Tag: classroom

The Death of the Classroom, *NOT* the University

This post is a continuation of my post from yesterday, available here.

I’ve been predicting the death of the classroom for three years, and wishing for it for far longer. We have classrooms, and continue to have classrooms, for the same reasons that factories organized themselves around the steam engine: it was the best response to available technology. That is, in a world without the internet and AI, in person synchronized learning with a figure of authority leading the class was the most efficient way to make learning happen.

And while we do have the internet and AI now, we have become so used to the status quo of the classrooms in universities that we find it difficult to reimagine what a classroom will look like given today’s technology.

Here’s one way to see classrooms: they’re solutions to coordination problems. A lot of students wish to learn a particular topic, a professor has knowledge about said topic, and a class in that classroom is a way to coordinate the dissemination of that knowledge to those students at the same time. For many years, if not centuries, it was the only way to disseminate that knowledge efficiently. There were, to use the language of the economist, no substitutes available that could achieve the same result at lesser cost.

But with the advent of the internet, and especially AI, that is no longer true. I can turn up tomorrow at a time and place of your choosing and give any number of students a class on, say, the principle that incentives matter. But all the students who attended that class by traveling to that place at that time could just have sat at home and learnt about this principle from ChatGPT. They could have had discussions with economists, sociologists, theologians and anthropologists and linguists about incentives. Pretty soon, they can build customized videos of their favorite sports personalities giving them a class on this topic.

Now, you might bristle at the thought and say that this couldn’t possibly be better than learning from a human. Not now, not forever, you might insist. But what if one of the students has to travel for this class from, say, Gadchiroli? What if this student cannot understand English all that much. What if this student learns best when concepts are sung to him, rather than spoken? What if he doesn’t relate to some of the examples being discussed in class? It needn’t be a student from Gadchiroli, and it needn’t be this particular list of problems. The point is that no human, no matter how good and multi-lingual she may be, can ever hope to achieve the level of customization that AI can. And once you take into account travel and coordination costs, it’s game over. You may still say that being taught by humans is better, but it is already no longer as efficient. That’s just a fact.

Why, just this past semester, I finished teaching a course in Principles of Economics to students at the Gokhale Institute. There were a hundred and fifty students in the class, and so I gave forty speeches across the semester. That is, there was absolutely no chance of in-depth conversations, detailed feedback and customized learning.

Why not split up the class instead, you ask? Because cost, of course. You save on the money you pay to the faculty by combining classes, quality be damned. From my own selfish perspective, combined classes are great, because saying the same thing twice is boring as hell – but from the point of view of the students, it is a whole other story.

So why not take the next logical step and save the cash that you have to pay for just the one combined class too? Why not have AI take the class instead? I’m quite serious, AI should be putting people like me out of my current job.

Note, however, that I’m saying it should be putting me out of my current job. When I write posts about the death of the classroom, what I am really hoping for is the death of universities structured around the concept of in-person classes the whole day, day after day, for two years.

AI solves the coordination problem, and takes away the need for in person classes. But at the same time, and as a direct consequence, it raises the need to have in person mentoring, and in person interactions with peers. The role of the in-person university with a physical campus goes up, not down, because of AI.

The classroom need not solve a coordination problem, but the university can (and should) become a coordinating point. It becomes a place where students interact with their mentors. It becomes a place where guest lectures take place. It becomes a place for in-person seminars, conferences, talks and walks. It becomes, in short, a place for ideas to blossom and bloom.

Cafeterias, amphitheatres, lawns and cafes will dominate such a campus, not classrooms. We will need Schelling points for discussions, as opposed to Schelling points for listening.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. So all my rhetoric and flights of fancy aside, there will still be demand for (and therefore space for) classroom based learning. But it will be a supplement to other kinds of learning, as opposed to being the primary mode that it is today.

A university dedicated to the spread and discussion of ideas, as opposed to a university that drowns you in classes, day after dreary day.

My, what a revolutionary thought experiment.

Will Classroom Teaching Change This Semester Onwards?

