “one to many” setting.
Various online lessons are an exercise in frustration because always someone complains they are too easy (that they cover only the “obvious” and “well-known” facts), and someone else complains they are too difficult (that they use terms they didn’t explain, and go through complex ideas too fast).
Traditional school solves this by making everyone progress along the same path, and the same speed. I guess we all know how frustrating this is for smart people who have a potential to do much faster. On the other hand, LW audience will consist of smart people, but there will be wild differences in background knowledge.
So the approach “this is the outline, read these things in this order, and discuss with me when you complete something or you get stuck” is a good solution that allows you to provide material for many people at the same time, and yet address everyone individually.
Some online courses have separate Q&A threads for each lesson, where students can talk to each other, but only about the specific lesson.
I suspect this will end up being something more akin to self-study groups that produce teaching material as a direct result of learning the material themselves. For example, writing up an explanation of how to do a particular book example. This doubles as an assessment of people’s skills since other people that know the topic really well can build on those explanations or correct mistakes.
With a series of such explanations, anyone else trying to go through the material will have a clearer pathway for the level of understanding of a given sub-topic they need to develop to progress: the exercises and readings needed to be able to understand something, or do a particular difficulty of project.
This is indeed something that could happen, and I agree it’d be valuable.
Although, while I think that writeups / explanation can be valuable for both the people writing it / the people reading it, the thing I was actually trying to point to was the sort of benefit you might get from a tutor: that is, if someone knows where you’re struggling, they can suggest things that are more tailored to help you succeed vs a typical online curriculum.
(And that this sort of personalized “adaptive curriculum” could be a unique benefit to come out of this activity.)
Note: Everything I write below about pedagogy is anecdotal, and I don’t have much experience outside of being a student.
This is a really cool idea! I think it’s a good way of bringing people in the community closer together!
That being said, I’m worried the classes might not turn out to be very good because good teaching seems generally pretty hard. (Which isn’t to say that I don’t think LWers can’t rise to the challenge, just that this means my priors on “Video tutoring will turn out well” are low.) (Or perhaps I just didn’t have many good teachers).
I think personalization could be a very important niche role we could exploit here to make things better. So rather than the Teacher spending time going over the subject, they could chat individually with Learners to assess where they are at, suggest materials, and then follow up after each iteration. (Think something like the flipped classroom model where we’re counting on people to be self-motivated learners, and these video sessions would be more for supplementing self-studying.)
As a former teacher I complete agree with your approach. One critical component of teaching is determining your students’ next inferential step. Which is easier in a “one to one” setting, and almost impossible in a “one to many” setting.
Various online lessons are an exercise in frustration because always someone complains they are too easy (that they cover only the “obvious” and “well-known” facts), and someone else complains they are too difficult (that they use terms they didn’t explain, and go through complex ideas too fast).
Traditional school solves this by making everyone progress along the same path, and the same speed. I guess we all know how frustrating this is for smart people who have a potential to do much faster. On the other hand, LW audience will consist of smart people, but there will be wild differences in background knowledge.
So the approach “this is the outline, read these things in this order, and discuss with me when you complete something or you get stuck” is a good solution that allows you to provide material for many people at the same time, and yet address everyone individually.
Some online courses have separate Q&A threads for each lesson, where students can talk to each other, but only about the specific lesson.
I suspect this will end up being something more akin to self-study groups that produce teaching material as a direct result of learning the material themselves. For example, writing up an explanation of how to do a particular book example. This doubles as an assessment of people’s skills since other people that know the topic really well can build on those explanations or correct mistakes.
With a series of such explanations, anyone else trying to go through the material will have a clearer pathway for the level of understanding of a given sub-topic they need to develop to progress: the exercises and readings needed to be able to understand something, or do a particular difficulty of project.
This is indeed something that could happen, and I agree it’d be valuable.
Although, while I think that writeups / explanation can be valuable for both the people writing it / the people reading it, the thing I was actually trying to point to was the sort of benefit you might get from a tutor: that is, if someone knows where you’re struggling, they can suggest things that are more tailored to help you succeed vs a typical online curriculum.
(And that this sort of personalized “adaptive curriculum” could be a unique benefit to come out of this activity.)