Your educational experiment involved 54 schoolchildren, aged 15-17, who were randomly selected from around 1,000 applicants, from 36 UK schools – mostly state schools. The teenagers spent two hours a week in online classes and after eight weeks were given a test using questions from an Oxford postgraduate quantum physics exam. More than 80% of the pupils passed and around half earned a distinction. Were you surprised by their success?
At one point, I was going to call off the whole thing because I thought it was going to be a complete disaster. We’d originally wanted the kids to interact with each other on social media or communicate online, but that wasn’t allowed due to the ethical guidelines for the experiment. I thought, what sort of educational experience is it, if you can’t talk to each other?
This is the Covid generation: none of them put their cameras on [for the online classes], so we were looking at a black screen. None of them asked questions using their voices, they just typed. It was a difficult teaching challenge by all standards. We also saw a self-esteem problem with the students. But the majority of kids liked that we had announced that you didn’t need a complex maths background. The maths had been a barrier to kids who had wanted to access this knowledge.
And then we got back the numbers. They did significantly better than we see from university-level students. Exams were marked blind, so we don’t know how many came in with the aim of pursuing Stem. We are processing that data now.
> we were looking at a black screen. None of them asked questions using their voices, they just typed. It was a difficult teaching challenge by all standards
IMO This is one of the most depressing things about teaching teenagers online in real-time. But I don't know what we can do about it. Should we adapt to it? Are there any benefits to enforcing the cameras and voice dialogues?
The only way you can get teenagers to really engage with any kind of instruction is to take some of the guardrails off and let them interact freely. This means they'll ask controversial questions, use slang, curse now and again, crack jokes, and go off into tangents that they've been thinking about. Adults are allowed to do all this at work, but teenagers aren't allowed to do it at school, and virtual education makes this even more boring.
One example: for online teaching, that may require a streaming model where there's a live, mostly uncensored chat where they can keep side conversations going and react to the material. I'm not sure if that model would be of use, but I do know that trying to get teenagers to engage requires the same thing it always has, which is taking them seriously as adults and not censoring them.
It didn't say their exam was an entire postgraduate exam. It said they passed an exam consisting of questions from a postgraduate exam.
I'd guess that if someone tried to take the entire exam it would include things that do require "complex math" (whatever that is). But you don't have to get to the parts of QM that require such math in order to cover things that exhibit the meat of QM, such as superposition, entanglement, and uncertainty principles. I'd guess that it was those kinds of things covered for these students and that is what they were tested on.
That sounds neat, but it seems like it's specifically for certain (discrete) processes? Like can you use this to e.g. derive the shape of atomic orbitals or predict something about spectra (which are kind of important parts of quantum mechanics)? If not then the implication that it's somehow teaching people years of material in 16 hours is about as silly as it sounds.
The "famously bizarre" parts are the parts that tie it back to the questions that first motivated it, e.g. what is "stuff" made out of, why do molecules behave the way they do, and how to reconcile that with naive predictions you might have from Coulomb's law.
It is many years since I visited CERN, but I really enjoyed my time there. One of the scientists was wandering around the visitor center willing to chat about the science at a quite detailed level.
Programs like this education experiment are essential to maintain interest in these big science projects that can take decades of planning and execution. A sliver of hope for humanity that we are still willing to collaborate on such a massive scale to deliver and run such projects.
Well done everyone, apart from the person that decided the home of the internet was not capable of self hosting the videos.
“ Subtitles are available in all languages! Simply switch on closed captions and select the auto-translation of the original subtitles in your preferred language.”
I think each speaker has its native language and hence this is the universal access approach.
I did wonder whether their native language is English. But English good for me. Well we are not commenting on …
That is brilliant and beautiful, I just wished that they would not default to English.
Sure that’s what you use to talk about particle physics, but this is targeted towards kids and by doing this the “Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire” makes it harder for French, Swiss, German etc. kids to follow.
It should not be hard to do a voiceover, at 4h I’d even volunteer.
Right, but there are other reasons why French is more obvious, not just "by default" but based on arguments and reasoning. Or has HN truly forgotten about these things?
I'm sure they have infinite resources and time to make it available in every language ever including braille.
