“But having a real-human teacher watch them causes most students to pay more attention, and this comes without any cost in rigor. Just by sitting next to my son I can increase his level of attention and I suspect the same is true with most learning. So even if online education drastically improves, and is able to present in a fascinating manner everything currently taught in college courses, having an instructor—plus online material—would allow courses to teach students even more than most of these students could learn from the online courses alone.”
This relates to why online education hasn’t replaced traditional schools. As I wrote for InsideHigherEd:
“But having a real-human teacher watch them causes most students to pay more attention, and this comes without any cost in rigor. Just by sitting next to my son I can increase his level of attention and I suspect the same is true with most learning. So even if online education drastically improves, and is able to present in a fascinating manner everything currently taught in college courses, having an instructor—plus online material—would allow courses to teach students even more than most of these students could learn from the online courses alone.”
Do you actually need a real-human meatbag teacher? Or would a sufficiently sophisticated virtual avatar be good enough?
What if you could impress your VR waifu by doing math problems? X-D
Excellent question that might determine the medium term fate of my profession (college professors).