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Self-paced co-learning and the freedom to talk back to the teacher

9 tweets · July 2021 · 56 likes · 3 retweets · read on Twitter

The power of self-paced co-learning: freedom to talk back. A lil story of some learners learning in their own way 🧵

A few months ago, I got excited about a course on the Ideal Parent Figure protocol, and I wanted to do it but I had the curse of enough self-knowledge to know that if I just bought the course I was unlikely to make it through even with its live calls.

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

The number of online courses I have signed up for & not actually completed is absurdly high. Especially self-paced ones but even like… I dropped out of @fortelabs' BASB halfway. Watched a lil of @nateliason Roam course. Early backer on @m_ashcroft's AT course, haven't touched.

So what I did was recruit a few friends to go through the course videos with me instead of the live calls. This turned out to be a way better idea than I'd even imagined. Having friends made there be an obvious time to go through it, but it was so different than live lecture!

These co-watching sessions were what allowed me to realize that one of the hidden lessons of school is:

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

@made_in_cosmos If an authority says something I think is incorrect, misleading, or confused, I may get punished for trying to correct or clarify.

We were listening in parallel, and if someone started feeling uncomfortable with what the teacher was saying, that person would post in the chat with a critique, and others would chime in, and we might even pause the instructor altogether to share concerns.

This is so inconceivable in the context of a live teacher in a classroom. Can get part of it with sidechannels, but there's a qualitative shift that happens when you get to HIT PAUSE on the teacher and speak your own voice out loud instead, uninterrupted. Profoundly empowering.

You can do this with writing too, which I highly recommend! Either pull something into a google doc or use an app like @worldbrain to comment directly on webpages or PDFs.

QC @QiaochuYuan ·

boy i just really really like being able to loudly disagree with the text right next to the text [text says some dumb shit] NO THIS IS DUMB I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS HERE IS HOW I CURRENTLY THINK IT ACTUALLY IS INSTEAD very sanity-inducing

If your approach to learning doesn't on net encourage you to feel what you feel and know what you know, it's probably net traumatizing.

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

Healing from trauma amounts to learning that it is okay to know what you know, and feel what you feel. — Bessel van der Kolk (quoted from my notes of an out-loud remark, so maybe slightly paraphrased, hence no " marks)

Was feeling vaguely aware of this thread today when on a private instructional call (combined theory & practice) I proposed that instead of the instructor presenting the slides, the learners did (which made the already-known fact that we already had a lot of background v obvious)