
The best way to learn something? Teach it. - delwin
http://delw.in/the-best-way-to-learn-teach/
======
capex
This tendency to learn by teaching has also given rise to a class of people
who start teaching on their websites and blogs a little too early. They
haven't yet got the right intuition, and still try to teach their audience,
which leads to wrong assumptions or false answers/ conclusions. Sal is in
complete contrast to this, coz he is so well prepared on the subject he is
teaching. And he has a depth of knowledge of his subjects which anyone just
learning it can't hope to have.

~~~
mononcqc
I think this is entirely depending on the attitude or mindset you have when
approaching the teaching task, at least for technical subjects.

If you're trying things in a vacuum, do not get reviews from people in know of
how things work, do not do research past "this seems to work for me, time to
disseminate", you will probably be missing on a lot of content.

People who get to the task by actually forcing themselves to learn first, get
some peer reviews, go straight to sources and take a broader mindset of "I
have to get this right because it costs more time and energy to undo bad
teaching than teaching in the first place" might do better. In fact, they
might get the benefit of teaching while still having a fresh perspective on a
given topic, something extremely lacking with some teaching material.

------
abraxasz
I'm experiencing something similar.

Many universities have some kind of "teaching assistantship" or "teaching
fellowship", that is, they pay students who've already taken the class (or a
similar class) to teach and hold office hours for other students.

This was my first semester doing it, and I learned quite a lot on a subject I
thought I already knew very well. The thing is, when you have to teach
something to someone during a section (or recitation, or whatever you call it)
or during office hours, you must be prepared to answer unexpected questions,
or explain the difference between two concepts that are very close. Best of
all, you must come up with different examples and mental representations of
your subject, hoping that one of the approaches will resonate with some
students.

Now some mentioned the fact that certain bloggers where going live way too
early. Well, my guess is that they can do it because they don't receive real
feedback. And no, a comment is not the same as a student telling you that you
don't know what you're talking about. You don't want to become a TA to early,
lest you make a fool of yourself, and trust me if students can burn you, they
will (although most of them are really nice people, they tend to loose
patience when confronted with incompetence, as most of us do).

But the process of writing down some kind of explanation in a clear way is
still a good thing. Often, when I'm programming and come up with a neat way of
doing something, I write a blog post about it, but I usually don't publish it
for the same reason many of you mentioned. Publishing a post would require
thinking more about the subject, trying different approaches, testing the code
for edge cases, etc, etc.. all things I don't have time to do. But it doesn't
matter, writing is enough to wrap my mind around the subject.

------
louischatriot
I couldn't agree more. I saw that in two situations:

\- I started blogging recently, and found that having to actually write my
thought in an organized way forces me to really learn and understand the topic

\- When I was a student preparing for a competitive exam (one where your rank
determines the school you go to and the other students in your class take it
"against" you), some people refused to help others, thinking they would beat
them in the exam. In fact, I found that helping other actually helps you even
more, and overall, the "helping students" fared much better in the exam

~~~
bmelton
I restarted blogging as well recently, and found the same thing. I've got a
couple of under-documented JavaScript topics that I appear to be blogging
about (one just under-documented, one brand new). Only catch is, I don't
really know Javascript. I mean, I know it in the "sure I can make that thing
bounce around your screen" way, but I've never worked with it on the server
side, ever.

Blogging about my progress has reinforced how little I knew. In going to
explain a topic, then suddenly realizing I didn't know _how_ to explain it, I
just knew how it was supposed to work. This has put a spotlight on what I
didn't know, and I find great value in it.

The other upside is that people apparently think I'm kidding when I say "I'm
just learning this" in my blog, because I routinely get questions via IRC of a
much more advanced nature from people trying to extend what I've taught. I
like to help, so I always give it a shot, and usually that means diving into
source and learning more -- win/win.

Of course, sometimes I'll go answer a question on something I thought I knew
really well, only to find out that I don't. I found out the other day that I
don't _really_ know how Django's form binding works. Somebody pointed that
out, and now I do.

A sub-topic about this could also be that "Discussing something is the second-
best way to learn something." I've never been one of those guys who hung out
in chat rooms all day, but honestly, I didn't know what I was missing. Lurk
around in #python for a day and I almost guarantee you'll see something you
didn't know.

------
ericHosick
This is something I learned in my Grad. Cert. class when I started lecturing
at a University (for a few years).

We retain:

5% from lecture.

10% from reading.

20% from audio-visual.

30% from demonstration.

50% from group discussion.

75% from practice.

90% from teaching.

(above copied from somewhere but there is a lot of information on this
subject: John Biggs is a good source).

I would have students lecture classes for me (I would have them lecture to me
the day before to make sure they had the lessons figured out).

~~~
CognitiveLens
The idea behind your claim is reasonably strong, but your numbers are so
imaginary that they actually harm this discussion. There are no universal
"rules for learning" like this. If there were, education research would have
been wrapped up a long time ago.

Learning is an incredibly complex combination of content, medium, background,
strategy, mental state, mental ability, and more, and it varies widely based
on subject material. There appear to be some advantages for certain teaching
strategies under certain conditions for particular populations, but there is
very little research that clearly establishes a more generalizable trend.

------
awy
This is why I'm a contributor on Stack Overflow.

The more I teach others, the more I learn myself.

------
creamyhorror
This is a relatively well known technique already. In college,
lecturers/professors often deploy it - we students would do the reading &
research, then present the topic to the class with interactive questions where
possible. (We didn't ever worry about not quite getting it right, perhaps
because the prof was there to correct us.) It works fairly well for the actual
sub-area you're assigned to work on, but you don't learn so much about your
teammates' sub-areas (expectedly). And you learn even less from other teams'
presentations, unless you're an excellent learner anyway.

Still, it's a good reminder to take the teaching approach wherever practical.

------
K2h
I totally agree that teaching a topic forces you to learn it much better than
static consumption.

But... Probably the absolute best way to learn something is have a deadline
where you have something to lose.

That's why I have moved to volunteering to teaching training courses whenever
I can.. It forces me to learn it better than anyone, and the pressure of
losing reputation if you get up and make a fool out of yourself is a great
motivator to get it right. When you are done, you find you learned it faster
than anyone, and are now the expert.

