I think the idea is really interesting. As someone who spent 5 years creating student video resources, I appreciate the impact they can have, and I have at times tried to convince my father—a life-long maths teacher to collaborate with me on replicating his course… but the fool didn’t take me up on the offer.
the cost of showing it to every student in the country is approximately zero
I feel like the cost-effectiveness argument is valid but might run into issues. To begin with, as you have in one of your comments pointed out, video resources with a teacher who can respond dynamically, adds much more than a video alone. So, this means there is no cost saving in terms of teachers time—which I think is a good thing (I’ll put a pin in that for later) and then video production on top of that is not at all cheap. One thing that was consistent, in my experience creating educational resources, was the need to constantly update the resources (there was a team of us working full time to just maintain one course).
So, while the cycle of feedback and constant improvement of the resources is a vital part of the process, it makes what seems like a one-off expense into a perpetual expense.
Furthermore teachers are already underpaid, relative to other professions requiring similar skills, so the additional funding for these new resources would need to result from an unprecedented increase in education funding (which could have gone to teachers) or would have to be taken from the budget at the expense of teachers.
Unless of course you leave it to the private sector in which case you have to worry about advertising, special interests and competition leading optimisation for what is appealing to students rather than what is necessarily effective—Hollywood, after all only has the mandate to entertain, they don’t have to also educate.
To get back to that pin: If we did manage to create a resource perhaps incorporating generative AI that can present ideas in an engaging way and provide dynamic feedback, making teachers unnecessary we run into another issue. There’s something to be said for having well-rounded educators in society, learning in a non-specialised way is enriching for people in general. One negative side of chat GPT is this way drastic drop-off in activity on forums like Stack Overflow, because people don’t need other people any more.
There’s something about the person to person trading of ideas that I think contributes to a robust community, in the same way that international trade helps to curb international conflicts—we might find that making human interaction unnecessary to education whether in schools or on forums might lead to a fragmentation of the social fabric. Personally I really like the idea of lots of amateurs sharing ideas—like on LessWrong and other forums, there’s something uniquely human about learning from sharing, with benefits for the teacher also (à la the Feynman Technique).
But, I think you make a good case. Thanks for sharing the idea.
One thing that was consistent, in my experience creating educational resources, was the need to constantly update the resources (there was a team of us working full time to just maintain one course).
This is a fair point; I might be underestimating the amount of revision needed. On the other hand, I can’t help but think that surely the economies of scale still make sense here.
Unless of course you leave it to the private sector in which case you have to worry about advertising, special interests and competition leading optimisation for what is appealing to students rather than what is necessarily effective—Hollywood, after all only has the mandate to entertain, they don’t have to also educate.
Yeah, I agree optimizing for learning is genuinely a harder task than optimizing for vague “I liked this movie” sentiment, and measuring and setting the incentives right is indeed tricky. I do think that setting the equivalent of Hollywood box-office revenue is actually hard. At the same time, I also think that there’s marginal value to be gained by moving into the more professionalized / specialized / scalable / “serious” direction.
There’s something to be said for having well-rounded educators in society, learning in a non-specialised way is enriching for people in general.
[...]
Personally I really like the idea of lots of amateurs sharing ideas—like on LessWrong and other forums, there’s something uniquely human about learning from sharing, with benefits for the teacher also (à la the Feynman Technique).
Hmm, I suspect that you think I’m proposing something more radical than what I am. (I might be sympathetic to more extreme versions of what I propose, but what I’m actually putting forth is not very extreme, I’d say.) I had a brief point about this in my post, “Of course, I’m not saying that all of education needs to be video-based, any more than current-day education only consists of a teacher lecturing”
To illustrate, what I’m saying is more like “in a 45 min class, have half of your classes begin with a 15 minute well-made educational video explaining the topic, with the rest being essentially the status quo” rather than “replace 80% of your classes with 45 minute videos”. (Again, I wouldn’t necessarily oppose the latter one, but I do think that there are more things one should think through there.) And this would leave plenty of time for non-scripted, natural conversations, at the level that is currently being satisfied.
