Originally Posted by DAD22
Originally Posted by puffin
I seem to recall questions being asked. We did have some lecturers whose English wasn't good enough to rephrase what they had said - they just repeated what they had already said like a rewound recording. It was not helpful and I can't see rewinding a video to be helpful either. Also if I don't understand something at the beginning and therefore can't follow the next step I need to get an answer now not tomorrow.

Yet Khan's niece Nadia preferred his videos to live tutoring sessions because she could watch them multiple times and go at her own pace. There may certainly be times when most of a video lecture is ineffective during the first viewing because of a question that pops up at the start. On the other hand, there are times when most of a live lecture is ineffective because it goes in real-time and a student didn't even have time to reflect on what they may have misunderstood in the first part, and formulate an appropriate question. Sometimes a single sentence perfectly communicates an idea, but the concept isn't understood until the student has time to reflect on it. Videos give students that time.


Originally Posted by puffin
Finally why go to a class to do busywork slowly with a bunch of people who probably haven't done the prep work and will ask the same questions over and over again or expect you to do their work for you?

As I've seen this implemented, the teachers know if the students played the videos or not. So the teachers can make a judgement call about helping the kids who didn't view them or answering questions for those that did. Unless you're waiting for a question to be answered, there's no reason to proceed slowly. I don't know why you are implying that some students will expect others to do their work for them, or how that would be specific to flipped classrooms.

I think that I am disagreeing with you based upon my own experiences as an educator-- not that your anecdotes above are incorrect, but that I strongly suspect that you are not accurately perceiving their relative frequency in average classroom settings.

My own experience leads me to know that what students PREFER is not always good for them educationally, firstly. Secondly, it's also true that students with relatively slow processing speeds may have difficulty with a lecture that proceeds too rapidly for them to follow in "real-time", by FAR the more common problem is the one that you've minimized-- the issue of a small gap, question, or misunderstood point undermining the student's ability to move forward or understand the rest of the whole.

I've seen that particular face-palm moment again and again and again... and again. It is the ENTIRE reason why dynamic teachers pay such close attention while they 'teach' from the front of the room-- because that presentation is entirely wasted if a student gets hung up, and it's far, far more work to backtrack later (even with just the one student).

As a student, as a teacher, and again as a parent watching how online classroom interactions happen, I've seen this. It's the single thing that makes "lecture" most ineffective to begin with, but flipping the classroom to a static information source makes it WORSE, not better.

The problem is not only that STUDENTS can't ask questions of a video. The other part of the problem is that instructors don't know-- even if they can make educated guesses a good deal of the time-- precisely where the trouble spots will be with a particular cohort of students. It's a process of dynamic discovery for both sides, and it's very difficult to predict ahead of time.

In part, the hybrid/integrated approach works best because, as Dad rightly notes earlier, you sometimes don't know what you don't know until you try to implement it or integrate it with other knowledge. The trouble is that neither does the instructor about 10-20% of the time. You can predict, in my experience, about 60-70% of the places that students will have difficulty, but that additional 30-40% will EAT UP class time and then some in a flipped classroom, and you'll wind up (as the instructor) answering the same question 3, 4, or 5 times in five minutes... just to deal with 2-3% of it. Idealistic views of how static instruction work are great-- but they don't make it any more efficient to iron out those little misunderstandings, and that is (mostly) what teaching is all about to begin with. A group instructional setting is simply more efficient for everyone from a time-management standpoint. Even if it does annoy the top 5% as a 'waste' of time, and confuse the bottom 10% even more than they already were, re: the pace that suits the middle of the distribution.

So a long session OUGHT to include brief bursts of direct instruction punctuating applied work/exploration with the concepts being introduced.

My objection to flipped classroom ideals is the sheer-- well, I consider it lunacy-- of thinking that 'instruction' can be a simple "transfer" of information in a static sense. That works for memorization. Nothing else.

Also, no offense to autodidacts, but it's also been my experience that those who have only learned what THEY have sought and taught themselves tend to almost invariably have two sequelae which are related: a) they seldom have multiple ways of considering/viewing the understanding that they possess, never having been exposed to views other than their own way of understanding it, and b) they have some strange gaps as a result of never having had an instructor explore/probe for those things as they learned the material. The best autodidacts tend to accumulate that understanding from multiple sources and challenge themselves with different approaches using different learning modes through a version of immersion. They are rare. More common is the autodidact that cannot learn from others because of a rigid mental approach to gaining understanding-- and that does tend to result in less than what I'd call actual mastery, though it can superficially seem that way. This is one reason why I am skeptical that an explanation aimed at the middle quartile is a "complete waste of time" for the top 10% who 'understand' the material already. Assuming that the top 10% is learning something new in that material (as I think is often NOT the case in undifferentiated classrooms), then no, it's not a complete waste of time to consider a different perspective and check your OWN understanding by mentally composing an answer yourself and checking it against what the instructor offers.

As long as a textbook/video can't respond adequately to the following kinds of questions, it will be a poor pedagogical substitute for a live instructor--

Is this related to {earlier topic}? Through {mechanism/event discussed in a prerequisite course}?

Do you have to do it that way?

Is it okay if I looked at it like this instead?

Why did you do that there?

I'm not sure that I understand why you chose ______ as a method/reason/etc. Can you explain?

Is there a reason to label those axes in that manner?

Is that a standard symbol or will just any variable do?

Did you consider _______ ?







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