andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1752 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Alex Tabarrok writes : There is something special, magical, and “almost sacred” about the live teaching experience. I agree that this is true for teaching at its best but it’s also irrelevant. It’s even more true that there is something special, magical and almost sacred about the live musical experience. . . . Mark Edmundson makes the analogy between teaching and music explicit: Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition. Quite right but every non-memorable class is also a bit like a jazz composition, namely one that was expensive, took an hour to drive to (15 minutes just to find parking) and at the end of the day wasn’t very memorable. The correct conclusion to draw from the analogy between live teaching and live music is that at their best both are great but both are also costly and inefficient ways of delivering most teaching and most musical experiences. Excellent points (and Tabarrok has additional good points that I haven’t quoted). We’re not all
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1 Alex Tabarrok writes : There is something special, magical, and “almost sacred” about the live teaching experience. [sent-1, score-0.381]
2 It’s even more true that there is something special, magical and almost sacred about the live musical experience. [sent-3, score-0.601]
3 Mark Edmundson makes the analogy between teaching and music explicit: Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition. [sent-7, score-1.11]
4 Quite right but every non-memorable class is also a bit like a jazz composition, namely one that was expensive, took an hour to drive to (15 minutes just to find parking) and at the end of the day wasn’t very memorable. [sent-8, score-0.397]
5 The correct conclusion to draw from the analogy between live teaching and live music is that at their best both are great but both are also costly and inefficient ways of delivering most teaching and most musical experiences. [sent-9, score-1.492]
6 We’re not all the way there yet: We have the technology to record a live class for repeated consumption but it’s still not so easy to do, certainly not as easy as pushing a button on a tape recorder to get a rough if imperfect capture of a music performance. [sent-11, score-1.183]
7 It would’ve been cool if my class this fall had been video recorded, but it never happened. [sent-12, score-0.407]
8 One difference between music and lectures is that, for most people, the only substitute for live music is broadcast or recorded music. [sent-13, score-1.709]
9 It may well be that in the near future the good lectures will be recorded and students will be required to watch them before they come to class. [sent-15, score-0.793]
10 One reason I never post my slides before class is that I’m worried that students would then read the slides as a substitute for reading the book. [sent-18, score-1.019]
11 So now I fear the future where students will watch the video instead of reading. [sent-20, score-0.468]
12 ” I think that’s right, but remember that students can read the textbook over and over again too, in fact physical (paper-based) textbooks are random access and I find much easier to go find things in, compared to video. [sent-23, score-0.49]
13 Attending a concert or listening to broadcast or recorded music. [sent-27, score-0.515]
14 Yes, some people listen to music carefully and repeatedly, but that’s still different from taking a class, I think. [sent-30, score-0.519]
15 To put it another way, if you’re a music student listening to music, that’s like a university student taking a class. [sent-31, score-0.68]
16 But lots and lots of people listen to music just to hear it, not to study it, while not so many people watch college classes just for fun. [sent-32, score-0.645]
17 I agree with everything that Alex wrote, and I also agree that it would be good to move toward a future where instructors do very little lecturing and instead spend class time helping students working on problems in small groups. [sent-34, score-0.963]
18 When discussing teaching strategy with our young instructors here, I always advise them to go with the book rather than spending long hours preparing supplementary reading material (which, I assure them, the students will never read). [sent-36, score-0.677]
19 I also tell them not to prepare lectures, not to lecture at all but just to go with the textbook and spend class time working out problems (this is particularly appropriate and easy to do in an introductory class). [sent-37, score-0.734]
20 They usually don’t follow my advice, but I think that’s not because they think their lectures are so great but rather because things are set up now so that it’s much less effort to stand up and lecture than to arrange problem-solving and discussion sections. [sent-38, score-0.613]
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