So why does the horribly outdated lecture model still exist? In fact, why did it ever exist? Most of what you learn can be better learned from books, or in our age videos on the subject are posted on youtube, vimeo, etc. I just dont see the point of a professor regurgitating the same stuff every year with little variation, uploading only part of the notes to force students to attend lectures. Im thankful for the few profs that realize this and upload their lectures online. So lets talk about advantages and disadvantages to lectures:
Disadvantages >Have to commute to school, this sometimes takes hours for some people (1.5 hours for me, 3 hours in total a day are wasted because some cuck professor wont just upload the notes). >Have to take redundant notes, the same notes that hundreds of other people around you are taking, as well as thousands of students that took the course in previous terms, its also sometimes difficult to take meaningful notes if information is flowing fast. >Have to sit in uncomfortable chairs and tables, with stagnant air, dealing with the typical bullshit (people talking during lectures, asking questions, making annoying noises, prof doesnt know how to turn off lights, chalk running out, strong cologne from some arab fag, etc.). >Lecture is live, meaning that its not perfect, a video/book can be recorded perfectly whereas a lecture will contain errors and the prof cant fix them. >Since lecture is live, if you miss a certain key point then it has a snowballing effect where you cant understand anything that builds off of it afterwards.
Advantages >Business mindset, youre at school and its a different mindset from being at home, If you lack discipline then a lecture could help you focus Cant think of anything else really, they seem inferior in almost every way
Seriously why do lectures still exist? Many professors hold onto them with all their might so that they can justify their worthless existence.
So they can "justify" the cost of higher education.
Eli Lee
Yup exactly what I thought. Im surprised more people arent talking about this though.
Certain courses have costs other than the prof, such as cost of tools for a lab, but you can easily drop a huge portion of the cost just by getting rid of these stagnant leeches that teach the same shit every year.
John Torres
intellectual property. Colleges feed professor and professor do things that will in turn make colleges rich. College is like bank that makes money by not doing anything. And professors, or whatever that means, is living the American dream by doing work just for the purpose of working.
Adam Howard
>Seriously why do lectures still exist? I don't even read books on subjects, I only attend lectures and unless lecturer is a dingdong it's more than enough to grasp the material.
Robert Watson
They really are scummy people arent they.
Why hasnt someone tried to organize some like minded profs together to form an online university? There are good ones that provide all their notes publicly and publish books and other stuff freely, post lectures on youtube, so im sure they might consider it.
Its such a huge issue with the amount of knowledge needed now but given through an outdated source.
Oliver Edwards
Some of us like going beyond the bare minimum. Theres no way youre going to learn as much from a few hours of lectures as a 1000 page book.
Brandon Butler
you can't ask a book questions
Oliver Miller
Lectures are great. Try reading a book while doing benchwork at the same time. multitasking baby!
Colton Garcia
huh well then you can read a book in your free time if you are THAT dedicated lectures are good for relaying the knowledge into younglings. of course, provided lecturer is good at his subject, and is not a lazy piece of shit last semester I had a great PChem lecturer from whom I learned a lot more than from books I read before, perhaps because it was her 10th time relaying the material and she knew the subject inside out and how to tell it so that students understood
Xavier Walker
As I said, whose gonna feed all the professors out there then? The "goal" of the society is to produce as many intellectual people as possible. Our government obviously has no money to feed them with collected taxes if professors can receive welfares by just being smart.
Leo Morris
Some lectures are time wasted like most math lectures and some are pretty useful. But it comes down how you prefer to learn. Some need hand-holding lectures while some people like to learn by themselves.
Some Universities have compulsory attendance for example what's in my opinion pretty bad because University is a place for adults and adults should ´be able to decide for themselves if they wanna go to a lecture or not. In my country for example you're kicked out of the course in some Universities if you're absent 3 times.
Adults, especially in academia, should be able to create their study life as they want and without restriction and attendance rules. People which need handholding should not be in academia/University at all IMO.
Xavier Moore
Because it works. We've had fads for decades going on centuries trying to get rid of them and yet they still are around. Lectures work. Just because you chose to live 1 and a half hours away and are clearly a misanthrope doesn't mean that we should take your ideas and enforce them.
Also >books or videos don't contain mistakes Lol.
David Rivera
>and is not a lazy piece of shit
Most professors, by definition are lazy shits (unless theyre involved in some real research). Why? Well because their job consists of regurgitating the same information every year. The same information, the same slightly modified notes, the same questions asked every year. No decent person would become a professor because it is a pathetic job for losers who cant handle the real world.
