Seeing the answers afterwards, they usually involved facts i knew applied in a way i could not. That experience convinced me that your internal assessment of how well you understand something can be wildly off without an objective yardstick. Like nothing teaches epistemic humility quite as forcefully as getting rekt in an exam.

My sense of relief was comical and fleeting. It was replaced by anger. How was it possible that most of the students in the class did worse than I? What an absolute waste to subject us all to such nonsense.

I heard a story from an academic coordinator once, of an instructor who had been hired for a required CS computer architecture class because he was a friend of the department chairman. He was an electrical engineer, which made some sense, but then students started showing up in the coordinator's office crying and trying to drop the class well after the last drop date. It seemed he thought CS undergraduates were supposed to be the same as electrical engineering grad students, and wanted to fail the entire class. (He did not, nor did he get hired for further classes. After many years, though, his friend was the department chairman again and hired him as a tenured professor and the department's external relations coordinator. This is part of the reason I did not go into academia.)

Many instructors are just stinking bad. Many aren't, and manage to tie together both interesting lectures and more active assignments. But the bad ones do leave marks.

Really helped to shape my perception that grades are meaningless and ultimately political.

That wouldn't really be fair to the students who care about their GPAs, though.

You know it's the professor themselves that adjusts the grades? Of course the professor wouldn't fail the class if, as you suggest, it would make the professor look "useless".

There's incentive to keep yourself employed however useless, bloated or out of time what you're teaching is.

I'm not sure how the school plan is evaluated in different places, but i feel like for example religion in a country like Sweden where most people don't believe in it[1] should be brought down to make space for something Swedes think is important.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Sweden

This helped avoid learning all those 1000 test questions, what most students did.

And using computer simulator with 3 pedals helped to automate the movements, and think of subtleties. Reportedly, those who had no practice before driving school, under the pressure of the exam, didn't stall the engine, but failed exactly in higher-order matters, like they'd cross continuous lines or not notice speed limit signs.

Plenty of people failed the driving test, though.

If you're curious whether road police is corrupted, as many believe, the industrial approach to fighting this actually works and gradually decreases corruption. In 2000-2008 you could literally pay for a licence and get it without any effort. In 2010 more rules were introduced, and the risk for the bureaucrats for doing this increased drammatically, so you had to go to driving school, but could bribe the exam inspector. Since then, inspectors would try extorting bribes by making you fail. The federal govt is fighting this as well: couple of years ago, the exams started to be videotaped. The video is kept for some months. Any case of incidents or if bribery is reported, a team of investigators starts analyzing videos, and they may take away the issued licenses as well as make criminal charges against the exam inspectors. (When I was driving, the instructor was talking on the phone discussing that our local road police was being under such inspection right in those days, and everyone there were scared.) Stakes for bribery increased dramatically.

I personally would prefer less industrial approach and more social capital, trust and honesty among people, but that's another story.

You have compulsory 50 hours of lectures (though it's up to each driving school whether to enforce it or not), 27 compulsory driving lessons 1.5 hours each. Theory test is standardized for the entire country, to be exact it's 800 same questions for the whole country issued every year. The exam is done on computers, over internet, so that local police can't help the examinees. The exam is also videotaped to catch those who cheat.

Our driving school made preliminary test of 40 questions, and I think the success rate was 80%.

At driving test, roughly half of people failed.

Also, under 50% of learner drivers pass their first practical test, which involves a 40 minute drive on public roads with an independent driving section and manouvres like parallel parking and bay parking, plus a bunch of questions you have to get right. You'll fail for stuff like not checking your mirror often enough, not checking blind spots, going too fast, going too slow, incorrect positioning at junctions, and so on.

For me with Math this is something I learned the hard way many times. In more advanced math tests you will be asked to prove something novel (to you) using skills/material from the covered subject. So it’s not enough to know the theorems, you need to understand them at a deeper level so you can apply them in new situations or use a similar practice from the theorem to prove something similar.

This is pretty straightforward for most math/physics/other stem courses since they’re usually accompanied by problem sets in their textbooks, and it’s rare to have to do absolutely all of them as HW.

Many years ago as a grad student I was a teaching assistant.

One year I was instructing two classes.

One was an ordinary class. It was all very pleasant, cozy and relaxed. Students would often bake cake for the class. But I had trouble teaching because most of them did not do any homework and did not read the textbooks much. They all liked me. One even said in class that he would try to get me again next semester, meaning that he knew he would fail the exam. Which most of them did.

