Ryan Peterman

When you took over CS50, it feels like the course completely changed.

When you got into it, was your first thought, I want to take this online and kind of make all these major changes, or was that a process over time?

I see.

So the idea was, it was a supplementary material for people who had paid for the Harvard Extension School.

And then, but other people just open on the internet could listen if they wanted.

So I think this is a brutal reality of making content on the internet.

There's so much competition for attention that all the content has to kind of hook people.

Let's say you're scrolling on Instagram.

That first second's really got to capture someone.

Otherwise, you're going to go to the next one.

And I'm curious because you are making content for the internet with these lectures that you post online.

Do you think about how can I, you know, hook the audience?

Does that ever factor into your lecture design?

Right.

What about in the in the idea of like a long video, there's still this concept that you kind of want to keep people engaged.

And so how do you keep people engaged for a three hour lecture?

One thing that I wonder, because computer science is such a dense topic where I guess there could be a trade-off with, imagine another style of lecture is there's a chalkboard and you're up there kind of blandly writing out all of the information.

I could imagine you could go through much more depth in that case.

Do you feel like there's any trade-off there?

In my research and looking at the reception of CS50 and people's perspective on how you are as an educator, they absolutely love your energy and your delivery.