On watching the past

I'm not sure how much I like watching old classes as part of a learning experience. I have done it a few times, and overall, it seems a little problematic.

The first time I really got into watching old class footage was when I was a first year law student taking copyright law. It was an extremely tough class, and the professor made it clear that anything was fair game, since the entire class was recorded. I watched a good 6 or 7 hours of those lectures, at least. I would play them when I worked on other things, so I could listen in.

I did really well in that class, but just knowing that the resource was there made me feel like I HAD to take advantage of it, whether or not I wanted to. This was law school, so there is a competitiveness that isn't in every program, but I knew that is others were using the materials, i sure as hell had to.

Info and control is a little different, and I think it's because I'm not actually watching the classes I was in, I'm watching the classes that came before me. And I don't really like it for 2 reasons that ties into one another. I think that the professors are using it in an effort to not have to go over the material again; I can see why they would do this, but I don't like it because it presumes that the captured state of the previous discussion is the only one really worth addressing. I'm interested in what the class last year had to say about cybernetic systems. I'm not willing to accept that that's all there is to be said on the subject, or that it's not important to go over it again. Professors often say that they learn alongside the class; i take this statement with varying degrees of credulity based upon the person, but having us use a previous classes discussion to learn about the material seems to be pretty solid evidence that the professors think that they got that part nailed.

Now this can be a really GOOD thing. There's no reason to have to teach people alchemy so you can teach them physics and chemistry: sometimes precedents can be built off and then greater things can be accomplished. And I think that's what the professors are trying to do. However, I'm not sure that everyone is on the same page with this: I haven't watched every lecture, and I'm sure that everyone else hasn't , so it's not like we're building on a very solid foundation...