Review of the course Model Thinking
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Some of the courses I signed up for, Networked Life and Model Thinking, have some (sigh) math. In almost every instance, the professor goes too fast for me — I’m sure they would feel awkward and stupid to talk through a math example as slowly as would enable me to grasp it the first time, but I could really suggest that they re-film these segments and offer us the choice of watching some bits at a slower pace.
Sadly, I’m likely to drop out of these courses as the math becomes more important to the lectures because in their current instantiation, there aren’t enough examples and ancillary materials to help me efficiently grasp the mathematical concepts. I can hear the professors thinking “well, you have to expect to do some work to master these math concepts” but I’m convinced that I could master these concepts without (inefficiently) struggling if the pedagogy was more robust. What I want is a lot of ancillary and optional video clips explaining the concepts using lots of different examples, so I can fly through all of them until I find the one that clicks with me, or use the variations to enrich my understanding. I am not going to sit with pencil and paper, replaying the same lecture segment over and over, and struggling to understand the concept that the professor handles so expertly and elegantly. I know from experience that struggling on my own with problem sets is a) unnecessarily time consuming and that b) I could potentially simply fail to ever grasp the concept fully. I don’t believe that there has to be pain and suffering for learning to happen, any more than I think it’s better to have lost ten pounds eating only food that you hate.
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