Improvements to MCAT videos lectures?
Does anyone know if the MCAT lectures will be revamped in anyway? Or if not, if there's a way to contribute to them? I've been using Khan's stuff extensively to prep, but have been having problems with what I'll roughly describe as a lack of rigor in the way everything is explained.
"Real quick, conflict theory is the idea that societies are made up of institutions that benefit the powerful and create inequalities, and large groups of people are at odds with each other until the conflict is resolved and a new social order is created with equality distributed power."
vs. this from a textbook referenced in the AAMC study outline:
The following are three primary assumptions of modern conflict theory:
- Competition over scarce resources is at the heart of all social relationships. Competition rather than consensus is characteristic of human relationships.
- Inequalities in power and reward are built into all social structures. Individuals and groups that benefit from any particular structure strive to see it maintained
- Change occurs as a result of conflict between competing interests rather than through adaptation.
Change is often abrupt and revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
For clarity's sake (if you're not seeing the differences), the definition from Khan opens up questions about what causes a conflict to start and doesn't explain them. Is it a breaking point in inequality? Is it random? Is it continuous? Meanwhile the textbook version gets around this by situating conflict a part of a beginning-middle-and-end process to describe societal change.
I could probably go on all day with more examples of this lack of rigor. It wouldn't be a problem, except that having a rigorous definition memorized or a full understanding of a theory/process/etc. is necessary for many MCAT questions. Is this actually a feature, not a bug? Are Khan videos intended to be used as a starting point and broad outline to be completed by the test-takers' own resources?
TL;DR - Are there plans to revamp the MCAT lectures? Can this be something to contribute to?
Post is closed for comments.