The new semester is underway in some colleges and universities, and others will begin soon enough. Across the country, a new bunch of students will be attending their first semesters in undergrad or postgrad courses.

This is both old news and news at the same time. There’s is nothing new in this if you take the long view, but given that this is the first semester post the end (?) of the pandemic, it is very new and very different.

Why different? Because we’ll be teaching students who have spent two years learning at/from home, and the way they have learnt is very different from the way they will learn in this semester.

  • Physical attendance will be required. Not by me, to be clear, but colleges and universities will require it (of course).
  • Usage of internet enabled devices might be frowned upon. Again, not by me, to be clear, but there will be a fair few number of colleges, universities and professors who will require complete attention, and that will mean no phones, tablets and laptops allowed.
    Let me be clear: I personally don’t mind usage of these devices in classes, but don’t hold very strong views on the subject, and am well aware of the fact that there are a large number of professors who hold very strong anti-device views. How this will play out is something I am very interested in seeing this semester.
  • Discussions, debates, arguments will be centre-stage once again in a classroom, and this time with many more people involved, whether they like it or not. Have we lost the skill? Will there be new norms given the last two years? Will it be more difficult to get discussions going, or will it be easier than ever before?
  • Every single professor I have spoken to has bemoaned the lack of eye-contact and visual cues while teaching. How will we adapt to having these advantages with us once again?
  • How screwed up are attention spans post pandemic? Not just because of ‘taking’ classes from home, but because of the pandemic itself – and how will these affect both teaching and learning?
  • Have students learnt to think of material available online as definitely being a substitute for an in-class experience, as opposed to a complement? And if so, are they likely to take less kindly to some of the teaching they will experience offline? And if so, how will colleges and universities respond? As my favorite blogger says, solve for the equilibrium.
  • Do pen and paper exams make sense anymore? If yes, why? If not, how are we thinking about substituting for them? Are these discussions taking place in higher-ed institutions across the country?
  • How should our pedagogy change? More videos shown in class? More interactive content? More discussions?
  • Will all classes be recorded and shared with students? Should they? If not, why not?
  • What percentage of subjects/courses offered in a semester will be offered ‘remotely’?
    • This is not just about habit formation. The one lesson that all course coordinators learnt during the pandemic (including yours truly) was that we need no longer be restricted by geography when it comes to hiring really good profs. But now that all classes are offline, should we just give up on profs we know are good, simply because they are not located in the same city/town as your campus? If the truth is to lie somewhere in the middle, how do we decide?
  • How will students solve what I’ve taken to calling the 2x problem? Imagine listening to the prof speak at 1x – how quaint (and quite possibly frustrating) it might seem to post-pandemic cohorts of students!

I don’t know the answers to even one of these questions. But in the semester that is coming up, I hope to spend a lot of time talking to folks who are in the higher-ed business to understand how classroom teaching will evolve from here on in. It promises to be a fascinating five months!

Here is an old blog post in which I predict that classroom teaching will decline from here on in, and wither away in the long run. And here is one in which I try to force myself to take the opposite position.

Thoughts, opinions and feedback is always welcome, but in the case of this blog post, especially so. If you are teaching a course in this semester and wish to chat, please drop me a line at ashish at econforeverybody dot com.

Is Online Education Transitory?

Students are finally making their way back into colleges across the country. Omicron, and whatever variant follows next will make the road bumpy, and there remains a significant chance that there will be some U-turns along the way. But we’re finally limping back towards something approaching normalcy. Or so one hopes.

