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Welcome to Spring Semester 2013
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From some of the forum discussions, it’s clear that some of you are putting way
too much emphasis on the lectures. They are not lessons in the traditional sense
of an instructional session that has been lesson-planned. They simply provide an
example of a professional engaged in mathematical thinking. Other than editing
out pauses while I think, and speeding up some of the handwriting, what you see
is what happened when I sat down at my desk. There are errors and slips. Some I
noticed during video editing, others are being discovered by some of you. That’s
how mathematics gets done. It's a messy, error-prone, human endeavor.
(Admittedly, since I’ve given this course many times before, and wrote the
companion book just a few months ago, it might look like I’m just reading from
the book, but that’s not the case.)
So please don’t pour over the videos repeatedly looking for rules or for answers. They are to set the agenda, provide some key ideas, give an example of one individual thinking mathematically (in real time), and (arguably more importantly) to provoke reflection and discussion.
In other words, the onus is on the student to figure things out. In putting together this course, I set out to try to create over the Internet the kind of experience you’d get if you were sitting next to me in my office at Stanford, or next to any other professional mathematician. (To be sure, not everyone likes this approach, but it’s pretty common in university education.)
The core learning mechanisms in the course are working on the assignments and the associated discussions, both on the forums and in the various groups people have created.
There’s pedagogic research to support this “be less helpful” approach, even at high school level, let alone university. If you are curious about the course philosophy, check out my recent MOOCtalk blog, where I reference some of that research.
Maybe it helps to know this, maybe not. Either way, I hope you stick with the course.
-- KD
So please don’t pour over the videos repeatedly looking for rules or for answers. They are to set the agenda, provide some key ideas, give an example of one individual thinking mathematically (in real time), and (arguably more importantly) to provoke reflection and discussion.
In other words, the onus is on the student to figure things out. In putting together this course, I set out to try to create over the Internet the kind of experience you’d get if you were sitting next to me in my office at Stanford, or next to any other professional mathematician. (To be sure, not everyone likes this approach, but it’s pretty common in university education.)
The core learning mechanisms in the course are working on the assignments and the associated discussions, both on the forums and in the various groups people have created.
There’s pedagogic research to support this “be less helpful” approach, even at high school level, let alone university. If you are curious about the course philosophy, check out my recent MOOCtalk blog, where I reference some of that research.
Maybe it helps to know this, maybe not. Either way, I hope you stick with the course.
-- KD
