I feel like I missed the most important part. You must have been transforming other things. Because we have kept the learning objectives and assessments identical. They get the exact same credit for the exact same courses assessed the exam same way as they always did and have zero problem with transfer. By the way, I sit on our states transfer module for approving calculus programs state wide. So I don't know what you did, but it isn't what we are doing.

Alex Tabarrok on the rising cost of education. Seemed interesting enough to link.

The person who seized control was doing it for entirely self-serving purposes and had no real interest in actual learning outcomes. The biggest change was adding activities that had no value and only trivial relation to the course topics. My experience with these people across multiple colleges within multiple universities has been mostly the same. IOW, I think they are bad actors.

The big takeaway is that listening to some monotone codger chalk and talk his way through delta-epsilon proofs for a long hour is boring and unengaging. I mean, no ****? There is nothing "new" here and this is mostly a strawman built on an outdated caricature Ben Stein-type droning on about voodoo economics. I concede that could be more true in math than other fields but in general it has not been my experience with modern university instruction.

What's usually missing from this discussion is that there are instructors who are absolutely great at delivering concepts with clarity to a live audience in more of the lecture/monologue style. In fact, I'd say this was the most common trait among the best instructors I had. If you confine these people to videos and let the students do their homework in class, you are absolutely wasting their talent.

What's probably happening is you're forcing undisciplined novices to actually sit down and do an honest hour of real practice with supervision. This works pretty well because practice is worth so much more at this point in the game. If left to their own devices, many will not give the same level of effort. We know this fairly conclusively from looking at activity logs for online homework; there are just way too many students whose first login attempt is an hour before the assignment is due.

It's pretty simple: the courses were diluted to make them "fun" and get the DFW rates as close to zero as possible. Students complain about having to do work and admins complain about us failing paying customers. Btw, none of this was aimed at serious students like engineers; there was a separate rigorous course for them that still contained all of the actual content.

Sure, it sounds like we don't necessarily disagree that much.

Right, so it was as I suspected: your example from 15 years ago looks almost nothing like the types of interventions I'm talking about. We work for serious students, keep assessments fixed (we maintain a searchable database of every exam problem asked this past decade with analytics to measure point bi-serials and so forth), and are very consciously trying to not just meet but extend the learning objectives in ways that wasn't previously possible.
Oh for sure, I'm certainly not claiming anything novel. I'm just saying that when my institution first tried it, relying on this kind of instruction in the video domain was a big problem with engagement we have since resolved. And indeed many of my traditional lecture colleagues (and myself a few years ago when I only did traditional lecture) are doing all sorts of things to keep things engaging in class. An hour on delta-epislon proofs can be pretty cool, if done right! And pretty awful if done poorly. The point here is that your bad example from 15 years ago shouldn't be held as that great of an example against the idea of trying to get students to learn math collaboratively, because it depends way more on the details of the prof etc. It's also worth noting that there are often minor changes to presentation that ought to be taken when the context changes so simply cutting sections of an hour long lecture isn't effective for the pre-class foundational knowledge transfer component.

Absolutely, and I aspire to be counted among that group whenever I lecture. I actually really love the video medium because you can really fine tune pacing and cognitive load, add exactly as many animations as necessary, students can pause/rewind etc etc. So in my classrooms, that great little bit of monologue style content delivery still happens, both in and outside the classroom (or at least I try), it is just that the total time is reduced somewhat, and a good portion of that total time is pushed outside the class to bring the collaborative doing math inside the classroom.

I sometimes use the analogy with my students of juggling. It is absolutely benefitial to watch world-class jugglers explain how to juggle. You don't get anywhere quick with juggling if you don't understand how juggling patterns work, for instance. But you absolutely need to be spending a ton of timing actually juggling. Really the goal here is to try and take that latter piece and put it a bit more front and center, with extra social supports.



Indeed. I think there are several mechanisms for why it seems so successful, but this metacognitive angle is definitely one of them. Students in first and second year are often not expert learners with the skills, attitudes, and habits to genuinely succeed wrestling with complicated mathematics concepts. So we are creating a learning environment that is explicitly structured to reflect effective learning habits. Indeed, I put quite a bit of emphasis on developing these metacognitive skills along with technical math skills, so students will be able to continue learning effectively when the structural supports are taken away in the future. This is a feature, not a bug.

Why are you not using infinitesimals to teach derivatives?

