1. The students are not like you. For you, the topic is fascinating, and something you've pondered for much of your adult life. For the average student, the topic is moderately interesting, and likely quite confusing, in the first exposure that is this class.
2. Teach to the middle of the class. Be aware that the weakest students will be perplexed much of the time, and the strongest will be bored. This range is hard for you to comprehend, given your path. Note that the range is not something you can alter. It is established by the university Registrar, not by you and also not by the students.
3. Expose the students to your enthusiasm for the material. Be direct, and be personal. "The next topic is" will not motivate students as much as "Now we ready for the exciting part" or "This next bit is what I like best about this topic", etc.
4. Make the decision to enjoy your time with the students.
> Now we ready for the exciting part" or "This next bit is what I like best about this topic", etc.
Personal excitement for the material is one piece, but it’s not enough. The most important thing a teacher should do is help the students internalize *why* they’re learning the material. What they can do with it.
Baking shows don’t start off telling the history of the maillard reaction, they show you the delicious cake you’re going to make. Then you make the cake. Then (if it’s a class and not the food network) you learn the important details.
Teaching is storytelling. The main character is the student. What challenge will they overcome? How will they grow as a result? If the teacher makes them hungry to know the answer, then students will not just tolerate the information, they’ll seek it out, challenge it, and ask for more.
> The most important thing a teacher should do is help the students internalize why they’re learning the material. What they can do with it.
Depending on the topic there is often no "why". Most classes a student takes are required and they have absolutely zero interest in them and they will willfully forget them as soon as the semester is over
There is always a "why", else what would be the use of teaching the subject in the first place, even to enthusiastic students?
OP's point is that helping the students understand the "why" might spark interest in them. Even if you reach one kid, you will have achieved your intended result.
The why the course is useful to know may not actually ever be relevant to the students why they’re taking the class, and no amount of informing the student how it’s useful will assist them. Knowing firsthand the value of tax knowledge doesn’t mean I have any level of enthusiasm about my taxes…
Btw, for your baking example: the great British bake off is a wildly popular show and yet almost none of the people I know who are fans care to even try to learn baking themselves. I just don’t think it’s a think that happens to any degree you think it does.
> the great British bake off is a wildly popular show and yet almost none of the people I know who are fans care to even try to learn baking themselves.
You're missing the point of teaching anything. Teaching is (literally) the act of grooming someone to be receptive to an idea. It's different from training, which is the act of coaching someone into doing something.
When the day comes where one of those fans does try to bake something, everything they saw on the show is going to resonate in a way it wouldn't for someone without the exposure.
I don't bake, but I now know two ways in which greasy meat leads to a soggy bottom.
Most people go to college for training; they could not care less about receptivity to ideas. There is this myth that college is about expanding one's mind and worldview. It is not. It is about improving and ensuring one's economic class. Only professors forsake a job in the real world for these ideals. Everybody else is there to secure their spot in the middle class, and they don't care about superfluous information
> Most people go to college for training; they could not care less about receptivity to ideas
And they come out of it disappointed that they don't actually know how to do anything.
> There is this myth that college is about expanding one's mind and worldview.
I used to think that was a myth too. So much so I did it twice. College is wasted on the young.
It took decades of experience for me to recognize how much of my college experience consisted of being fed blatant lies meant to foster critical thought.
> what would be the use of teaching the subject in the first place, even to enthusiastic students?
This is something which you should always ask yourself in a class. What use is this class?
Usually the "why" is: "nobody would take this class unless we forced them to, and the English department would starve to death without forced pre-requisites"
> Even if you reach one kid, you will have achieved your intended result
If you reach 1 kid in a class of 30 you have objectively failed
“I want to learn something just to learn something” isn’t the best reason, but it is A reason.
I mention in another post that even if the reason doesn’t interest you personally, the teacher still should make a strong case and you should walk away knowing why someone (even if not you) could do, if only they had the knowledge.
Films exist without motive, plot, climax, or story. Some people love these films. If that’s the kind of story that you seek, then the teacher doesn’t need to lift a finger. Good for you.
For the rest of us, we need to want a hole before we learn how to use a drill. And that’s okay too.
At least some of the time the reason is the canon of that subject requires it and you either care about that subject or you don't. If it's a distribution requirement the school imposes or the student simply doesn't know yet what they enjoy studying and are still major-shopping, there isn't necessarily much a professor can do about that. It's not like cooking. Everyone has to eat. Not everyone needs to become a chemist, but if at some point you think you might want to become one, you're going to have to learn common foundational material that all chemists must know to succeed as chemists. If you end up not actually becoming a chemist, it will never be useful to you.
Or if you're pre-med, it still may never be useful to you to learn all the different ways atoms can arrange themselves into molecules unless you're going to someday do novel drug research, but medical school admissions and clinical licensing boards have not yet figured out a way to craft pre-requisites based on the specific unknowable future paths of individual applicants and they have to require everything that might be needed by any kind of doctor.
Not everyone likes cake (believe it or not). But everyone understands why someone else might want a cake.
It’s a storytellers job to make the connection or to provide a surrogate. Most people have never been orphans, but Little orphan Annie’s character acts as surrogate through which the viewer can understand the orphan world.
You’re right that having more context of your audience and having shared interests help, but you can still tell a story to someone you’ve never met.
> *why* they’re learning the material. What they can do with it.*
If the honest answer is that of the few students that every do anything with the material, those will be academics who go on to just study the material more, that should be articulated too.
"In this course we will be descending into a branch of mathematics that hitherto has found no practical application. Perhaps some of you will go on to find some."
Love this. My version is wanting to know what problem I would face on my own that would lead me to independently generate the solution I'm about to learn. That gives me motivation and context for the information so I can form a complete orientation in the problem space.
A problem is probably the most classic storytelling device. “A heroes journey” gives the hero a problem to solve and then the climax is when they solve it.
> 2. Teach to the middle of the class. Be aware that the weakest students will be perplexed much of the time, and the strongest will be bored.
True for the weakest students, but it's always possible to give harder material/exercises to the strongest students. And it doesn't even take much time for the teacher because these students are more autonomous. I only taught CS and maths, but it's very easy to keep the good students busy.
I personally like teaching CS lab classes. The key is to design projects with gradual difficulty. Even the weakest students should manage to complete a few tasks.
