Eric Mazur – the story for me.

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Elizabeth,
I liked Eric Mazur too. Not a big fan of lectures yet he seems to be one of very few studying that delivery method to find out where improvements can be made. My concern is more along the lines of time shortage being pressed onto education as if somehow the universe was running faster these days. Mazur suggests that time is a factor in properly processing information taken in and I wonder if we can design around this by reducing content or picking global principals that fit many seemingly different questions in different fields? I often feel I studied many things so I could retain a few. Remembering 10% meant losing 90% and raising that 10 to 15% was a matter of two extra years to attain a loss rate of 85%. Maybe more time on math is suggested by this reasoning but it seems time has taken on too much importance in education.

[ElizabethECharl]

Hi Scott,  As due to time and student numbers more and more teaching seems to take place in lecture theatre – I was really pleased that there was a story that could possibly address this situation.  The processing, reflection and application/planning for implementation that is supposed to take place also requires thinking time.  However it is such a precious commodity and you are right that to allow for this to take place the content would have to be reduced drastically or one or two universal themes/global principles addressed instead! Trying to get the balance right is always very tricky.

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Elizabeth,
As someone who helps build online courses I suppose thinking about lectures is a betrayal of the team but I still like the determination that Eric Mazur presents in order to make the lecture form better. Even our online students have f2f labs and coop placements that include being lectured to and real-time limits on learning “events.” Some fields require quantities of information to be passed on and an optimal method needs to be discovered to facilitate that. Even, or maybe especially, online where students set their own learning time limits we need delivery strategies that sticky and not lost by the next sentence. It still could be very cool have a one-time course in understanding everything at once:-) Then the rest could be 4 years of exceptions to that rule Though I don’t think 4 years would be enough, so we are back where we started.

[Joseph Gliddon]

I recently read an article on flipped maths classes.  The students were tested Vs control classes (which hadnt flipped).

Although the flipped classes did slightly better on the test, it was not statistically significant (i.e. it could be down to random chance) but what was interesting was that the students were 2 whole weeks ahead in the curriculum after 6 months of teaching.

So flipped classrooms can actually increase the amount of materials that students can cover.

 

[Joseph Gliddon]

Here is my video response comparing Mazur with Downes (Flip with Mooc)

http://youtu.be/yvEo0Tq0i4k (its 2.30 mins)

Joseph

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