I'm sure we mostly agree on all of this, but my example didn't *end* 15 years ago. That's when it started and they've continued down that path up until present day constantly trying to implement the latest and greatest. What I was trying to say is that AL and flipped classroom were "so 15 years ago." There are people seriously trying to improve pedagogy and others just trying to gain from it. I'm sure we both fall in the former category. The latter group is always hawking new ****, new buzzwords, new ephemeral technology, new research that I don't find even somewhat believable. And anecdotally, these peddlers tend to be the absolute worst people I've ever seen in a classroom.

What if you are trained that ulcers are caused by stress or that schizophrenia is best treated with talk therapy?

Fair enough. There is also this other group that steadfastly refuses to try new ****, doesn't even know the basic terminology, and rejects out of hand valid research. And anecdotally, these peddlers tend to be at least the second worst people I've ever seen in a classroom.

I'm definitely a fan of differentials (and love it for talking about linearizations), but you do have to be a bit careful. For instance, is the chain rule trivial?

it needs to be regulated more. john oliver did a piece on how its basically just a money grab right now as is, between the "rehab facilities" and the insurance companies. you set up a "rehab", hire a bunch of head hunters/recruiters to find yourself some addicts, and order tons of drug tests and the like and bill them to the insurance, the insurance then bills the government triple or more for the price of the test and everyone but the patients get more well off.

Sure, as I say I have no idea on this field to say anything intelligent. Does sound much more like a problem with the profession itself and the kind of perverse incentives the american medical system creates than a problem of higher education per se, although perhaps there are unscrupulous colleges offering essentially bogus degrees to feed this market incentive, wouldn't shock me.

Grunching here, but where have you been? IIRC, Juan does that **** all the time. No matter how often he gets corrected or embarrassed by people that actually know what they are talking about, he doesn’t change his behavior or even adopt a little humility. Like, that’s the hallmark characteristic of conservatives as far as I can tell.

Have you considered that people being *******s toward transgender people, like you, are the reason that they have higher suicide rates? You are the problem. You.

Speaking of mental issues, I think people who constantly believe false information and confidently spread it despite repeatedly being proven wrong have even more serious, harmful mental issues than whatever issues a transgender person may have.

When you say “outright fail” at treating mental health/addiction issues, what do you mean? Are you saying that cognitive behavior therapy, for instance, always fails?

Have you read anything I wrote or are you going off of the fabricated narrative from the dishonest hack who demonstrated I'm either capable of predicting the future, or was able to understand his motive was to actually project hate while not even getting a whiff of the irony. The thinly veiled tone policing was him fabricating narrative in order to justify being hostile and obnoxious. It was like witnessing the drill sergeant from full metal jacket issue a speech on sensitivity training.

What have I said that was awful or hostile towards trans people? How could I possibly be contributing to the suicide rates? I specifically said I believe in being polite with trans people and playing along with their social identity. That doesn't mean I actually believe it. Or do I have to believe it or else I, and people like me, are culpable for suicide?

As to your second paragraph, What misinformation have I spread? Where have I been proven wrong? Again, you are welcome to try and educate me. I've been clear I don't have all the answers and welcomed any additional info/arguments to shape my view on the issue. You won't. The guy who fabricated a narrative in order to hurl abuse at me was asked similar questions and he predictably dipped out. I'm not holding my breathe here either. I'm guessing this emotional outburst will not transition to you or the head of sensitivity training actually formulating an evidence based argument or discussion of the issue.

I look forward to more emotion based attacks with zero content though

Here you claim the gender pay gap is a myth, full stop. It is not.
Here you say there is an endless strain of absolute absurdity coming out of gender studies world, this is to support your original argument that western universities are a total disaster. Yet you only offer a handful of anecdotes, which other than having titles that you obviously find ridiculous, you fail to demonstrate that you actually have read or understand any of them, much less why they indicate massive academic fraud symptomatic of a failed western higher education system.

One final thing, did you ever find a sociology textbook that teaches there are infinite genders? I know you have said that you did not take issue with that “fact” as an example of what’s wrong with western higher education, but that doesn’t change the fact that had no one called you on it, the casual observer would have no clue that you pulled that from a god-damned YouTube that you credulously took as the truth, based on who knows what. The big problem for those of us who believe in sincere debate is that you constantly spew outright untruths or, at best, extreme exaggerations as the truth in support or tangentially related to your arguments. This becomes very laborious to pick through all the bull**** upon which your arguments are based and clogs up the actual discussion. When you get called on it, it doesn’t slow you down, you don’t change your behavior, or even slightly question any of the assumptions upon which your posts are based before you post, so nothing ever improves. When people quit tediously walking you through every logical misstep and jump hard to the conclusion, ie that you are either stupid or being a giant ******* intentionally doing this ****, you whine and complain. If you sincerely don’t understand why people are pissed at you, you should probably chill out and just watch from the sidelines. In short, you provide no value to these discussions and your posting actually detracts from any constructive conversation.

