Go Ahead and Read The Book, Dudes

[dancingalone]

Instructional videos often get bashed on MT. For the most part, the detracting points made are valid. Most seem to be able to converge on an agreement that books and videos are fine as references and should be used in conjunction with a live teacher.

I've related before that I have had a student teach themselves a roundhouse kick from a TKD video. This was someone who had had no prior martial arts experience at all, and I only had to make the correction that their kick should follow through the target. It's a fairly obvious and important correction, but the fact that their kick was fine otherwise gives me inspriration that some fairly specific and confined teaching/learning can be done outside of class. Why would we want to do this? Well, selfishly, I don't want to teach EVERYTHING. It would be nice if the student already comes to class with some preconceptions or 'pre-knowledge' that I have fed to them.

Case in point. I am telling 2 of my more mature TKD students to learn the choreography for Dan Gun, the second hyung, from a video filmed of myself performing it. That way when they come to class, I can make corrections instead of spending time on just teaching the form. Obviously, the source needs to be something I have created or approved of myself - I don't recommend picking out a random Youtube video or grabbing an unapproved text from the library for this.

Thoughts? If you were a relative beginner, would you mind your teacher putting this type of trust and responsibility upon you?

 

[granfire]

It depends.

I don't seem to do well trying to learn something like a form from a book or a DVD.
And I am somebody who is pretty good about self teaching stuff from material like that. Just the movement thing does not work for me. maybe my girl brain prohibits that.

The upside is of course with a standardized DVD at home you can rewind your Master time and time again, as often as it takes.

I preferred the DVD after I had learned the basic moves to freshen and deepen the technique.

But that is me.

Also, in terms of books: The written word is confusing, the pictures in their nature leave out a lot...or the photos are black and white with grainy quality.
(would it be racist to ask for a bit more contrast in the models?)


But that is me.

 

[dancingalone]

I can't say that I've seen a single form book that has impressed me. Videos can do a better job, but they need to be made by someone with a background in multimedia instructional design. Too many of the so-called instructional videos out there are only demo videos at best.

At the moment I only have a crude self-filmed video of myself doing the form from the front, side, and back perspectives at learning speed and then performance speed. I hope to be able to improve on this. I'm interviewing some student filmmakers from the University of Texas to help me with the project.

 

[terryl965]

Poomsae, forms, kata book do not do any justice to the intent of the poomsae, form or kata. Now video on the other hand being done right with both front and back views for a student can be very useful especially if they are able to learn the movements and then later get corrections from a instructor that actually knows the poomsae, form or kata.

 

[ATC]

Sounds good to me. If you made a video of yourself doing the techniques and ask your students to use this to learn the form and then you tweak things latter is a smart approach. One it speeds up things like you say but better than that is it forces the student to take initiative and begin his or her oneself development of ones own teaching skills by teaching themselves first.

 

[Flying Crane]

I would not accept it. If I had a teacher who told me to work with the video first, I'd probably not study with him much longer.

 

[dancingalone]

I would not accept it. If I had a teacher who told me to work with the video first, I'd probably not study with him much longer.

What is your objection to the idea, thinking as a student? We have required readings prior to attending class in universities, so that the lecture can be meaningful with interaction between professor and students. I'm approaching it from along the same lines.

 

[Flying Crane]

What is your objection to the idea, thinking as a student? We have required readings prior to attending class in universities, so that the lecture can be meaningful with interaction between professor and students. I'm approaching it from along the same lines.

This isn't a purely intellectual exercise. The fact that it's intellectual concepts connected to physical movement and technique that is very specific, requires it be face-to-face. You can learn abstractions. You can read a book first, and then discuss abstract and intellectual concepts later. But when you've got to connect it to the physical part, it falls down.

You could watch a video on how to tighten a hex nut with a crescent wrench, and then do so yourself. Sure, that's also physical. But a hex nut really only goes on one way. It's pretty tough to tighten it down wrong, once you've seen how it's done. But martial technique has a million ways to do it wrong, and few ways to do it right. Chances are the student is going to be doing it more wrong than right. I think it's an attempt at a shortcut that isn't doing your students any favors. If you try this as an experiment to see how it goes, you might actually drive away some students who feel like you aren't really interested in teaching them, you are just pretending so you can take their money. Might be a big risk for your school.

personally, as a teacher I do want to teach everything. Because I want to give the student the best opportunity that I can, to do everything correctly and understand it fully.