But overall, I think that heterogeneity makes teaching much more complicated that what it could be, especially when basic pre-requisites aren't met. It's a bit heartbreaking when you get students which are obviously losing their time and money.
I sneak in advanced things into lectures and preface it with "for students that are more advanced or have more prior knowledge in the subject..." I usually see the more advanced students perk up and the other students exhale and zone out a bit to rest their brain. Seems to work fairly well.
I've been quite curious how to "divide and conquer" the problem by weaponizing the bored genius into teaching the perplexed and lagging. It may save teacher time for teaching the middle group while also teaching the genius what it is to explain something so intuitive to someone who doesn't. But it may backfire ..
>> by weaponizing the bored genius into teaching the perplexed and lagging.
This seems like a great idea but should be used very sparingly. Your "bored genius" isn't necessarily a great teacher, and that's not their job anyway. I've found you're better to give them more challenging options. If they want to be bored that's on them; if they pursue it they'll likely do it independently.
I agree but there's a huge value in showing them how diverse can brains be. As a smart person, it's very important that they tame their own needs and open their mind a bit too.
That said, making them chasing challenges is also a great thing.
> It may save teacher time for teaching the middle group while also teaching the genius what it is to explain something so intuitive to someone who doesn't.
So, really no benefit for the genius and all the benefit for the weaker ones and the teacher who does not have to run their patience thin.
No, I think giving the genius a challenge that they came for is the best way to go about it. If you have none, that's fine, let the genius discover things on their own, they were almost certainly doing so anyways and its best to not get in their way.
Upper-year students often work as teaching assistants which is something to this effect. That is, if they hold tutoring sessions or office hours and not just do grading.
> Expose the students to your enthusiasm for the material.
This makes a huge difference to me. There were subjects that were exceedingly boring and difficult to me at first but I managed to find joy in them because teachers were so enthusiastic about them it was like they were filled with childlike wonder and it inspired me to give it a chance instead of just going through the motions.
I've had teachers who seemed to be there just for the paycheck and it made me be there just for the grades too, thoroughly depressing.
My student life has been an awful boring existence because of number 2. There was nothing more frustrating than going to school. A few sentences were enough for me to understand concepts that were explained during several weeks.
That's a long time I'm out of school.
The truth is you should read books about subjects you're interested in to solve a lack of understanding on one subject, and from there teach yourself anything you want, if you were in my situation.
What I did is taking the highest level course I could find on X subject, and trying to understand from other lower level sources the high level concepts I couldn't understand from intuition by the sole reading of the high level syllabus.
I used to work as a teacher in a kind of bootcamp. Over the years my my view on teaching has changed massively. I think there are only two generic things and the rest is situation dependent.
- There is just no way around the struggle. The students have to struggle. Your job is not to take the struggle away but to show them why it is worth struggling and instil the belief that they can do it.
- The most important teaching skill is to level with them. Talk about how difficult it was for you to understand it, what helped you. Never put yourself above them. I honestly believe this is where most people fundamentally fail. Respect them. Don’t treat them like babies. Forced attendance is imo the worst symptom of this.
> Forced attendance is imo the worst symptom of this
I taught in an inner city title one school. While it would have made teaching those who showed up easier, I'd bet that over half the students would not show up without forced attendance. We had under 2% of students who would go on to graduate a four year college and something like an 80% transitory rate (meaning 20% would complete all four years at the school - this might have been up to 95% transitory, it has been a while since I was there). Gangs, violence, and poverty and no examples of school helping anyone in their lives.
What do you do with kids in that kind of situation?
I think most of the people here (myself included) only have experience teaching at a university level (since it is a website for tech professionals, most of us only have teaching experience in grad school or as professors). So the scenario is just totally different. Mandatory attendance doesn’t make sense for adults that are supposed to be trusted to make their own decision and who are paying lots of money to be there (If people don’t show up to my discussion section, it is a sign I’m failing paying customers, and I need to sort that out, so forcing them to attend will destroy my measurement).
If you are teaching k-12 and especially if some of the kids have a rough situation outside of the school, at least mandatory attendance puts them in an environment insulated from those outside pressures.
Oh, first of all, I truly respect this kind of teaching work. My only experience is in graduate or post-graduate level teaching. So really don't what is ideal in your situation.
In Spain it became common after the last university reform, about 15 years ago. IMO it's counterproductive. If a student doesn't want to go to class and you force them, they probably won't be paying attention but just wasting time with social networks or whatever other distraction, and they can even distract those that want to attend. And I don't even feel morally justified to tell them to stop wasting time (as long as they're silent, at least) if they're forced to be there.
You can force a student to be in class, you can't force them to care about class.
Forced attendance would work if students cared for their education but their parents didn't. That's just not the case, even if students don't care because their parents don't, it just doesn't fix the problem.
From experience, in the last 5-10 years most lecturers won't care if you go to classes or no. The will only require you to do continuous evaluation tasks.
I’ve taken and assisted for classes that had “mandatory” attendance. In the sense that missing classes would come out of your grade.
Sometimes it was implemented as a direct role-call. Some classes have a “participation” component which is really just a fuzzy attendance grade. Some classes have random graded in-class quizzes, which also function as a stochastic attendance check.
Generally I hate all of these things IMO low attendance is the instructor’s last, most dramatic barometer to indicate poor instruction, and subverting this measurement is a terrible idea. But it is definitely different for k-12!
Even with trades you need to know how to read, write and do basic math (and honestly algebra). Kids who don't show up likely haven't hopped that hurdle and are unfit even for trades. There is a disconnect where kids dont understand that classes are often not about the class but some underlying skill you're practicing via something they consider worthless.
It's a waste for schools to put an unprepared kid in a trade class only for them to realize oh. They actually have zero skills for that. And then backtrack. You'll also never convince most kids that they'll need algebra for a trade because most people can't connect that you need algebra to budget and other basics of life.
Vocational track was a thing when I was a kid. And it didn't matter much because kids who could do it were capable of doing college track if they wanted and kids who could nevet do collegr track and needed mandatory attendance couldn't even read. Maybe the gap is narrower these days, but i don't think a vocational track is encourages the bottom. I do think it's a good thing to expose kids as an option, just to explain that nowadays even trades require schooling after high school if you want to get certified, etc. It's just shorter with more lab type classes a la engineering.
