Time to Video All Lectures

mathew

petrochemical wrote: »

Yes, they're paid to stand there and read out the lecture notes to people because people are babies who can't do it themselves. The notes are a cogged compilation of various stuff from books which people could quite possibly compile themselves if they had to. If they've any questions they can go on a message forum and they'd probably get a better answer than the lecturer would give them, and more than one opinion. This is a bit of a generalisation and of course there are exceptions but I'd say the majority of courses aren't too far off this.

As well as what Boston said, for science/engineering courses* its not only necessary to read notes or a book but it is incredibly helpful to have someone go through examples and explain the stepts they are taking and the background behind what they are doing, with the option for any of the students to ask questions.
Its invaluable to have someone go through and explain the notes and methods to you, instead of just reading them in a book or in notes.

*I cant obviously speak for courses unlike engineering/science

Cantab.

Boston wrote: »

You've no idea what you're talking about. It takes a huge amount of time and knowledge to compile a decent set of lecture notes for a course, many of the best lecturers have spent years fine tuning their notes. Many american universities use online forums for class participation with students. It compliments the lecturing, it doesn't replace it.

Maybe it's time to give postgrads and postdocs more responsibilities and ensure every professor his own secretary like they would have had up until recently.

Boston

Cantab. wrote: »

Maybe it's time to give postgrads and postdocs more responsibilities and ensure every professor his own secretary like they would have had up until recently.

The majority of lecturers in trinity would be postdocs or postgrads. Funding problems are the main reason for the lack of administrative staff, my own department spent several months last year without a secretary. It was never common practice for professors to have there own personal secretary. Finally, professors can be male or female.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Boston wrote: »

Finally, professors can be male or female.

Don't be a pedant. It's ugly and disruptive in text to see "his/her" everywhere...

Boston

One place. The implication was clear.

It would have been "every professor their own secretary". No need for he/she his/her's bull.

Fremen

Boston wrote: »

One place. The implication was clear.

It would have been "every professor there own secretary". No need for he/she his/her's bull.

Their.
If you're going to correct someone, don't make yourself look stupid in the process.

Many lecturers put their lecture notes up online anyway. I fail to see how posting video lectures is any different. If anything, a good video lecture series serves as an advertisement for the university.

Boston

I edited the post before you replied. If you're going to correct someone's spelling, try not to take so long.

Btw, way to miss the point.

Podge_irl

Boston wrote: »

The majority of lecturers in trinity would be postdocs or postgrads.

Really? I don't recall ever getting lectured by a postgrad or postdoc. Tutorials sure, but never lectured. Though I have no idea how it works outside the maths and physics departments.

Boston

Very common in engineering and CS. I can count on one hand the number of lecturers I had who were professors. Might have been different in physics where there was/is more money.

petrochemical

You've no idea what you're talking about. It takes a huge amount of time and knowledge to compile a decent set of lecture notes for a course, many of the best lecturers have spent years fine tuning their notes. Many american universities use online forums for class participation with students. It compliments the lecturing, it doesn't replace it.

Maybe so but still alot of that knowledge is itself learned from books, so in a sense they are just editing other peoples work. I'd say in the future online forums could replace more and more the inefficient and sometimes pointless human interactions that people engage in the learning process. People do it more because its the way they know, not because its the best way. It arguably isn't in many cases.

mathew wrote: »

As well as what Boston said, for science/engineering courses* its not only necessary to read notes or a book but it is incredibly helpful to have someone go through examples and explain the stepts they are taking and the background behind what they are doing, with the option for any of the students to ask questions.
Its invaluable to have someone go through and explain the notes and methods to you, instead of just reading them in a book or in notes.

*I cant obviously speak for courses unlike engineering/science

What a load of bollo-x. If anything Science/Engineering are the easiest to learn from a book- particularly engineering. There's no reason why you couldn't teach yourself- if you really studied the book properly and did all the questions- the book is specifically laid out to cover all the angles. The writer refined it to do so. It may be helpful but is arguably not necessary to have someone help you. The problem is people don't want to do the hard work but instead act like imbeciles in school with their hand up in class- please show me, waaaaa! If it was a life or death situation and you had to learn from a book you'd soon learn!

Boston

I've my doubts, what I've seen of online course work hasn't impressed me. WebCT is terribly flawed for example.

I hate when people use the work "just" as if whatever they're describing is the easiest thing in the world. The lecturers job is to pick out whats relevant and present it as concisely as possible. I've read some atrocious txt books in my time, and you're simply wrong to suggest that any and all text books are better then a lecturer. There is definitely value to a real life human interaction.

Fremen

Only very few lecturers are ever professors. In the UK and Ireland, it's the highest academic rank you can achieve. In the UK at least, the progression is temporary postdoc -> lecturer -> reader -> professor.

It would be very unusual for a PhD student to teach a lecture course. They do marking and demonstrating, but not really lecturing.

Boston

Yea no, not how it works here*. Lecturer's not really a set position in a staffing structure. I know/known three PhD students who've lectured, the requirements seem very loose.

In trinity professorship isn't the highest academic rank you can achieve (fellow would be above prof) , and even within the professor "rank" there are levels.

*I can only really speak for engineering/cs schools.

John

petrochemical wrote: »

What a load of bollo-x. If anything Science/Engineering are the easiest to learn from a book- particularly engineering. There's no reason why you couldn't teach yourself- if you really studied the book properly and did all the questions- the book is specifically laid out to cover all the angles. The writer refined it to do so. It may be helpful but is arguably not necessary to have someone help you. The problem is people don't want to do the hard work but instead act like imbeciles in school with their hand up in class- please show me, waaaaa! If it was a life or death situation and you had to learn from a book you'd soon learn!

