Live vs recorded sessions: Shoaib and Ivan

Jul 31, 2013 • Ivan Gonzalez

Shoaib did a presentation on a bash script that fetches images at regular
intervals from a website and joins them into a video. The images are processed
to change their filenames, eliminate duplicates, etc.. Ivan did a presentation
on how to include and use the docopt library from a Python program, documenting
a small script that sends an email from Python.

We had some technical problems at the beginning. We could not get Skype screen
sharing to work. We switched to Google Hangouts, which finally worked fine, but
it had changed its interface also, so it was quite hard to find out how to
invite someone and then start a hangout. We think that this should be taken into
account when considering which system is better. We both liked each other
presentation, and think they were interesting, relevant, and pitched at the
right level.

Regarding the comparison with the recorded sessions, we agree that the live
session is better. These are some thoughts:

  • Immediate feedback was very useful; one can ask and clarify what the person
    is doing. This is most important advantage of the online rather than a
    recording.
  • Online is more efficient, but can be difficult to connect with that person if
    you don’t see them face to face.
  • With the live session is hard to control the time you spend in teaching.
  • You can switch between different applications (e.g. website, terminal, editor
    and images files) fastly, which we think leads to a richer experience.

We think that has also some advantages to teaching in a standard setting:

  • Teaching a class saves time although you cannot personalise; a one-on-one
    live session are better because you get feedback.
  • It’s easier for shy people to ask their questions without being drowned out
    by louder people or fear of embarrassment.

We thought a good use of live teaching could be following-up more standard
classes, e.g. support weekly support classes combined with monthly
in-person/recorded classes.

Regarding how to evaluate learning from live vs recorded, we agree it’s a
dificult task. You could do a survey after the different styles of learning to
see if people felt they had learnt useful skills, how confident they felt in
applying what they learnt, or whether they would recommend that method to
others.