Lectures have been an incredibly ineffective way to learn forever. Faculty continue to lecture, and we continue to build lecture-style classrooms, further enshrining this poor approach. Active learning works, and yet both faculty and students dislike it. Faculty like to talk and pretend they're teaching, and students like to listen and pretend they're learning.

All to say—I wish it was this easy to change the academy. But it's not.

I had some "reverse classroom" classes back in college, and it was the best kind of class for me. Read the papers on your own time before class, and spend class discussing and in tests.

It did, however, absolutely require everyone to prepare for every class. Some people complained a lot about this, which might be why this was not as popular as more common lectures.

You are right and this is the way, it's just a lot easier said than done, especially the quizzes/exams part.

There is a tension between: - authentic assessments (not multiple choice/ - grading resources - computer lab availability - students using AI in very discreet ways on their own laptop when taking an in-person exam

So overall you are on point, it's just really hard to do honest authentic assessment at scale right now (in person or otherwise).

I see a potential for it to get much better, or much worse... Hard to tell which way it will go right now.

Yep. I've been using AI to teach myself system design and it's been a god send. Was struggling with other courses because I couldn't have it tailored to what I wanted.

I had a chat with my state legislators to streamline education; shift all public school and university funding to libraries staffed by SMEs

Mandate N hours year of and guided group work for under 18s

Mandate N hours for becoming an SME for roles that require such

Break the pipeline from the factory era of linearly pumping out kids who are just smart enough to run the machines