Trades still include hard work and rule following for a long time. And many trades have a culture of crusty old assholes being in charge and then turning the young entrants into the crusty old assholes.
I think there will still be a large segment of the population that will see gang and criminal activities (fraternity, high-reward, party lifestyle) as a more compelling career choice
Amen to this. Frankly i would go a step further and say that any student that doesn’t show a real interest and propensity for STEM should be equally encouraged and introduced to trade school and apprenticeship options as well as college with equal emphasis.
You will serve those students better and society as a whole.
That sounds like a difficult environment, and as they say "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".
However, here's a few things I'd be trying:
1) Stories. One of the best uni professors I had was always breaking up his lessons with Stories. The time some people exploded a whale with dynamite, the Lawnchair Larry flight, the time he was held at knife Point while travelling. It just made the lectures more fun and made you feel good for having showed up.
2) Inspiring examples. I'd be inclined to work to find people who had been in their situation and gotten out. Bring them to class, get them to tell their stories.
3) Relevance. Making teaching examples that are edgy and somewhat relevant to their interests. If you're teaching English, use street slang in your examples. If you're teaching math, make examples about making money etc, getting creative and meeting your world with theirs.
Agree with all this. The key is to make it relatable to the students in some way.
My son was struggling with Romeo and Juliet because of the archaic language, and the teacher never explained what many of the words and phrases meant. I would sit down with him and explain a scene in modern terms eg “OK, so basically the boys are going to a party, and one of Romeo’s friends is telling him not to be a stick in the mud and sulk off in the corner, but to actually have fun and talk to people”.
At the beginning the play was completely alien to him. By the end, working together, he came to understand that the play engaged in timeless themes that are as true today as they were 400 years ago (love, prestige, ego, jealousy, anger, despair, remorse, etc).
It sounds like a problem that punishing students for not showing up doesn't solve. Incentives (like pay for attendance) that help to alleviate some of the issues causing attendance problems (by your own words, poverty among them) seem like a good start. At the bottom of it is a very rough and ill-enforced social contract, though. People in these positions don't believe that society cares much to reward their positive qualities (and it often doesn't).
I imagine that you did your very best, you tried to meet your students where they're at, and tried best as you could to make your class room a safe place.
Although there is no way around the struggle, there is a way around how the struggle is perceived and experienced. A good teacher shows the struggle is worth it, but I believe a great teacher makes the struggle something you enjoy doing, and not something you have to put up with so you can enjoy the compensation at some point in the future.
Flipped classroom style maybe.
Lectures are prerecorded then you as a group struggle with the problem sets in class. A few schools have entire courses for learning the struggle like MITs freshman problem solving course for figuring out Puerto Rico's power grid problems you are given some small area to research yourself and bring that to your student meetings and struggle to a solution.
I think there are two main factors in doing this: The first is creating the passion for the subject matter by making it both fascinating and accessible and by that generating even more curiosity and motivation that I believe are innate in everyone.
The second is never letting anyone feel that they are treading water (although this can be seen as a by-product of making things accessible).
Even when babies learn how to walk (assuming a healthy and secure environment) they do not need (or would understand) any assurance that the struggle will be worth it. They go for the struggle because the instinct/motivation to explore is already there - it gives a sense of autonomy, of being in control, of making progress, of being involved, of being alive.
But no need to make assumptions about what motivates babies - you can look at how people feel when playing games, solving puzzles etc. They don't see it as a struggle, it is something that is a joy to participate in, even though it might be very challenging. A great teacher is someone that makes learning a by-product of having fun. I believe this is possible for any subject, no matter how "difficult" or "boring".
I see nothing wrong with platitudes if they are true :)
I'm not sure what examples you're looking for or would find convincing. I can speak about my own experiences of learning new things, where the speed of what I learned were always proportional the how interesting and accessible the material was made to be. In the cases where it was made enjoyable, I usually had more than enough motivation and curiosity to dig deeper using new materials that were less fun to learn (but could have been made fun too).
I can also speak of my experiences teaching young people with no knowledge about programming who had preconceptions about how boring and difficult it is, which illustrated the degree of how you teach something has an effect on the perception of struggling.
I assume you have your own examples as well, but if you can offer a counterexample I'll reconsider my opinion :)
There is another important thing I'd like to point out though. What makes something fun or accessible for one person is not always what will do it for another. Having to teach groups, and especially large groups of people will make it very challenging if not impossible to be the ideal teacher. I'm not judging anyone for not being to be an ideal teacher under these constraints. Just pointing out that this should be the objective - not saying it is always possible.
Seconded. On this, I think the book "A Mind for Numbers" by Barbara Oakley summed up the lessons when it comes to learning the best. The effort/struggle to learn a topic is a signal to the brain that this particular information is salient and worth remembering; like some sort of feedback/anchor. People more should reframe and be thinking on how should they approach a subject to make getting to "the click" and understanding faster (not necessarily easier).
Perhaps it's just the wording, but I really disagree here.
Yes, there's a natural stress process we go through while learning where our boundaries are expanded, but to struggle... it's often a sign of bad teaching.
I say this as a best selling Udemy instructor and having been a university CS tutor. Your job IS to take away the struggle. You do this by being the student, leading them to confusing situations and then overcoming that situation with them in a series of steps that are built up over time, and then having them apply that knowledge to build skill.
The thing is, that teaching a subject well takes a lot of time and effort. There are very few really great teachers out there.
Maybe a better word is "toil", or just "hard work".
No matter how good the teacher is, there's almost no student in the world that can learn effectively without actually putting in the effort of working through problems on their own. The best teachers and curricula are the ones that dose out the hard work to maximize learning.
Your first point is the truth, although I've found that there are very few takers for this truth :)
In HN itself, I've argued with people numerous times on how challenge is a necessity for advancing in learning, but I've met with stiff resistance to this point often.
So just want to say, glad to see a practicing teacher state the obvious (to practicing teachers) in HN.
1. Nobody wants to admit they don’t know. Not in front of you, certainly not in front of their peers. Related, almost nobody that needs to goes to office hours.
