"[S]tudents assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on 'machine-guided learning' software -- with reduced face time with instructors -- did just as well, in less time..."

"... as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students."

Why are you better than a robot?

The robotic software did have disadvantages, the researchers found. For one, students found it duller than listening to a live instructor. 

Duller than a live instructor! Good lord, we teachers provide some mild amusement. But the students are fooling with the internet or at least daydreaming, so it may only be the illusion of relatively less dullness.

Some felt as though they had learned less, even if they scored just as well on tests. 

We make you feel you've learned, even when we haven't. It's the empathy, I bet. Robots don't care. But I'm sure they could pretty easily tweak the robotics to give comparable cues to the student and stimulate the same feeling of having learned.

Engaging students, such as professors might by sprinkling their lectures with personal anecdotes and entertaining asides, remains one area where humans have the upper hand.

Oh, come on, you could program the robots with much better jokes-n-anecdotes than the professors. I mean, the one thing we professors have is that we might say anything — the spontaneity. If that's a human being up there, then she might be saying what she's saying now not because she's programmed, but because she just thought that. She responded to something that a student said. But I think you could program a computer to have lots of material and to put things together spontaneously. What's different is that the student knows it's just built into the program, but the human-being teacher actually had a human experience with the student.

How precious is that?

Why are you better than a robot?