
Show HN: We measure classroom confusion - pkrein
http://blog.classmetric.com/post/10279085541/postlectureview
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bluekeybox
Just to point out -- whether it's relevant or not -- I remember reading
recently that confusion is often a good sign, i.e. confusion often means that
one mental model is being replaced by another, which can be an indicator of
learning. For example, in the process of replacing a common-sense model of
physics with a Newtonian one, there has to be a "confusion" stage somewhere
in-between, and an absence of such stage could indicate a failure to acquire
the Newtonian model.

~~~
ColinDabritz
Certainly, although you have to differentiate between confusion, which can be
beneficial as you say, and being completely lost, which hampers learning.

The subject matter being obvious and well understood can look a lot like the
subject matter having no meaning at all because the learners are completely
lost.

Particularly, asking 'any questions?' and then moving on (often rapidly) when
no questions are forthcoming is another sign. It's hard to tell if it is
because there is full understanding or almost no understanding. Instead, try
giving more time for people to think of questions, and ask 'what questions do
you have?'.

I've not had a chance to try, but in a similar vein, having an IRC chat
running along side a lecture could provide similar useful feedback, and an
avenue for questions without making learners feel stupid.

I like the direction they are taking with this tool. Good, honest, and
especially timely feedback is one of the difficult challenges of education.
Without it you are flying blind.

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sp332
How do you reconcile this with the observation that the most confused people
are the ones who understand the most?
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2931518>

~~~
pkrein
The crucial thing is that students can now give some feedback - if it turns
out that having students more confused improves their learning, then
professors can purposefully drive the red line higher. As PG has said, you
improve what you measure. Professors have a powerful way to measure confusion
now.

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jamesRaybould
As a fairly recent graduate (just over a year now) I'd like to say, please
stop giving us things to distract us in lectures.

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ckwang
That's actually my lecture that ClassMetric broke down in the blog post. From
a (first time) instructor's perspective, I don't see the tool as a distraction
to students. I'm not punishing students for using it, and students have
another way to communicate to me that they don't understand something in
lecture. I only lectured for one hour a week, the TAs spent the majority of
the time with the students. In my case, Class Metric allowed me to touch on
the big ideas of the week during my lecture, measure confusion on topics, and
figure out how TAs should structure their discussions and labs to be the most
useful to the most students. The message posting system also allowed TAs to
participate directly during lecture as well, answering questions and
addressing confusion as it appeared so students could better keep up with the
lecture material. Yes, it may be distracting to have knowledge coming from two
channels, but students can still refer back to that channel later when they
are reviewing the whole lecture material.

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charlieflowers
If you think about it, the way we teach now is really primitive. So much
feedback could be gathered and incorporated so easily, and greatly increase
the effectiveness of the whole process. Imagine something like this
incorporated with the Kahn Academy. Also, imagine the feedback being used _not
only_ to help the teacher improve the lecture, but also in a "stack overflow"
sense to cause the best lecture videos to "rise to the top". I am very excited
about what is going to happen in the field of education.

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zedshaw
This looks pretty interesting. I actually would be more interested in using it
for curriculum design, not really for real-time classes. I think I'd get a
group of students and a BETA version of one of my books, teach a class with
it, then use this to review which exercises are working and which need to be
redone.

If it also included metrics on improvement in understanding over time and
across instructors it'd be even more powerful.

~~~
pkrein
It would be great to have you give it a try - email us at
friends@classmetric.com and we can get you hooked up with the alpha version.

ClassMetric actually started as Bookxor, where the focus was on document
analytics and discussions. We showed teachers which pages students were
reading and how long they spent on each page. The system also let students
post questions and have discussions in the margins of the document.

Over the next couple months we'll be bringing some of these ideas back to
ClassMetric. Maybe these document-centric features would be more useful for
you?

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p4wnc6
I think this is ok, but not nearly as good as: <
<https://learningcatalytics.com/> >.

~~~
teej
Hey p4wnc6, welcome to Hacker News. I've downvoted your post - here's why.

The comment isn't particularly insightful. It espouses your opinion (totally
OK) without any reason or rationale (not OK). Why is it better? What could
this company learn from Learning Catalytic's product? Is this just
observation, or are you uniquely qualified to judge these two products?

The link is completely superfluous. It goes to a login page and doesn't tell
me anything about the company or product. Also, a note on style, links are
typically just left inline <http://google.com> or in parens
(<http://google.com>) but that's orthogonal to what matters - insightful
comments.

I hope that's helpful!

~~~
p4wnc6
(a) I am a grad student who works with Mazur and the post-doc who founded
Learning Catalytics, so I think I am in a position to make a useful
comparison. (b) I only intended to offer my opinion because, as the other
commenter mentioned, some people feel Learning Catalytics is very different
and I don't. I specifically wanted to avoid a lengthy back-and-forth about the
nuances between the two. My two cents is that anyone who would use this
product would be better served by Learning Catalytics. (c) The web link was
just to alert you to the the existence of Learning Catalytics. If you want
details, search harder. (d) I don't care about link style, especially not in a
one-line comment. My comment wasn't hard to read or obtrusive, so why are you
splitting hairs about the formatting?

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mw63214
Just an idea:

[http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-18-10-1076...](http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-18-10-10762)
\+ <http://www.khanacademy.org/> \+ www.classmetric.com

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alttag
As a university instructor, I want to find out more about it, but your page
makes it harder than it should be. The "home" icon links to the blog, the one
on the right does too. No links for more information, status of the project,
or cost involved.

~~~
pkrein
Woops - our apologies. We're currently testing at MIT and Boston University,
but we'd love to talk to you more. Shoot us an email at
friends@classmetric.com or head over to <http://classmetric.com>

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prayag
As someone who've taught before (I was a TA at Berkeley during grad school).
It's awesome to monitor the classroom and see if what you are saying even
makes sense to the class or not. Kudos!

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pixcavator
Anything that requires extra work from students is no-go.

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IonWarp
Very cool! Helps turn a one-way learning experience into a dynamic one.

~~~
acangiano
Guys, please don't do this. You submitted your startup. The submission got
popular, and will now be discussed. Do we really need obvious sock puppet
accounts created 10 minutes after the initial submission, commenting with
enthusiasm and marketing speech?

~~~
IonWarp
Antonio, don't be so quick to cry foul.

I am one of classmetrics founder's brother, and run my own company out in
Philadelphia area called LeanServer.

If you need my papers, I will be more than happy to fax them to you.

Best, Mike

~~~
gjm11
> I am one of classmetrics founder's brother

In which case, although you may not be a sockpuppet in the literal sense, what
you did is frankly not much better. Sorry to be the bearer of disagreeable
news, but that's how it is.

It's not just that you'll get downvotes for this. I don't know about anyone
else, but my opinion of the likely value of ClassMetrics went _down_ when I
saw your comment, and further down when it was confirmed that you were indeed
basically spamming HN. That's probably not the outcome you were looking for.

[EDITED to fix a typo.]

~~~
philwelch
On Wikipedia, the term for accounts like that is "meatpuppet".

