A teacher who made mistakes on purpose
nik.art
nik.art
You can see instances of this in his last lecture in 2023.
He also seemed to, precisely once every semester, assign a problem among the homework problems that was, as written, an open problem in the field, only to, a couple days before the deadline, send out a clarification apologizing.
Having been around there a couple years, I always suspected that these two things were not unrelated.
I think this article, even if it was true, downplays the social penalty that the kids who speak up might pay.
That said, the age of the students seems extremely relevant.
That's a new word (for me). Always glad to see some new vocabulary, thanks.
I hated it.
The issue is that, at least for me, I'm madly trying to capture in my notes whatever it is the teacher was presenting. Then, on "step 15" we get the "Oh, did anyone notice this on Step 3?" and then they'd erase the board and we'd start again.
I never felt it was an interesting technique, especially early on, when, again, at least for me, I'm just trying to absorb everything. I don't know enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, and still barely understand what I'm doing. Many times one can succeed by blindly following a process without understanding, and over time that understanding arrives, aided by repetition and application of the examples.
Folks learn differently with different ways. This was not an effective teaching technique for me.
But anything beyond that anything multi step is just not useful - you talk about taking notes young kids are not taking notes
I think it's fine if someone chooses to learn this way, but it's unfair to expect all the other students to waste their time---I really hated when math teachers assigned 30 problems of homework, because I didn't need 30 of the same problem to know how to solve it, and almost no one does. Really, you only need repetition for a small percent of the content, it's just what "clicks" for each person is different.
I appreciated what my high school chemistry teacher did instead: all problem sets were optional, but there were recommended problems. Then, we had tests every two weeks which we were allowed to retake, but only once we solved the problems. That way, we quickly see if we're missing any knowledge and are forced to learn it for a good grade.
> I hated it.
> The issue is that, at least for me, I'm madly trying to capture in my notes whatever it is the teacher was presenting.
I've observed this relation for myself, but the causality in my experience has clearly been reversed: it's not really possible for me to pay much attention to what is being taught when I'm working so hard just to write it down. Taking sparse, partial notes— or no notes at all— always left me way more room to think about the material.
This kind of approach works a lot better when you have a competent textbook that you can actually take home, which is only occasionally the case for high schoolers and almost never the case for elementary schoolers. When you have a decent textbook you can always make 'slow notes' from that at your leisure, if you really need them, and you can also do the readings before class so that all you need from the lecture is to fill in gaps.
But either way, trying to copy down the whole board is almost always the wrong way to take notes unless you are typing and can do so much more quickly than the board changes, IME. It's just way too much overhead and doesn't leave enough room for substantive engagement.
Assuming that there is no such sequencing issue involved for organic chemistry as it's commonly taught, and that a large number of 'brute facts' are an inherent feature of the subject matter, how is frantic, mechanical transcription a good use of in-class time in which students have access to a subject-matter expert? Transcription doesn't require the presence or time of an expert. Wouldn't it be better for students to perform such transcription outside of class, especially in advance of the lecture, and/or to receive paper copies of the contents of the board printed with double line spacing and wide margins at the beginning of class? In that case, both class time and students' notes could be better focused on questions, mistakes, and generally material of more substance than memorization.
Is there an assumption (or maybe an understanding informed by experience) that students just won't do such transcription (and thus not memorize the facts they need to) if they're not prompted to do so in class?
In current child development theories and books, it is taught that young children lack in "precausal thinking"/"transductive reasoning". Where a child does not understand things like "put on your jacket, it is cold outside" or "bring an umbrella, it will rain later".
It is said it is better to teach them "backwards" - let them feel that it is cold outside (problem) then tell them to put on a jacket (solution). But this type of reasoning reverses as we grow and develop.
Your experience however seems to be either in secondary or collegiate classrooms and I can easily see where this approach there would often be problematic. That said if an instructor is trying to get students to engage in critical thinking about why something works then an intentional mistake could be educational. You can copy code from stack overflow all day long but it’s going to work a lot better if you can actually analyze it and understand what’s happening.
It's the same in work meetings. If you're blindly absorbing what the presenter is saying, you're not a helpful participant. You should be deriving your own solutions and questioning differences between your solution and the presenter's when they arise. Sometimes, companies pay for improv classes for their employees to help them anticipate and react in meetings, but if you're already practiced in classroom learning, that's redundant.
