
Is it time to rethink the way university lectures are delivered? - pitdesi
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-it-time-to-rethink-way-university.html
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chad_oliver
I think that the whole concept of lectures is broken. Twenty years ago they
were appropriate, but now we have YouTube and PDF files and Print-On-Demand.
These technologies means that universities don't have to employ lackluster
lecturers, but can instead create highly-crafted lecture videos (in the style
of Khan Academy) and comprehensive lecture notes. Certainly these materials
will cost a lot to produce, but they can be used year after year, with only
minor corrections for the changing course syllabus.

If a university would create proper learning materials and drop the lectures,
there would be a lot more time to have more discussion-based and hands-on
learning.

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mkramlich
I'm so with you and I happen to have a project where I'm creating a system
that can "slot in" to this new kind of education mix I think we're heading
towards. Death to mindless traditions! The future is now if we let it. ;)

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chad_oliver
Are you referring to Zyguild? I checked it out on your website, and it sounds
intriguing. How do you plan on providing "quality filtering, education,
certification and alumni networking"? I'd love to know more.

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mkramlich
haha. nice! good find. actually it's something else. that idea is on the
backburner for now. I decided my Zyguild vision had more competitors and was
much harder to scale up with small staff/money than another idea I had, so
focusing on another project instead. General problem: too many ideas, not
enough time-energy-money to work on them all. :)

I do think traditional education is a dinosaur ripe for disruption, and has
lots of cheap-to-start and reasonably-easy-ways-to-scale things you can do in
the space. I'd argue that much of it (current traditional mass/government
education) is an artifact or echo from an prior time back before the Internet
existed, computers, video telecomm. Why settle for local teachers when you can
have the best location-irrelevant ones? Why settle for static education
content when you can have dynamic, interactive ones? Why settle for only 1 or
a few types of approved resource mediums when there are hundreds of them, some
not even possible 30 years ago? Why allow our kids to be fed nationalist
propaganda in government-run schools when much more objective, honest and
worldly alternatives exist? Why embarass the slower kids by putting them in
the same room with the really smart ones? Why slow down and hold back the fast
ones? Why setup vast complicated systems and bureaucracies just to generate a
_proxy_ for the thing you want (an interview, a test, a degree, etc.), when
you can just go after _The Thing You Want_ directly? (Or more directly.)