If I was a beginner, honestly I might not know the difference and I might go along with it. But with my experience that I do have, I think I would feel like the exercise is a waste of time because I really do not know if I'm doing it right and I would not trust it. Especially with something more complex like a form, there's a lot of subleties that just won't get identified thru the video exercise. I'd wait for the classtime to learn it first hand, and skip the video.

 

[Xue Sheng]

This isn't a purely intellectual exercise. The fact that it's intellectual concepts connected to physical movement and technique that is very specific, requires it be face-to-face. You can learn abstractions. You can read a book first, and then discuss abstract and intellectual concepts later. But when you've got to connect it to the physical part, it falls down.

You could watch a video on how to tighten a hex nut with a crescent wrench, and then do so yourself. Sure, that's also physical. But a hex nut really only goes on one way. It's pretty tough to tighten it down wrong, once you've seen how it's done. But martial technique has a million ways to do it wrong, and few ways to do it right. Chances are the student is going to be doing it more wrong than right. I think it's an attempt at a shortcut that isn't doing your students any favors. If you try this as an experiment to see how it goes, you might actually drive away some students who feel like you aren't really interested in teaching them, you are just pretending so you can take their money. Might be a big risk for your school.

personally, as a teacher I do want to teach everything. Because I want to give the student the best opportunity that I can, to do everything correctly and understand it fully.

If I was a beginner, honestly I might not know the difference and I might go along with it. But with my experience that I do have, I think I would feel like the exercise is a waste of time because I really do not know if I'm doing it right and I would not trust it. Especially with something more complex like a form, there's a lot of subleties that just won't get identified thru the video exercise. I'd wait for the classtime to learn it first hand, and skip the video.

What he said.

The difference between training by video and training with a teacher is...

one is a dance and the other is not

 

[Nomad]

I'm not sure about giving the video to beginners and asking them to learn from it first. I think a better approach is to teach the basics of the form, and provide the video as backup so they can work on it at home. That way, when they come back, hopefully they'll have the basic moves down and you can work on refining it.

I think giving out the video first relies too much on them being able to view and understand it properly, and honestly feels very impersonal. Giving it as a backup for when they're practicing and can't remember the next move, OTOH, is a nice incentive to practice it more (instead of coming to class and just asking to go through it again. And again. Until they finally have the basic moves down and can work on the details.)

 

[Earl Weiss]

The problem is that different people learn differently and need to be taught differently. These types are Visual, tactile and Auditory.

See: http://371078645507472465-a-1802744...rnpSmHsIH_FZY0WTDvbA2vzGaqQw==&attredirects=0

Visual learners can learn from a video. Reading is an auditory skill since the Brain process the written word as if it is hearing it.

So, while the visula learners will learn from the video they may have difficulty wirth the written word. Simialry auditory learners will have trouble from the video.

IMNSHO as instructors we have a responsibility to make our lessons understandable by different types of learners. If they are not visual learners requiring learning from the video will be frustrating for them.

 

[dancingalone]

This isn't a purely intellectual exercise. The fact that it's intellectual concepts connected to physical movement and technique that is very specific, requires it be face-to-face. You can learn abstractions. You can read a book first, and then discuss abstract and intellectual concepts later. But when you've got to connect it to the physical part, it falls down.

You could watch a video on how to tighten a hex nut with a crescent wrench, and then do so yourself. Sure, that's also physical. But a hex nut really only goes on one way. It's pretty tough to tighten it down wrong, once you've seen how it's done. But martial technique has a million ways to do it wrong, and few ways to do it right. Chances are the student is going to be doing it more wrong than right. I think it's an attempt at a shortcut that isn't doing your students any favors. If you try this as an experiment to see how it goes, you might actually drive away some students who feel like you aren't really interested in teaching them, you are just pretending so you can take their money. Might be a big risk for your school.

In a past life, I used to be a management consultant for some wafer chip manufacturers. Part of the fabrication process included some intensive cleansing protocols both mechanically and physically, so the facilities and also workers needed to be made 'pristine' prior to operations proceeding again. I helped design and implement a successful CBT (computer based training) program which served to be the first step in the on-the-job learning process for new workers, prior to serving an apprenticeship with a senior floor leader. Six months after it rolled out, we measured an improvement of almost 14% in efficiency, which is quite good considering the limit resources invested into the CBT and then rollout training.