Nobody is going to question a professor about a poorly designed project, or bad teaching, or any fuck ups he may have. They live in a fantasy world where whatever they do or say is ultimate because they have all the students by the balls.
>benchwork I highly doubt you can absorb non-trivial information while doing something involved.
Good books dont raise any questions from you because they are well written and have considered many questions before hand. A book that raises more questions than answers will not sell.
Andrew Smith
Advantages of schooling is social.
Fucking autist. When do you learn that teamwork and humanity is the strongest asset you have, not science.
You are literally NOTHING without other humans.
Angel Long
It's called coursera or MIT OCW dummy.
You're not paying for the knowledge at university, you're paying for the credential.
Sebastian Rogers
>Because it works Horses worked, steam engines worked, sail boats worked. There are some that try to improve on things and other who are content with everything being the way it is.
>Just because you chose to live 1 and a half hours away Never chose to, also its me along with thousands of others. Most of the university, probably like 80%, lives at least 45 minutes away. Any time spent on travel is wasted time.
>misanthrope What? So everyone that proposed any improvement on anything falls under this category? Nice strawman.
>books or videos don't contain mistakes Less than lectures fucking kek. Lectures dont have editors or multiple authors correcting each other. Lectures might contain less errors (though I doubt they do) because the information is much simpler.
Carson Parker
>It's called coursera or MIT OCW dummy. Yeah I know about them. Last I checked the course offerings from coursera were limited (or was it edx that I used, I dont remember).
MIT OCW was legit though, still why have lecturers when all this content can simply be condensed to a series of videos and updated whenever they need to be.
Grayson Myers
Lecture model is trash, just an excuse to charge high tuition, undergrad course should have max 5-10 lectures per term. Weekly office hours, and profs required to check email. /thread
Aiden Hughes
Its not like you talk much during the lectures or between them when you only have 5 minutes to get to the next one.
Plus labs would still exist.
Kayden Thompson
>I highly doubt you can absorb non-trivial information while doing something involved A lot of benchwork is practically thoughtless and can be done while listening to ebooks or talking to co-workers.
Benjamin Parker
Plus less travel time means more time to spend how I want, and I would be spending that time in program social centers or whatever theyre called and making friends there, once I make friends I would start a project with them and continue it from home.
Evan Harris
>So why does the horribly outdated lecture model still exist? In fact, why did it ever exist? Just go crash on the rocks until you figure it out. I'm tired of answering this question.
Brody Gonzalez
Elaborate you faggot. Why dont profs just record high quality lectures like most online schools do (lynda.com, udemy, pluralsight, etc.) then hold office hours in place of their lecture period? That way the prof spends more time doing real work and less time repeating himself.
Josiah Foster
>Lecture model is trash, just an excuse to charge high tuition, undergrad co
Our prof wanted to do this and proposed this idea to the board. He just was BTFO'd then and told that's not possible. It's not the profs fault but the adminstration.
Aaron Flores
>I'm too lazy/poor/stupid to find housing near my uni so I'd rather waste 400+ dollars a month and half my free time driving.
Just because you're doing it doesn't mean you don't have a choice. There's ALWAYS a choice.
Michael Cook
Yeah and end up spending more money living there and having to get a job so I focus less on school. Wasting more time as well ironing my clothes, cleaning it, cooking, etc.
At least on the bus I can text/watch netflix, socialize occasionally, living by myself in some shithole apartment full of garbage people would be far worse.
Anthony Ortiz
Some of my profs upload their lectures online in their entirety, most are just too lazy and have few requirements placed on them by the department.
Liam Sanders
>most are just too lazy Most know that your asses will sit and home and either not even watch the video, or zone out and start doing random shit online after a few minutes.
Why should they spend time and energy making a noose for you to hang yourself with?
Angel Ortiz
ITT: that retard who showed up to zero lectures then filed a formal complaint when he failed the class as a result
Matthew Jones
>Most of what you learn can be better learned from books
No no no. Books are much worse than lectures. They take so much time and effort to produce and as soon as they're produced, they are obsolete.
Instead, we should focus on making education the number one priority. Every city should have at its center a school. Any decision, political, economical, social etc. should be made by first considering its consequences on education. Education comes first.
Imagine a place where the student to teacher ratio was 1. Where the title of teacher no longer exists. Where learning is fun. Where there is no competition, only cooperation. No stress. No desires, just curiosity. Where the world is united towards the primary objective: to learn how this mess that we were borne into works and what it means. Everything else is just stamp collecting.
