Very recently, I was contacted by a representative from one of the many corporations (I hate to call them education providers) and asked if I would be willing to take classes for their students on an adhoc basic on weekends. I love teaching and consider it an honorable profession. Unsurprisingly, I agreed to discuss the opportunity further. The academic panel wanted a demonstration of my abilities to teach and I was more than happy to point them to a long 1.5 hour lecture that I gave to a mixed audience on probability distributions. Without wasting much time, they came back to me and observed that in this video, I have addressed a live audience and used a whiteboard whereas I would be expected to teach students online and use digital tools.
This should have been first alarm bell but I indulged them and gave them a fresh recording on a mutually decided topic. They took their own sweet time and came back to me with a feedback modeled using the classical "good news first, bad news later" approach.
The good news was that my communication skills were excellent. That my understanding of the subject was good. That my use of annotations was good too!
And then they delivered the bad news - I was not engaging the audience enough (in a demo recording!!!), I was not using graphics (yes, student imagination is not to be pushed, everything must be illustrated with modern graphics), I was not conducting random polls (yes, it gives the students a much needed break every few minutes after they have become very tired) and I was not providing any use cases (why would I spill all my beans in a demo recording with no contract of how the recording itself will be used).
There was an audacious suggestion that I agree to recording or performing another demo session. My reply to them made the following very clear.
I would not do another demo session. If an academic panel made of IITians and IIMians was not able to judge my teaching abilities based on two recorded sessions, then it was not worth providing more evidence.
And that when it comes to methods of engagement, we would have to agree to disagree. Most great teachers do not use graphics, do not use polls and do not use pop quizzes in the middle of the lectures. My style of teaching makes a student feel as if they are a part of a classroom where a real teacher is standing in front of them and they are being taken through a journey. Students have praised me considerably for this refreshing method of teaching that breaks the (what I believe are stupid) norms of massive online teaching models.
That my students have never complained of being disengaged and this was a fact that could not be demonstrated in a recorded session.
Sure enough, there was a polite acknowledgement but I have not heard anything back from them. And I guess I don't want to! The whole incident made me think of the best lecturers whose magic I was lucky enough to witness. In some cases, these teachers stood at the blackboard with no notes and just a chalk in their hand. And then they weaved the most engrossing of narratives which kept us hooked for not ten minutes but hours and hours. We forgot our thirst, we forgot our hunger and we forgot time!
This state where the mind enters a trance and does some real learning has been recognized in brain studies and has in fact been given a name - it is called the "flow state". And only people who are absorbed in what they do, with sufficient depth, can alone realize this state and use the full power of their brains in crafting ideas and learning things in depth. And guess what modern teaching is doing - it is going in the opposite direction! Just look at some of the rules that have been written by someone for designing online courses - keep videos shorter than 10 minutes, conduct many pop quizzes, show lots of animations and graphics and give plenty of examples. How can someone enter that state of flow and do real deep learning if we are going to be constantly bombarded by interruptions?
When I expressed this view to some people, they pointed out to me that perhaps there is no market for such teachers which is why the corporations offering these MOOCs have adopted this model. I am not sure what to make of this. But I have plently of students who wish to hear more of what I have to say precisely because of the classical approach that I take! But yes, we could still argue that these students are in minority and that majority of the students who will eventually give their money to the corporations, don't care about this kind of deep study. And to this, I have only one thing to say - may God save their souls!
Another argument that was presented is - these corporations need to give jobs. And jobs require practical knowledge. And practical knowledge, for it to be imparted properly, perhaps requires this kind of method of teaching. Again, a very interesting point but my counter to this is simple - don't people who learn the classical way get a job? In fact I would argue that the top most jobs are reserved for these people! Because it is not the sole purpose of the teacher to present information to a student. A higher purpose is to teach students how to think. And the engineering of our brain can only happen if it is deeply involved in the teaching and learning process.
I have witnessed the magical web being weaved by many teachers. And all teachers known for this magic had one thing in common - their ability to dilate time, their ability to inspire, their ability to touch the students at a sub-conscious level, their ability to reengineer the thought process of the students. And it is from this very fine cadre of magicians that I try and learn how to perform the magic myself. And it leaves me with such immense satisfaction that I will never hesitate in saying no to corporations that do not recognize this ability or the students who can't value it!
Happy learning! Happy teaching!