How does a professor connect with 100,000 students?

The Wall Street Journal's article "Web Courses Woo Professors" reports on the game-changing developments going on in higher education, especially as a result of MOOC's: Massive Open Online Courses. 

These are being offered by a multiplicity of schools, including MIT, Harvard, and the University of Illinois, as well as new organizations such as Coursera and Udacity.

The good part of these developments is the inexpensive delivery of massive amounts of knowledge to millions, and the opportunity for classroom teachers to assign lectures - hopefully with the best lecturers - to be watched at a student's leisure, while classroom time is left open for discussion and team problem-solving. 

It's not surprising that college education is going this way: between the ridiculous prices and the lack of individual attention at many, many schools, it's just logical to use these new resources.

But what about the MOOC's themselves, as courses? As one student said "It's hard enough for one professor to connect with 200 students in their own classroom. I'd be worried that one professor trying to connect with 100,000 students would be impossible."

Human beings are complex creatures that need a lot of help growing up. Students want and need more than a knowledge transfer; they want mentoring, guidance, and the kind of detailed interaction possible with in-person learning. These are important elements to becoming free and independent, and successful persons. I only hope these facts don't get lost in the education re-shuffling.

Business Becomes More Personal as Education Becomes Less So

I found it ironically interesting to read "The Science of Serendipity in the Workplace" in the Wall Street Journal this morning; it recounts how high tech companies like Google and Salesforce are working hard to engineer more incidental personal encounters between employees. They're redesigning buildings, rooms, and floor plans.

Why?

Because remarkably innovative developments result from these chance encounters. Like Gmail and Streetview on Google Maps. "'The most productive relationships are difficult to engineer,' says Jason Owen-Smith, a University of Michigan sociologist who studies employee collaboration."

Why is it ironic? While these tech leaders, whose employees are connected six ways to Monday via electronic tools and the Internet, are carefully engineering in-person interactions, education is moving faster and faster towards online learning and classes.

I don't want to downplay the extraordinary educational value to be had from the Internet and technological tools - the sheer amount of information and skill instruction available is mind-boggling. Here's a link to 700 free courses online!

But maybe one of the reasons education is moving more and more online is that in-person instruction is often so dismal. Many classes don't involve real interactions, as students sit and listen to lectures or professors explaining stuff. Are students getting the benefit of learning from other people? Of learning to work with others?

It's something to wonder about.

Motivation Trumps Intelligence in Learning Math

From the January 5-6, 2013 Wall Street Journal "Week in Ideas" by Dan Akst:

"When it comes to learning math, intelligence counts at the outset. But after that, it's a matter of motivation and study skills.

"That's the result of a German study of 3, 530 students in grades five through 10. Researchers examined six years of data with an eye toward establishing the effect of IQ, motivation and study skills on growth in math achievement.

"Intelligence, it turned out, wasn't a factor in this growth. And rote learning strategies actually did more harm than good. But feelings of control, high motivation and study skills that involved explaining a summarizing math and connecting it to other material did predict greater achievement. What it takes to learn math, the researchers said, isn't just innate; it can be fostered."

Summary of the research from: "Predicting Long-term Growth in Students' Mathematics Achievement: The Unique Contributions of Motivation and Cognitive Strategies," Kou Murayama, Reinhard Pekrun, Rudolf vom Hofe and Stephanie Lichtenfeld, Child Development (Dec. 20)

Notice that explaining and summarizing and connecting the math to other material was very important. To me, that means verbally conceptualizing the math and integrating it with other knowledge about the world - which tends to be motivational because it enables the learning to know how to use the math.

Two year olds can remember

For years, developmental psychologists have claimed that children cannot remember much of anything before the age of three. New research shows that it varies by person, some remembering far earlier.

"My Teacher is an App"

Learning through the Internet reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica in his Foundation trilogy - all the knowledge available at one's fingertips. A life-altering resource of knowledge.

"My Teacher Is An App" discusses elementary schools using computers for most of the learning, or "hybrid" models in which children do some in-person work, often through a homeschool, but more work through computers.

It's good that their virtual experiences and activities are so much richer than the mere paper and pencil learning of traditional schools. But I worry that they will not get enough real-world experience through such systems to develop their senses, their motor abilities, their knowledge, and their imaginations well.

We are living animals and our reason is highly connected to the functioning of our bodies. In the '90's, Antonio Damasio began demonstrating how poorly reason operates without a well-functioning connection to emotion; reason cannot enable us to choose well if cut off from emotion which relay our deepest core values and needs to the reasoning mind.

This connection is developed through sensory-perceptual-motor experience, through physical interaction with the world, through interaction with other people. These experiences can be simulated on computer but not replaced.

What happens to a person's ability to reason well and wisely about life-choices if they don't have sufficient real-life experience?

