Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Coronavirus burst the higher education bubble: Chegg CEO" video.
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That's because you're getting it from teachers who have about ONE crash course in it, PLUS you're used to being spoon-fed and entertained by a live lecture. Live lecture is a one-size-fits-all delivery system that delivers the exact same lesson to the EVERY student at the exact same time. No student is exactly like the one next to them.
Learning is the most individualized experience there is. Public schools condition you not to interact with the knowledge, directly, but through the intercession of a teacher. Most students wait for a lecture on the material before reading their books. Home-schooled and charter-school kids, often more advanced than their own high school teachers, know how to crack their books and learn.
In the future, because of the broken schools, more and more kids are going to get stuff on their own, and just need an expert to facilitate and answer questions, instead of "Everybody got their bibs on? Here comes the next spoonful of knowledge."
There are really GOOD learning products out there, for CHEAP, if you WANT it. Do you WANT IT?
If you local school is going online, chances are good, there's another online product that is FAR SUPERIOR to what your teachers are giving you at the local school. Once we go full online, there's no reason to use the local school over any school in the world!
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Pure online isn't ideal. It's really hard to get 100% honest assessments. Your big sister can help you on the tests and you receive an unearned 'A.' That's why I insist on in-person, paper-and-pencil tests in all my offerings, face-to-face or online courses alike.
MOST learning takes place OUTSIDE the classroom. I think the ideal is a hybrid experience, where teachers (in person and/or remote) are there to give general guidance and answer questions on-demand. A mix of online content and human assistance would be a better product and cost less. But it would require teachers who can facilitate, and answer ANY question, rather than what I see, which are teachers who spend an hour or two learning the lesson one step ahead of students and give a carefully-prepared lecture, but can't really answer advanced questions off the cuff, especially in math. I've had colleagues ask me basic math questions for the courses they teach, and I always answer them, but in my heart, I'm asking myself "How did this person get this job?"
Yes, students need to learn how to learn better. Some small amount of training is needed. But we're talking about kids who play very complex role-playing games for HOURS. They can figure out how to learn how to use some VERY GOOD online learning products very quickly. And MOST students will be able to do their lessons in much less time than they spend in INSTITUTIONS (You WANT your kid institutionalized? That's the current system.). They can get their social after their lessons, and have a lot more free time to do so!
I HOPE what comes of this failed 100%-online approach by amateurs is that millions of parents will see that there are some great online learning products out there that are better and cheaper than what the local schools are offering, and for THEIR kids, better than the traditional courses to which we're all habituated. They didn't KNOW there were cheap, high-quality alternatives until COVID forced them to it! 100% individualized. 100% self-paced. Maybe your kid's a dreamer. Maybe your kid's a little awkward. Maybe your kid's a little unruly. Maybe the school tells you your kid has ADHD and want to NUMB them with adderol or ritalin.
Chances are good that the dreamer/awkward kid is getting bullied at the local kid's jail. Maybe your unruly/ADHD kid is just too smart to sit still for the BORING classes at school. Boys, especially, might not be ready to sit still all day until their 8, 9 or 10, if EVER. Such kids tend not to have a short attention span so much as they have no patience for stupid. They're interested in what they're interested in and can spend hours on one thing, if it's got their interest. Give those kids lessons that they have to finish before they can go out and play, or work on for a set amount of time. I think you'll find that YOUR kids will progress in their learning much faster and with higher degree of mastery than learning by traditional methods.
You just have to break out of the box.
I think traditional institutions are going to have to down-size.
The only thing you can't get for yourself is hands-on work with high-dollar equipment that an institution can provide. Engineers probably need brick-and-mortar facilities. English, history and the humanities, not so much.
Online testing is an issue. There, even if the test is administered and assessed by a machine, you should have a lock-down computer that denies access to anything but the test, while you're taking the test, with a key that the student needs to provide, and a human to make sure they're not accessing the information on another device. So I'd argue for less money for the classroom lecture and more money for professional proctors and more robust testing centers that the students visit just to take their tests.
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