Jukka Larja (roskakori2006@gmail.com) on 10/7/09 wrote:
---------------------------
>AM (myname4rwt@jee.male) on 10/6/09 wrote:
>---------------------------
>
>> I asked you to be fact-based since
>> you keep insisting that I constantly
>> interpret what others say in the way
>> I want, IIRC. If that is meant to
>> say that my interpretation is
>> constantly wrong, please refer to
>> the posts you mean.
>>
>> Do you realize that something like
>> this can be simply insulting to read?
>
>Yes I do and I'm sorry about that. But just consider how disheartening and embarrassing
>it is to me that I can't explain myself well enough. I don't like giving up.

I'm not asking you for any explanations, just refer to the posts you're talking about. Of course, if you are simply being dishonest (as much of your writing suggests), it's understandable why you won't.

>> You probably missed my point. As
>> proficient as you are, your three
>> questions posed to the class can
>> potentially do much more good
>> than a very professional lecture.
>> *That* was my point.
>
>Ok. I agree with that.
>
>By the way, I think we may mean a bit different things when we talk about exercises.
>For me exercise is something student has to do. Whether the exercise is tackled
>alone at home, by discussion in groups with course staff ready to answer any questions
>or some other way is independent issue. Of course, not all exercises are good for
>group discussion, but those tend to be bad exercises anyway.
>
>Here's an example: http://www.tml.tkk.fi/Studies/T-110.300/2001/Homeworks/assignment_9.html
>
>The exercise question four "Get Connected" could just as well be discussed in groups as tackled home alone.
>
>Also, you later write: "I still have memories of various projects where a desire
>to be better than others (other teams) gave me much more than lectures or exercises."
>I think a project is just a name for large exercise. I count something like "Implement
>an email client supporting SMTP, POP and IMAP protocols" as an exercise.
>
>The "well wording" here would mean specifying what we mean by "supporting", what
>sort of UI requirements there are and so on. Of course, for exercise this large,
>there probably isn't going to be hundreds of students or groups participating, so
>one doesn't need to be overly accurate.
>
>>> Anyway, what you say is mostly the basic
>>> stuff that can be read from any book
>>> about teaching, and what, unfortunately,
>>> tends to fall apart once you factor in
>>> the cost and less than perfect students.
>>
>> Err... Don't you find it's actually
>> cheaper to provide students with good
>> references and right stimulating
>> environment for better results?
>
>Well, the lecture course requires one person proficient in the field, a professor.
>That's required anyway, at least to superwise even if actual lecturing (or whatever
>way of teaching we choose) is done by someone else. If there's one lecture a week
>total time spend by the professor is four hours per week (+ plus fixed costs and
>grading the exams). Hard to get any cheaper than that.

You probably miss something I consider obvious: professors are not perfect. This is simply ridiculous to expect that *anyone* teaching has very deep understanding of the subject; this is not true and never was.

What's actually true is that course instructor can easily confuse students.

>So how much does creating stimulating environment cost? I don't know, but I can't
>see how that could be achieved in four man hours a week.

Simple. Introduce a goal function that will make students work harder if they want higher points (e.g. speed of code in a course on numerical methods).

>If you are talking about return of investment, then that's a very different issue.
>Universities are (for most part, especially the basic teaching) funded by government
>and government has set certain rules on how funding works. Those rules are complicated
>and I'm not an expert on them, but I would be surprised if they were optimal from return of investment point of view.
>
>I think the good references and source material, whether that's a text-book or
>something else, is orthogonal matter to how you teach. You need to provide that anyway.

Bad teaching is worse than lack of teaching. And it's much easier to settle on good references than find people with great depth of understanding across all topics of a course.

>> I think this is what many educational
>> systems are simply accustomed to.
>> Cheapest? This is hardly the most
>> important goal in education, and
>> depends on who actually does the job
>> and many other things.
>
>I'm not saying lecturing is particularly good way, but it is cheap. And not all
>people deciding about university funding look at or are even interested in results.
>At least not such abstract ones as how well are we actually educating the students.

Yes, all I'm saying is providing a reading list is actually even cheaper. No salary, no overheads, and students can learn from texts written by the best minds.