2. Teaching the right way to do something is the minimum. Teaching how to avoid all traps; the appealing and intuitive but incorrect or inefficient ways to do something is better. Students will amaze you with all the ways there are to fail to solve a problem.
3. There may be steps you are not articulating, because you're not aware you're doing them. If one student gets it wrong, it's probably them, if most of them get it wrong, it’s probably you. As a new teacher, you will learn as much from their struggles as they do.
4. Related, there are steps you have mastered, like a tightrope walker, than can not be immediately emulated, despite the apparent simplicity of the instructions.
5. You chose this material, they may not have.
6. Related, you want to share the material and your enthusiasm with them, which is good, but they may only want to get the minimum they need to get by.
7. As a teacher, despite the lack of respect you may feel, they see you as an authority figure. You are the institution. You are not one of them, even if you are. They don't want to see you in the hall or at the grocery store; it does not matter your respective ages.
Let me respond to a couple of your points, although overall I loved your comment.
1. This is absolutely true. But you can cultivate an environment where students feel safe enough to admit they don’t know. It takes time and effort. It requires you to be honest when you don’t know something. But it can be done. That said, I suspect that is going to be more difficult in a college environment just because you have class less often. I see my (high school) kids more often, so I can establish that safe environment in, say, a month or so. And then I have them for the rest of the year.
2. “Students will amaze you with all the ways there are to fail to solve a problem.” This is so true! And they will also amaze you with all the ways they misunderstand instructions or directions. You’ll receive back an answer that you just don’t even understand how they came to it and when you talk to them, you realize they read your instructions a certain way. Then you realize that you could write your instructions more clearly than you did. So I’d add to this: don’t assume that a bizarre answer that you receive is because the student is dumb or high or something. Ask how they came up with it. Listen to their thought process. And be open to the possibility that you could modify your instructions (or content teaching) to avoid a similar misunderstanding in the future.
3. Yes! Again, yes!!
6. I would only add this: enthusiasm is never a bad thing to express towards your material. (I mean, I’m a history teacher, so it’s going to look different when I’m teaching, like, the Industrial Revolution than when I’m on the Holocaust, but yeah.) Just realize that there will be plenty of students who do not share your enthusiasm and never will, and don’t be hurt or offended by it. But don’t be afraid to be enthusiastic!
7. This is one that I sort of just disagree with, but it could be because I teach high school, not college. Students always run up to me if they see me out and about. I’m not saying they all love me. But they do tend to take special pleasure in seeing you around. It’s almost like they’re surprised that you actually exist outside of the school building. (I’ll stop with that, although there’s a much larger discussion to be had around high school teachers being involved in community activities. If you want to maximize your impact, teaching in high school is so much more than just delivering content.)
I am not sure why people are not adopting Khan Academy's reasonings and methods for teaching at almost all levels where the study material doesn't change and has been static for years.
Why are professors made to teach the same subject each year? Why not create a set of lectures by the best in the field or even setup a committee of professors on how best to craft a particular lecture and create a video, freeze it and distribute it. So many professors spend time in writing an equation on the board, hey why not latex it? I believe each university should hire a powerpoint / slideshow person who can translate professors material into modern format to avoid repeating of work.
Once the foundational material is out in the open, the real fun can begin with discussions and other storytelling activities which incorporates philosophy, history and how the topic came about to be and future open-ended problems.
> Why not create a set of lectures by the best in the field or even setup a committee of professors on how best to craft a particular lecture and create a video...
A few things:
- Professors, even best in the field, may disagree. In the first lecture for my AI course I talk about how cognitive scientists still can't agree on a definition for what intelligence IS. Extend that to other domains and I'm willing to bet there'd be similar opinions in deciding "best"
- Not every domain can be distilled into a lecture. While I can (and have) recorded videos for martial art techniques, they still need to attend class to drill technique.
- This builds on the above point, but 'time on task' is still one of our most identifying features for determining student mastery. This doesn't mean we should revert to drilling endless worksheets, but rather 'learning' takes time to occur and can't be achieved via watching videos
- Building on the prior point, Mickie Chi's ICAP framework labels "watching lectures" as a passive activity. While learning can happen, more learning gains can be made with more engaging activities (drilling [active], self-explanation [constructive], and revising drafts [interactive]).
- I don't mean for this point to make me sound like a miser, but the majority of students just won't read or watch the material. Again, not an attack on 'the youths', none of us read TOS and user agreements. Even in flipped classrooms, if not well designed then you'll have students that need to review the material and miss out of the in-class discussion.
- "I believe each university should hire a powerpoint / slideshow person who can translate professors material into modern format to avoid repeating of work". That's sort of what some professors do with textbooks
I do agree that once you establish a student's foundational knowledge, then you can "play" (as I've described it). The issue is that establishing that foundation is hard and how do you do it in less motivated students? One option is to say they need more self-regulated learning, but how do you build THAT up?
Low content reply I know but it's great to see ICAP having the mindshare to appear in this discussion on HN. It's such a great paper and concept. I also think it has a lot to offer practitioners by making "active learning" a defined and delineated idea.
Absolutely! I based my dissertation on analyzing how students selected different lower level CS exercises (typing exercises, Parson Puzzles, output prediction, etc.) based on ICAP. What I observed was lower Active exercises benefit all students, the general order of exercise selection follows a sawtooth wave (work upwards to assessment, then reset for the next week), completers and non-completers in a MOOC selected 'next exercises' similarly, and no one likes pop ups recommending you to 'downgrade' if you're struggling on a problem. There are limitations to my work, like the order of how exercises were presented primed their selections, but the overarching theme I tried to convey was that lower-level drilling is an absolute necessity for learning.
I hate being forced to attend college classes in person, where I sit for 4 hours, hearing a person talk about something that I don't care about, and even if I cared, I could learn it myself in half the time by myself at home.
I'm a firm believer that lectures should never be necessary, give me the recorded lecture which I'll watch if I want to, I'll read the content myself, and I'll ask the teacher questions over the time where lectures would usually be given, and it will be easier since not everyone has to be there at once.
At my university the professors would record and upload all of their lectures. I would watch the videos at 1.5-2x speed, pausing/jumping back frequently whenever I started to drift off or anything was even slightly confusing, to think it through and ensure that I understood. I got way better comprehension that way.