My realization on this: teachers were a really bad fit for me. Having a human trying to make it palatable to me in real time in their own words was just not great. At some point I stopped listening in class nor taking notes and just read the manual and other related books on my own, at my own pace (often during class), and it worked a hundred times better.
There's still the issue of having to be in the classroom, which meant doing that whole learning process ahead of time to be able to defocus and still somewhat react to questions and activities going on in the classroom.
I think that's kind of the point. Everyone can learn using the method you describe (it's mainly how I go about it), but everyone can also learn the "proper" way. It just requires more commitment and belief in yourself upfront.
Kids won't do that. And there's a lot of classes there.
Though indo agree with his sentiment. Most college lectures are useless and easily replaced with a video. I found my best math professor had us do homework and then the beginning of every class I'd going over it and working out all our mistakes. I felt that he could teach calculus to a monkey he was so effective.
There’s some nuance in getting the right balance of interaction but it definitely works.
It was a purely online course, and the instructor was at a campus I never visited. (We were surprised to learn that we'd need to commute there for the final exam, but I worked out an alternate plan.)
The course materials were all Pearson-provided and hosted on Canvas, so there were video lectures, and the quizzes and tests were automated. Our instructor was just there to keep the backend together, and provide a credentialed face.
I, however, struggled mightily, and so I found the tutoring center, and it was fantastic. It was bustling in the daytime; it had computers we could log into or desks without them. Then the tutors circulated, and we could plug through coursework and raise a flag when we had questions.
It was one instance of a vast support network that is too often left untapped by students, who just aren't aware of what's available, or don't care and resort to cheating, or have a study group where they all sort of muddle through.
Are people taking this to be a real life account, and if so whats the basis for that. I'm not seeing anything on this blog to indicate otherwise.
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Students aren't going to lose trust in their teacher over mistakes. Establishing core concepts while tripping over details breeds humility for correction when real mistakes are made by the teacher and helps show students that it's okay to make mistakes. This brings more attention to the value of double-checking one's work and the opportunities for correction give purpose to their learning.
The more the class consists of exercises like this, the more it feels like a waste of the more advanced students' time and the greater the sense of distance it creates between the more advanced students and the ones who are slower or more behind.
You'd be better off just putting the more middling, slower or less consistent students in the hotseat than asking if 'anyone' knows the answer, and then whenever their answer has a problem asking if anyone can rephrase or reframe the thing just taught in a way that makes more sense to the unsure student, then ask the student who answered earlier if they're satisfied with that answer or if it's not quite rock solid for them. That way, the more advanced students can at least still participate in moving the discussion forward in a non-antagonistic way (if you are ruthless about prohibiting mockery of incorrect or partial answers).
Same thing if you ask questions that have multiple somewhat obvious answers but only accept one oral answer per student (maybe take additional written answers for credit as homework or a bonus or just some kind of feedback, to make it easier to adhere to that rule). Then your more eager students are more opening up the floor for more reluctant students than just preempting them.
One of my teachers would distribute cloze notes before each lecture. Then it was up to follow along, and fill in the blanks. Or, jump ahead if we felt confident, without the classroom atmosphere of "let's see who knows this first!"
She also used humorous props and catch-phrases. Introduce the prop, explain its meaning, return to the prop and repeat the catch phrase, and pretty soon, the whole class is chanting along with it.
It was an adult class, an introduction to a complex and philosophical topic, and we ran through it in a few weeks. She did not omit Powerpoints with animations.
Seriously, it was so annoying to have to participate in the charade. I put a paperback in my pencil case, but some teachers took it personally if I read during class, and it's absolute torture to have to listen to a disengaged group stumble through an answer to a question like this with your full attention on the front of the class. As an adult nobody tries to teach you using question and answer for anything that requires more time than a first aid certificate because they know damn well that you'll leave and/or pull out your phone.
It reminds me of another anecdote, regarding a university professor who told his students that he would deliberately include one falsehood in each lecture, and the students were charged with listening carefully and identifying the 'mistake' in each class.
For the very last class in the course, the professor trolled his students by not including any mistake.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/my-favorite-liahtml - https://zenmoments.org/my-favorite-liar/
"let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie."