It will be a great problem if your class was 100 student or so But yes, most of the students prefer visualizations and animations than textual content. This is one of the findings of our study.

Thank you Dr. Nelson for the link. Actually some educators believe in learning styles and others don’t believe in it. Human computer Interaction researchers and multimedia presentation researchers believe that visual presentations will have more positive impact on students since it rely on the large bandwidth of the student’s visual channel to the brain. Learning styles is a really debatable concept.

I totally agree with you that communicating with the students outside the formal setting is really desirable and makes you more intimate with your students which makes you more able to understand their preferences.

Thank you for the information about critical thinking. Just I want to add a simple thing. For those subjects in which we are taught certain facts such as science and maths, the probability of the students to be less engaged in these courses is very high and in addition most of the time they will not remember most of what they have learned after finishing the course. On the other hand, in these courses where critical thinking is applied, students are more engaged to the course and they can better remember and also apply what they have learned after finishing the course.

You really posted a good question at the beginning of your blog “How do we make something highly individualized and provide that same level education to the masses”. To me, this question is like the enigma of education! It reminds of me of something in the education theory called learning styles. For example suppose you are an instructor and you want to present some material in a more visual way. Would you believe all of your students will like this new style of presentation? According the learning style proponents the answer is no as each student has his own learning preferences in which some of them prefer to read more text while others prefer more representative visualizations. On the other hand it may be infeasible for an instructor to design a course taking into consideration all the learning styles of his students. Accordingly, it is really hard to provide the same level of education to the masses.

I totally agree with you that the what, why and the how should be clearly defined in a learning setting although it is sometimes hard to do that. I believe in school based learning setting we have a clear definition of the what students should learn but I bet we don’t have a clear cut answer of why we are making them learning so and what is the best way of making them learning so (the how). Accordingly, a connected learning setting which is based on engagement and common interests can overcome this problem.

Yes, sometimes we ask ourselves this question. But I have my own strategy to deal with it Ignore your thoughts and continue doing whatever you are doing So If I was in your case I would have continued in Electrical Engineering. I know this may be wrong, But I believe it is better to “Love what you are doing to do what you love”

I totally agree with you and support your call for an act to stop profiling in US campuses. On the other hand I encourage free of speech, but there is a great difference between free of speech and insolence. When you insult me because I am following a certain religion or believe in whatever idea, you are not practicing free of speech but you are digging your nose in my own life.