I'm glad someone noticed my subtle attempt at humor. Believe it or not, percents were the hardest thing to teach. "Percent of", "Increased by a percent", and overlapping percents can confuse people. In the case above, either you can assume I'm trying to hit 100% (which most people are trying to do), or the sample overlaps. The overlapping bit is more of a statistics thing than basic math.
The answer: It depends... (Isn't that always the answer?)
...upon how the student learns and what the instructor is trying to teach.
Everyone learns differently. Depending upon which study or promotion you believe there are between 3 and 36 basic learning styles. At a minimum there is visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Since I learn visually, a podcast would be brutal for me, and most lectures are difficult, unless the instructor used visuals well. At some point I had to learn to 'translate' from something like a podcast or boring lecture to pictures - either in my mind or in my notes.
Still, I skipped ~35% of all of my engineering lectures, because of my preference. I went to my senior dam design class twice (almost getting kicked out the second time because my professor didn't know who I was) and earned an A. Unfortunately, I had to re-calculate a half dozen formulas that my 800 page manual had wrong. Had I been in class the handouts would have corrected this. I also would have learned less had I been in class!
The other side of the coin is what an instructor is trying to teach - and I'm not just talking about the subject matter that you can get in a book. The most important thing I learned from an engineering school is how to engineer. The best classes were the ones where the professor made a mistake 30 minutes ago and had to go back and find it, and where a student asked a question that stumped the instructor.
As a tutor and instructor myself, a good portion of time is used in teaching a student how to learn. For example, if a student came in with a question about his MS Office class (no Gates comments please), I would spend most of my time teaching him how to read the book. Technical and semi-technical computer books are impossible to read if you don't know how. I almost never answered the question directly. This frustrated students at first, but they thanked me later for it, and many times did not need any more tutoring. Another student came to me with a Psychology question, so I taught her how to use the index of her book and read in context to find the answer for herself.
Lecturing is different from tutoring, but I found myself still needing to teach students how to learn. I taught a basic math class at a community college. 40% of the students were there because they had forgotten the material (over 40 years old), 50% didn't learn it in high school (under 20 years old), 5% had to take it as a prerequisite, and 10% had no clue how to add percents. I felt this was part of my responsibility to teach some learning skills, since they were paying to learn something that they had no tools to get and retain the knowledge properly. As a result, I had pop quizzes and random homework checks to encourage class participation, and had mini group projects. From this, the better students were able to help the poorer students, and some of the poorer students improved in their learning.
I viewed it as my responsibility to encourage both the good and poor students to come to class - good students to help during class discussion; poor students so I could teach them how to learn better. Ultimately, it is the students' responsibility to learn and do the work. The level of your students, how they learn, the content of the class, your teaching style, and the needs that arise all go into determining whether students need to come to class.
So to answer the original question: First, I would setup a simple, optional password to allow students to get the podcasts, either a per lecture password or per class password. I would set up a structure that allows the instructor to setup when the podcast is available, and if a password is needed, and the frequency of the password. This allows them to direct how to use this tool is used, and covers his responsibility. Students would talk to the ins
For comparison: Giza pyramids in a similar scale. Now all Google has to do is get a 1 meter resolution of Visoko and I'm suuuure everyone will see the new pyramids.
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I'm glad someone noticed my subtle attempt at humor. Believe it or not, percents were the hardest thing to teach. "Percent of", "Increased by a percent", and overlapping percents can confuse people. In the case above, either you can assume I'm trying to hit 100% (which most people are trying to do), or the sample overlaps. The overlapping bit is more of a statistics thing than basic math.
The answer: It depends... (Isn't that always the answer?)
...upon how the student learns and what the instructor is trying to teach.
Everyone learns differently. Depending upon which study or promotion you believe there are between 3 and 36 basic learning styles. At a minimum there is visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Since I learn visually, a podcast would be brutal for me, and most lectures are difficult, unless the instructor used visuals well. At some point I had to learn to 'translate' from something like a podcast or boring lecture to pictures - either in my mind or in my notes.
Still, I skipped ~35% of all of my engineering lectures, because of my preference. I went to my senior dam design class twice (almost getting kicked out the second time because my professor didn't know who I was) and earned an A. Unfortunately, I had to re-calculate a half dozen formulas that my 800 page manual had wrong. Had I been in class the handouts would have corrected this. I also would have learned less had I been in class!
The other side of the coin is what an instructor is trying to teach - and I'm not just talking about the subject matter that you can get in a book. The most important thing I learned from an engineering school is how to engineer. The best classes were the ones where the professor made a mistake 30 minutes ago and had to go back and find it, and where a student asked a question that stumped the instructor.
As a tutor and instructor myself, a good portion of time is used in teaching a student how to learn. For example, if a student came in with a question about his MS Office class (no Gates comments please), I would spend most of my time teaching him how to read the book. Technical and semi-technical computer books are impossible to read if you don't know how. I almost never answered the question directly. This frustrated students at first, but they thanked me later for it, and many times did not need any more tutoring. Another student came to me with a Psychology question, so I taught her how to use the index of her book and read in context to find the answer for herself.
Lecturing is different from tutoring, but I found myself still needing to teach students how to learn. I taught a basic math class at a community college. 40% of the students were there because they had forgotten the material (over 40 years old), 50% didn't learn it in high school (under 20 years old), 5% had to take it as a prerequisite, and 10% had no clue how to add percents. I felt this was part of my responsibility to teach some learning skills, since they were paying to learn something that they had no tools to get and retain the knowledge properly. As a result, I had pop quizzes and random homework checks to encourage class participation, and had mini group projects. From this, the better students were able to help the poorer students, and some of the poorer students improved in their learning.
I viewed it as my responsibility to encourage both the good and poor students to come to class - good students to help during class discussion; poor students so I could teach them how to learn better. Ultimately, it is the students' responsibility to learn and do the work. The level of your students, how they learn, the content of the class, your teaching style, and the needs that arise all go into determining whether students need to come to class.
So to answer the original question: First, I would setup a simple, optional password to allow students to get the podcasts, either a per lecture password or per class password. I would set up a structure that allows the instructor to setup when the podcast is available, and if a password is needed, and the frequency of the password. This allows them to direct how to use this tool is used, and covers his responsibility. Students would talk to the ins
For comparison: Giza pyramids in a similar scale. Now all Google has to do is get a 1 meter resolution of Visoko and I'm suuuure everyone will see the new pyramids.