Re: "My Latest TED Talk"
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.
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