The other class was a special class for students that had failed the previous exams and because the curriculum had changed this was their last chance. They were a lot more motivated. And they were quite critical about me as an instructor. At one point they even made a complaint about me be because I had tried to prove a theorem on the blackboard and failed because I made a silly mistake. They were absolutely right that I messed up that proof. But we did handle it in that same class and had a good discussion about that theorem and how to prove things. And their critical attitude kept me on my toes. I worked hard preparing the classes. And the classes were focused and tense. In the end, except for one that fell sick, everyone passed the exam with good marks.

The entertainment aspect is hard to get away from. It's like when you watch a good documentary, you're in awe of whatever field it's about. But have you really learned much? Hard to say.

This made university pretty stressful: it was always on my mind how little I had yet retained and understood from my current courses; i'd only be happy when grinding material through my brain on my own (i.e. actually learning).

When I'm learning something, I have kind of a map in my head. I can just accurately keep track of the parts that are still fuzzy. In any subject, unknown unknowns are what will really trip you up. I think a big part of it is that I can use tiny context clues to predict and calibrate my understanding. Often, just knowing the NAME of a concept is enough for me to figure out what it's going to look like. (I did that with feynman path integrals for example.) SO I absorb those context clues and use them to try to keep some idea of what I DON'T know yet in that map.

In fact, I think it's closely tied with prediction in general. I remember in math, I'd take what we knew, or had been learning, and just take it to the absolute limits of my knowledge, or find it's absolutely limits until the idea breaks. I did that constantly. In doing so, I could often predict the next section of study. I think that habit gives you lots of practice in self-assessment of what you really know.

Conversely... when it comes to complicated subjects of complex systems like history/economics/geopolitics, where there is relatively poor feedback on "correctness" of ideas, I feel like ALL of my opinions are completely unfounded bullshit. People still seem to value them, but they have such a tenuous grip on reality.

A brief review/lecture at the end to tie together all of that practice intoa coherent story then wraps it all up.

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

For each class, a text lesson is assigned. This assignment includes a reading and specific problems associated with the reading material. Each cadet is expected to "work the problems." (Note: Prior to 2000 these problems were called "drill problems"; the current terminology is "suggested problems.")

• "One learns mathematics by doing mathematics." Cadets are encouraged to be active learners and to "do" mathematics. Group work is encouraged and expected. Special projects are a major portion of each core mathematics course-work on these projects is done in teams of two or three.

• Cadets are required to study the concepts of each lesson in such a way as to be ready to use them in three ways: 1. To express them fluently in words and symbols 2. To use them in proof and analysis 3. To apply them to the solution of original problems

• The instructor's goal during each lesson is to cause the maximum number of cadets to actively participate in the day's lesson. One of the instructor's roles is to facilitate the learning activity in the classroom. This may take the form of a question or a remark to clarify a point.

• Class begins with the instructor's questions on the assigned text lesson. Cadets are asked if there are questions on the assignment. Example problems are worked and discussed. Cadets are sent to the boards to work in groups of two or three on specific problems that are provided (so called "board problems"). These board problems may be similar to the problems assigned with the text lesson or they may be "original."

• Cadets are selected to recite on the problems they work. Questions are encouraged.

• The instructor spends a few minutes to discuss the next lesson. This practice is commonly called the "pre-teach."

First, I'm a slow reader, so I always feel penalized when it takes me twice as long to get through a text as classmates.

Second, math/engineering/science lessons typically build upon understanding the first example. If you don't understand or have questions about the earlier parts of the lesson you will have a hard time completing the lesson.

Third, most text books I have encountered are terrible. Grade and High schools typically are trying to get the cheapest books so their dollar stretches further. In college, too many Profs/Departments push certain books because of kickbacks.

Finally, too often enough people don't complete the readings, so you end up covering the material in class anyway. Or worse, not at all. I had several profs who's assigned reading was never to be discussed in class but was prominently featured in tests.

I much prefer the typical lecture that allows for questions and discussions during the class. That way I can quickly address the issues I have with the material when I encounter it instead of having to wait till the next class hoping I don't fall too far behind.

Newer learning systems like Duo Lingo, ALEKS, and Brilliant do an excellent job of constantly, actively engaging students with the lesson, tightening the feedback loop between teaching the student something and checking whether they actually learned it to seconds rather than days.

After experiencing such systems for myself I'm blown away that they aren't already the norm.

I’m currently nearing a 2000-day streak and have repeatedly gold-starred the German course as they add more content, and Duolingo isn’t the only app I’m using.

Despite this, while my vocabulary is OK, I don’t conjugate even close to correctly, my grammar in general sucks, and I can only comprehend real-life spoken German if the speaker talks very slowly and clearly and uses a sufficiently short sentences — from experience, the sort of conversation you’d find in an interview in a general interest magazine in the waiting room of a Hausarzt.

