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Comment by huitzitziltzin | Hacker News Reader

I don't entirely disagree, but I partially disagree.

Personally I was desperate in March 2020 (as were my colleagues) for any tips about what would work online. I didn't want my classes to suck, nor did my colleagues. There was very little information available at the beginning about what worked.

But what's worse (and what makes me disagree with your comment) is that even after a year of being online it still wasn't clear how to make it not suck! Basically no one had discovered anything which made students like it OR perform well.

I polled my students every midterm and final exam (and gave them actual points for their answers!) on whatever they had found to work in any of their online classes. Collectively they were exposed to several hundred other professors at my university. While they did have some suggestions (which I did implement), nothing really worked.

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One thing I've seen is that people convinced that in-person education is the best will try to focus on making their online classes more like in-person classes, when that might be the wrong direction needed. Particularly since it sounds like you and your colleagues (as well as the students) were thrown into things suddenly with little to no experience. If you were trying to discover success from your own classes, those of your colleagues in a similar situation, or those from your students, I'd imagine it'd be slow going, since it sounds a bit like the blind leading the blind.

On top of this, schools tend to be constrained with trying to fit everything into the particular confines of what's considered a class. I don't know about your particular school, but all of the ones I've seen would never try to educate students with something like The Odin Project, even though many here think it's a great example of online education.

Also, even with a great program and experienced teacher, changes in education styles entail a transition period for the students. We would expect this to be much slower in such a rocky transition with the professors themselves trying to figure out what to do. But even with poor circumstances I'd expect to see at least some amount of progress as students adjusted to things. Did you not see any?

You mention them being exposed to the classes of several hundred professors at your university. Surely there was some variability in the success the professors had. What difference did the school see between the more successful classes and the less successful classes?

Could it be that since humans are social primates, online simply can never work as well as face-to-face.

I work in sales and direct face-to-face sales ALWAYS has better close rates, happier customers, etc. than indirect sales through phone or internet.

Close rates are better because a captive customer is at a severe disadvantage to the psychological tactics used in sales.

Objection, your honor!

I sold private whisky casks to individuals or groups. Before the pandemic, I would sit down at the table with them and guide them through a tasting, several hours long. My close rate was close to 50%.

With the pandemic, I switched to shipping samples and moderating the tasting online via Zoom or Teams. My close rate dropped to noise level.

I don't think I fundamentally changed my "tactics", and since it involved drinking more than a few sips of alcohol, I never required the customer to sign the order form in my presence.

In my experience, physical presence was waaaay more conducive to sales.

You're agreeing with me. Psychologically, once you have a potential buyer in your physical presence (especially outside of their environment), you have a tremendous advantage in closing.

And sales where you're giving a sample like whisky? The social obligation to reciprocate for receiving something "free" is very strong. The idea behind giving a sample in a sales pitch isn't to get them to like the whisky (though it helps eliminate/reduce resistance), it's to incur that social obligation.

As a customer, I much prefer online shopping in no small part because I don't want to deal with salespeople.

There is Zoom and other stuff involving faces.

> But what's worse (and what makes me disagree with your comment) is that even after a year of being online it still wasn't clear how to make it not suck!

Were these Zoom classes? I can't think of a single synchronous (like Zoom) class that didn't suck.

What I liked as a student was prerecorded lectures that could be replayed at high speed (or even skipped) on my own schedule. Personally I much prefer these over live lectures.

As a student in undergrad, I got to know the people at the school's "teaching center" very well.

This resource is available on most college campuses for the teachers who have the humility to ask. Those folks were intimately involved in MOOCs and knew a lot about how to make online teaching work. They might have been able to help, but there was a bit of a sigma around talking to them.

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