An Ode to the Crash Course App
In 2021 I did freelance work as a Physics Contractor for Complexly. We were just rolling out of the pandemic and a year of being confined to my PC, so I had been seeking out a way to make my screen time more productive. Of course by the time I started things were returning to "the new normal" (I attended my first virtual meeting from Big Bear on a Cross Country training trip) but it was fulfilling work nonetheless.
My role was to create content for flashcards to accompany the Crash Course Physics series. Each episode would get a handful of flashcards to help students review key concepts and they could study the cards as a standard deck or quiz themselves with multiple choice questions that I also wrote the distractors for. Once I wrote the questions I would confirm proposed artwork for each one, or make recommendations for changes if it might accidentally reinforce a misconception of the topic. These questions were hosted on a dedicated Crass Course App where learners could bounce between the questions and the videos since each term was also attached to a timestamp in case they needed to review the content.
Creating these flashcards was a refreshing pedagogical challenge that forced me to reconcile some of the contradictions that I live with as a STEM educator. Vocabulary and academic language are important foundations for understanding, but mastery of the terminology is only stamp-collecting if there is never an opportunity for application or practice. A student using the app and its flashcards would be set up for productive lessons and labs in a structured course, but I would always fear that independent learners could conflate mastery of the terms with mastery of the practice.
That has always been the frustration I have had with the Crash Course series, and most educational video content. The best learning comes from doing and a video, no matter how well made, pushes a learner towards inaction. It can be done well! Early Veritasium videos used a "choose your own adventure" format to make viewers commit to their predictions and the Crash Course AI series is a standout for the inclusion of interactive Google Colab Python notebooks where students can run programs along with the host and then tinker with them on their own. But most content, even from the most well-meaning creators, are forced to prioritize passive engagement over formats that would get the viewer to do some processing themselves.
Is it better than nothing? I wish I could that it was with confidence, but again I am distraught by the confidence trap of an understandable explanation. I wonder if a learner would be better off without these explainers so that they are not lulled into a passive belief that they understand a topic because they can retain information from a video or snappy infographic. No educational resource exists in a vacuum but too many imply a completeness.
Thus it was bittersweet this week when I read that the Crash Course App would be shutting down over the next few weeks. It does sting to know my work is going to be come less accessible, though the cards are still available here. But maybe this is an opportunity for a refresh into something great for the Crash Course series. I saw news that they are using new animators and are putting time into dedicated educator resources. If any organization can figure out how to make worthwhile STEM education content right now it's Complexly and Crash Course, so I am excited to see what might come next.