Carson Scott
The entire education model is outdated, instead of teaching stuff to people we should find a way to encode information permanently into your long term memory ALLOWING YOU TO LEARN ANYTHING INSTANTLY. Making school systems completely obsolete as well.
Luis Martin
Shortly after the invention of the radio, people thought lectures should be given over the radio, never caught on
Shortly after the invention of the telly, people thought they should just do video lectures, never caught on.
Shortly after the invention of the internet, people thought lectures should be given online, never caught on.
Apparently there's something about actually going to a university that people like.
Andrew Hernandez
I think lectures are still useful (although I admit, I'm biased as I am employed partially as a lecturer). But why I like it: hearing an expert's perspective on something I want to know. Books have all the information, but something is lost in the pedagogy that includes details. In lecture, one is allowed to highlight what actually matters and make it INTERESTING, without regard to the disruption of the formal presentation. That's what always kept me going. Vector spaces for quantum mechanics? Boring. Knowing that the sun isn't classically hot enough to fuse and that we only have a long lasting sun because of quantum tunneling? Badass. Give me more. It's pat highly, part motivation, part presentation. Never underestimate an expert (at least, until you're knowledgeable enough to do so).
Levi Gray
Also note that, despite it being my job to publish in my field and learn what others are doing, sometimes I'm just too lazy to do that. Forcing yourself to go to a lecture is easy; then that person takes the responsibility of making something entertaining and educational. Learning's a lot easier when done with others.
Liam Thompson
> Unless they're involved in real research... So, like, most professors that aren't at liberal arts school?
Thomas Wright
"Education" is a massive scam, a massive liberal brainwashing campaign, and all these people working in education are also liberal voters
This sort of disgusting blatant corruption is normal to liberal voters
Jaxon Williams
>being poor is a choice thats why we are in college dipshit, to get a better career. We don't all have the luxury of a rich daddy.
Caleb Thomas
...
Wyatt James
nani?! he's fat!
Jaxon Jones
why do you think they invented tenure? Just so its impossible to fire those fucking libs
Isaiah Adams
>thats why we are in college dipshit, to get a better career
Speak for yourself, you slave. Rich daddy-having master race here. I can take my sweet ass time, staying in school for as long as I want and studying whatever interests me.
Jeremiah Stewart
Um, cool for you? Anyway, doesn't contradict the argument from the other user.
Nathan Kelly
Why is college undergraduate admissions so retarded?
> prestigious schools require near perfect standardized test scores even though they are only basic algebra and straightforward reading > also 2 years of foreign language for no apparent reason, just so most of the kids who fall that meme can forget how to speak spanish after 6 months > they also care about GPA when in reality the public highschools are total shit
Evan Barnes
If the test scores are only basic algebra and reading it should be trivial to get a perfect score right brainlet-kun?
Adam Evans
Lecture is still the best. Only brainlets need differentiation and constant stimuli to learn. OP is definitely a millennial
Parker Clark
/thread
Hunter Scott
>Business mindset L0Lno fgt pls
Zachary Fisher
Yeah, that gets you looked at--it's weeding out the nonsense. Then, you actually accept the people who have actually accomplished something. They want people who are going to succeed...not just sit around and dream.
Asher Thompson
uploading useful knowledge doesn't make you money.
Colton Brooks
Capitalism is a parasite holding society back. I'll upload any useful information I damn well please and there are many who do the same.
Luis Perry
...
Ayden Morgan
Sounds like you're a first year undergrad who failed a course and you're now trying to blame anybody but yourself.
Leo Roberts
>Capitalism is a parasite holding society back literally retarded
Grayson Perry
Honestly the moment some smart guy figures out how to mimic accreditation, colleges are dead.
Easton Rodriguez
You forgot one: >professor fucks up long example calculation midway and doesn't realise it till the end.
Nathaniel Brown
How often do you ask questions during a lecture or afterwards? And if you have a question while reading a book, you can use google, ask in the /sqt/, ask in one of the math question subreddits (I know, le reddit xd), ask on math stackexchange, ask your peers, or just keep studying until it eventually clicks.
Matthew Ward
Another advantage is that you could possibly see a qt math girl's soles if she pops her heels out of her sweatyy flats that day.
James Lopez
>lectures over radio I'm pretty sure no-one was stupid enough to think that you can hold a lecture without seeing what is written on the blackboard. >lectures over tv That is absolutely retarded. You would need like a gorillion TV channels for the different courses, since you can't really air two different lectures at the same time on the same channel, which would cost a metric fuckton. >lectures over internet Online lectures are available on demand, unlike the previous two options, and I don't know where you've been in the past couple years, but sites like ocw, edx and coursera are getting popular with the availability of cheap full HD recording devices and fast internet. >Apparently there's something about actually going to a university that people like. I fucking guarantee that if all the courses were available online in high quality, most people would stay at home to learn.