Another trick that worked for me: If there are high-quality lecture notes, download a note, set a timer for the length of the lecture, and aim to read through the entire note within the time period that it took to deliver the lecture. Being on the clock creates a little pressure that helps me focus. It's OK if I don't achieve 100% comprehension; I basically never achieve 100% comprehension during a live lecture anyways.
The only problem with these techniques is that it's easy to fall way behind if you don't discipline yourself to consume lectures at about the same rate they're being delivered. Cal Newport's book How to Become a Straight-A Student has good tips like blocking out chunks of time during your week in advance to do study specific topics or do specific assignments.
Because that's not how teaching/learning works. At best it could theoretically work for highly motivated self-regulated learners, but most of learners are not such ones. Yes, even in higher education levels. But even then learning is a process that almost always needs reflection to avoid fixation of misconceptions etc.
One minor note: From my experience when studying, if a lecturer used a powerpoint I immediately knew the lecture would be less engaging compared to if they were writing directly on a chalkboard/white. Powerpoints are just... Bad.
But yeah I think the idea of preparing quality content (and potentially reusable content) and using the class time to instead get interactive feedback is the flipped classroom idea, which is popular.
I agree with having a set of lectures as a foundational in some aspect because we are repeating the same things and be redundant. On the other hand, people learn in different ways and it is great that there are "teachers everywhere" with different strategies. YouTube and other services has show that, many people could learn easier matching with the right teacher(s).
This really resonated with me. I taught computer science to middle/high school aged kids for several years, and had similar dilemmas on how to keep everyone engaged. There would always be a wide range of student aptitude, and it was always a bit discouraging to see how many students aren't ready to learn. But it's pretty awesome nowadays to get messages out of the blue from my former students entering the workforce and thanking me for the course.
I am sure one of your students will build something amazing with Rust some day, because they worked on a practical application and had the resources to "level up" on this very useful skill. Hopefully they send you a message about it :)
Engagement is also very environmental, I think, when you’re teaching in middle/high school. Like, is there a schoolwide culture of students engaging in work? Is there an expectation that when you walk into the building you are a student, or is it just a place that you have to be because everybody says so? (Note: kids pick up lightning-quickly on whether teachers themselves give a shit. If half your teachers don’t, you have a problem in your building.)
Kids that age are still trying to figure out how to be their own selves. It’s very new. I mean we all try to figure that out throughout our lives, but middle school and high school are when you first start to emerge as your own person. And a lot of figuring that out is done in response to your environment.
I went back to uni after a 15 year career writing software.
I attended the all the office hours for all my classes.
Instructors went from shocked to excited, and I learned so much!
I think 18-24 is just way too young for most people to study at a university (at least math/physics-based ones). I don't have a better solution, but only about 6-7 years after graduating I realized I would then have enjoyed these classes and learned from them much much more.
A big problem (from my experience) is the cultural shift from high school to university. Our high schools do a terrible job at preparing students for college. Just off the top of my head:
- High school classes are typically too easy
- So kids develop poor study habits which don't serve them well for college material
- And most high school teachers are bad at getting kids excited about the subject because they're exhausted themselves from babysitting and treat the work as a job. College professors can be bad at "teaching" but for different reasons (being researchers first and foremost). This disconnect in the reasons for bad education being different in environments is also not taught well to kids ahead of time (because who in this formula would? Requires good parenting or very self-conscious teachers at all levels).
There are definitely exceptions to this rule, but they are too few to solve the overarching problems.
The UK based O/A system, which is used in many of the former colonies, is not as easy as the North American high school system. O levels is easy. But A levels content is almost as difficult as a typical first year university course.
Yet, students from those systems also face an equivalent huge shock when they switch to university. The reason is fundamentally different. In school, students are infantalized and their own education is not considered their responsibility. In university, nobody used to care whether you sank or swam. So students struggled. But that has changed quite a lot now. Many universities have almost a "no child left behind" policy - yes they do think child not adult who chose to attend university.
So even if students in the past used to attend office hours (I don't know), today they don't because it is no longer their responsibility to learn.
> Many universities have almost a "no child left behind" policy.
That's true, it's difficult to encourage independent learning at undergrad level and we often end up hand holding and spoon feeding material like in high school. This is partly because it's an easy fix to avoid the most negative student evaluations from the "I won't put in the work and when I fail it's the teacher's fault" types. There aren't many of those but the vocal few can really ruin evaluation average of an otherwise great course. The downside of the policy is obviously that the can gets kicked down the road and employers have to deal with the inability to learn independently.
IMO the more fundamental problem is that the examinations typically won’t measure how much students have learnt independently. If you want to do well in most university exams, then you need to pay very close attention to exactly what the professor wants you to learn and make sure you’re learning exactly that.
It is possible to design exams that actually grade people on their knowledge of the subject in general, but most universities seem to leave exam design to the course leader, so quality varies drastically.
I’m sure it depends greatly on subject, but my experience has been quite the opposite. If you do even a modicum of learning ‘outside the classroom’ many exam questions suddenly become a routine triviality. If you learn only what the lecturer intends you directly to learn, you end up at a point where the exam is optimally difficult.
Looking at textbooks and other universities’ lecture notes on your own is so effective it almost feels like cheating!
There are benefits to this model too though. Centralized exam design will be slower to adjust and adapt as industries evolve and the skills needed change.
When individual professors write exams, the good ones will have exams that better match what students will need to learn today. The bad professors that can't write quality exams honestly should just be trained and/or let go if the problem persists.
I expect is not age, but experience that is significant. 6-7 years in the "real world" gave you the perspective to relate those classes to something meaningful that you didn't have before.
We leave our children in a weird bubble where they don't get to experience the world much beyond school during primary and secondary ages, and those who go on to university typically don't deviate from that bubble until graduation. Better life balance through youth, perhaps especially with more involvement in the workplace, seems like one potential solution.
I dropped out of uni when I was 19. Worked for about 5 years doing low skilled labor. This sent me back to school on my own dime with a fire inside to finish. For my personality type this worked well for me. I have to really buy into something before I put my heart into it.
