Engineering education: Libraries are not lecturers
Mass distribution of learning material has existed for centuries, yet it has never replaced guided learning. While reading and listening can build up facts and skills, producing complex work of real value remains much harder without feedback on the process.
Mathematics, for example, is not just applying rules. It demands reasoning, and writing proofs that clearly communicate that reasoning. Following along with lectures can start the process, but ingraining the techniques requires writing proofs of unfamiliar problems. Someone must read those proofs and point out where reasoning is unclear, incomplete, or flawed—suggesting alternate notation or a shorter route. Good teachers add notes like: “This is a cool idea you have developed here, and it points toward this complex-analysis area we haven’t covered yet.”
Similarly, psychology cannot be learned by memorizing summaries and a few papers. Students need probing questions: “There is a critical flaw in this paper’s sampling methodology—can you find it? How would you improve it?” and “What systematic bias can we expect in these results?” Without such questions and guidance toward answers, half the text is missed, leaving students unprepared to judge others’ research or design their own experiments.
This process cannot be automated yet. Humans must read and respond to your work, preferably at interactive latencies.
