Face-to-face interaction enhances learning, innovation | Hacker News Reader

Face-to-face interaction enhances learning, innovation

news.cornell.edu

119 pointscaaqil23 comments

Title should be amended to something like 'Face-to-face, rather than shoulder-to-shoulder, enhances learning, innovation.'

For a high quality face-to-face remote experience, I expect we'll start to see really impressive consumer ready technology announced soon. See what Facebook have been doing with cameras mounted in VR headsets [1] or Google's Project Starline [2].

That said, when we're doing this much transformation and synthesis of the raw data to achieve high-fidelity telepresence, are we going to have issues trusting it?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3XcQtoja_Y [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199330

I am curious why you went directly to a virtual representation. Isnt a standard Webex or zoom better? You see the actual video.

High-fidelity telepresence here implying eye contact and 3D presence. Hard to get that without jumbling the data a bit in order to fly the photons in the right way.

I understood what you meant. You get the same eye contact and full representation of the person with video without having to resort to expensive/fancy stuff. If anything video is better because with virtual representation there is no way to tell if I am really talking to you or someone else using your virtual representation to pose as you.

You don't really get eye contact unless the person's video is in the same location as your camera, or you use software eyeball adjustments to turn "eyes looking down at screen" into "eyes looking at the camera" (see "FaceTime attention correction" setting).

And if you're in a zoom call with 4 people, you're looking equally at everyone when you look at the camera. You can't tell if someone is looking at you, you can't tell if someone is looking at someone else. VR avatars could actually look around to different people in a virtual meeting.

"Children, in contrast, came up with new solutions and often remained in their original position."

Basically, kids fooled around and played while the adults tried to complete the task as quickly as possible as get on with reality.

"Those results suggested adults had become better rote learners but less innovative with time and more formal education."

Did they find a control group of adults without formal education?

The "results" of social science ...

This is cool. I'm reminded of a physics & chemistry teacher I had that would strap a webcam to his chin and project the feed onto the whiteboard; this was only just financially and technically possible for a state school at the time - I had family in the school administration and have since been told how hard he had to work to get any of that "experimental teaching equipment".

It makes me wonder if there are good ways to improve my interaction with my team - OBS to embed my face in the screen share and try and find something to do eye tracking?

So, you re saying that we need to improve remote face-to-face tools

I feel like no one talks about Google Project Starline any more

Maybe because Google themselves haven't really spoken about it for about a year?

Yes. There's nothing to talk about.

Worth noting the type of tasks discussed in the paper: visuospatial

> Learning a new visuospatial task, such as how to tie a knot or play an instrument, is thought to require us to adopt the teachers’ perspectives, to try to see the world through their eyes. However, the new research suggests it might also be important to actually see their eyes.

I think there is something to "it might also be important to actually see their eyes.". When I talk about code I tend to move the mouse around the places I talk about not necessarily expecting people to grasp every bit in every place but just visualizing where my own attention is.

Of course it does. But usually there is no interaction because most people do not interact.

Usually as a student I did raise my hand and asked questions and was the only one or sometimes we were two or three at most in a class of 40 people. Then in a class of 100, or 200 in the University.

Most people sit still, passive. They do not interact. Those people are better served with a video they can play at 2x and rewind multiple times, do automatic speech recognition,use with anki, archive and search.

In fact the best way to learn is a one on one interaction, that would be too expensive to have. I was getting it because most people did not use their share.

This is not what the article is about.

That was more interesting than I expected from the headline, making the headline sort of a don’t-click-bait.

same here.

i was expecting an essay on how remote work is not good and all. but ended up learning quite a few things. it's not just the title. the whole article is calling that interaction face-to-face.

if a bunch on people are sitting such that they can see the face of their instructor, face-to-face isn't what i would call it...

Calling it face-to-face interaction is confusing when it is actually about the perspective at which a student observes the actions of a teacher.

My Tai Chi mentor faces us and lifts her left arm. Most of us lift our right arm. I lift my left arm. "It does not matter" She said. "Show intention" She reminds us.

This sounds like more of one of those articles to manipulate people perception of back to the office. Judging by the funding donated by the FAANG, doesn’t surprise me.

> This sounds like more of one of those articles to manipulate people perception of back to the office.

My first thought exactly, and one I've easily debunked for at least myself.

Anecdata point of one, YMMV, but I definitely have learned more by myself than I ever have from a teacher or mentor. I can go at my own pace, stop to look things up, try things out, and never have to feel pressure due to falling behind or waiting for others.

Even in the case of the paper's specific area of learning (visual and spatial), I can watch a video, slow that video down, skip around, etc, much more effectively. And for many things, there are usually plenty of them - that's actually how I learned to tie a bowtie, after failing to learn from a friend who tried to show me.

Yeah agreed. Remote meetings with screen sharing can be incredibly effective for learning and innovation, if the people have a good rapport and can work well together, plus have fast internet and systems so there's not technology friction.

This allows you to get 5+ people looking at one screen close up in detail, which is hard on a physical screen. This also allows for long sessions which is hard on a physical screen as usually if it's more than 2 or 3 people then some people are standing up.

In a cube

if you're "lucky". The last (pre-pandemic) interview I had at a certain NYC-based market data provider ended with a tour of what would be my work environment - an open-office hellscape consisting of rows of long tables with barely a meter of distance from your neighbor. I declined the offer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com