The only reason I wouldn't recommend this approach is that working full time and going to school was brutal.
exactly. And it applies generally in life too. esp. in "western" well-off places.
i have met (okay, seen eyes of) ~12y old kids with probably "35y-old"-grade experience behind... And i have met a few 38 or 43y old human exemplars that barely pass for 6-7-10y old at most.
yeah, teaching is hard. You have to learn more than them, about them, in no time, in order to build the (different) bridge to everyone. Takes... time. And gumption.
I've had the same thought, but on the other hand, would you really feel ready for math and physics at 30 if you hadn't spent years struggling with it at 18-24? Maybe the only way to develop the maturity to feel ready is to dive in and struggle with it anyways, even when you don't feel ready.
Same here, I feel like I could have done a lot more at college, knowing what I know now. I couldn't see the big picture, and I felt uninspired most of the time.
What I've learned is that trying to teach others something will help you better understand what you are teaching. Not only you have to analyze different aspects you never considered, but you have to reply to questions you would never ask. You also have to put things in order before explaining to seome and chances are you will never do it otherwise because you are convinced you know it well enough.
The author has the makings of an excellent teacher if they keep at it. I say so more because of the form of this reflection than the content: seeing things from your students point of view really is the core skill that makes everything else possible.
> Hi! I'm a PhD student studying computer science at Rice University.
This means that we are on the same career path (I am currently an assistant professor in theoretical CS in Europe). I wish you of course best of luck!
Here is the harshest truth about teaching I learned during my PhD:
If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting yourself up for failure.
This sounds cruel, and in fact I am much like you, I love teaching and I love self-improvement and it is quite easy for me to invest time into my teaching prep, presentation, and more and see measurable results in class quality and usually also student feedback.
However, at least in my neck of the woods (i.e. Europe), almost all gates and gatekeepers for you as a PhD student, and later postdoc, are checking your research. At some places they really do expect you to have K publications in the top 3 CS conferences or you will not be considered at all -- and it seems these thresholds are only getting higher. Here I mean for example invitation-only workshops, postdoc positions with top advisors, and later also permanent positions.
On the other hand, if you are a talented scientist, they usually only care that your teaching skills are at the bare minimum -- have you taught something? Yes? Great.
Now orator/presentation skills are critical and presenting a coherent lecture plan might be useful for a final presentation at an interview for a permanent position. But even there, it is more about you knowing what you want to teach and how it complements the department than about your past achievements (i.e., how much you have put in a course previously).
My PhD advisor usually said that he likes to dig into teaching when research is not going well. I agree with that -- teaching really is fulfilling to me and I love to improve my class and see people happy with it, and research is all about global ranking (which is tough on anyone's psyche) and generating progress which is the fun part but sometimes takes a long time. However, at your stage of your career, the research really can't go slow.
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PS: If the author reads this, since it is a self-post, your class sounds really nice and it is actually one I would have loved to attend. My research is in online algorithms -- a field which you can rephrase as seeing some theoretical problems as two player games between a solver and an adversary -- and among other things I would like to consider utilizing all the techniques of chess solvers (which cannot evaluate the game fully, but "almost") and transfer it to other areas of online algorithms.
Just as a counterpoint: this very much depends. I probably spent at least a year (probably more) of my PhD (in Europe) just teaching a class I built up from the ground up myself. I barely got any research done the first year I gave that class, and every subsequent year it still took a large chunk of my time. It's part of the reason I spent a total of 7 years doing a PhD (which is long, considering I already had an MSc), during 5 of which I taught my class, and grew it from 10 students in the first year to 200 in my last. But I don't consider that time wasted. I had a blast and found that teaching helped me understand the fundamentals of my fields at an extremely deep level that I'd never reached otherwise. It didn't improve my research output, but I feel that the soft skills and understanding of fundamentals was a real advantage. My future career also didn't suffer, I'm now working as researcher at a FAANG AI lab.
> I had a blast and found that teaching helped me understand the fundamentals of my fields at an extremely deep level that I'd never reached otherwise
You spent 5 years teaching a class that, judging from your words, you probably prepared and improved very thoroughly. That is a lot of hours of work. Are you sure if you devoted all those hours to reading textbooks, papers, doing experiments, etc. on your field, you wouldn't have achieved an even deeper understanding?
Maybe yes, but if so, I honestly think you're in a minority. As an academic myself, I like teaching and I do learn things from it, but it's far from the most efficient way to learn a scientific field. If I had a pure research position I'm pretty sure that my research productivity would be better.
> If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting yourself up for failure.
This is good advice. And this is true even once you become a professor. All time spent on teaching will go against your career progression. Even if you're tenured and don't care about promotion, you'll feel like an imposter in your department if you're not somewhat competitive research wise.
Generally speaking, there's no recognition in teaching in general, and at university level it's often not even considered as a job by itself.
Maybe it's different in Asia, but that was my experience in the western countries where I worked.
> However, at least in my neck of the woods (i.e. Europe), almost all gates and gatekeepers for you as a PhD student, and later postdoc, are checking your research.
While I'm also in Europe, my bet is that this is universal and won't change in the foreseeable future.
The reason is that teaching is practically impossible to evaluate. How do you quantitatively measure which professors provide high-quality teaching? By grades? No, easiest course wins. By employability? No, it depends a lot on the field, a philosophy professor can be amazing but that won't create jobs in philosophy. Student polls? Correlation with actual quality is really weak, and I say this as someone who has good polls - there is a strong influence of difficulty as well as the subject itself (a CS student will almost always prefer programming to physics, and it's not the physics professor's fault), apart from gender bias.
In my country they try to give an equal weight to teaching equally with respect to research in applications for positiosn and tenure, but since there is no realistic metric, the bulk of the score ends up being about "years teaching" or "number of hours taught" which is the only objective number that they can come up with. So it becomes basically a seniority factor and since your seniority is what it is and preparing high-quality lectures won't give you more hours or years, the outcome is still that focusing too much on teaching is bad for your career.
There are different types of universities. While R1 institutions are more focused on research than teaching, there are smaller liberal arts universities which revolve around the undergraduate student experience. These universities still have research expectations as part of tenure and promotion, but faculty aren’t required to crank out research publications. Teaching is hugely important at these schools, both during the hiring process and when evaluating candidates for tenure and promotion.
I have been fortunate enough to work at such a university for the past 20 years. We have a deep endowment, small class sizes, and extensive support for our faculty research projects. Undergraduates at our school are often engaged in research projects as well.
