Online lectures could benefit good students
When I read an article or essay about making lectures available
on-line, there is inevitably a professor who is afraid that
interaction and “human contact” will be lost to
technology. When I hear this, I wonder if the professor is just
such a genius that he never had any trouble following lectures, and
therefore doesn’t realize how enormously valuable it would be
for a less brilliant (but equally enthusiastic) student to be able
to pause and rewind in order to think for a few minutes and hear a
difficult point explained again.
The fear is that students will stop going to lectures and thus
the interaction will be lost. The lazy, bad students will stop
going to lectures. Good students who actually care will continue
going and benefit from the interaction. Are we going to let the bad
students spoil it for the good students? That would be
perverse.
I have just eviscerated the main argument against online
lectures. Let’s stop dragging our feet and get these lectures
in place while I’m still a student and can still use
them.
Daniel O’Connor Graduate student, applied
mathematics