Thoughts on design: The 100,000-student classroom

This video was shared by Peter Allen, and a few things caught my attention. The first was the use of written notes captured by a camera...it feels counter-intuitive, but they had good feedback about the sense it created a more knowledgeable friend explaining something. The second thing to jump out is that everyone was working on the same thing at the same time; again, this seems to go against notions of personalisation and differentiation, but I can see how it would lead to a 'critical mass' in the subject associated forums. And the final thing was making some of the material available for a limited time to help with motivation and work to deadlines. Hmmm.

While I really 'get' some of this, and for sure deadlines for example, can be a great motivator. But to remove the material completely seems to negate the notion of being able to review, recycle, and reflect. Also, with the handwritten notes - are there issues of accessibilty here (low vision learners for example)? And finally, everyone learning at the same time at the same pace...Peter Norvig mentioned Sal Khan as a source of knowledge, but something that Khan's research is indicating is (no surprise here) everyone learns at a different pace and in a different way.

What are your thoughts?

The description from the site reads: http://www.ted.com In the fall of 2011 Peter Norvig taught a class with Sebastian Thrun on artificial intelligence at Stanford attended by 175 students in situ -- and over 100,000 via an interactive webcast. He shares what he learned about teaching to a global classroom. Image There is currently no consensus on how closely the brain should be simulated. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)