For me, this is like an academic utopia: a blend of teaching and research with a primary focus on teaching. There are many other universities like mine.
Yes, I'm fully aware of the fact that teaching isn't really a priority in academia - for that reason, I probably won't be reviving my class in the near future. I really do like teaching, but it doesn't get me much closer to any of my current goals.
> Somehow I need to make assignments which thread the needle between being too hard to solve and too easy
The author is describing precisely what ever video game designer learns to do: build the right scaffolding at every step so people can be in Flow [1]
I've always enjoyed this symmetry between teaching & video game making. They both try to do the same thing in that way. (after all, video games are really just "voluntary work" when you think about it)
I was lecturing software development for information design students.
Only 6 students signed up.
At least it was an optional class, so the students did it on purpose.
Still, it's hard to teach new people from the ground up. Skills, and motivation are just so different.
Some learn fast and some slow and in the end you need to define what constitutes a good grade.
I did online classes. They had to go through free code camp and every month, I would let them create a small project, to see what they learned. Some students built stuff that was way more than what I expected and some couldn't even do a basic form.
In the end, two of them even got a job as frontend devs, so I guess I did an okay job.
A suggestion: I enjoyed one short online computer course I studied, because we were given other students' submissions to assess. I recall using both my own code and the code of another student to suggest improvements in a third student's code. I am talking mainly about small tasks such as coding a function.
To me this is just formalising what students do anyway: namely, help each other understand and complete tasks in a course. The difference is that the instructor is actively giving students access to other students' code. I found the process motivated me to get stuck into a task, rather than leaving it to the last minute.
I enjoyed this article. A couple of points, if the interactive/handson way is the future, how do we solve the no-TA problem if that's a prerequisite? It's not really feasible to produce them for every class. Will it be chatbots?
I have taught such interactive classes/labs by myself. If you have prepared enough, i.e. have a very solidly laid out worksheet of appropriate difficulty, then a single person can handle about 20 people. About 5 students will have no problem and you just need to quickly check on them once or twice. 10 will need quick interventions. 5 will need more support. You can probably do three rounds in that one hour.
> Flipped classrooms are popular these days, so I might try that, but I also feel that pre-recorded lectures are a little soulless. I might try a hybrid approach, integrating lectures with assignments.
My Physics I class in college was a bit of both. First part of class was lecture, then we did practice assignments in class as groups, then there was out-of-class lecture videos and assignments. The out of class lectures weren't very long, I'd say under 20 minutes per lecture day if memory serves. Just long enough to cover a small topic in enough detail.
The thing that breaks my heart is that we have a much better understanding of adult learning. It didn't need to be that painful. That's not the lecturers fault. It takes a while to learn how to teach. It is the fault of our education system which thinks "let's throw seniors into a teaching situation without any grounding or support". We can also, simultaneously, fault the education system for a high school system that does not prepare people for college at all.
Sure glad we spend a lot of money on football coaches, though.
Our high school system doesn’t prepare students for college at all because the way high school works here (in America) clearly isn’t meant to prepare students for college. You have to go to high school. There are compulsory attendance laws everywhere. You don’t have to go to college. It’s a choice to be there. College professors expect students to have their own motivation, their own ability to study things, and so in. High school teachers have to deal with the fact that very often a very large percentage of our students would simply rather not come to school than be there. And if you just let them fail, you get everybody from the principal to parents to society at large, pointing their fingers at you as the problem. So we can’t approach instruction with any expectation that students will care, try, stay awake, or do anything other than show up in class. (And I live in a district with really profound truancy problems because our district attorney doesn’t give a shit and never holds truancy court, so I can’t even expect students to show up on a regular basis.) But everyone then pointed us like we are failing somehow to prepare students for college.
I put it in reverse: colleges are failing to understand what high schools deal with and what we have to do in response. We are the ones who have laws constraining what we can and can’t do (especially in public school), how we have to approach certain things, and even what content we have to teach. (I am required by law, for example, to teach the content standards promulgated by the state. If I wander outside my standards, that’s good cause for being fired. Now, fortunately, I teach a subject where our standards are extremely broad and loose, so I can fit almost anything under them. But history is a core subject that isn’t a focus of testing regimes, so they generally ignore us.)
By the way, I’m not saying it’s a good thing that high schools don’t prepare students for college. But literally the response from our administration when a faculty member points out that our policies aren’t helping prepare students for college is that “not all our students will go to college.” Maybe half-ish of our students do.
Note that I point to the education system. I know a lot of teachers bend over backwards to make sure their students learn something. (Often even at personal cost, because heaven forbid we give them or students decent supplies)
We as a society just don't seem to give a damn about that outcome. (Cf teacher salaries, the truancy issue you mention, standardized testing, content standards as strict prescription instead of a minimum,....)
And you're right, maybe colleges need to adapt to that reality as well. Or maybe there's a step missing between high school and college. But, again, we don't seem to particularly care about fixing that as a society.
I like the idea that there’s a step missing in between. Like, after high school, you spend a year minimum doing college prep at some sort of extended school. Or you could test out of it and enter college immediately (if, say, you went to a college-prep-type high school). I don’t know who would fund it and that’s half the battle, but it would be miles better than what we do right now.
Part of the issue with public schools right now is that we aren’t really just education anymore. We’re like a social service agency. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be but people need to understand that what we do is so much more than just content. Every day last week, I was in the offices of the guidance counselors, or our behavioral interventionist, because kids had come to talk to me privately about different struggles they’re having (all mental health-related in one way or another). Whether it was anxiety, depression, panic attacks, or not being able to get through the day without smoking weed because of how bad they feel. Who else is going to help these kids deal with that? They don’t have community resources to help them, and they often don’t tell anyone at home about it. And that’s just extra stuff on top of what every normal teenager goes through during their development. I’ve had to have so many conversations with boys AND girls this year about using protection if they’re having sex that it’s terrifying, because of the shit I hear. But people on the outside just see me as, like, giving history assignments.
In my case, at the very least, I had a fair amount of support.
First of all, I explicitly signed up to teach. At my university, fewer than ten undergraduates per semester teach a class, and typically it's for students who want to hang out and teach something they like. In order to teach, they have to take an introductory class on pedagogy first, which mostly covers assignment and syllabus design.