But the transition isn’t smooth, and cultural adjustments are going to be tricky. What sort of cultural adjustments? Here goes:

  • Lockdowns and restrictions have been in place long enough for a culture of online learning to have emerged. In the context of this blog post, I define the word culture to mean social behaviors and norms that have emerged among students during the past eighteen (or so) months. There is more to culture than that, I am well aware, but it is this specific aspect of the word that I am focusing on.
  • Students across India have gotten used to the following aspects of this culture:
    • Listening to a lecture that is being delivered need not be a community based event. You can listen to a lecture alone, anywhere, as opposed to along with your classmates in a classroom.
    • Listening to a lecture need not by a synchronous event. That is, you don’t need to listen when the professor is speaking. One can listen later, as per one’s own convenience.
    • Listening to a lecture need not be a 1x event. Amit Varma’s point about being able to listen to somebody else speaking at even 3x applies to lectures as much as it does to podcasts. Students who find a particular professor boring may even argue that the point applies with even greater force to lectures than it does to podcasts!
    • Students feel much more comfortable calling out online examinations for the farce that they are. And let me be clear about this: online examinations are a farce. If you are a part of any university’s administration in this country, I urge you to speak to students, their parents, and recruiters about this issue. I repeat, online examinations are a farce. This is important, and it needs to be called out. We’re very much in Emperor’s New Clothes territory in this regard, and that is where the cultural aspect comes in.
  • At the moment, most colleges (if not all) are not making classroom attendance mandatory, at least for the students. Students may be on campus, but not necessarily in the classroom. Most students I have spoken to (in a completely unscientific fashion, I should add, so this is strictly anecdotal) think this to be the best of all worlds. They are not at home, they are with friends, and they are not in a classroom. It doesn’t get better than this, as far as they are concerned.

So now, assuming you find yourself in even limited agreement with what I have written above, think about the scenario I am about to outline. Imagine that you are a university administrator with the power to mandate offline attendance in classrooms and offline examinations for your students. And at some date in the foreseeable future, you decree that this must happen.

And some students come along and ask an entirely reasonable (to them, at any rate) question: why?

Why are offline attendance and offline examinations better than what we have right now?

What would your answers be?

A Pro-Classroom Argument

I am, if anything, against how learning is delivered today. Much lesser classroom teaching, much more discussions, much more of arguments, much more of thinking and writing (this ought to turn into a separate post!) is how I would prefer learning takes place.

But, if I had to force myself to think about what about traditional classroom teaching is good…

  1. Traditional classroom teaching, where the teacher talks and the students listen for the most part, allows for a much more systematic completion of the syllabus, and reduces the burden on the teacher. Teaching ought to become easier, and therefore (assumption alert) better.
  2. The teacher is able to focus on one particular aspect for the duration of that one class, and therefore is able to prepare accordingly. Random questions and answers, taking the class off on a tangent is all well and good, but you suffer, inevitably, a loss in depth when you go wide.
  3. A one-to-many mode of teaching ensures that all students have the same notes, and are in agreement about what was taught. Group based discussions (breakout rooms is what we call these things these days) for example, leaves students unaware of what was said in the other groups. Debriefing helps, but never completely.
  4. Do we underrate “sit still and listen” these days? Yes, long classes and having to focus on the voice that drones on is easy to make fun of, but have we collectively lost the art of sitting still and listening? Might we be inculcating the value of sustained concentration by having traditional classes, and might this in fact be a good thing?
  5. If a class is going to be about listening on a one-to-many basis, does this reduce the cognitive load on the student? Freed from all other requirements, classroom teaching might free up the student to learn more, by reducing the amount of effort demanded from her?
  6. Two points about discussions and debates. Doesn’t limiting the scope for discussions and debates in class make it better, by having only genuine doubts and disagreements being raised? Forcing students to take part in a discussion or a debate, when most of them seem to not want to, can end up making them uncomfortable. It can also be a time-consuming affair, and all for points that perhaps were not worth it. On the other hand, leaving only ten minutes or so for discussion at the end will “bubble up” only the most willing, most eager and most well-thought out responses. That is a good thing, right?
  7. Is a classroom really the best place to debate and discuss? Is not the opportunity cost of having to listen to your peers, rather than the person with the most amount of knowledge about the subject (the professor), very high? Students can (and should!) debate issues raised in class – but outside.

I find myself unable to come up with more, but I’m sure there are other arguments to be made for classroom-based, one-teacher-talks-many-students-listen-based model. What am I missing?