I’m also trying to learn Arabic on Duolingo. Over a year into that course, I still can’t even read the entire Arabic alphabet.

Their app has to be "fun" or in flow rather than in that difficult challenging place to actually help you grow.

In learning both German and Old Norse the most helpful thing for me was to translate texts, read them aloud to a fluent speaker and get feedback. Which is hard to scale.

... Do Old Norse graded readers exist?

Also, when you make a common mistake during a lesson, Duo Lingo will often interrupt the lesson with an impromptu tip showing you what your mistake was, why it was a mistake (what grammatical rules it broke, etc), and how to avoid that mistake in the future. Those have been pretty helpful in my (admittedly limited) experience, though I suppose it's possible the prevalence of those tips depends on the course.

Unfortunately the interstitial hints do vary by course. Spanish course has stuff like that very frequently in the early lessons (I have not done the later Spanish lessons); the German course barely has them at all anywhere, possibly not at all (if I had perfect memory it would be much easier to learn the languages).

For language specifically, the only way you're ever going to get anywhere close to the level of a native speaker is by actually conversing with native speakers. I'm still just starting out with Duolingo, but my plan is to finish the course I'm in (or at least get a decent way into it), then switch to Tandem or some other service that lets you trade lessons with native speakers of another language.

If you can recommend any novels for mid-skill non-native speaking adults, I’d be interested.

0. Homework is never collected or graded, but don't be fooled into thinking it's not required -- that is, if you don't do the homework, you are extremely unlikely to pass the exams/course. Essentially, this is not knowledge we were learning -- it is skills that require practice. Homework is an opportunity to practice and hone skills.

1. Each lecture introduces a concept and/or technique, and works through a few demonstrative problems to show what it means or how it is done. Homework is assigned from textbook problems that involve the same techniques with progressive difficulty or complexity. The textbook used that pattern where odd-numbered problems included solutions, and assignments usually involved the ones with solutions.

2. The last one-quarter to one-third of every class period was dedicated to review and questions about the homework assigned for the previous class. Because we had the correct solutions in the text, we knew what to ask about (i.e. the ones we couldn't get to come out right). This particular instructor was fantastic at thinking on his feet and working problems on the fly, correctly and without preparation, so usually he'd just work the problem on the board and we could stop him to ask for a more detailed explanation if necessary.

Granted, this model didn't work as well for his linear algebra class. Since many of those problems involve long slogs through tedious and error-prone matrix operations before/while you were really dealing with the concept or technique being introduced, he couldn't as easily demo entire solutions during the question/review periods. I suppose that difficulty would apply to several other higher-math topics, as well, but even so, later in my education I often found myself wishing this or that professor would follow the pattern of my humble calculus teacher.

My math teacher in high school gave us a 15 minute test every week and would just randomly pick 4 students who must hand it in of which one presents their solution giving the teacher time to grade the tests. Doing something every week makes it less stressful.

Most students do their math homework begrudgingly because they get in trouble otherwise; this does not mean that doing the assigned problems does not help them learn...

While it's been decades since I went to college, I'm surprised this is no longer how it's done. That was pretty much the routine when I was in school.

At the end of the class, the professor would say, "Next week, we'll be doing X, Y, and Z. It's chapters A, B, and C in the book." You'd prepare for it over the weekend. The following week, we'd have a mixture of lecture, discussion, and quizzes.

Is it the other way around now? Lecture first, then the books and papers?

This seems to be the continual heart of opposition to restructuring math curricula. Whether it's my parents generation recalling how their parents couldn't make heads or tails of new math or parents slightly older than me struggling to comprehend the Common Core math they're supposed to guide their children through, the essence of the complaint is the same: "how can I teach my child what I was never taught myself?"

If you learned something at all, then you should feel a tad bit dumber than before you started. A lot of people though actively avoid ever feeling dumb, so they want "edutainment".

I think both are useful, but obviously not in the same proportions.

If I were to make a language course, I would definitely try to make people feel smarter with the sample lessons. That being said, so much content is basically 95% this and 5% the important stuff. So I think it's important to find a balance. You need to sell to your audience, you do that by making them feel better after sampling the content, but there's actually negative value if the content never dips into the "you're going to feel dumber for a little while but it's ok" territory.

I've never taken Masterclass, but is it all just edutainment? The people I know who take them seem to really prefer to feel good after learning stuff.

This may be, but studies also show that you should review the material before the lecture so that you can engage the lecturer.

I can count on a single hand and not use all the fingers the number of students I have taught who always reviewed the material before I lectured on it. Unsurprisingly, those students absolutely sailed through my class with very high grades.