You've never marked any assignments, have you? The students who turn up to tutorials and lectures are the ones who answer the questions correctly (or at least understand what is being asked). Those that don't turn up tend not to answer the question being asked, let alone correctly.

And as for science/engineering being easiest to learn from a book, I'm not so sure about that. Yes, some stuff is very easy to learn from a book but some stuff really does require an interactive forum such as a lecture or a tutorial as science can quickly go from "That's obvious" to "WTF!!!!" in a short space of time. I tried to teach myself calculus once (to a level beyond what I learned in college) and failed miserably because books just don't answer your questions when you're stuck, no matter how much you talk to them.

Fremen wrote: »

It would be very unusual for a PhD student to teach a lecture course. They do marking and demonstrating, but not really lecturing.

Depends on the course and the department. I'm a PhD student and I've done marking, demonstrating, tutorials, lab supervision (for projects) and lectures (to a variety of years and courses). Granted I'm not currently in TCD but I know that my situation is not unique. Some departments utilise postgrads/postdocs almost exclusively and some use lecturers. Neither situation is unusual.

Cantab.

Universities to become irrelevant by 2020 according to a professor:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705298649/Universities-will-be-irrelevant.html

flerb22

in medicine, prof McCann "podcasts" all his lectures.

by podcast he of course means that he gets the audio recorded and synced up with the powerpoint and you can watch it as an mpeg

its kinda hilarious, but great if you dont understand something when going over the lectures again

http://www.medicine.tcd.ie/haematology/local/students/

Cantab.

Fair play to him. He should get nominated for the Provost's teaching award on that alone. A bit of competition amongst lecturers wouldn't go astray.

I wonder will the Physics department (one of the Colleges finest) and others be able to square up with Medicine.

flerb22

Cantab. wrote: »

Fair play to him. He should get nominated for the Provost's teaching award on that alone. A bit of competition amongst lecturers wouldn't go astray.

I wonder will the Physics department (one of the Colleges finest) and others be able to square up with Medicine.

he also gave away his textbook for free. what a guy :-)

i hope he reads this and figures out who i am and gives me lots of marks in the path exam now.

preilly79

snappieT wrote: »

Why should they be able to. Attend lectures. Too lazy to get out of bed, you shouldn't be getting the benefit of lectures.

Because some of us (<<< me) work full time jobs to support our families and study part-time in the evening (I won't mention what my taxes pay for). Work commitments mean that sometimes you just can't make classes.

snappieT

preilly79 wrote: »

Because some of us (<<< me) work full time jobs to support our families and study part-time in the evening (I won't mention what my taxes pay for). Work commitments mean that sometimes you just can't make classes.

That statement was directed at the day course people, to be honest.

That said, if you can't commit to the lecturing hours of an evening course, you probably shouldn't be doing it either.

stroanie

Gotta say I approve of the idea. Much like MIT's opencourseware. While I accept that it's a job that lecturers do and should be paid for, I don't see any real reason why the material shouldn't be publicly accessible.

I highly doubt that opencourseware has lost MIT a single propective student, and would imagine that it has persuaded more than one student to choose that college. Knowledge that their materials would be made public might persuade more than one lecturer to upgrade the quality of their notes and the structure of their courses.

People go to college for the qualification. The knowledge that you gain can always be gathered via books and home study. The value of college will not be deminished.

Jimdw

Cantab. wrote: »

Trinity are falling behind.

I believe we need to roll out the infrastructure to be able to video and record all lectures and make them available to the public at large.

The http://academicearth.org project is truly amazing. It appears we've little to contribute.

This Apple interface that's currently being plugged is a half-assed attempt at bringing us in line with the world's top universities.

We need an open-source, easy-to-use and highly accessible interface to all college courses. We should be the leaders of this technology in Ireland and the British Isles, not the laggers.

Methinks it's time to order some smart cams and directional microphones and give ISServices/the library an exciting project to work on.

I ENTIRELY agree with that. I believe that all lectures should be recorded. When I joined Medicine first year at the start of this year 2008 our Physiology lecturer was recording the lectures and posted them as podcasts on some weird website. He gave us six lectures and no other lecturer ever attempted to do any of that. I now record audio of lectures. I always have my laptop on me, so why not. I also really want to record my screen and the lecture from the internal microphone with ScreenFlow application for mac, its brilliant, i just have 2GB free space on my mac so I just physically have no space on my mac to record those although I really support the idea. Also my battery would get dead a lot faster with video recording of my screen, although it is a brilliant idea, I am actually going to try that and backup all my lecture videos on my external 500GB Hard Drive.

Also Trinity has podcast account with iTunes, they can post all lecture videos right there for all courses and years. Although that would have huge implications on the data requirement and transfer. Apple and technology might not be entirely ready for that at the moment. I think it's just technology needs to catch up with people's/student's, needs.

At least I can make my own podcasts with ScreenFlow. Thanks for a great idea http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/overview.htm

Kwekubo

Jimdw wrote: »

Also Trinity has podcast account with iTunes, they can post all lecture videos right there for all courses and years. Although that would have huge implications on the data requirement and transfer. Apple and technology might not be entirely ready for that at the moment. I think it's just technology needs to catch up with people's/student's, needs.

Don't need Apple, don't need iTunes - just need cameras/microphones and a server. Apple doesn't provide hosting for podcasts anyway - iTunes is only a directory.

Cantab.

There's a lot more to providing videoed lectures than the technology. But yes, I believe Apple shouldn't have a monopoly. I also believe open-source tech should be used at all points -- in the spirit of academia, like.