The student-taught-course program at my university exists far more for the (undergraduate) instructors' benefit than to teach students; its job is to give students a chance to experiment with teaching early on.
No offense, but "assignment and syllabus design" scratches the surface at best. And while I understand the desire to let students experiment with teaching, it's worth keeping in mind it's an experiment on other human beings. (So, technically, subject to IRB review.)
Again, this isn't your fault. This is a massive failure of the education system in general. We pretend that as long as somebody knows the subject, they're decent teachers. (We pretend that because it's cheaper, and we pretend it because otherwise established faculty would have to admit that a large number of their members are extremely bad teachers)
In general, it is always interesting and disheartening to see how many educators feel like they need to re-invent the wheel. There has indeed been a ton of research into educational methods, didactic approaches, etc.
There is no shortage of material available. Then again, as you say, without the proper support to get you grounded and pointed to the right entry level resources it is difficult to all figure out.
At first, at least, nobody learns as much as the teacher.
"all physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could understand them.'" - Einstein, to deBroglie [in Clark, 1972, p.418]
> I was teaching a blow-off class… only about half of my students were really paying attention at a time, which is pretty bad if you want them to actually learn anything.
I think most teachers would consider half the students paying attention to be a roaring success.
When I would go to my Professor’s office hours they would be swamped but about a half dozen students just trying to get passing grades. I feel like colleges now self-select for laziness. The less work you actually have to do, the less opportunity to fail.
It sounds very lofty, but also on a path to disappointment and burnout. You can't meet the needs of all students. Fortunately, your class is small, but even there you find that you can't please them all (let alone a class of 300). And I write "please", because that's what you appear to be aiming at.
First, a course is there to convey knowledge and skills, not to please students. I'm not fond of hard rules in education, but some are simply right. Rule number one is: set the levels in advance: determine prerequisites and end goals. You may accept students outside the range, but it's their risk to take a class that's too easy or too hard, not your responsibility to overcome. You could always split it into multiple classes (basics and advanced), but that's already setting yourself up for more work.
Second: try to use literature, books or articles, for material that takes too much time in class. It's better that they come with questions than that they leave with questions. However, I'm aware this doesn't work well, since students don't read before class.
Third, I'm not teaching anymore, but my former colleagues and friends who teach and even direct programs, tell that the flipped classroom isn't only a nebulous concept, it also doesn't work. Covid has shown that. Developing a technically complex class that actually works is going to be very, very time consuming, and not rewarding at all. Cynically: when the department finds out you're not actually physically teaching, they'll assign you to something else. Or give your class to someone else.
Fourth, try to be interactive in class: explain, then give short, direct assignments. Your topic is unfortunately too complex to do anything meaningful during class, but perhaps you can ask them to look at some code and write down what it does, compare two different position evaluators, find out why a certain move can't be returned by a certain algorithm, etc. The trick is to get them to actually work out and write down answers (and it can be wrong; there should be no scoring for these exercises), not wait for someone else to tell them, whether it's you or the bright, interested student who's going to pass anyway. Everyone should apply their full attention to the problem for a short time.
Another cynical remark: it seems you're interested in knowledge transfer. You don't get high ratings for that. If your school evaluates teachers based on student feedback, it's a losing game. The only thing left, if you want to stay in that game, is to make it "fun."
Definitely thought this was an interesting article. Recalled some of my own thoughts on “struggle” as a way to learn. And am somehow interested in the subject of pedagogy too. Also a software developer. Thanks for the article.
Teaching transcends mere information delivery; it's about igniting curiosity and guiding students through an intellectual journey. The real skill lies in connecting the subject's complexity with the students' inquisitive minds. It's a blend of storytelling and exploration, where the classroom becomes an adventure in discovery. Effective teaching makes each lesson a step towards a larger, more exciting world of knowledge.
I would kill for a class like this at my college! All the seminar classes are very boring (Intro to C++ etc...). I wish they would have super specific and interesting topics like this!
Nice read. What I like about teaching is that your always get a new chance to improve your own teaching: the next period you try better or try a different approach and see what works best. The frustrating part is that students have a veto over what they learn, because "you can lead a horse to the water but if they don't drink, they don't". If they don't show up, you can teach away whatever you want but no one learns anything.
> In my experience, I learn the most when I struggle; if a student can shortcut through all the hard parts on, for example, and assignment, they're not going to learn very much. On the flip side, when most students struggle, they just give up.
This. 100% this. How do you make someone understand that struggling is good? That - more than anything else - is what I want to be able to teach.
Building perseverance, and more broadly motivation, is still only partially understood in cognitive science. However, Carol Dweck's 'growth mindset' can help bridge the gap by shifting students' opinions away from "some people just get this" to "I don't understand this yet". Other motivation elements outside the scope of the material include intrinsic/extrinsic motivations, role models in the field, self-regulated learning, mindfulness, Baker et. al.'s affect model [1], etc.
It's something I usually mention to my students during the later part of the semester - humans are one of the hardest problems out there! We're irrational, something that works for one person won't for the other, even if we know something's bad we'll keep doing it.
They have to have the experience of being successful on the other side of the struggle. And they have to have someone showing them the connection. Look at where you were before this. You struggled but persevered. Now look at where you are (in terms of either what you know or what you can do). That’s called growth, and it only happened because you stuck with it.
Also, frankly, positive reinforcement will get you a lot of mileage.
What I've learned from teaching is exactly what these comments exhibit, a hundred different solutions. For me the best teaching tool has been being able to read the room. If you can do that, then you can figure out which of the hundred solutions you need to use.
1. The students are not like you. For you, the topic is fascinating, and something you've pondered for much of your adult life. For the average student, the topic is moderately interesting, and likely quite confusing, in the first exposure that is this class.
2. Teach to the middle of the class. Be aware that the weakest students will be perplexed much of the time, and the strongest will be bored. This range is hard for you to comprehend, given your path. Note that the range is not something you can alter. It is established by the university Registrar, not by you and also not by the students.
3. Expose the students to your enthusiasm for the material. Be direct, and be personal. "The next topic is" will not motivate students as much as "Now we ready for the exciting part" or "This next bit is what I like best about this topic", etc.
4. Make the decision to enjoy your time with the students.