Over the past 2 years, students around the world have been experiencing the absolute horror of online learning. Let’s paint the picture: one insanely boring teacher rambling on (and maybe sharing their screen to show off their rivetingPowerPoint) with any number of students sitting on mute desperately trying to stay awake. There’s little to no engagement, the teachers hate it, the students hate it, and all is wrong with the world (don’t even get me started on Blackboard or Canvas). Luckily, I only had to deal with this for 2 months as I “graduated” grad school on Zoom but more and more classes are being taught in a grid from hell.
That’s not to say that all traditional online education is bad. Plenty of folks have figured out ways to take lectures and turn them into quality content. Harvard’s CS50 is the prime example of this, combining world-class curriculum with the production quality of a TV show. It’s not a drastic departure from what you’d get in the physical classroom. In fact, Professor Malan teaches the course live on campus as well as distributing it online. The key here is that Malan and his crew believe that the best way to get through to students is engaging (and dare I say fun) content.