Re: "My Latest TED Talk"

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Joseph Valles

24. november 2016 05:53
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This is a response to the email "My Latest TED talk" from November 23rd concerning mastery of concepts.

[Begin response] "That's a very good point. If you dont master concepts you can approach an impassable complexity gate once too many non-present understandings are assumed. I have some tips for you and your educational staff for avoiding this kind of problem with prospective students. I've went through a couple of your playlists (the differential equations playlist is by far my favorite) and there is a glaring pedagogical issue with some of the playlists. Aside from the essential ordering of the videos in a playlist, sequential conceptual progression can only take place when concepts have been exercised. Intellectual exercises familiarize students with the mechanics of a given problem and implicitly teach them the rules of the transformations involved and various other facets of the problem.

This is especially crucial for example for mathematics courses where transformations and differences between equations can be too subtle to recall from merely watching a video on a given mathematical formula or concept. Students must familiarize themselves with the application of the problem. In your linear algebra playlist, for example, there are no exercises given in the course material. Conceptual progression can take place simply from watching videos, but relationships between mathematical properties exist in part in the intermediate transformational mechanics which can only be familiarized with by working exercises.

As a full-time learner I'd like to give you a couple more tips on your instructive structure (the video content itself is phenomenal). This isn't to say that you're fully unaware of these aspects; content production and time constraints are to be expected."

I can expand on these tips more in the near future.

Nyt opslag

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Inger Hohler

25. november 2016 14:58
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Hi Joseph, thanks for sharing your view. Fortunately Khan Academy is a dynamic site where content is re-structured and added to, so I hope your wishes come true. Currently there are only 3 set of exercises in that topic, all of them under Vectors I believe.

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Joseph Valles

26. november 2016 05:51
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In the meantime I'd like to note that the physics playlist (I've watched the differential equations playlist, part of the linear algebra playlist and the physics playlist up to harmonic motion) seems to be the clearest playlist I've watched. It's easiest in that playlist to follow along and the playlists is used best in terms of efficiency and effectiveness when you attempt to (or best case scenario when the concepts are conveyed so effectively that you *successfully* complete it on your own) complete a problem before it's demonstrated. Maybe Sal or the other instructors can do a little encouraging in this area because I find that my understanding of a concept heightens dramatically when I complete the problems MYSELF and have the process validated to me, or on unsuccessful completion I at least learn what I did wrong.

The differential equations playlist was pretty good in this regard but without knowing how to adjust to instructive style I didn't know that I should complete the problems in advance of seeing Sal complete them, and as a result I walked away with only a more abstract understanding of differential equations and had to actually create problems for myself to solve and find problems on the internet so as to avoid the so-called "complexity gate" where the subject becomes too abstract to understand due to lack of mechanics or intuition.

Overall the videos are truly phenomenal and I think that video-based induction is the most information-dense and effective method of instruction, and I find myself learning quite a bit in a short amount of time this way. I see myself using this site for a lot of learning in the present and near future and I would like to see the effectiveness increase even more with a good, effective outer structure peripheral to the content of the videos themselves. I will definitely be a major donator in the future when I educate myself enough to either move on until more content is added or hopefully stay indefinitely.

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Re: "My Latest TED Talk"

Fandt du ikke det, du ledte efter?

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Fandt du ikke det, du ledte efter?