Dieter: moved from separate page (2008-05-23 14:37) [#4703]

this anonymous suggestion was previously at an orphan page

Instead of a having an advanced player play a weaker player, what can be done is that a strong player can choose two weaker near equal players. Then the advanced player can watch and comment as they play.

This produces several good situations. The weaker players produce games they are more likely to encounter in regular play and the game is more or less even.

The teacher can observe the style of play of both students and not be concerned froma players perspective.

It was tried on KGS today and seem to work rather well.

Alex Weldon: I agree that this is an effective way to teach. I don't agree, however, that it should be considered a better way to teach. Teacher vs. student, student vs. student, teacher vs. teacher (commenting their own game for the students as they play and stopping to show variations and answer questions), handicap, no handicap... I don't think it's fair to say that any of them is better than any other. It depends on the student, and on the teacher... and probably the best thing of all is to alternate and play as many different kinds of teaching games as possible.

Thad: In clubs perhaps, but online I don't think I've ever seen it done this way. Of course in a club they call it kibitzing and the teachers seem to always pick the other guys side :(

On KGS it seemed to generate a lot more energy from the teachers than standard methods and the students seemed to benefit from it more. Perhaps it should have been called BetterOnlineTeachingGame??

Tas: I had an online teaching game like this. I had put up a teaching game in the KTL stating that i would teach or be taugth depending on who joined the game. The first one to come was only four stones weaker than me, but I decided to try and teach him what little I could. As we begun I saw that a dan player had also joined in order to teach me, but a little too late. But he stuck around and supervised my teaching so that it actually became me playing the weaker player, and the dan teaching both of us. It was great.