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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

As a semi-academic, practice supervision sounds like a horrible use of limited teacher/classroom time. But I guess that is true at the high end (in universities and higher performing kids) but not at the lower end where professional practice supervision is much more necessary.

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My child goes to a very good school and they often teach math "upside down". In this method, the homework is to watch the teacher give a recorded lecture. Then, in class they work on the homework (math problems) while the teacher goes around watching them work and helping them with the parts they don't understand. He loves that method and seems to lean a lot from it.

That's great! FYI, it's called a Flipped Classroom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

I tried it when I was teaching Calculus...

Turns out, recording video lectures so that they are lively and watchable is hard.

The students loved the couple of videos I posted, but then I burned out making them - since doing that was in addition to actually being in class, grading, and working on my thesis.

So I went back to the more traditional (and ineffective setting) - one thing I regret about that semester.

However, looking back, I'd need an entire semester just to develop the materials. Of course, that was not an option.

Why did you feel it necessary to invent the lectures yourself? Surely there are world class lectures out there that you could leverage and then use your time more effectively in the person to person setting?

Seems like we are missing the whole potential of the digital (infinitely scalable one to many lectures) by constantly reinventing the wheel.

It's like asking why people still produce music when there are world class records out there.

Or why people still write books.

Teaching is a performance art as well.

That aside, as a graduate student I didn't have that much freedom (or didn't understand how much freedom I actually had) in making changes - and also, it was my first time as an instructor of record, so I was trying different approaches. If I teach again (currently I'm in the industry), I'll know how to direct my efforts better.

I thought this was a brilliant idea when I first heard of this approach. It's obviously the correct way to instruct, because the instructor is available to assist when you're actually doing the work where the most frustration and education happens.

Students also need to write down questions about the lecture they didn't understand, which mandates some effort towards integrating understanding before practice the following day.

Flipped classrooms are increasingly common in universities as well, but the 4 hours of outside work for every hour of class still applies.

Why does it still apply?

If the work is assigned in the beginning, what's stopping them from skimming it to make sure they understand it, and if they do, simply not bothering to watch the lectures?

I never believed that "4 hours of outside work for every hour of class" thing one bit. I hardly ever did work outside of class and I graduated with a 3.7.

Actually you are dead wrong on that.

Homework is unsupervised extra practice. Extra practice is helpful if done right, harmful if done wrong. When done unsupervised it go either way.

According to research, school homework on average is neutral, but when you dig in is helpful to harmful depending on the educational support that the parents can supply. So it helps rich kids, hurts poor ones, depending on how well the parents can teach.

For a book-length treatment of the issue, including references to relevant studies, see https://www.alfiekohn.org/homework-myth/.

That book doesn't go into the university level, but there the situation is simple. There is not enough lecture time to actually teach the material fully, so supervised practice is not an option. So homework is the only option, and it is your problem if you can't figure out how to supervise yourself.

> As a semi-academic, practice supervision sounds like a horrible use of limited teacher/classroom time

Research shows the opposite: lecture is a horrible use of limited teacher/classroom time.

University-education researches also recommend supervised practice. When I got a job as a TA in college, I had the same attitude you did, and the TA lead / education researcher scolded me about it.

Are you in physics? Sections in CS courses are more for discussions and Q&A, they aren’t coding their assignments during that time.

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