>> Exercises do a good job when they
>> make one think really hard about
>> something, and this is by far not
>> always the case. So my point is
>> not so much about exercises "from
>> the book" as about exercises in
>> general. I just don't find them
>> to be the best way to learn.
>
>My rant about text-book exercises wasn't really important. I just wanted to point
>out that whether the exercises in a book are good or not, there are reasons not to use them.
>
>I mostly agree with "Exercises do a good job when they make one think really hard
>about something", but in my opinion, it is often a realistic goal just to make one
>think about something. The "really hard" part cannot always be achieved. Of course,
>this depends on what exactly we count as really hard.
>
>Anyway, I agree that if exercises don't make one think, they are pretty much pointless,
>at least on university level. There's little to be gained by exercises that just
>require one to look up the right equation and add the values from exercise.
>
>> IMO the strongest (and natural) motivator
>> is competition, so even exercises will do
>> as long as there is a proper competitive
>> environment.
>
>I think the studies have shown that competition between students isn't that good
>motivator. It motivates the ones ho succeed and discourages the ones who most need
>the encouragement. Personally I hate competition, so I can easily believe that.
>The "right way" would be to get a student to compete with himself, though I'm not
>sure whether one really should talk about competition at that point.
>
>I don't have any references (I may have lecture slides in Finnish, on paper, but
>nothing good, nothing defining exactly what was studied and how), so I don't want
>to push this point, if you don't agree.

Competition-based approach is known to work well across different cultures and educational systems; even a most basic grading system can be considered a form of competition.

Actually one other thing I completely forgot to mention is playing. Learning by playing + competition, that's what education should be like, I think.

>> At least this is what my experience
>> suggests -- I still have memories
>> of various projects where a desire
>> to be better than others (other
>> teams) gave me much more than
>> lectures or exercises.
>
>It depends much on one's personality, and I also think, success. How successful
>were you? How would you feel about those projects if you were contending for place
>40 out of 80? Or if a member in your team was a complete idiot making sure you have
>no change of anything better than something between mediocre and quite good?
>
>Or, if after the project was done you realize that you have misunderstood some
>part of it which drops your performance from good to mediocre?

The fun part was always doing it, because noone knew what the final results would be. Anyway, I doubt that someone who feels like a loser would learn a lot from not competing, but doing exercises as you seem to suggest, I just don't see why it should be that way (was that your experience)?

>> Ask me what
>> exercises taught me something good,
>> and I'll just shrug (even though
>> there could have been really good
>> ones, whose value was unfortunately
>> totally lost either because it just
>> wasn't interesting to think hard
>> about the answer, or they were not
>> necessary to complete, or simply
>> never assigned).
>
>There are many ways to make exercises more or less useless. One is to make them
>voluntary, in which case practicly no-one does them (unless there are similar questions
>in an exam in which case according to good student tradition you tackle the exercises
>last night before the exam, trying to pick the most probable ones).
>
>Other is to grade exercises so that there's very large disparity between what is
>asked and what is accepted. Good and average students will feel betrayed if sub-par
>submissions are accepted just as well as great ones.
>
>There are many error's one can make and exercises, just like everything, are only as good as one makes them.

As long as students are not excited about doing exercises, they hardly have high educational value (I personally never was).

>> Universities often have home-made
>> courses, available in digital or
>> printed form, so this is not a
>> real problem. I have accentuated
>> the value of good sources, and I
>> think it's out of question that
>> what costs a lot is not
>> necessarily a sign of high
>> quality.
>
>What I wrote was mostly in the context of why not to use exercises from text-books.
>For computer science there's lot's of free material online. For some basic courses,
>even the Wikipedia can provide sizable amount of material. But again, from the point
>of view of an accountant, it is cheaper to told students to buy a text-book than
>pay for a professor to go through online sources and building up some coherent collection of knowledge for students.
>
>Of course, many students then simply don't buy the books. Sometimes the professor
>even states at the beginning of the course that the book isn't necessary. From return
>of investment point of view it probably was better if one person, the professor
>or an assistant teacher, would compile the material, instead of tens of students doing it by themselves.
>
>But the work students do or the money they spent on text-books is free for the
>university and for the government. And you know, maybe it just does good for the
>students to do some source hunting. Personally, I think the last one is an excuse,
>if it is applied in general or on basic courses. The point of every course shouldn't
>be how to find good sources of information.

This is what I said; judging whether a source is good or bad is simply beyond what a student can do. And lecturing at the level of a good source (unless it's a form of parroting) is beyond what many professors can do. And understanding difficult subjects on the fly is really hard.

This, in short, is the huge problem with lectures.

