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Comment by padobson | Hacker News Reader

This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not.

One of Malcolm Gladwell's books made a convincing argument that reducing class size quickly runs into the issue of diminishing returns. A cursory Googling suggests there's plenty of research to back it up[0][1]

The effectiveness of in-person learning may have more to do with social interaction and peer motivation. A teacher with about 20 students who is able to create a general excitement for learning in the class seems to be the most effective. A classroom where the "spirit" of learning is alive is ideal for a lot of kids.

[0]https://edcentral.uk/reading-list/431-what-we-have-learned-a... [1]http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/evidence-class-siz...

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In some of these online classes I've heard of >1000 students signing up with one professor and maybe two assistants. In that case, maybe a model would be to recruit the top students (selected early in the course based on their submitted) work) to act as tutors for say groups of 10 or so. Pitch them on the idea with "the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else."

And what happens if they don’t want to do it?

Make their course completion contingent upon doing so? That’s a bit draconian of course, but you could also provide something positive to juice the deal instead. Incentives 101.

So the education system is contingent on making students teach other students, or else? Lol

It’s not as if this isn’t already a requirement for some.

https://biosciences.uchicago.edu/content/teaching-assistant-...

> All graduate students are required to serve as a Teaching Assistant in at least one course for academic credit before the Ph.D. degree is awarded. Appropriate courses may be undergraduate, graduate, or medical, but must be in the Biological Sciences Division (exceptions may be made for students in the Biophysical Sciences program).

Grad school is not a requirement in the United States as far as I know.

in my school they pay students to tutor. it was actually quite competitive. A lot of tutors I knew went on to get really good jobs right after graduation.

it works out really well for the student. instead of working a regular job during the year you get to do something that benefits your career, you build a relationship with your professors and it pays more than if you were working at the local grocery store.

https://cse.ucsd.edu/undergraduate/readers-and-tutors

How about offer to pay them for their services?

So like being a grad student without the abuse and poverty pay?

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