Paul Cantrell
A whole lot of people are going to see this study (via @hrheingold):
https://mastodon.social/@hrheingold/111536204785721878
and wrongly think, “Oh! In-person classes are a low-value activity!”
…when in fact the correct conclusion (in this teacher’s view) is that •lectures• are a low-value activity.
Do that study again but with active learning — social, hands-on, interactive wrestling with difficult challenges in the presence of support — and let me know how that goes on Zoom.
Paul Cantrell
(There’s also a whole conversation to be had about using exams as the benchmark for learning, but surprisingly, I’m sympathetic to that in this context. Long-term whole-human outcomes are of course 10000x more important than passing exams, but they’re pretty damned hard to design a study around.)
Paul Cantrell
I had a chance to do the in-person vs online comparison for Macalester’s second-semester computer science course. It’s maybe 80–90% in-class programming activities (with conceptual reading interspersed in the activity directions: concepts in context, always!). Students do the activities in pairs, with hands-on help from an instructor and a student preceptor.
In fall 2020, I taught that class on Zoom. We made it work. The students were amazing. And…it was hellish.
Paul Cantrell
Hellish as in I still kind of have low-grade trauma flashbacks about that semester. We •did• make it work: breakout rooms, screen sharing, remote pairing tools, and a hell of a lot of can-do attitude from the students. We…made…it…work. [clenched teeth, distant stare]
The overwhelming feeling was one of survival. Joy was scarce: present, but hard to come by. And when I taught it in person again? Like a 1000-pound weight coming off my shoulders.
Paul Cantrell
Some kinds of learning that move online smoothly; others that suffer terribly. We educators might look critically at our own teaching through this lens:
What am I doing that might as well be online? Be online at scale? Be automated?
Is it worth my students’ time and energy to be doing those things?
If in my teaching I have the precious gifts of physical proximity and human relationships, am I using them wisely?
What forces are trying to wrest away those gifts, that kind of learning?
chris martens
@inthehands YES. i feel like the biggest lesson i have learned is precisely that synchronous, physical proximity is a precious gift that we should not take for granted, that we should use those precious opportunities in a way that respects everyone who is contributing to it with their presence, and makes use of the unique fingerprint of collective energy generated by the specific people assembled.
Gen X-Wing
@inthehands I went to college with a guy that had an amazing ability to pass exams. Not smarter than the rest of us otherwise in general, but he was absolutely amazing at quickly study some books, retain all of it, and pass any test with ease.
Me, I’m terrible at it:(
Paul Cantrell
@breadbin
Well, I’m sure that skill has really paid off for him, what with all the exams we all have to take on a regular basis in adult life!
Gen X-Wing
@inthehands hehe, I know:) I mean he’s not dumb and didn’t do bad work. He was doing well last I heard. But he didn’t retain the stuff he crammed. It was a party trick.
But I swear he could have gotten a few extra degrees in those four years. Well if he hadn’t partied so much at least.
Paul Cantrell
@breadbin
Heh, I am definitely going to steal “party trick” as a description of doing well at the immediate success checkboxes of school with any deep, lasting retention or personal transformation. Perfect.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.