Yeah. I’ve taught myself several courses just from textbooks, with much more success than in traditional setups that come with individual attention. I am probably unusual in this regard and should probably typical-mind-fallacy less.
However, I will nitpick a bit. While most textbooks won’t quite have every answer to every question a student could formulate whilst reading it (although the good ones come very close), answers to these questions are typically 30 seconds away, either on Wikipedia or Google. Point about the importance of having people to talk to still stands.
Also, some textbooks (e.g. the AoPS books) have hints for when a student gets stuck on a problem. Point about the importance of having people to help students when they get stuck still stands, although I believe the people best-suited to do this are their classmates; by happy coincidence, these people don’t cost educational organizations anything.
I’m tinkering with a system in which a professor, instead of lecturing, has it as their job to give each of 20 graduate students an hour a week of one-on-one attention (you know, the useful type of individual attention), which the graduate student is expected to prepare for extensively. Similarly, each graduate student is tasked with giving undergraduates 1 hour/week of individual attention. This maintains a professor:student ratio of 200:1 (so MIT needs a grand total of… 57 professors), doesn’t overly burden the mentors, and gives the students much more quality individual attention than I sense they’re currently getting. (Also, I believe that 1 hour of a grad student’s time is going to be more helpful to a student than 1 hour of a professor’s time. Graduate students haven’t become so well-trained in their field they’re no longer able to simulate a non-understanding undergrad in their head (an inability Dr. Mazur claims is shared among lecturers) and I expect there’s benefit from shrinking the age/culture gap. Also, no need to worry about appearing to be the class idiot in front of the person assigning your grade and potentially not giving you the benefit of the doubt on account of being the class idiot.) (Also, it has not escaped my attention that this falls apart at schools that are small or don’t have graduate students. And there’s other problems. Just an idea I’ve had floating around that may be enough in the right direction to effect a positive change.)
Yeah. I’ve taught myself several courses just from textbooks, with much more success than in traditional setups that come with individual attention. I am probably unusual in this regard and should probably typical-mind-fallacy less.
However, I will nitpick a bit. While most textbooks won’t quite have every answer to every question a student could formulate whilst reading it (although the good ones come very close), answers to these questions are typically 30 seconds away, either on Wikipedia or Google. Point about the importance of having people to talk to still stands.
Also, some textbooks (e.g. the AoPS books) have hints for when a student gets stuck on a problem. Point about the importance of having people to help students when they get stuck still stands, although I believe the people best-suited to do this are their classmates; by happy coincidence, these people don’t cost educational organizations anything.
I’m tinkering with a system in which a professor, instead of lecturing, has it as their job to give each of 20 graduate students an hour a week of one-on-one attention (you know, the useful type of individual attention), which the graduate student is expected to prepare for extensively. Similarly, each graduate student is tasked with giving undergraduates 1 hour/week of individual attention. This maintains a professor:student ratio of 200:1 (so MIT needs a grand total of… 57 professors), doesn’t overly burden the mentors, and gives the students much more quality individual attention than I sense they’re currently getting. (Also, I believe that 1 hour of a grad student’s time is going to be more helpful to a student than 1 hour of a professor’s time. Graduate students haven’t become so well-trained in their field they’re no longer able to simulate a non-understanding undergrad in their head (an inability Dr. Mazur claims is shared among lecturers) and I expect there’s benefit from shrinking the age/culture gap. Also, no need to worry about appearing to be the class idiot in front of the person assigning your grade and potentially not giving you the benefit of the doubt on account of being the class idiot.) (Also, it has not escaped my attention that this falls apart at schools that are small or don’t have graduate students. And there’s other problems. Just an idea I’ve had floating around that may be enough in the right direction to effect a positive change.)