On Online Classes

2020 05 26, Tuesday

A friend and I were discussing this:

After Weeks Of Online Classes At IIT, Here's The Truth - NDTV https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/online-classes-sound-cute-on-paper-heres-the-reality-2237464

WhatsApp turned out to be an unsuitable medium for this, so I wrote my comments out separately.

My father used to say that no comparison is fair.  This can be extended to ... .

I believe that any new scheme in publishing, education, learning, ​etc.​ does not replace the earlier schemes.  It only adds to it.

Old proverb:

The old order changeth, yielding place to the new.

New version:

The old order endures; it looks a bit different, since the new one has a place in it.

Example: In the old old days, people had to travel to a Gurukul, stay as a member of a Guru’s (extended) family, and study and learn.  Almost a 1-to-1 ratio.  OK, not exactly, but maybe 1 to N, when N was a single digit (usually).  [Disadvantage: the topper had to marry the daughter of the Guru!]

Then came the technique of writing (however crude it was).  And people thought that one can learn from the writings of the Guru and his shishyas.  That was possible, but the Guru was not replaced, only his students increased, and they had to meet and discuss their ideas and difficulties with the Guru.

Then came the printed book (Johannes Gutenberg).  The book did not replace the Guru, nor writing, nor discussions and interactions with a Guru.

Then came photography.  It added to the books, e​tc.​.  But people still did go out to look at stuff, samples, trees, hills, rivers, waterfalls, birds, dogs, ... .

Then came cinematography.  Another addition, note: NOT a replacement.  People watch the movie, and read the book, often do both.  Ditto for TV.  All that it did was to bring the cinema into homes.  Nothing of the old was replaced.  The order did change, but by addition, not by replacement.

Remember ​The Ascent of Man​, by Jacob Bronowski (BBC, 1973)?  He created the BBC TV Series, and then wrote the book (a must-read for any mature human).  His comparison of television and book is here (screenshots from Google Books):

I have not seen a neater comparison between television and the book.  But note: they both add to each other, the book (which came earlier) is not replaced by TV.  

After TV, we had on-demand TV, videotapes and discs, and then the internet.  Each item added to our ‘order’, it did not replace it.

We cannot hear the views of Dr Bronowski on the current order!  He died in 1974.

When I created the MOOC: ME209x Thermodynamics, I realised that it does not and will not replace any course, any series of lectures, or any book.  It may be considered as another book in a library.  Some ‘students’ will browse through it, some will taste it, some will swallow it, and a few will chew it and digest it (after Francis Bacon:​ Of Studies​).  We have done that with so many books (of all kinds).

The current situation: we are trying to replace real classes with online ones.  The idea of replacement is not correct.  Online lectures, video-recorded lectures, ​etc.​ will only add to our repertoire, it will not replace it or even change it significantly.  Ditto for evaluation, examination, ... .

Arrangement of Books in a Library

A few days ago, there was an item the BBC website:

Coronavirus: Library books rearranged in size order by cleaner

The title says it all, but one has to look at the photo to appreciate the result.

During the lockdown, a team of cleaners went through the shelves and re-arranged all books in the order of their heights!

This may be shocking for regular users of the library.
But that set me thinking:

When books are arranged in topic-order (typical for a scientific/technical library, which uses a coding, e.g. the UDC), the result is an arrangement with random heights.   However, this is very convenient for people (students/teachers/readers) to find books on a particular subject, field, or topic.

However, this means that the vertical spacing between shelves is dictated by the tallest book, and hence lots of empty space is also 'stored'.  This may be considered a waste of space - a scarce resource in many places.

Suppose the whole library arranges books by height.  That means, jumbled up w.r.t. subject, etc..
But on a given shelf, there will be books of almost the same height.  That means, we can adjust the empty space above them to the minimum, and thus store more books!  The library will now need less overall space.  Or, in a given space, we can store more books.

There is another advantage of this.  Serendipity and happiness will increase.

Consider the scene: I visit a library, I go through the indices (necessary now), and find that the book on Thermodynamics that I want to access is on Shelf 23B4.  I go there, and find the book I need.  However, there is a good probability that surrounding that I find a novel that I wanted to read (say Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days).  I am happier, and my life is richer.

As a result of this, engineers may look at fiction, they may also read some sociology!  You can extend this and imagine yourself in such a library.  Communication between scientists, engineers, sociologists, economists, and laypeople will improve.

Does any small library want to try this out?  I will help out.  And, the reduction in space will be nicely quantifiable!