>> To avoid any possible confusion, by
>> "good sources" I don't mean
>> necessarily expensive books. Yes,
>> there are good ones whose authors
>> deserve the share of income for
>> contribution to the body of human
>> knowledge, their exceptional moral
>> qualities or some other real values.
>
>I discussed book vs. other sources above, so I don't repeat myself.
>
>> But what if they get a fixed sum
>> regardless of circulation? Would you
>> want to sponsor money-makers who
>> contribute to deterioration of our
>> biosphere?
>
>I think this is just ideological daydreaming that doesn't factor in in real world
>decisions. Writing your own material or simply checking the copyrights and composing
>coherent whole of the freely available material is such a huge task that no-one
>is going to do that just because text-book publishers work in less than moral ways.

No, you don't have to (and shouldn't) write anything yourself (unless you can really do it better than others), and compiling a good reading list takes expertise, not time.

>Most of the lecturers do try to make it easier to use old editions of books, for
>example by giving page numbers for lectures and exam for newer and older editions.
>There is quite a lot of book trading going on in campus.
>
>But that's pretty much it. There's no money in making your own material, only some
>prestige, if you go further and turn it into a book. Collecting a bunch of free
>sources for students' benefit doesn't have any prestige at all, so it is probably
>only done if teacher feels that the available text-books aren't covering the subject well enough.

Well, I don't know about prestige, but selecting right sources to study is arguably the best thing a professor can do. If capable, of course.

>>> 1) you still have to make the exercise
>>> well-worded. Sure, if you have groups
>>> of four, you have four times less
>>> personal explaining to do, but it
>>> doesn't go away completely.
>>
>> I think it's enough to make clear what
>> the problem is (the essence). The value
>> I see in such questions is that for
>> anyone who wants to learn, they
>> (+arguments) can lead to such depths of
>> subject, which can easily get missed by
>> attending lectures or doing well-worded
>> exercises.
>
>What about those who don't really want to learn and are quite happy if they just
>receive the credits? I think it is great from learning perspective to discuss or
>argue about things. The ones easiest to misunderstand are often the most interesting
>ones, but how do you grade these arguments? Do you have ten assistant teachers wandering
>around listening to the discussions and then assigning a grade based on what they have heard?
>
>If you just told students to discuss without somehow forcing them to, they won't.
>And if you somehow force them, then you have to have some sort of grading system,
>or many will just do what has to be done to get the credits.

Some will do it to defend their views, and believe me, those people don't need course points to do so. Consider it from a different angle: if someone has no natural interest to what's being studied, will he really benefit more from "traditional" way of teaching (lectures + exercises)? Don't think so.

>> Time is one of the reasons why I think
>> exercises suck. Easy exercises have
>> little or no value, hard ones can
>> teach a lot, but if there's no strong
>> motivation to crack a problem, why
>> bother?
>
>I think the basic motivation is that one can't pass the course without passing
>(some percentage of) exercise(s). Next step is to design such exercises and grading
>principles that there's a motivation to do more than just what is necessary.

Yes, and it may be helpful. However, there are lots of things when exercises (in usual sense: a gradable assignment to solve something) are simply uselesss. Consider the topic the discussion grew from in-order vs OoOE: what exercise can possibly make students look at the problem from many different angles?

>> The rate at which one arrives at
>> better understanding of the
>> subject is arguably higher during
>> arguments over interesting
>> questions.
>
>Sure, but how do you get students to discuss? They can't do that unless they have
>some knowledge on the issue. So they either have to study be themselves or attend
>to a lecture. Or do you suggest they discuss with the lecturer (perhaps in small groups like ten people)?

Of course knowledge is required, and I made it clear in the original post. Lectures in classical sense are hardly thought-stimulating; neither are exercises in the classical sense. There's just very little chance, from my own experience, that they can spark natural interest to dig deep into non-trivial subjects.

>>If you manage to make students have different opinions on the subject (remember:
>>it's your task), the rest is much easier. E.g. make clear what the points of arguments
>>are, and give a few points to the winner of each.
>
>Are you suggesting I listen to all the arguments? I don't disagree with your concepts,
>just with the practical arrangements. An exercise that has different right answer's
>depending on what you presume is good, because writing a good answer forces the
>student to view the problem from different angles. I think that for a large course
>best way to force the thinking and collect the answers is to publish an exercise
>and tell students to submit written answers.

