Link buggered again. Something is wrong with the linky bits of the posting software, methinks.
Now now. All research conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, involving normal educational practices, such as:
a. research on regular and special education instructional strategies
b. research on the effectiveness of or the comparison among instructional techniques,
curricula, or classroom management methods
...is generally exempt from IRB review.
("Thanks for setting me straight!" you say. No problem; all in a day's work.)
Ah good. I was looking for the text rfts quoted.
I thought you still had to submit projects that were exempt from review to the IRB to show that they are exempt from review.
4: here you have to get a waiver, yes. If your research involves human subjects, I mean. Just studying dusty, old documents, including books and whatnot, is fine, so I'm going back to that. It was easier anyway. Live people are squirmy and unpredictable and often say inconvenient things.
...is generally exempt from IRB review.
I looked this up because I wasn't sure. It's not exempt from review. It's reviewed to see that it is exempt.
I think Thrun's failure ought not be taken as the death knell for MOOCs. One of the big failings they have is that interaction between students is hard, and that's one of the ways people learn best, is by talking to someone who only just got the point of the lesson like five minutes ago. I'm willing to bet that if students were better able to interact with each other I completion rates would be higher. They'll never be as good as F2F, but it would help.
Part of the problem with the MOOC model is just the difficulty of translating the immediacy of F2F interaction into the digital realm.
Making students pay to be in a trial seems wrong to me. Refunding all or part of the fees for the non-completers seems like the only fair thing to do. It's not the fault of the students that the teaching medium sucked.
7: The MOOC as part of the "flipped classroom" certainly makes sense. It seems like most commentary on the "flipped classroom" consists of people saying "OMG! Professors should have discussions instead of just lecturing! Whoda thunk it! As if I don't lead discussions all the time! These reformers think we're stuck in the stone age of the Sage On The Stage blah blah blah". Well, the majority of my college classes were the Sage On The Stage. Could stand some improvement.
I would like to try teaching "flipped classroom" style. But it's not worth the risk. Maybe after I have tenure.
9. Are you btocked, or is your phone's backlight on the blink?
But yes. When I first encountered the idea of the "flipped classroom", my second thought was, "... or Oxbridge tutorials, as they've been known for the last few hundred years."*
[* My first thought was, "Is flipped classroom an embarrassed euphemism for fucked classroom?]
6: Well, or something a little weirdly in-betweener than that -- it's of the "CATEGORIES OF RESEARCH ACTIVITIES EXEMPT FROM REVIEW" if your office of responsible research practices or whatever your local version likes to be called determines that it is exempt. So you're supposed to have it confirmed by someone, but then it's not reviewed by the actual board.
These reformers think we're stuck in the stone age of the Sage On The Stage
Alternative approaches include the Mentor in the Centre, the Guide On One Side, the Didact at the Back and the Guru in the Ulu.
I am not so into the "flipped classroom" when the model requires having to videotape yourself giving a bunch of lectures the students are supposed to watch outside of class, as it seems often to do, at least in my neck of the woods.
I would like to try teaching "flipped classroom" style. But it's not worth the risk
Quite risky, it's hard to get all the furniture to stay attached to the ceiling.
Every morning when the students wake up it's like the sage came to life and moved overnight!
that's one of the ways people learn best, is by talking to someone who only just got the point of the lesson like five minutes ago
Maybe this justifies my practicing of throwing together my lecture notes for any given day at the last possible moment.
13 is great, and definitely should be used by every Professor's hype man before the lecture begins. "Utah State organic chemistry 103B ... ARE YOU READY"
12: Yes. It's a much faster process than actual review.
11 -- let's flip the class, bring the old school back
I hate the flipped classroom concept so very, very, VERY much.
I love the idea of lecturers having hype men. That would be so awesome.
Someone else already came up with the Guide on the Side in all seriousness.
I don't know much about these, but I have been thinking about looking for some free/cheap courses to do (to counteract the boredom). I should actually look.
23: Why?
26:
1. The videos seem like a wild amount of work, which will only sort of transfer from instructor to instructor.
2. At best, students can learn highly computational parts of the material, like derivative shortcuts, but I wouldn't trust that they really gained an understanding of anything conceptual. They can already get that level of computational understanding and work through examples from a textbook.
3. (To me) it seems obvious that the classroom shouldn't be 100% workshop nor 100% lecture, but a blend. So under the ideal flipped classroom, you'll lecture for a few minutes on a topic, have them work on a problem while you wander around and help them (in groups or individually), back to lecture, etc.
This is what everyone should be doing, period. It has nothing to do with the novelty of making your own videos, it's just good teaching. The whole video gimmick is a red herring, except one that would require a wild investment of time and energy up front, and then it's a PITA to modify and evolve them as time passes. The whole concept drives me nuts.
Alternative approaches include...
The cove from above
The mensch from the bench
the Guru in the Ulu
In the what now? Around here an ulu is a type of knife. The Yup'ik word is uluaq, but I think the English word is actually borrowed from Inupiaq, where it is apparently just ulu.
I just read another article on Udacity, along with the one linked in the OP. I like to think that I am unmatched in my contempt for Silicon Valley blowhards, but Thrun really does come across as a thoughtful, responsible guy, particularly for someone with a tech company. He is pretty impressively forthright in admitting that his grand experiment, which he went far out on a limb for, didn't work, and doesn't actually have the power to remedy giant social structural problems with education. That's a good thing.
I live in an eruv and nobody seems to be particularly taking care of the MOOCs.
Maybe it's a shitty eruv. I first learned about it here, so clearly nobody is advertising it very well.
33 made me realize I've always put the stress on the wrong syllable in eruv. You know, in the like two times I've ever had occasion to say it aloud.
Is 2 really true? I've definitely submitted stuff to math ed publications which carried the instructions to make sure all IRB protocol had been observed. And I thought my math ed in the know friend did IRB submissions from time to time.
As amended by 12 it is. At my school, everything goes to the IRB even if you are just proving something is exempt.
31: That must be it; thanks. Googling just brought up a bunch of stuff about the knives, presumably because Google knows where I live.
It's probably a bit more lax at schools where there aren't more researchers than teachers. And sending something to an IRB to prove it is exempt is very much easier than submitting something for actual review. Most of our stuff requires quarterly reports to the IRB plus special notice if we fuck something up.
39: I also got results about the knife, so probably not a Google localization thing. I found my link through "in the ulu".
Only half of my first-page Google results were about the knife, but none were about military slang. The other half mostly referred to a Hawai'ian tree, with one hit for a VC firm named after the tree and one for a band "known for [an] original blend of experimental jazzfunkrock [and] booty-shaking grooves ..."