Lincoln did a great job at presenting the material. The biggest difference between the videos and Lincoln's presentation was that it was in realtime meaning that we could ask questions right there and then. There is a big difference when an entire class is focusing on particular topic and when students are sporadically watching the videos on their own. That is what is missing from online videos. The interaction is missing when watching the videos. Sure, we have the forum to ask questions but the problem is that sometimes i don't even know what to ask. Yesterday, I asked a question based on the question that another student asked. Again, even if people used the forum to post questions, we are all doing it when we can. Sometimes ill be watching the videos early morning or late at night and I can't expect answers immediately and that uninspires me because I am so focus at that moment and feel like i hit a road block. Even though lincoln did essentially cover the same material as the videos, the difference is that it was in a class setting where all the students are thinking about the same thing at the same time. I think thats the beauty of lecturing in person. Online videos should be supplemental and not the core of the class. I hope the class has more presentations like that in the future. 

It's interesting that you say this. As you know this class is being taught experimentally to see how well this approach works. 

What I like about it is that students often make use of the class time to work on the material. My guess is that you get a lot more out of working on the material in class with each other than when working on it at home.

Lectures are considered outmoded these days. The problem with them is that for the most part, students just sit and watch (or don't watch) -- and perhaps listen. Often many students don't listen, and many students don't ask questions in lectures. So to a great extent the time is not well used. (I think of time as being well used to the extent that students are thinking actively during that time. Under that criteria, most lecture time is not well used. And by the way, taking notes does not count as thinking!)

So here's a possibility. How about watching the videos and identifying the parts that give you trouble. (And don't say the whole thing!) Let us know what those parts are (by posting to the forum), and we can go over those parts in class.

Please do your best to pin point where your confusion lies. That will help us decide what to focus on. (Also, you will often find that by identifying the areas of confusion you can clarify the issue by yourself.)

The forum posts are important because they give us a chance to decide how to present the material. For example, I prepared the image that Lincoln used between the two sections. The first section didn't see that image -- although you can now look at it on the wiki page. For the first section Lincoln worked from Roughgarden's slides. In this case the particular slide was quite confusing. So seeing a presentation based on a clearer graphic probably helped. But the only reason I created the image was because I knew in advance we would talk about it in the second section!

I would also guess that if you hadn't seen the videos and hadn't at least found that you were confused by how Kosaraju's algorithm works, you wouldn't have paid as much attention to Lincoln. Your confusion was motivation that would have been lacking had the algorithm just been part of a standard lecture.

le

Hey professor Abbott, you showed up in one of the cs101 videos!

And if this is an experiment and we're the guinea pigs, where's the control group?