I think your last sentence deserves a little more attention. You write that as if you are using emotionless, cold logic in your arguments, but that’s clearly not the case. Almost the entirety of your argument against western higher education, ie that it’s a disaster, is based on your emotional reaction to studies and information that you find scary or that clearly makes you uncomfortable, but that you haven’t demonstrated any understanding of, or that the information to which you are reacting is even accurate. The YouTube regarding gender that you took as true, but was quickly proved inaccurate is a good example. You admittedly think the idea that there are infinite genders is absurd, but even if your anecdote was true, you don’t provide any reasoning as to why that has anything to do with western higher education being in shambles. More importantly, the fraud argument you pushed, is based on a handful of peer-reviewed papers that you don’t appear to have read, much less understand. Based on the way you presented them, you expect us to agree with your argument based solely on the presentation of their title or their topic, which doesn’t so much support your argument that western education is a disaster and the peer review system is a fraud, so much as it does provide us evidence that the titles incite a significant emotional reaction in YOU. And again, even if we all agree that those articles are fraudulent, that provides little evidence supporting your argument that there is massive fraud in the peer review system. You need data for that. For example, how many peer reviewed papers are published? Do the number of papers that are, as you say, fraudulent amount to a significant percentage? You skipped over those steps and instead expect your argument to be self evident and accepted with out question, probably because you are so uncomfortable with the topics the papers discuss.

Yes, my reaction was emotional. You keep posting misinformed bull**** that perpetuates misinformation that is harmful to many people and wrongfully undermines important institutions of learning. The way you talk about mental health issues is stigmatizing and harmful. You may not see it because you seem to lack a strong sense of empathy for issues that don’t affect you, so I don’t expect you to believe me.

Always projection.

No they are making billions, with very little effort and very little impact on the actual problems. To me what they do can barely be called science at this point, more like a failed paradigm.

That's actually and interesting avenue cuz it actually has to do with neuroplasticity, I do think however that it's like trying to drive a Model T ford when you could be driving the brand new corvette. It's been around for a minute but you can rewire the brain a lot of faster than how cognitive thearapy can with neuroplastic training techniques. I do mean mental health and addiction health pros outright fail, like half the population around me deals with these "pros" and next to any other professional in any industry you are getting a **** product especially when you compare this product to it's competitor in the same field.



I think when it comes to scientific fields, this on is a super lazy field cuz there is so much money in it. Why change it, it's profitable. The alternative of neuroplastic training would put a lot of people out of business cuz you could learn it on Youtube or in a book. Only hardcore stuff like schitzos, multiple personalities and such would actually need to go to a pro. The entire industry is one big silly mess, but it is rather profitable.


From what I under cognitive therapy is mainly for anxiety conditions, I can and have crushed them with meditation and affirmations and I don't need to pay someone $100+/hr. You can learn this with a little study and then you just gotta put in the training of rewiring your brain. I see the brain as hardware and software and it's pretty easy to manipulate, these "pros" just seem off the mark and after being in that world for decades it amazes me how ass backwards their game is. REally what I should be saying, is they have a failed paradigm and a lot of their methods seem to fail too.

I think I'm studying science, I think they study academia and diverted from real science a while ago. I could be wrong but I'm not seeing the results in the real world like I should be seeing and would be seeing if they went by the paradigm I've learned that actually predates all of psychology as funny as it is.

Can you explain what fat studies is? How prevalent fat studies classes are? Or why they are bad?

What field are you in?

I'm a science geek that's been trying to fix my own brain since a child. I didn't get help till I realized psyhcology and psychiatry are a joke and just read and read until I found things that worked. I woulda went to school to be a psychologist, but in my experience that's a dead end sciencewise. It's very good if you wanna make a good living it seems.


It doesn't matter either way, we will look back in a 100 years at the mental health and addiction field and be like "Wow, wtf kinda nonsense were these people taught."


I guess you can say my field is neuroplastic training or human software.

You called me all sorts of things and that I was wrong based on my stance on trans issues. I then asked you a couple straight forward questions and predicted you wouldn't even attempt to answer them but instead resort back to emotion based attacks. I just skimmed through your posts because you're off topic and not very interesting so feel free to redirect me if I missed something.

So how did you respond? Exactly as I predicted. That's kind of the fun thing with ideologues, you kind of know how they're going to behave just like an entertainer sticking it's head in a gators mouth

While you're busy teaching me all sorts of things could you tell me what the gender wage gap is and what it's caused by?

Toodles