The wisdom of the "gap" year

According the the Wall Street Journal's "Delaying college to fill in the gaps," more students are exploring the real world before heading off to college. Good for them! After the long infantilization of most schooling, some real-world experience will help them learn what's possible and good for them.

The Hand as the Instrument of the Mind

"Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development."

"How Handwriting Trains the Brain," in the Wall Street Journal, you can read about a "new" discovery we've known in the Montessori world for 100 years.

“The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.” 
“The human hand allows the minds to reveal itself.”
“The mind and the hand are prepared separately for written language and follow different roads to the same goal.”  Maria Montessori 

Hence, the thousands of "hands-on" Montessori materials in a Montessori school. 

Reading and the Brain

"Information, Please: Our species ancestors didn't have to follow recipes or digest 'Catcher in the Rye.' So how did the brain learn to read?" from the Wall Street Journal reviews neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene's new book Reading in the Brain. Looks like an excellent read - I've ordered it already.

One element I liked: the research on reading tests the commonly-held view that the brain functions "modularly" with little interaction between different modules. That theory has always flown in the face of human experience but it hasn't stopped it's advocates, who seem to argue that the experience of wholeness is an "illusion."

'Virtual Drug Testing' versus Education

Bob Sechler in today's Wall Street Journal reports that GE Global Research, Simcyp Ltd. and Pfizer, among others, have "developed software that simulates the complex chemistry of living organisms" in order to run virtual tests of new drugs.

At first, I could hardly believed this worked, because the human body is so complex, but, apparently, they're able to use this technology to weed out "sure-fire losers." "...high speed processors and other technological advancements are enabling relatively small-scale simulations--of particular organs, for instance--to be integrated into increasingly complete software-based 'virtual humans'..." It's saving the companies millions and reducing human risk.

What an amazing application of reason and creativity!

But it made me sad to think of the field of education, in contrast, which mainly uses the same methods it did 100 years ago.

Sure, schools continue to adopt new material technologies, like the Internet, web-casting, and white boards, all well and good. Hopefully, the new Prado Museum Google Earth project will be tapped, also. But in terms of method - lectures, tests, memorization of data - are centuries old!

We're just damn lucky that the researchers who graduate from mostly traditional schools are able to develop such a high level of creativity.

(I'm terribly sorry, after 20 minutes of searching on the Journal's website, I was not able to find the article - saw it in hardcopy only.)

First Hand Observation of Prado Museum Details

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports another Google innovation:

"Spain's Prado Museum has teamed up with Google Earth for a project that allows people to zoom in on the gallery's main works, even on details not immediately discernible to the human eye.

Getty Images
Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas.""

What a fabulous new way to learn!! Here's some more info:

"The initiative, announced Tuesday, is the first of its kind involving an art museum. It involves 14 of the Prado's paintings, including Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas," Francisco de Goya's "Third of May" and Peter Paul Rubens's "The Three Graces."

"There is no better way to pay tribute to the great masters of the history of art than to universalize knowledge of their works using optimum conditions," Prado director Miguel Zugaza said.

Google Spain director Javier Rodriguez Zapatero said the images now available on the Internet were 1,400 times as clear as what would be rendered with a 10-megapixel camera.

"With Google Earth technology it is possible to enjoy these magnificent works in a way never previously possible, obtaining details impossible to appreciate through first-hand observation," he said."

Cannonading the Great Books

A few weeks ago, a new book came out on the history of the Great Books, with a rather snide view of the project. Today in the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz' article "Lessons from the Great Books Generation" reports on the public's huge interest in this collection of classics during the '40's, '50's, and early '60's, and their relation to "today's more fleeting culture."

Ironically, in the late '20's, one of the Great Books founders, Robert Hutchins, was worried about information overload. "The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propoganda that beats upon the citizen 24 hours a day all his life," means "that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues for themselves." He had good reason to worry--the Soviets, Nazis, and Fascists were rising to power during this era.

Attacked in the late '60's by "radicals" (see my take on conservative they truly are here) who now dominate academia with their New Left views, these books have been hounded out of most curricula as the works of "dead white males." Sadly, even the University of Chicago where Hutchins was president at the tender age of 29, has eliminated most of the core curriculum of classics which he introduced in the '30's.

I only wish the minions of today's sorry educational institutions would take to heart Hutchins statement "The best education for the best is the best education for all. I am not saying that reading and discussing the Great Books will save humanity from itself, but I don't know anything else that will."

An Education in Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is alive and well in Washington, DC.- the Obama’s have chosen a private, $30,000 per year Quaker school for their girls. The Huffington Post approves.

Yes, the Obama girls need to be protected from danger and sheltered from the press. This can’t be done at a public school? You’d think the drug gangs would clear out in a minute with all those Secret Service agents.

Meanwhile, according to this Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Obama is against vouchers, because “Although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom.”

The “vision of the anointed” redux? I can’t wait to see what Tom Sowell says about this.