So while I understand your point about physical complexity, I don't believe it is an insurmountable problem to address. The goal of the CBT was to give workers enough private 'lab' experience so they could learn more meaningfully when they reached the apprenticeship section of the training. Likewise, I am trying to do something similar here and the project could be intelligently structured between class time and home study to reinforce each other. Just one simple example would be to use the video to only 'chain' the techniques together into an list of consecutive actions. The actual instruction of how to perform each action (down block, stepping, turning, etc) could be reserved for in-class time.

As for wanting to teach everything in person yourself, I can understand that desire. I have a traditional teacher who does the same mostly, or he relies on his senior students to help teach. I myself see a project like this as an effort to extend myself and my knowledge and skill for the benefit of my students. Technology lets us do a lot of things which would have been inconceivable even 50 years ago, and I am inclined to use it intelligently and judiciously where it can be of help.

 

[Earl Weiss]

FWIW, I had to learn the basics of 2-6th Dan forms from videos, since my instructor really did not know them very well. Then, having the basics down, when I had the chance to train with others who knew them well, I had to go thru the process of fixing lots of stuff.

 

[dancingalone]

Visual learners can learn from a video. Reading is an auditory skill since the Brain process the written word as if it is hearing it.

So, while the visula learners will learn from the video they may have difficulty wirth the written word. Simialry auditory learners will have trouble from the video.

IMNSHO as instructors we have a responsibility to make our lessons understandable by different types of learners. If they are not visual learners requiring learning from the video will be frustrating for them.

I agree with all of this. Good instruction no matter the delivery vehicle should try to engage all the learning styles people have. We don't have the technology (yet) to produce a tactile response, yet good multimedia instruction can definitely address the auditory and visual learning styles.

I sometimes think we are visualizing someone watching Youtube and trying to learn a form that way. That's not my intended endgame at all.

 

[dancingalone]

The difference between training by video and training with a teacher is...

one is a dance and the other is not

Ah, but that's not exactly the scenario being discussed, is it?

 

[Omar B]

Instructional videos often get bashed on MT. For the most part, the detracting points made are valid. Most seem to be able to converge on an agreement that books and videos are fine as references and should be used in conjunction with a live teacher.

I've related before that I have had a student teach themselves a roundhouse kick from a TKD video. This was someone who had had no prior martial arts experience at all, and I only had to make the correction that their kick should follow through the target. It's a fairly obvious and important correction, but the fact that their kick was fine otherwise gives me inspriration that some fairly specific and confined teaching/learning can be done outside of class. Why would we want to do this? Well, selfishly, I don't want to teach EVERYTHING. It would be nice if the student already comes to class with some preconceptions or 'pre-knowledge' that I have fed to them.

Case in point. I am telling 2 of my more mature TKD students to learn the choreography for Dan Gun, the second hyung, from a video filmed of myself performing it. That way when they come to class, I can make corrections instead of spending time on just teaching the form. Obviously, the source needs to be something I have created or approved of myself - I don't recommend picking out a random Youtube video or grabbing an unapproved text from the library for this.

Thoughts? If you were a relative beginner, would you mind your teacher putting this type of trust and responsibility upon you?

There's your answer. Something as simple as that was missed because the person did not have a teacher and a roundhouse is pretty simple as tech goes. Little mistakes add up and kicking an attacker with no follow through won't do a thing but piss him off more.

 

[dancingalone]

There's your answer. Something as simple as that was missed because the person did not have a teacher and a roundhouse is pretty simple as tech goes. Little mistakes add up and kicking an attacker with no follow through won't do a thing but piss him off more.

We are not talking about solo learning where there is no feedback nor correction from an instructor.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Case in point. I am telling 2 of my more mature TKD students to learn the choreography for Dan Gun, the second hyung, from a video filmed of myself performing it. That way when they come to class, I can make corrections instead of spending time on just teaching the form. Obviously, the source needs to be something I have created or approved of myself - I don't recommend picking out a random Youtube video or grabbing an unapproved text from the library for this.

Thoughts? If you were a relative beginner, would you mind your teacher putting this type of trust and responsibility upon you?[/quote]

My thoughts and please I am not trying to be hostile here you just asked for my thoughts. And you may not be doing this but this is what I would think in any school I walked into that wanted me to learn form a DVD first

They learned a dance and now you want to correct that dance because it is easier and more expedient for you. That way you can get more students through the door and charge more money and teach less.

