14 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
vanderZwanAug 2017Strongly recommends
> At the end of this (i.e. graduate level courses) the only ones with sufficient mastery are those that are doing the research. Sadly, sufficient mastery of the subject often comes at the cost of sufficient mastery of teaching , which becomes especially important for such difficult subjects. If only some of that money spent on more staff was spent on assistant teachers whose main skill was teaching and coaching other teachers, and providing paid hours for both of them to fix the curriculum together... Anyway, I fully agree with your second paragraph. Another issue is that of researchers not really seeming to care, having an attitude of "you shouldn't be in University unless you really want to learn this, and I'm not going to try to motivate you or help you with that." There's some truth to that, but it also sometimes feels like it's used as a way to mask their own teaching incompetence. I was asked to be an assistant teacher after graduating from my masters, and I completely freaked out about the responsibility of making sure I wouldn't fuck up my student's education (I cared more than most of my students did). I almost declined the job offer! I was basically told "yeah we know, that's part of why we want you." Anyway, I spent a lot of time on-line trying to find advice on the dos and dont's of education. I can say that the best two lecture were Eric Mazur's Confessions of a Converted Lecturer [0] and John Corrigan's Are We Listening To Our Children? [1]. I think every teache
in “Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching” · View on HN
synoticDec 2015Strongly recommends
In a similar vein, there's a really great talk by Eric Mazur, Physics professor at Harvard about peer instruction — ▶ this video He goes into why he started exploring the idea at first (students got 5's on their AP physics exams and had strong problem-solving skills — plug-and-chug — but poor conceptual understanding), the many iterations of the approach, and the data he collected on the way (significant increases in open-ended, conceptual problems, including at other schools that adopted the approach). Really fascinating. I haven't watched the shorter version, but someone edited they key points down to 18 minutes: [link]
in “A better way to teach technical skills to a group” · View on HN
yequalsxApr 2010Strongly recommends
I strongly disagree with the notion that college algebra ought to be the place where one learns practical applications of mathematics. A valuable skill for any educated person is the ability to plod through minutia and make sense of it. Being able to be focused on the point at hand and not let distractions cloud judgment is a valuable skill. If one really understands the mechanics of logs then I think they will not freak out when presented with a formula involving logs. I'm all in favor of applications but isn't this the job of other subjects? The applications should be taught in the subjects that apply it. The goal of a mathematics class ought to be to understand mathematics. This lecture, ▶ this video is long but well worth watching. He provides strong evidence that students learn to solve word problems but haven't the slightest idea of what is really going on. They are memorizing steps. This happens at Harvard and the community college. I've given my students the standard word problems on travelling problems. They get the problems right. Then I ask them this simple problem and they universally get is wrong: You drive 1 mile at 40 mph and then the next mile drive 60 mph. What is your average speed? (Almost everyone says 50 mph.) We aren't teaching thinking skills. We are teaching memorization of problem types. Almost none of them is actually practical, correct, or useful. But why are we teaching travelling problems in a math class? I think it should be taught in physics.
in “Dan Meyer dissects the flaws of math textbooks (video)” · View on HN
MaysonLJan 2010Strongly recommends
Great video on how a pretty good teacher (as conventionally measured) learned how to really teach. ▶ this video titled: Confessions of a converted lecturer.
in “Freakonomics: Quantifying Teacher Effectiveness?” · View on HN
mquanderDec 2009Strongly recommends
Strongly reminiscent of this really fantastic talk from Eric Mazur, a Harvard physics professor (and a charismatic speaker!) who was shocked when he discovered the pervasive misconceptions held by his undergraduate students. ▶ this video Mazur describes how he discovered and carefully measured the lack of fundamental understanding among the majority of his students, and how after attempting to address the problem in various ways, he found that a discussion-based, peer-assisted method of working through material was much more effective than more a lecture-oriented approach.
in “Taking account of misconceptions; avoiding rote learning (MIT OCW video)” · View on HN
TehShrikeApr 2023Recommends
Eric Mazur figured out how to improve on the lecture+test cycle a while ago – explain something to the students, ask them a question, let them talk to each other and try to convince each other what the right answer is, collect the answers, and carry on. Here he is giving an engrossing explanation: ▶ this video A text article: [link]
in “Schools Are Ditching Homework, Deadlines in Favor of ‘Equitable Grading’” · View on HN
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dorfsmayApr 2018Recommends
I'm surprised the article nor the comments here mention Harvard professor Eric Mazur and his "evidence-based, interactive teaching" Peer Instruction method. This video is a bit long, but goes into details of his scientific approach to measuring results in the context of learning: ▶ this video For more details: [link] [link]
in “The Case Against Lectures” · View on HN
2020-3030Nov 2017Recommends
You are correct that course sizes matter to educational outcomes for a variety of reasons. If the groups are too small, it is possible that nobody has enough of what is needed for the class and everybody flounders, requiring intensive instructor led tutoring and learning. This brings us back to the 1:1 situation. If we are interested in how many students are required to support peer to peer learning, you might enjoy the following articles (popular and academic) about how Harvard physics professor, Dr. Eric Mazur has embraced and studied peer-to-peer instruction. This should provide a partial answer to your questions. 1) Eric's Harvard Profile [link] ) 2) A good story/video about the development of his peer-to-peer, active learning methods ( ▶ this video ). 3) One of Harvard's articles about his educational work. ( [link] 4) A list of Dr. Mazur's publications ( [link] ) 5) Eric's 2015 papers on peer learning a) 2015 - Dowd JE, Araujo I, Mazur E. Making sense of confusion: Relating performance, confidence, and self-efficacy to expressions of confusion in an introductory physics class. Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research. 11. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.11.010107 b) 2015 - Miller K, Schell J, Ho A, Lukoff B, Mazur E. Response switching and self-efficacy in Peer Instruction classrooms Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research. 11. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.11.010104 Googling for "ideal group size for peer to peer learning physics" brings up arti
in “Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)” · View on HN
bhattisatishFeb 2014Recommends
Eric Mazur's Peer learning process ▶ this video kind of highlights the problem and a solution for the same. Namely, Flip the classroom. Ask questions that highlight the knowledge gap within the students. Let students debate among themselves and then actually provide the solution. Though this is not sufficient, it at least improves the ability of the student to reason about the problem and question the models they have built around their heads on the given subject.
