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BGonline.org Forums
Comments on the Web Lecture
Posted By: Jason Lee
Date: Friday, 29 May 2009, at 5:25 a.m.
I have a lot of feedback I'd like to give on the web lecture, which finished a little while ago.
First of all, I am generally very enthusiastic about this concept of the web lecture. Being able to hear some expert opinions can only be good for my game, and there were some interesting concepts that were discussed. Overall, I am very happy that I took two hours and spent ten bucks to participate. I actually mostly watched and listened... I chimed in once to talk about the meaning of equity and EMG, and then ducked back in the shadows.
I didn't ask any questions, although I had some from time to time... they weren't profound, and my cell phone sucks ass, so it was a pain to take it off mute, and I don't have speaker phone on it. My reluctance to ask questions was almost entirely technological on my end.
I'd like to offer some suggestions for improvement. I don't want these to be seen as criticisms... even though I'm about to launch into a laundry list of things that I think could be better, please keep in mind that in the big picture, I think it was great.
Don't show the bot analysis right away.
Here's how the session went. Phil (I think) had a bot open on his machine, and the webex thingamajig would let me see what was on his computer via my web browser. He opened up a pre-analyzed match file, and would pick a move to discuss.
The main problem was, I never got a chance to think about the play before everything went up on the screen. The position, dice roll, and bot analysis went up there all at once.
Phil tried for a little while to just put the position up, but there didn't seem to be a way for him to prevent it from showing up at least for a little bit.
The bot they used was unfamiliar to me (it wasn't GNU or Snowie or even anything I'd ever heard of). While it had a neat feature of showing big arrows to indicate moves (useful in this context), otherwise it seemed too clunky for the job.
That leads me to the next suggestion:
Let's have the problems in advance!
When I teach mathematics, I am going to spend a certain amount of time with the students working out problems myself -- just showing them how to do a problem. This is most effective when the students have had an opportunity to work out the problem in advance. Then they can hear me talk about pitfalls, or they can determine where they went wrong, and they can ask "what happens if the problem is a little bit different, and we change blip to blap?"
I think a great way to do a lecture like this is to publish 10 or 20 problems in advance and let me work on them. Then I show up to the web lecture, and I can see the teacher go over them. I guess I could look in the back of the book (use a bot) if I wanted to, but that isn't going to help much... what I really want to hear is the expert opinion.
The thing that I like about this web lecture concept is that it is one of the few ways, in a distance learning concept, that I can interact with an expert. The back of the book might give the answer, but you cannot get the thought process from that.
Let's look for problems with interesting themes, rather than just looking at errors that a particular human made.
The choice of problems was a big sticking point for me. I don't like the idea of selecting problems because they were ones that one particular human made. The fact that one particular person made an error doesn't not necessarily make the position interesting. There needs to be a better reason for choosing a problem for discussion.
A better way of picking problems is to focus on a particular theme, or to choose problems that is known to stump LOTS of people.
In a way, this didn't matter too much, because many of the problems were interesting and generated good discussion.
It would be nice to be able to use a text messaging feature more.
I should have mentioned that another reason I didn't pipe up much was that the number of people talking was near a critical mass. It was manageable, but I was worried that two or three more voices on the line would get messy.
The interface had a chat interface -- let's try to use that! Then I don't have to try to get my voice into the stream... I can type my question and then the smart folks can answer my question when we get there.
Now for some minor stuff:
I hate 3D boards.
Enough said.
Use the keyboard shortcuts.
At times, Phil would remove the analysis -- there were keyboard shortcuts that could accomplish this. This cuts down on the clunkiness.
There was a weird mix of advanced and beginner level topics.
I can't call this a criticism, more of an observation. We bopped around from talking about gammon values and robustness to why you should not slot an opening 21 when you're behind post-Crawford. I would never want to quash any questions... however, maybe some specific themes in the problems can more clearly focus the discussion.
Finally, thanks to Stick, Perry, Mary, and Phil for an interesting two hours -- hope I didn't miss anybody else. I think it was definitely educational!
JLee
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