Algorithmic trading

My colleague and I had a satisfying experience today. Students have taken a low-stakes test where they are marked automatically. The key benefit we have found to this approach is that students can get immediate feedback after the test, and we can provide a meaningful debrief at the same time. Students get closure and move

Worked solutions: when and how to use them?

‘Worked solutions’ are a relatively modern phenomenon and are symptomatic of mass education. With ample time available, a master would guide an apprentice through the solution to a problem by the Socratic method, and would adapt to the apprentice’s approach. There would be no need for a ‘worked solution’ because the only meaningful solution for

Challenge yourself

I had a great time on a climbing wall recently, my first time trying it. There’s different levels of challenge on the different walls, and even on the same wall. You can start by climbing however you like, or challenge yourself on the same wall to only use blobs of a certain colour to make

Friction in the ideal learning process

We have identified ‘getting stuck‘ as a universal experience in self-study. Students and teachers alike declare that they get stuck a lot when doing homework. Sometimes – but not always! – getting stuck is a blockage that impedes progress in learning. Unblocking is seen as an essential role for tutors. Students attend ‘clinics’ to relieve

What does it mean to ‘have an appreciation’ for something?

Some activities are core to an engineering education, like applying a theoretical model to make a design decision. Other parts of the education only require the graduate to ‘have an appreciation’ for them. For example, a mechanical engineer needs an ‘appreciation’ for manufacturing processes; a software engineer needs an ‘appreciation’ for how hardware works; et.

Put it in the calendar! (How to study)

Graduates are people who know how to study. A degree programme provides structure in the early days, which is gradually removed as the student becomes more independent. That’s why educationalists call it ‘scaffolding’. It is true that graduates also graduate with some knowledge. That knowledge is a foundation for some occupations. Law for lawyers, engineering

Online vs. in-person: The student experience of tutorials in engineering (dissertation)

Here is the dissertation I completed in 2022 as part of an M.Ed. degree at Imperial. Title: Online vs. in-person: The student experience of tutorials in engineering. TL;DR: I used student art to find that online tutorials offer flexibility but lead to boredom and hopelessness; when in-person students enjoy peer support but get distracted. A

Getting stuck

To kick off the Lambda Feedback project we ran a workshop on our experience of maths homework. We worked in four groups and found remarkable similarity in the answers, which we then grouped together. We identified the following dimensions of the student experience: Getting stuck Practice and discipline Learning resources Social Time Cultural Emotional Creative

Computers make us human

Educational institutions (as opposed to, for example, apprenticeships or parenting) are limited in the amount of time a teacher can spend with a student. What happens during that limited time together? Could any of that activity be automated, so that the time together is higher quality? The diagram above lists some qualities and abilities of

Teaching things we don’t know

Michael Polanyi wrote powerfully in the 1960’s about ‘tacit knowledge’. He reasoned that ‘we know more than we can tell’. An example is the hunches of a scientist exploring a nebulous problem – they are guided by their tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge has important implications for teaching. How does a scientist or engineer learn to