We had a very interesting female lecturer who would deliver the "lecture" (which it's really not, in the classical sense at least) by first giving us several notions and definitions and then, instead of going on, she would start asking questions. Many seemed trivial, but only to find out, after she would point out something we were missing, that the answer is not that simple at all. The funniest thing about the course was that even after many "lectures" behind us, we were not always able to win this us-vs-her game.

>Whether the subject and formulation of the exercise is any good is a different
>issue. Wordings are more important if there are more students. That's true in both
>cases, though number (and quality) of students may seriously impact the meaningfulness of discussions.
>
>> Average students are actually more
>> likely to miss important points
>> during a non-trivial lecture or
>> fail to deal with hard exercises
>> than bright ones.
>
>Yes, average students aren't generally speaking as good as bright ones. I'm not
>defending great educational value of lectures, but they are the norm for a reason.
>Exercises are a different issue. I consider a course that has exercises in addition
>to lectures to be good by default, and ones with only lectures to be bad. It's up
>to implementation whether either consideration turns out to be true.
>
>Other teaching methods, like seminars, discussions, workshops, case studies and
>so on work well if students are interested and there aren't too many of them. But
>that isn't the situation with basic courses.
>
>(Just to make clear, I have attended a very bad seminar course and less than perfect
>workshops, so they are by no means successful by default, even if the attendance
>is small. It still requires skill from the teacher.)

And instructor's skill is a variable thing -- that's the difference with good sources.

>> That's why good sources and
>> thought-stimulating environment
>> are both very important in my
>> opinion. Getting things on the
>> fly is not for all, and the
>> harder the subject, the more so.
>
>As I said before, I think you need good sources no matter what. "Thought-stimulating
>environment" is a buzz word that for me has pretty much zero concrete meaning. Yes,
>students should think, that's the point of academic studies. But what exactly should
>you do, when you have X euros, Y students with Z level of knowledge, and are constrained
>by government mandates Q, T, E, C, D, and P.

I think good sources are actually enough.

>Thought-stimulating environment is something politicians say in their speeches.
>I don't see it having any conrete meaning.

The concrete meaning is that non-thought-stimulating education won't get students too far.

>> Well, you basically said it all
>> yourself. This is the problem with
>> exercises and hw. No need to be
>> really good or better than others,
>> hence the results. And it's not
>> students, you're the one who sets
>> the rules.
>
>For homework exercise, it is simple to set the rules, if they are needed. My point
>was, that I don't see how you can set the rules for discussion, unless your discussing
>with (all) the students. Even then it is harder to be fair, since there are no written rules to refer to.

You seem to be somehow fixed in a rigid framework; our female lecturer didn't have any written rules, she had a knack of turning a lecture into a game that all of us enjoyed. Of course, we still had to hold exam.

>>> But I don't think any of them is
>>> going to remember me after few
>>> years :) .
>>
>> Well, if it helped some of them
>> gain really good knowledge of
>> the subject, why not then?
>
>I wasn't interacting with them much: One lecture, some clarifications to newsgroup,
>bit of personal help for few students (they might remember me :) ) and a demo session
>where they discussed with me about their implementation and what issues they might
>have encountered during development. I've attended many such courses and whether
>I thought the exercises were good or bad, I don't remember the assistant teachers any better.
>
>I do remember few assistant teacher's from math courses, but that's because I spent four hours a week with them :) .
>
>> I'll give it a read maybe, but I'm
>> curious if you're done with studies
>> or going for a PhD now. :)
>
>I'm done, more or less. If some day I'm financially independent, I might go back
>for fun. Or if some company I'm working with starts a project with a university,
>then I might consider it. I don't think it's likely though.
>
>> What do you perceive as your
>> strength (teaching or some specific
>> technical subjects)?
>
>I do think I'm pretty good teacher, but I have almost no formal pedagogic studies,
>which makes my unsuitable for anything below universities, and if you want to teach
>in university, you have to at least pretend that you are going for PhD. I'm not
>very good lecturer though, so if I was going to teach, I would have something to
>learn (besides the subject matter that is).
>
>Anyway, teachers have pretty lousy paychecks, so it isn't very tempting career
>for someone who has to think about buying a house and getting the "real life" started.

OK, so you work outside of uni now? Good luck with real life.

