
Making a classroom discussion an actual discussion - benbreen
http://crookedtimber.org/2016/09/12/making-a-classroom-discussion-an-actual-discussion/
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taeric
The point of this being a mentally taxing exercise is an interesting and
welcome one. Especially from someone that seems good at it.

I will try to keep "yes, this is hard" in my mind on future conversations.
Especially with my family. The point is I want their points. Not that I want
them to bend to my will.

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Iv
Ok, naive question: how "21 separate and not that great tutorials, all
happening at the same time" is not what a class is supposed to be? If I go to
the class, I expect to learn information from the teacher. There will be
occasional classmate information that will be interesting but I expect 90% of
my time spent gaining information from the teacher.

Since when do we expect classes to be social events? If I want to learn with
other learners then I don't really need a teacher, or a classroom, actually. I
need a forum, a la stackoverflow, and a good doc/book.

~~~
lutorm
No, that's not what a class is supposed to be.

The view of a classroom as being a conduit where the teacher transmits
knowledge from their brain into the students is entirely outdated. That's not
how learning works.

To learn, you have to process information, build understanding. One way that
has been shown to work quite well at this is to make students explain to each
other and challenge each other.

You may have heard the phrase "I didn't really learn this until I had to teach
it", which is another reflection of the same thing; the act of explaining to
other people improves your understanding.

Not to mention that it also improves your skills at things like making a
coherent argument and working with other people, which are quite useful skills
to have in life.

If this doesn't work for you, you don't need the teacher either. After all,
what can they tell you that you can't just read in the textbook?

~~~
jimmaswell
>That's not how learning works.

I've learned lots of information from classes by just paying attention to the
lectures and doing no out of class studying/conversations unless I had
particular trouble with something, in a wide range of subjects like physics
from Newton's laws to relativity, various history classes, music theory,
epistemology, calculus. Is this that unusual of an experience?

~~~
r00fus
You may just be predisposed to that form of instruction. Many other folks
aren't.

One of my most interesting experiences was US history Class in high school.
The teacher was supposedly boring as hell (like that guy from ferris bueller).
I kind of went into a trance in but recalled quite a bit of facts and did
great on his tests.

Now did I really grok the subject? Perhaps not.

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Dowwie
Are there any HN members who have experienced a flipped classroom approach at
university in the last 5 years? I'm referring to use of MOOCs for lectures and
classroom for facilitated discussion. Would you share your experiences?

~~~
mattkrause
Ignoring the MOOCs for a second, isn't this essentially how a seminar has
traditionally operated? Everyone reads the assigned papers/books/whatever on
their own time, and then shows up in a room for a discussion. If so, these
were my favorite classes. The class operated as follows. For each class
meeting, the syllabus listed 3-5 "core" papers that were "officially required"
reading, along with a smattering of background material. One or two students
would give a brief overview of the material for ten or fifteen minutes before
they (and the profs) led the discussion.

\- There needs to be a hook for the discussions. In many cases, the profs
baited that hook by choosing papers that contradicted or complemented each
other. For example, it's fairly easy to get a self-sustaining discussion going
on whether Theory A seems plausible. Papers 1-3 show data that they claim
supports it, but the experiments in 4-5 seem to refute it. Hashing this out--
and watching others do so--is probably even more useful than whatever the
ostensible topic of the class may be.

This works really well when there is a legitimate debate. It can sorta kinda
work if there _was_ some debate but the question has been settled pretty
conclusively. Some students can be asked to play the losing side (e.g., the
pro-luminiferous aether folks in a physics class). It does not work well at
all for things like methods papers or situations where the debate is so remote
or unfathomable (e.g., I would not teach calculus or programming like this)

You can sometimes get away with "what did you like or dislike about this
paper?", but this often veers into a discussion of methodology (which may or
may not be the goal).

However, I think a good selection of papers typically led to good discussions,
while even the best-prepared list of discussion questions couldn't do much to
provoke interesting debates about a random walk through the literature.

\- Everyone needs to have a pretty solid background. We tried a similar format
with 1st and 2nd year undergrads and it was not a smashing success. The
conversation kept bottoming out in places where students did not know enough
to ask/answer questions or connect it with other things that weren't
explicitly in the reading (This is probably more of an issue with science or
social science; I imagine it happens less in literature classes). The
undergrads were also very reluctant to question published papers.

One class attempted to circumvent this with a mixed format. The Thursday
classes were lectures. A guest professor would lecture for ~90 minutes on
their field of research. These served as background material for 3-5 papers
that were the assigned reading. On the following Tuesday, students (+ the
professors coordinating the course) discussed the papers. The guest lecturer
would return for the discussion and act as a sort of 'expert witness' who
could answer questions.

\- This format works well when the atmosphere is fairly casual and the
students are comfortable with each other. This probably imposes an upper limit
of 15-20 students/class or so.

~~~
Dowwie
Thanks for sharing