~~~
meisterbrendan
does this mean oral exams are the ultimate teaching tool? Something to loose
(bad test score) + you have to be able to think on your feet and respond to
questions (which I find broadly similar to teaching; it tests the depth of
your knowledge).

~~~
_delirium
To some extent yes, but in my ~1 yr recent experience giving oral exams (moved
to Europe, coming from the U.S. university system that rarely uses them), I've
found that students' personality has a larger influence on the process than
I'd like. When oral exams work well they're hard to beat with another method,
but the setting tends to favor more gregarious personalities with social
confidence, and penalizes students who get very nervous or flustered in that
kind of on-the-spot, face-to-face situation.

Being able to handle that setting is also a useful skill, of course, so you
could argue it's fair to test. It's not the only useful skill, though, and
it's not clear to me if it's being overweighted (even when I actively try not
to). For example, in a computer graphics course, there are students who could
do brilliant work if you let them sit alone for 60 minutes with a compiler (or
with a piece of paper and some formulas), but who don't shine when examined
orally, and vice-versa. There are some students who will do well in all
modalities, and some who'll do poorly in all, but I think there's a
significant number who will do differently depending on whether your exam is a
30-minute oral exam or a 3-hour take-home exam, so that choice really changes
what you're testing for.

------
pinaceae
gives the phrase "those who can't, teach" a whole new meaning...

------
zby
This might be good to way to weed out all the weak points in your thinking -
but for a more beginner phase I recommend organizing panel discussions
instead.

------
nickloewen
I wholeheartedly agree with this.

However, I think it's weak that the 'best example' is to 'hazard a guess' that
Sal Khan learns more from teaching than just reading. There's no actual
evidence in that statement, it's effectively just backing up 'I think' with 'I
think.' I find it disappointing because I'm sure there are good arguments that
could be made for his point.

------
frr149
That's so true. I noticed this when I started teaching iOS development (both
on my own and at The Big Nerd Ranch). Teaching a subject forces you to see it
from many different perspectives, as many as students you have. It still
astonishes me the completely different ways each person approaches a same
subject.

------
ma2rten
This is notabene part of the model that universities are build on: Students
learn from those who know (arguably) the most about a subject matter; those
who do research in that area. However that relationship is mutually
beneficial.

------
easterisle
This is a point that I take to heart but I find it difficult to make that last
step to show others what I've learned out of fear of being factually
incorrect. How do you overcome this hurdle?

~~~
jreeve
IMO, when you are in a situation where you have to teach, ultimately you
realize that you both know your subject material well enough to help out
people who are new to the material even if you might get minor details wrong.
And in the event that you get something important wrong (it's happened to me,
FWIW), people know that you are human-- as long as you're willing to own up
and figure out where you are wrong (and actually do have a bit of mastery over
the larger material) most students are happy to be learning along with you.
The only way to overcome is to actually make mistakes and practice dealing
with them. Fortunately, the more you teach, the more you will find
opportunities to deal with your misunderstandings of the world.

~~~
personlurking
Language-wise, though, while I might know a certain language up to a certain
level of fluency, I won't offer to teach that level to someone else. If I'm
fluent (or intermediate), I'll have no problem teaching up to intermediate (or
beginner) level.

Teaching something to show you are retaining it isn't the best way to go,
though teaching something to show you have retained it is better.

------
sparknlaunch12
There is a lot of truth in this article. Most things I remember are bits of
information I have had to tell others about. Maybe schools should adopt this
technique for helping kids learn?

------
iamtoby2003
teaching is still a bit different than deeply understanding it. when i was in
high school, i always tried to teach my younger sister what i have learned in
class when i got home hoping it will help me remember stuff. but over time i
found out rememebering is still different than understanding. to understand
better, u might have to sit in front of desk alone and put alot of thoughts on
what u learn quietly.

------
imcontroversial
Oh, definitely. That's how I learnt Japanese. Not sure my students got that
much out of it, though.

------
lassecausen
I once heard about 3 levels of knowledge: 1\. Understanding 2\. Remembering
3\. Being able to teach

~~~
henrikeh
There are many ways to slice and dice what learning and knowledge can be
understood as. I'm no expert, but my daily work is in educating youth
organisations (Scouting) and occasionally with training leaders for such
organisations.

I'm in the school of Bloom's Taxonomy for learning objectives. It goes like
this:

1\. Remember

2\. Understand

3\. Apply

4\. Analyse, evaluate and create

This grading goes from the known and concrete to the unknown and abstract.
But, as said, there are many ways to look at this. Some say that the fourth
point can be separated into three points, other's argue they are of equal
level of skill. Just take a look at the Wikipedia article for Bloom's Taxonomy
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blooms_Taxonomy>) and you'll see that it even
portrays several different perspectives to one (actually two) theory.