So, what should I, as a college lecturer, do about this?

Everybody claims they want "active learning", but there are two parties to that bargain.

Very few college classes meet these requirements. When they did, they were amazing. But otherwise, reviewing just makes it nearly impossible to pay attention as the lecturer slowly speaks the material you already know. And then any questions you may have require too much detail to actually answer in the lecture. It's really quite miserable. Why would you do that to yourself?

So during 2020 we moved into a model where we recorded the lectures for students to watch on their own time, and then they'd have a questions-only class (or so they were told). This turned out to get 80-90% of the students to actually view the material before class, and then they'd ask questions about what they didn't understand. On a few difficult topics, we ended up having yet another lecture (but focused on the parts they had trouble following).

On some occasions where they didn't engage with many questions (I think it was the first few classes under this model, which was novel to the students) we the teachers picked up on doing a quick recap and focusing on what we knew beforehand tends to be hard to understand, and engaged them in the class (questions, explain the concepts themselves, etc).

Here's my take: it takes a lot of effort to do this, from recording the material beforehand, to "lying" that the class will be questions-only for clearing up (and we know we'll end up explaining yet again if they don't bring questions), to actively engaging and changing the pace of the lectures/classes.

Because of all this effort, out of 5 different courses I teach, I only managed to pull this in 1, and we're still tweaking a lot of content to make it work better under this model. But we're planning to keep it even after the restrictions are gone (we're still not giving in-person classes at my university, in theory they'll be back for 2022).

What I've never seen is a comparison between a pure lecture (like it would be on video) and reading a book. Those two fit the same stage on an effective "get pointed to the content, get the raw content, refine it with people and the real world" learning process.

Now, about your question, I have no idea :)

Lectures alone don't give you a deep understanding and a solid theoretical grasp of the concepts and their manipulations, books alone are very dense and often lack the intuition and human explanations of the concepts. But if you go book then lecture you get a double whammy of thick theory followed by an exposition of the intuition behind it and suddenly everything clicks together.

I imagine it's obvious to many, but I only realized it recently.

I like to think my lectures are good, but you can't learn material without doing the work yourself.

As for being spurious? They didn't have to show up for my lectures--they did anyway. I have never made that a condition for any of my classes.

> Slow enough, that is, to remember verbatim everything she has read. “We on Camiroi are only a little more intelligent than you on Earth,” one of the adults says. “We cannot afford to waste time on forgetting or reviewing, or pursuing anything of a shallowness that lends itself to scanning.”

-- Primary Education of the Camiroi, R. A. Lafferty [1]

[1] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/text-patterns/reading-at-spee...

I asked them if they really knew what they were doing and they claimed they did, until after summer break when they forgot everything but I had literal muscle memory from typing commands and performing sequences.

I'd complete my labs for credit and then either reset and try to break them or complete the lab again.

In IT we call the 3x speed folks "Paper Tigers" they may have accreditations and exam certs that say they know a lot, but throw them a curveball and they can barely pass muster.

I'm guessing it would be superior unless it was a very high difficulty piece. Having a basic understanding and then formulating questions allows you have an input on the learning, as opposed to simply listening.

I would also say that with some material (esp. fiction), your "comprehension" may go up if you listen to it faster, because you don't give your mind a chance to wonder if something makes sense; I often fall for the trap of asking what I would do in a given situation, and then when the character does something nonsensical, I go looking for a good reason. I lose sight of what the author is trying to say because they made a mistake when trying to forward the plot.

You'll have to listen another time, and off goes the profit of x2 speed. But even after listening multiple times, it's still very hard to argue for, or retell in details what's been said. Unless it's a radio show, where information is sparse.

I'm unconvinced. Is it better to listen to something once at 1x speed or twice at 2x speed?

The proof for this is e.g. blind people. Listen to what their screen readers sound like! I bet it will be hard to know even what language it is.

There was a post a few weeks ago whose comments had discussion about whether video learning was useful or worked better for some people than textual learning. I saw a lot of people claiming that they enjoyed videos more and learned more from them...but, as the linked study shows, enjoyment doesn't imply learning effectiveness (if anything, there's a negative correlation).

The downside is that sometimes there's a better solution in the next spoonful that I didn't think of/knew existed and then I have to redo some work to integrate the next tidbit of knowledge, but hey..at least it sticks in my noggin and I fully understand why that next bit came into existence.

Perception is a strong force, and being good at "evaluating your current ability", and more broadly being good at "evaluating how good you are at evaluating your current ability", is a skill in itself.

Awareness that you may currently be incapable of measuring these things in an unbiased way is a big step on this path, the next step being the realization that you probably are incapable.