Ok so this is not your goal, you are serious about training your students properly... now what. Actually Crane said it best but I will put it this way.

You now have to un-train all the bad habits they picked up via DVD training and then you have to correct the form. You may think you saved time and maybe you did save your time but, IMO, you wasted your student’s time and money.

And if they can get it form the video...what do they need you for

Ah, but that's not exactly the scenario being discussed, is it?

Is that what you’re looking for?

There are a rare few that can learn from video and get it right but even then they tend to have no power.


And based on the responses to the people that have posted in answer to your question you are looking to justify something that you have already decided to do and if that is the case do it and stop asking about it because it is likely you will not get the answer you are looking for

EDIT

I would like to add however that if someone showed up well trained in a similar art, it might work.

Example someone shows up well train in Bajiquan and you give them a video for Chung Yi Chuan it is likely that they will do well at it since Chung Yi Chuan’s based is Bajiquan as a matter of fact Chung Yi Quan has been called Baji lite, but then why would they need a teacher at all.

 

[ATC]

This isn't a purely intellectual exercise. The fact that it's intellectual concepts connected to physical movement and technique that is very specific, requires it be face-to-face. You can learn abstractions. You can read a book first, and then discuss abstract and intellectual concepts later. But when you've got to connect it to the physical part, it falls down.

You could watch a video on how to tighten a hex nut with a crescent wrench, and then do so yourself. Sure, that's also physical. But a hex nut really only goes on one way. It's pretty tough to tighten it down wrong, once you've seen how it's done. But martial technique has a million ways to do it wrong, and few ways to do it right. Chances are the student is going to be doing it more wrong than right. I think it's an attempt at a shortcut that isn't doing your students any favors. If you try this as an experiment to see how it goes, you might actually drive away some students who feel like you aren't really interested in teaching them, you are just pretending so you can take their money. Might be a big risk for your school.

personally, as a teacher I do want to teach everything. Because I want to give the student the best opportunity that I can, to do everything correctly and understand it fully.

If I was a beginner, honestly I might not know the difference and I might go along with it. But with my experience that I do have, I think I would feel like the exercise is a waste of time because I really do not know if I'm doing it right and I would not trust it. Especially with something more complex like a form, there's a lot of subleties that just won't get identified thru the video exercise. I'd wait for the classtime to learn it first hand, and skip the video.

I think you are looking at it from and extreme point of view. He is not having a beginner come in to class on the first day then just give him a DVD to take home and learn from. At least this is not what I infer. I would think that the student would come to class and learn basic stances, blocks and strikes, while doing all of the repetition work and at some point simply understand that there is a school DVD that all should be using as a tool to learn his/her next form. So beginners as well as advanced student still do everything in class, including forms but simply are asked to practice at home with the DVD to learn the broad movements of the form to be prepared when in class and the details are being taught as well as the broad movements still.

The DVD is simply a tool for home study to keep the dojang/dojo time as efficient as possible.

Example: Say Monday is forms day. You begin by teaching the new form to a set of students as you normally would. Let's say you have already implemented the DVD at home study way also. You now notice that one student is not even getting the basic turn left and middle punch as he does not even know which way to turn or even if he is blocking or punching and what types of each. You then ask did you try using the DVD to learn the basic movements. He answers no. Then you ask the ones that are doing the basic turns and attempted stances correctly and they say yes. You then simply remind the class that they have DVD's that can help them have some understanding of what is being taught that would make learning in class faster and better as you don't have to waste the limited amount of time with just getting them to know the steps of the form. We can spend more time learning the details and the applications. You still correct incorrect form and techniques in class.

I think things can progress quicker and make a better student.

 

[dancingalone]

And based on the responses to the people that have posted in answer to your question you are looking to justify something that you have already decided to do and if that is the case do it and stop asking about it because it is likely you will not get the answer you are looking for

I am seeking a discussion about it. I do not seek validation or approval.

I understand it's a hot button issue for some, and they are welcome to participate or not as they please. I think it's healthy to hear all viewpoints and would enjoy material discussion. But it would be nice if everyone could respond to the discussion as it unfolds in a back and forth fashion rather than with, for a lack of a better word, a knee jerk reaction.

Please don't take this as an attack.