But seriously, it's obviously meant to have a wider audience than just those countries you mentioned. Not even mentioning the elephant in the room that they are funded by many other eu countries (~23) that have their own languages as well. What else besides the most international language in the world should they have chosen?
Adding a language does not exclude another? I completely understand that you do the videos in English and for adult audience that’s great, but for kids below 16 it’s a bit challanging.
I just wish that for non English speaking kids there would be more resources in their native languages, especially since mathematical interests and interest in languages rarely are equally strong.
The fact that the US has such a large unified one language market really gives them an edge when it comes to creating content.
It would be stupid to ask American educators to provide content in language irrelevant in their country; but given that France, Italy and Germany together provide for 40% of cern budget wishing for human made subtitles surly is nothing outrageous.
This is version 1.0. CERN education has a great track record of native language activities and will no doubt expand to other languages assuming this course is successful and useful.
YouTube is doing some auto-dubbing. It detects I'm in Argentina and it shows the autranslated Spanish version. I hate it. It's not bad, a little robotic, but not bad.
For kids below 16 ... I agree. My 7 y.o. is studing some English at school and sometimes she watchs cartoons in English, and she aparently understand most of it. But watching technical stuff is more difficult.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/16/physicist-bo...
Your educational experiment involved 54 schoolchildren, aged 15-17, who were randomly selected from around 1,000 applicants, from 36 UK schools – mostly state schools. The teenagers spent two hours a week in online classes and after eight weeks were given a test using questions from an Oxford postgraduate quantum physics exam. More than 80% of the pupils passed and around half earned a distinction. Were you surprised by their success?
At one point, I was going to call off the whole thing because I thought it was going to be a complete disaster. We’d originally wanted the kids to interact with each other on social media or communicate online, but that wasn’t allowed due to the ethical guidelines for the experiment. I thought, what sort of educational experience is it, if you can’t talk to each other?
This is the Covid generation: none of them put their cameras on [for the online classes], so we were looking at a black screen. None of them asked questions using their voices, they just typed. It was a difficult teaching challenge by all standards. We also saw a self-esteem problem with the students. But the majority of kids liked that we had announced that you didn’t need a complex maths background. The maths had been a barrier to kids who had wanted to access this knowledge.
And then we got back the numbers. They did significantly better than we see from university-level students. Exams were marked blind, so we don’t know how many came in with the aim of pursuing Stem. We are processing that data now.
> we were looking at a black screen. None of them asked questions using their voices, they just typed. It was a difficult teaching challenge by all standards
IMO This is one of the most depressing things about teaching teenagers online in real-time. But I don't know what we can do about it. Should we adapt to it? Are there any benefits to enforcing the cameras and voice dialogues?
The only way you can get teenagers to really engage with any kind of instruction is to take some of the guardrails off and let them interact freely. This means they'll ask controversial questions, use slang, curse now and again, crack jokes, and go off into tangents that they've been thinking about. Adults are allowed to do all this at work, but teenagers aren't allowed to do it at school, and virtual education makes this even more boring.
One example: for online teaching, that may require a streaming model where there's a live, mostly uncensored chat where they can keep side conversations going and react to the material. I'm not sure if that model would be of use, but I do know that trying to get teenagers to engage requires the same thing it always has, which is taking them seriously as adults and not censoring them.
I'm autistic and prefer text for virtually all communication because it's easier for me to control a keyboard than it is for me to control my voice.
Now I have questions about the Oxford postgraduate quantum physics exam :)
Exactly, how can one pass a postgraduate level exam 'without complex math'?
It didn't say their exam was an entire postgraduate exam. It said they passed an exam consisting of questions from a postgraduate exam.
I'd guess that if someone tried to take the entire exam it would include things that do require "complex math" (whatever that is). But you don't have to get to the parts of QM that require such math in order to cover things that exhibit the meat of QM, such as superposition, entanglement, and uncertainty principles. I'd guess that it was those kinds of things covered for these students and that is what they were tested on.
That sounds neat, but it seems like it's specifically for certain (discrete) processes? Like can you use this to e.g. derive the shape of atomic orbitals or predict something about spectra (which are kind of important parts of quantum mechanics)? If not then the implication that it's somehow teaching people years of material in 16 hours is about as silly as it sounds.