Ian Martin
For something like the humanities I can understand it, if the lecturer is interactive with the class and class sizes are small enough that there can be some productive give-and-take. But I did EE, and there was one particularly challenging module in my final year, Analogue Signal Processing. Analogue signal processing as a concept can be difficult to pick up, but the primary difficulty with this module was that it was almost entirely lecture-based, we only had 4 tutorials in the entire semester. The tutorials were great, whatever it happened to be on you did pick up and understand because you were learning by doing and seeing how mathematical formulae applied to a real-life circuit, but there is no point in having a lecture that consists of slide after slide of circuit diagrams and mathematical formulae and brief explanations of how the formulae relate to one another. Nobody can develop a real understanding of analogue signal processing like that, the best case scenario is that the average student will learn off the formulae and diagrams by rote, which is what we eventually did for the exam. Totally useless information without proper context.
Michael Brooks
I'm not sure I understand, OP. If you don't like the lectures, then don't attend them. They are a service. If you prefer to learn from the book only, then do that and take the exam at the end.
But for me, the actual lectures were always much more convenient than just studying the textbook. They are paced to the speed at which you can comfortably understand things, which is a very hard thing to achieve in a textbook.
Kayden Rodriguez
Elaborate please.
Luis Jones
The lecture model was used way before the recent explosion in education cost. It is not, in and of itself, expensive.
Costs:
1) Building and associated costs (electricity, maintenance, etc.) 2) Teacher 3) Teaching material
The idea that there will be an explosion of cost around this business structure is a little surprising.
Mason Morales
I think college is meme tier as far as computer science goes.Literally everything is avaliable online.Just learn at your own pace while doing some shitty part time job.And when you think you have learned enough and have done some decent projects, apply for jobs. Most people go to college just to get a job anyways.
Landon Murphy
Historical relic and manufacturing era style of thinking. Let us "mass produce" batches of students.
Jayden Ramirez
A lecture with a good teacher is a good way to learn. It's still just textbook reading, but at least the teacher has feedback on what people understood. He can also comment on harder proofs, make jokes to help people remember better, or answer questions.
A year of higher ed in Europe, especially in scientific fields (it's another thing in economics and/or medicine) is usually 600€ and sometimes you even get paid to study.
Benjamin Perez
this, 10000%
Jack Campbell
But how is a live lecture the best when on a recorded lecture you can pause to go poop and not miss anything, continue watching on mobile while pooping, and email the instructor precise questions or ask online?
You're just being a Luddite or an elitist by saying lecture is still the best
Bentley Ross
>email the instructor precise questions or ask online >implying they will respond They also lack the direct feedback from being face-to-face.
Blake Brooks
faggot
Isaac Scott
Yes, but this doesn't loose any advantages you listed when uploaded online. That's my issue. I live in bumfuck nowhere and have an hour long commute and get graded for attendance / in class participation, so it sucks dick since it's all avoidable anyway
Kevin Watson
Why didn't I ever think of being from a rich family? Your a genioius!
Dominic Scott
Because change takes time.
The changes are already happening in lower education (common core), which is a move away from lecturing.
At my university there are vast changes to lower division courses in which students merely come to class to ask questions and work in groups. But i think lecturing absolutely has a place in upper division materials. At a certain point the material is complicated enough that a mere book will not be enough. You have to talk with someone about it to clear any holes. That is what the lectures in upper division courses are meant to be. Fluff and general ideas the book provides are omitted, as it is assumed everyone read the chapter before coming.
Ryder Foster
>be educator >do 6 courses and have 800 students >50 lazy neet students send you daily messages about all the things they don't understand
Anthony Hughes
>Not in EDUCATION Employment, or Training student ?
And yes, I understand, this is why my Uni has 3 kinds of classes, lectures, tutorial classes (called "directed work") where students prepare then correct exercises and problems, while redoing some aspects of the lecture, and practical classes where we either do experiments or visualise mathematical stuff on computer.
Sometimes, at the end of 2 or 3 practical classes you must write a report on a topic. Last one I did was about proving Dirichlet's theorem, and then study 3 or 4 Fourier series. It's great because it encourages students to work together and find the solutions, while forcing us to do some actual proof-writing, which is rare in engineering school.