>>> [2]cont. It is actually somewhat
>>> painful to watch sometimes when a
>>> foreign lecturer ask students to
>>> form groups and discuss some
>>> issue for a few minutes.
>>
>> Agreed, and doing it this way is
>> not what I meant (and will probably
>> yield zero or negative result
>> anywhere, not just in Finland).
>> This is just lame, a lecturer
>> who would do it that way probably
>> misses the value of debate altogether.
>
>Yeah, this was more of an example of Finnish culture, which seems to be a surprise
>for many visiting lecturers. The point of few minutes of discussion isn't really
>to learn much. It's just to wake people up. Such wakenings are recommended by every
>expert, but the basic ones like "some discussion with the person next to you" simply
>don't work with CS students we have.

Well, that is more of a contact-establishing thing, and I mean purely educational aspect.

>> To reiterate: "help them see all
>> the pros and cons and have
>> conflicting opinions on the
>> matter;" -- this is what's needed
>> in the first place. Not easy to
>> achieve, but if you manage that
>> and can steer the discussion so
>> it progresses well, drop right
>> hints if the teams can't arrive
>> at interesting conclusions on
>> their own, and keep the spirit
>> right, I'm convinced your
>> students will have much better
>> understanding of hard subjects
>> with many subtle points.
>
>I agree with your ideas but think they require way too high teacher/student ratio
>and thus money/student ratio. Whether the absolute amount of money (or number of
>students) is optimal in Finland, or in some other place, is a different question.
>Also, everything becames easier if students are more motivated, more talented and so on.
>
>> I can't really add anything to
>> what I said above. I'm convinced
>> lectures and exercises are even
>> less of a help for not-so-bright
>> students.
>
>I agree and I don't think the issue is which is a better method if all you measure
>are the results and have enough resources to do a good job. But once you factor
>in the cost, situation changes. The thing is, if you have a course with lectures,
>you can double the number of students and the cost stays pretty much the same (grading
>the exam will take double the time, but that shouldn't be too much compared to tens
>of hours of lectures and coming up with examination questions and other fixed costs).

If cost is an important factor, then lectures should be simply dropped, there's just very little value in listening to someone compared to reading a good source.

>> I think that what bad students need
>> more are a few things: a real inner
>> feeling that while they are not so
>> good as others, they still can be
>> better than their peers, that
>> usually being smarter means being
>> naturally interested in the subject
>> and/or working harder than others,
>> that drinking beer for coffee
>> hardly helps etc.
>
>I think this is getting bit far to the field of psychology :) . Different things
>motivate different people. At high school I was motivated by the fact that I was
>about second best in the class. At university, I was not motivated at all by how
>I compared to others. I was far from the top and whether you are in the top 40 %
>or 60 % doesn't really matter at all, for me. Especially, since the exams aren't
>very good way of measuring what is important, in my opinion.
>
>But that's just me. I don't know whether I'm part of majority or minority.
>
>> I'm not in education sector
>> currently, it's looking back
>> at my own scholar years why
>> I think many things can be
>> done in a much better way.
>
>I certainly agree on that. I just think that the problems are way above individual
>professors, many of them even above rectors (headmasters, or whatever the most correct title is :) ) of universities.

Many problems seem much harder than they are, and I think anyone who seeks to do his best educating people can find significant freedom within limits imposed by administration and law.

>> And what are exams like in Finland?
>> Do you have some kind of federal
>> certification (fed exam)?
>
>There's a federal system for highschool final exams, but everything else is local.
>There are quite strict guidelines and rules for basic education, but for university
>level I think they are, well, just guidelines.
>
>> If exams are in written form, are
>> they available e.g. on [potential]
>> employer's request? Is it normal
>> practice for [potential] employers
>> to ask tutors for a reference on
>> their former or current student?
>
>I'm not sure whether they are publicly available for outsiders or not. Much in
>the university is. For example, you could walk to the university office and request
>my grades and get them, legally, as far as I know. For a student, exams (both questions
>and his answers) must be available at least for two years in case of misconducts.
>Employers never ask about exams, however. Based on what I have heard and experienced
>myself, I don't think they are even interested in grades, or average of grades.
>
>It's probably different outside CS and engineering, but I don't think individual
>exams or course grades are focus of interest in any field.
>
>Here are few exams from the course that is mentioned in my master thesis: http://tenttiarkisto.fi/course.php?id=302?=en_US
>
>Currently the course is lectured in Finnish only (it being quite basic course.
>Basic enough that exchange students shouldn't waste their time on it), so there
>aren't any newer exams available in English.
>
>-JLarja