The "famously bizarre" parts are the parts that tie it back to the questions that first motivated it, e.g. what is "stuff" made out of, why do molecules behave the way they do, and how to reconcile that with naive predictions you might have from Coulomb's law.
> from 36 UK schools
> and after eight weeks were given a test
Was the test remote or in-person? I've seen children (and adults) cheating even for stupid tests that have no grades/prices/whatever.
It is many years since I visited CERN, but I really enjoyed my time there. One of the scientists was wandering around the visitor center willing to chat about the science at a quite detailed level.
Programs like this education experiment are essential to maintain interest in these big science projects that can take decades of planning and execution. A sliver of hope for humanity that we are still willing to collaborate on such a massive scale to deliver and run such projects.
Well done everyone, apart from the person that decided the home of the internet was not capable of self hosting the videos.
It's only 4 hours? I expected it to be longer, even for an introductory course.
Anyway, it's a great effort! And it makes me happy to see how seriously they take it.
Since I have near 0 knowledge in the matter, I might actually take it.
Amazing stuff! I visited CERN this year on holiday. One of the few places where humanity's desire for betterment remains.
Strange about the comments.
“ Subtitles are available in all languages! Simply switch on closed captions and select the auto-translation of the original subtitles in your preferred language.”
I think each speaker has its native language and hence this is the universal access approach.
I did wonder whether their native language is English. But English good for me. Well we are not commenting on …
I'm surprised about the auto-translation, it's working great. However, unforntunately I think there is no option to auto-translate the quizzes.
That is brilliant and beautiful, I just wished that they would not default to English.
Sure that’s what you use to talk about particle physics, but this is targeted towards kids and by doing this the “Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire” makes it harder for French, Swiss, German etc. kids to follow.
It should not be hard to do a voiceover, at 4h I’d even volunteer.
What should they have defaulted to?
I mean, wouldn't any language they choose exclude others?
French would definitely be the more obvious choice in this case
Both English and French are the official working languages of Cern.
They should include more languages than just English, but French is not by default the more obvious choice.
Right, but there are other reasons why French is more obvious, not just "by default" but based on arguments and reasoning. Or has HN truly forgotten about these things?
The previous poster was actually inviting you to expound on the other reasons.
Volunteer accepted!
1. Watch the video with subtitles in your language.
2. Record audio of you reading the subtitles in time with the video.
3. Upload your recording as YouTube video or to an audio hosting website
4. Post a link to your recording, as a comment on YouTube and in a message to the producers
Optional: Download the video from YouTube using available tools, and merge your audio track into the video, and re upload it.
I'm sure they have infinite resources and time to make it available in every language ever including braille.
But seriously, it's obviously meant to have a wider audience than just those countries you mentioned. Not even mentioning the elephant in the room that they are funded by many other eu countries (~23) that have their own languages as well. What else besides the most international language in the world should they have chosen?
Adding a language does not exclude another? I completely understand that you do the videos in English and for adult audience that’s great, but for kids below 16 it’s a bit challanging.
I just wish that for non English speaking kids there would be more resources in their native languages, especially since mathematical interests and interest in languages rarely are equally strong.
The fact that the US has such a large unified one language market really gives them an edge when it comes to creating content.
It would be stupid to ask American educators to provide content in language irrelevant in their country; but given that France, Italy and Germany together provide for 40% of cern budget wishing for human made subtitles surly is nothing outrageous.
This is version 1.0. CERN education has a great track record of native language activities and will no doubt expand to other languages assuming this course is successful and useful.
YouTube is doing some auto-dubbing. It detects I'm in Argentina and it shows the autranslated Spanish version. I hate it. It's not bad, a little robotic, but not bad.
For kids below 16 ... I agree. My 7 y.o. is studing some English at school and sometimes she watchs cartoons in English, and she aparently understand most of it. But watching technical stuff is more difficult.
It’s much easier to learn complicated things in one’s native tongue.
OTOH, it’s a huge advantage to learn technical English early on. It’s the language of computers, engineering, science, math, business.
Well, it says 'pilot version' so maybe there will be a more definitive version later that is available in more languages.