in “Khan Academy: The Illusion of Understanding” · View on HN
MaysonLJan 2010Recommends
A better question would be: what percentage understand what a random variable is and will be able to apply this understanding later. See ▶ this video for exploration of the difference by a Harvard physics professor who realized a few years into his teaching career that most of his into physics students weren't learning very much, although they were able to apply all the appropriate mathematical recipes to all the standard type homework and exam questions.
in “A review of probability theory” · View on HN
mncharityMay 2020Cites it
The idea that science education is profoundly and pervasively dysfunctional. It was a slowly accumulating realization. There was Feynman's critique of rote memorization in Brazil[1], but ok, Brasil isn't CaTech. And Mexico high-school graduates having TIMSS scores similar to US high-school dropouts, but oh well, that's Mexico. And news media have a trope, like "Harvard MBA students don't know what causes Earth seasons", but that's merely misunderstanding the nature of expertise -- if someone last studied a topic in middle school, then a middle-school-like understanding shouldn't come as a surprise. Similarly for grad and undergrad, professors and grad school. MIT and Harvard graduates being unable to light a bulb with a battery and wire[2], that seemed more bizarre. But by the time I saw Eric Mazur's (Harvard, intro physics) "it became clear that in spite of high evaluations, and in spite of good performance, my students were not really learning very much"[3], it didn't come as a surprise. Though it could still felt odd, for a time. Talking with first-tier medical school graduate students, with no clue how big blood cells are, beyond "really really small". Asking first-tier astronomy graduate students, "a five-year old asks you 'I'm told the Sun is a big hot ball [...] what color is the ball?'"... and of the very few who didn't get it wrong, half-ish learned it as "common misconceptions in astronomy education", rather from their own, atypically extensive and successful educat
in “Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life” · View on HN
harshavrMay 2011Cites it
Not to minimize the importance of teaching, but the content is important too. Instead of the content consisting of memorizing and performing algorithms, hoping for students to discover meaningful patterns/concepts/insights or rely on teachers to provide them, maybe the content should be doing this explicitly. One topic in the high school syllabus which actually does this is Euclidean geometry, where everything is coherently derived from basic principles as opposed to a grabbag of techniques. Maybe, one could present arithmetic in the same way, not focussing on the how to do calculations but the patterns in these calculations and a few basic principles too discover/prove them. Alternatively, one could focus on applications of mathematical techniques in toy versions of real world problems. Arithmetic algorithms still have value - for the insight they give on arithmetic and because following a complex algorithm is itself a skill with value. But there is no need, as we do now, to insist on performing them so many times, or to do them very quickly in exams. The main problem with this new approach, I feel, is that it makes learning mathematics harder . Building richer conceptual models which is necessary for both applications or theory is more interesting and meaningful, but also more difficult than following prescribed algorithms. It is harder to test in an exam, and where testable the problems are much harder. This issue of algorithms vs conceptual understanding, is important at
in “Economist's View: "The Mathematics Generation Gap"” · View on HN
yequalsxMar 2011Cites it
I teach at mathematics at a community college. I have videos for each section of the book and created problem sets for each section of the book. In essence, I've created my own book. My intention was to invert the role of homework and classwork. That is, that homework would now consist of watching the lecture. Classwork would focus on solving problems. The outcome? Disaster. I tracked usage of the videos. Around half the class didn't watch a given lecture. Around 1/3 consistently watched the lectures. The effect of this was that over time only around 1/3 of the class was able (and willing) to engage in problem solving and discussions about the material. I had 2/3 of the students hopelessly lost by the tenth week. How does this compare to the traditional format? When I give the standard lecture/homework assignment type class around 2/3 will pass. I double the number of people passing but I strongly suspect that they end up failing in the next course. (It is quite easy to pass beginning math classes these days. ) My anecdotal experience is that while I get more people to pass by giving lectures each day I end up with a group of people who know the material less well. My experience tells me that around 1/4 of the students will learn the material from my video lectures because they are motivated and willing to engage me when they are lost. Around 1/4 will stumble through the course and learn something regardless of the format it is given in. The rest are mostly hopeless. They lac
in “Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos” · View on HN
LucDec 2009Cites it
Does anyone know what textbook he's referring to as the one he used as a base for his original lectures? Sounds like 'Weidner and Selz', supposedly out of print? ▶ this video
in “Students Ace Textbook Physics While Struggling With Basic Understanding (video)” · View on HN