Interesting question given all the interest in online education. Some things are good for remote learning. But I'm fairly old-school in this respect: the classroom setting with a discussion and reading works best for me, especially if it is new material. I this works because of the discussion in the class. I just don't think it's the same with online learning. Of course, if you were brought up on remote learning perhaps it would work for you. I'll concede to that. But I have been an instructor a long time ago; most students don't engage; you have to engage them and that is only done in a classroom or tutoring situation.
I find that the 'tempo' issue also appears with instructor-led training. Either you get a course that crawls, usually because one or two individuals have signed up without having done any of the pre-requisite materials and the whole class ends up slowing down to their pace, or it's a bootcamp where you have to skip through the practical exercises in order to cram what turns out to have been a 10 day course into a 3 day session.
Video tutorials vary greatly in quality however. Some are well thought out and have been rehearsed with a high quality production value and benefit from the video medium, especially if there is a lot of visual aspects or technique involved, whereas others appear to have been done on the fly and erm labour erm the erm main erm points erm and do erm little erm for the erm subject...
One advantage of the book format though is that the publishers usually impose a basic minimum level of quality to the material.
I find that books are my learning foundation after which I like to follow up with lab experiments to bring any new knowledge into the practical world. The resources of the internet are a very valuable tool to supplement information, though, here again, I prefer documents that I can read or print. I find the video tutorials entertaining but I am always impatient with the tempo which seems to be too slow in the portions where I understand the content and too fast when I am trying to assimilate new material. I am likely, due to experience, out of date in my approach but it has served me well and any future change in learning techniques will be a slow evolution.
It depends on the subject matter but I definitely opt for some form of self-paced blended learning these days. Usually comprises of a mixture of books, on-line video, multimedia, and hands-on.
I find that being able to control the time and pace of the learning is very important and I always like the ability to pause and either read around a subject or play with an application, some code, or breadboard to reinforce the subject before continuing.
However the quality and production of the on-line material has to be at an acceptable level. Nothing worse than a poor audio voiceover or cameras jumping all-over the place.
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