Chase Cook
No because their are tons of "gotcha" questions
But the people who will actually accomplish something will just say "Fuck studying for the ACT/SAT, I'm already confident that I'm at a 8th grade level in algebra and reading" and go work on something non trivial
Alexander Bennett
also my ACT was 30, which was 94th percentile at the time
it isn't bad, but I'm now wishing I'd have done better
Leo Diaz
Not for namefags
Parker Rogers
Guess if you knew your basic math and reading better you would've gotten a perfect huh?
Aiden Morales
>I'm pretty sure no-one was stupid enough to think that you can hold a lecture without seeing what is written on the blackboard.
Not all lectures need to be given with an accompanying visual aid.
>That is absolutely retarded. You would need like a gorillion TV channels
No - you would need either to limit what courses are available and give them individual time slots on the same channel or have multiple channels. What is retarded is your idea that you would need a channel for everything single course that could be taught. People can record off the TV too and TVs do air repeats.
>Research shows that students remember as little as 10% of their lectures just days afterwards.
>A Harvard study in 2014 found that, on average, attendance at lectures falls from 79% at the start of term to 43% at the end.
Landon Ortiz
>Not all lectures need to be given with an accompanying visual aid. Almost everything Veeky Forums related needs one. >What is retarded is your idea that you would need a channel for everything single course that could be taught I didn't mean one course per channel, just that a relatively small number of university programs can be aired on the same channel, and most of them would be aired at inconvenient times, although I did a really bad job of getting that point across, but it doesn't even matter, because you are the fucktard who believes that the logistical nightmare that airing lectures on TV would be is in any way comparable to online education.
Andrew Jenkins
>books or videos don't contain mistakes Nice strawman, they just have to contain less mistakes than lectures. Also, you can grab the errata online in like 90% of the time, and videos can be easily annotated when a mistake is discovered (like Khanacademy does).
Aaron Wright
>I'm too lazy/poor/stupid to find housing near my uni so I'd rather waste 400+ dollars a month and half my free time driving. >driving Try public transport for $12/month >too poor Yeah, sorry for not being born to rich parents. Or am I supposed to work beside university so that I can waste more time in a wagecuck job than I waste in public transport right now?
Joshua Collins
t. someone who has never learnt anything in their entire lives
Lincoln Scott
I'm not from the US, and I cannot begin to describe how enraged I'd be if I was forced to learn some useless second language when I already know English.
Robert Martinez
>Business mindset, youre at school and its a different mindset from being at home, If you lack discipline then a lecture could help you focus
This is not an advantage this is just bullshit. Business people aren't paying for someone to teach them shit. Business people are working in a team and taking orders from a boss who will in the end pay them.
Evan Roberts
I agree with you a lot on this, but you don't necessarily need a teacher for that, you just need to have a list of exercises related to the topic.
Andrew Cooper
the public schools don't force it on us, but to get into a reasonable college you need 2 years of foreign language
And they never tell you why...
Samuel Smith
I ended up having to learn 2 languages because of how the requirements were set up. I do not really remember either of them though.
Actually, I can read them okay. But these classes do not make you speak very much, so that is probably why I do not remember how to say very much.
I wish they changed the language format to require more speaking, but I guess that takes too much class time.
Xavier Phillips
>Have to sit in uncomfortable chairs and tables, with stagnant air, dealing with the typical bullshit (people talking during lectures, asking questions, making annoying noises, prof doesnt know how to turn off lights, chalk running out, strong cologne from some arab fag, etc.).
that's just beause they lowered the standards for students, and they all rack disiprine
how can you blame them for not taking a feminine penis genderqueer studies course seriously though
Cameron Gutierrez
ITT: NEETS doing the mental equivalent of a severely, nonfunctioning autistic child throwing a tantrum
Ryan Richardson
I feel like the lecture is dependent on the lecturer. Most people can't do it right and the ones that do get bought up by schools I'll never go to.
Jace Morris
> if all the courses were available online in high quality, most people would stay at home to learn. Funnily enough, the lecturer in one of my classes this year surveyed attendants of their lecture asking if it'd be better they just streamed/uploaded all content online. Not a single person said they wanted this to happen, but peferred attending the lectures and workshops in person. I agree with them - I did a strictly online class in the summer semester, and having it all online "any time I want" was less engaging.
Landon Morris
Doy out think teachers need no money
Cooper Torres
BS Online classes always get filled first
Dylan Miller
A+ student actually, 2nd year 2nd semester.
Isaac King
I don't mean business in that way, I mean the "I'm here to learn" mindset. Like how some people go to an office over working from home because at an office you don't have movies or Vidya available to you.
