The worst thing about online learning is that everything has become a video.

Arianna Masciolini

@Daojoan to be fair, video *tutorials* have worked better than written *tutorials* for me in many occasions. What I really struggle with right now is finding something that *isn't* a tutorial when all I need is concise, high-quality, up-to-date, structured and easily searchable reference material. Especially when it comes to web development.

hitaus

@Daojoan Fully agree. Unfortunately most (AI gen'd?) websites also fail to get to the point efficiently, and ramble on around the subject for ages. Hence I prefer a short'n'succinct Codeberg/Github page or minimal blog post that dives straight into the issue and be done with it.

Professor_Stevens

@crazyeddie @Daojoan

But that would be poetic.

BlogRolly

@Daojoan depending on what you want to learn I can suggest the Odin project if it’s software development you want to learn they have an exhaustive guide

Hamish Buchanan

It is so annoying. Reading is so much faster than video and comprehension from reading is much better, too.

If you can write a script for a video, you can at least post it with your video.

@Daojoan

Jetse de Vries

@Daojoan Yes, I greatly prefer a concise, written 'how to' above the endless blathering on a video.

RealGene ☣️

@Daojoan
Yesterday, my Brother laser printer, which is generally a nice, invisible piece of machinery, was apparently soliciting strange computers on the Internet, because there were literally thousands of triggers of a firewall rule I set up forbidding access to the printer from outside, primarily to prevent firmware upgrades.

So I attempted to log in to the printer's web console, which requires an SSL connection, but it wouldn't respond to that.

When I searched for why I couldn't log in, the results were either from Brother, all of which told me to tell the browser to accept the cert (which it couldn't, because the printer wouldn't accept a TLS connection at all), or YouTube videos saying/showing EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

So I factory reset it, and was then able to log in (after telling the browser to accept the self-signed cert).

And the outside attacks stopped.

Neil Moffatt

@Daojoan Writing good guides is so much harder. Modern life gravitates towards the easy path.

Suran

@miszeleq @earthshine @Daojoan

Yes.
#Discord is where information goes to die.

Tizian 「ティツィアーン」

@Daojoan I always hated video tutorials. Esp. because the format is inherently hard to adjust for updates.

AO Smith

@Daojoan
I can intellectually appreciate that some people find videos easiest to learn from. But I find them so inefficient to be essentially useless. And, of course, poor references because you can't just quickly go back and re-read a section.

Only once, years ago, I found instructions on a particular crochet technique that only came in a video that was useful because the creator had content links marked so you could jump to a section. Kudos to them for taking the time to add that feature!

crazyeddie

@miszeleq @earthshine @Daojoan I blame stackoverflow.

That guy set out with the stated goal of killing all forums and usenet and having all questions and such in one central database used by everyone.

It fucking worked. Those things all died and search results largely point at that place. AI is starting to swamp it out, but there you go...

I was actually slow to shift from usenet/forum to stackoverflow. Eventually I did until I just stopped participating in the "community".

Marc

@Daojoan yes! We had a discussion about this at my customer, and a user survey. The result has been 50/50 between video and written. We did a blended learning concept and we decided to choose the best for the users .

I agree , I like written as well more

Francisca Sinn

@Daojoan omg this. Every click to a link is painful.

J Miller

@Daojoan

FWIW, many educators also find this terrible from an instructor’s point of view. Of course, some enjoy it. But for many it shifts the focus from teaching, learning, and subject matter to performing on screen, which is not what we got into the field for in the first place.

Do not underestimate the extent the ongoing “pivot to video” reflects what can be monetized rather than actual preference or effectiveness.

Urwumpe

@Daojoan Like an university lecture without text books and lecture notes. Can't be that bad, right? Its not like development is complex and (often) hard....

#teaching #slop

Akul Bansal

@Daojoan Now there is a AI button on youtube videos which you can use for summarizing the video or asking other questions.

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)

@Daojoan when I tell people that the video is basically garbage because I’m never gonna watch it, just peel off the transcript, they look at me in utter shock but man I cannot glean information from some rando droning on and on about everything except the thing, then two sentences on the thing, and now we’ve moved onto tangential shores.

Koen Hufkens, PhD

@Daojoan As if they are meant to be training some GenAI tool or something.

Orb 2069

@miszeleq @earthshine @Daojoan

We're going to find out in twenty years that the endless torrent of spam that drove people away from public forums to Discord and Facebook was funded/aided by Facebook and Discord.

It's fucking Jia Tan, all the way down. I know it in my bones.

Wandering Adventure Party

The worst thing about online learning is that everything has become a video.