Confessions of a Converted Lecturer: Eric Mazur
Why Hacker News recommends it
Repeatedly recommended in education threads as the definitive talk on why lectures fail and what works better.
What it is
Harvard physicist Eric Mazur explains how he realized his students were memorizing rather than understanding, and how he changed his teaching. He presents peer instruction and data showing improved student performance.
Recommended by 9 HN commenters across 9 different months, 2009 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec mquander · 2009-12 · on “Taking account of misconceptions; avoiding rote learning (MIT OCW video)”
Strongly reminiscent of this really fantastic talk from Eric Mazur, a Harvard physics professor (and a charismatic speaker!) who was shocked when he discovered the pervasive misconceptions held by his undergraduate students. [this video] Mazur describes how he discovered and carefully measured the lack of fundamental understanding among the majority of his students, and how after attempting to address the problem in various ways, he found that a discussion-based, peer-assisted method of working through material was much more effective than more a lecture-oriented approach.
Strong rec MaysonL · 2010-01 · on “Freakonomics: Quantifying Teacher Effectiveness?”
Great video on how a pretty good teacher (as conventionally measured) learned how to really teach. [this video] titled: Confessions of a converted lecturer.
Strong rec yequalsx · 2010-04 · on “Dan Meyer dissects the flaws of math textbooks (video)”
I strongly disagree with the notion that college algebra ought to be the place where one learns practical applications of mathematics. A valuable skill for any educated person is the ability to plod through minutia and make sense of it. Being able to be focused on the point at hand and not let distractions cloud judgment is a valuable skill. If one really understands the mechanics of logs then I think they will not freak out when presented with a formula involving logs. I'm all in favor of applications but isn't this the job of other subjects? The applications should be taught in the subjects that apply it. The goal of a mathematics class ought to be to understand mathematics. This lecture,
Strong rec synotic · 2015-12 · on “A better way to teach technical skills to a group”
In a similar vein, there's a really great talk by Eric Mazur, Physics professor at Harvard about peer instruction — [this video] He goes into why he started exploring the idea at first (students got 5's on their AP physics exams and had strong problem-solving skills — plug-and-chug — but poor conceptual understanding), the many iterations of the approach, and the data he collected on the way (significant increases in open-ended, conceptual problems, including at other schools that adopted the approach). Really fascinating. I haven't watched the shorter version, but someone edited they key points down to 18 minutes: [LINK]
Strong rec vanderZwan · 2017-08 · on “Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching”
> At the end of this (i.e. graduate level courses) the only ones with sufficient mastery are those that are doing the research. Sadly, sufficient mastery of the subject often comes at the cost of sufficient mastery of teaching , which becomes especially important for such difficult subjects. If only some of that money spent on more staff was spent on assistant teachers whose main skill was teaching and coaching other teachers, and providing paid hours for both of them to fix the curriculum together... Anyway, I fully agree with your second paragraph. Another issue is that of researchers not really seeming to care, having an attitude of "you shouldn't be in University unless you really want t
Recommends MaysonL · 2010-01 · on “A review of probability theory”
A better question would be: what percentage understand what a random variable is and will be able to apply this understanding later. See [this video] for exploration of the difference by a Harvard physics professor who realized a few years into his teaching career that most of his into physics students weren't learning very much, although they were able to apply all the appropriate mathematical recipes to all the standard type homework and exam questions.
Recommends bhattisatish · 2014-02 · on “Khan Academy: The Illusion of Understanding”
Eric Mazur's Peer learning process [this video] kind of highlights the problem and a solution for the same. Namely, Flip the classroom. Ask questions that highlight the knowledge gap within the students. Let students debate among themselves and then actually provide the solution. Though this is not sufficient, it at least improves the ability of the student to reason about the problem and question the models they have built around their heads on the given subject.
Recommends 2020-3030 · 2017-11 · on “Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)”
You are correct that course sizes matter to educational outcomes for a variety of reasons. If the groups are too small, it is possible that nobody has enough of what is needed for the class and everybody flounders, requiring intensive instructor led tutoring and learning. This brings us back to the 1:1 situation. If we are interested in how many students are required to support peer to peer learning, you might enjoy the following articles (popular and academic) about how Harvard physics professor, Dr. Eric Mazur has embraced and studied peer-to-peer instruction. This should provide a partial answer to your questions. 1) Eric's Harvard Profile [LINK] ) 2) A good story/video about the developm