Another point I want to make: I think we should go much more towards “school is critical infrastructure that we run professionally” than where we currently are. In that, school is not the place where you want to have your improvised amateur hours at, and your authentic human connections could happen sometime else than when you learn new stuff (e.g. hobbies, or classes more designed with that in mind). Obviously if you can pick both you pick both, it’s important that students actually like going to school, with younger children learning the curriculum is far from the only goal, etc.
I think the idea is really interesting. As someone who spent 5 years creating student video resources, I appreciate the impact they can have, and I have at times tried to convince my father—a life-long maths teacher to collaborate with me on replicating his course… but the fool didn’t take me up on the offer.
I feel like the cost-effectiveness argument is valid but might run into issues. To begin with, as you have in one of your comments pointed out, video resources with a teacher who can respond dynamically, adds much more than a video alone. So, this means there is no cost saving in terms of teachers time—which I think is a good thing (I’ll put a pin in that for later) and then video production on top of that is not at all cheap. One thing that was consistent, in my experience creating educational resources, was the need to constantly update the resources (there was a team of us working full time to just maintain one course).
So, while the cycle of feedback and constant improvement of the resources is a vital part of the process, it makes what seems like a one-off expense into a perpetual expense.
Furthermore teachers are already underpaid, relative to other professions requiring similar skills, so the additional funding for these new resources would need to result from an unprecedented increase in education funding (which could have gone to teachers) or would have to be taken from the budget at the expense of teachers.
Unless of course you leave it to the private sector in which case you have to worry about advertising, special interests and competition leading optimisation for what is appealing to students rather than what is necessarily effective—Hollywood, after all only has the mandate to entertain, they don’t have to also educate.
To get back to that pin: If we did manage to create a resource perhaps incorporating generative AI that can present ideas in an engaging way and provide dynamic feedback, making teachers unnecessary we run into another issue. There’s something to be said for having well-rounded educators in society, learning in a non-specialised way is enriching for people in general. One negative side of chat GPT is this way drastic drop-off in activity on forums like Stack Overflow, because people don’t need other people any more.
There’s something about the person to person trading of ideas that I think contributes to a robust community, in the same way that international trade helps to curb international conflicts—we might find that making human interaction unnecessary to education whether in schools or on forums might lead to a fragmentation of the social fabric. Personally I really like the idea of lots of amateurs sharing ideas—like on LessWrong and other forums, there’s something uniquely human about learning from sharing, with benefits for the teacher also (à la the Feynman Technique).
But, I think you make a good case. Thanks for sharing the idea.
Thanks for the interesting comment.
This is a fair point; I might be underestimating the amount of revision needed. On the other hand, I can’t help but think that surely the economies of scale still make sense here.
Yeah, I agree optimizing for learning is genuinely a harder task than optimizing for vague “I liked this movie” sentiment, and measuring and setting the incentives right is indeed tricky. I do think that setting the equivalent of Hollywood box-office revenue is actually hard. At the same time, I also think that there’s marginal value to be gained by moving into the more professionalized / specialized / scalable / “serious” direction.
Hmm, I suspect that you think I’m proposing something more radical than what I am. (I might be sympathetic to more extreme versions of what I propose, but what I’m actually putting forth is not very extreme, I’d say.) I had a brief point about this in my post, “Of course, I’m not saying that all of education needs to be video-based, any more than current-day education only consists of a teacher lecturing”
To illustrate, what I’m saying is more like “in a 45 min class, have half of your classes begin with a 15 minute well-made educational video explaining the topic, with the rest being essentially the status quo” rather than “replace 80% of your classes with 45 minute videos”. (Again, I wouldn’t necessarily oppose the latter one, but I do think that there are more things one should think through there.) And this would leave plenty of time for non-scripted, natural conversations, at the level that is currently being satisfied.
Another point I want to make: I think we should go much more towards “school is critical infrastructure that we run professionally” than where we currently are. In that, school is not the place where you want to have your improvised amateur hours at, and your authentic human connections could happen sometime else than when you learn new stuff (e.g. hobbies, or classes more designed with that in mind). Obviously if you can pick both you pick both, it’s important that students actually like going to school, with younger children learning the curriculum is far from the only goal, etc.