GUNTHER ROLAND: One of the changes
that we made over the last three or four
years was to flip the classroom in 8.13 and 8.14.
Essentially what we found is that we spend a lot of time
in class with lectures by the lab staff which in the end
seemed to be only moderately useful in really getting
the material across.
So what we decided to do was to export
the lectures in the form of videos to the MITx platform
and replace the time that we spent on that previously
with in-class exercises and class discussions
to really rehearse some of the concepts that were introduced
in the lectures in class, which also gives us
a much closer communication with the students.
And you can find out what it is that really needs
to be explored in more depth.
The other thing that we did is move
the prep questions for each of the experiments
also to that platform.
What is important there is that we
can give the students instantaneous feedback
on whether they got the question right or not,
and remove the manuals for the labs onto the same platform
to have a lot of that in one place.
And I think, as I said, the main benefit
is really that we can use the time that we free up
in the class for discussions and exercises
that are much more effective than the students sitting
there and listening to one of us talk.