AM (myname4rwt@jee.male) on 10/8/09 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.

If I'm not going to explain or defend my position, what's the point of posting? For all I know, I may have misunderstood what you are asking or what I think you think I was saying.

Judging by how the discussion below is going, I don't have high hopes of our communication in general.

But since you insist, just take a look at your discussion about different Atom's availability with Ungo. It seems to me that you think he was making a claim with some concrete numbers from Intel and that his argument is faulty because he can't provide them.

> 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.

Are you suggesting that _basic courses_ are often taught by someone without understanding of the subject? I don't know about "very deep". Generally speaking what a teacher needs is a deeper understanding than what students are supposed to achieve, but not necessarily "very deep".

By the way, how should someone without good understanding be able to compile collection of good sources?

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

Yes, of course. If you are doing a bad job, results probably won't be good.

> 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).

And how do you do this in group discussions or in any exercise, where there's no written document to grade? I mean for hundred(s of) students.

Why do you think even the classical exercises (which are apparently a subset of what I understand as an exercise) couldn't be graded with something else than passed/fail grades?

> 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.

Well, we are using several lecturers on many courses, even the basic ones. That again costs more money, but the cost doesn't go up with number of students.

And I really don't understand how you can think that good references are easy to come up with by someone who doesn't have good understanding on subject.

> 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.

Well, sure, and this is done too, although not often in my university. The problem is that even an accountant understands that this is hardly even teaching.

The great thing about lectures is that it is an easy way for a student to learn during longer period of time (several weeks or months). It takes a lot of discipline to study a text-book, if the only pressure is generated by a looming exam weeks or months in the future. This is also why I think voluntary exercises without direct benefit are pretty much useless. No one's interested in them until it is too late.

I know many people are able to do it. Good for them. I'm not very good at it unless the subject is really interesting. From my experience most people that attend the lectures think the same way.

And just to make sure: I do think that good source material is paramount, whether there is a lecture or not.

> 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.

So I think we disagree. I want to state again, however, that my problem is with pitting students against each other. I don't think basic grading does that.

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

I consider exercises to be heavily on the playing side of things, compared to reading through some text-book or other material.

> The fun part was always doing it,
> because noone knew what the final
> results would be.

So how was the competition motivating, if there weren't any tracking going on? I don't consider it particularly competitive environment, if you just get results after the course. No one cares at that point (at least here, I don't know if your experiences are different).

> 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)?

Personally, I think competition is a great way to take fun out of anything. I like playing games, but I don't like being too serious about who's winning. What you described above ("noone knew what the final results would be") sounds to me like playing without real competition. Sure, that's fun, count me in.

That's what I think when talking about _good_ exercises. Not all exercises are great fun, but it should give you satisfaction and feeling of learning to get them done (or, if they are trivial for your level of knowledge, they shouldn't take too much time).

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

Think about it this way: if you can't make exciting exercises about the subject, do you think any reading material is going to be much better?

Still, I think your meaning for word exercise differs from mine.

> This is what I said; judging whether
> a source is good or bad is simply
> beyond what a student can do.

Yes, though that's something one should learn during studying.

> 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.

I'm certainly not suggesting that you subtitute good source material with lectures. I thought I was perfectly clear on that.

> No, you don't have to (and shouldn't)
> write anything yourself (unless you
> can really do it better than others),

Well, someone has to write the text-books :) .

> and compiling a good reading list
> takes expertise, not time.

Just how little time you think that takes? Sure, not as much as writing your own, but the motivation is also lesser. And it certainly takes more time than picking a text-book, if appropriate one is available.

> 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.

It occurred to me, do we have a same meaning for professor? In Finland, all professors have at least a PhD (if you don't, your just university teacher or something like that). I think it's very sad if all a professor can do is compile a collection of source material, since he's suppose to be an expert on at least some part of the course.

Just wondering.

> Some will do it to defend their
> views, and believe me, those people
> don't need course points to do so.

Yes, some. Some don't need a university in the first place.

> 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.

Absolutely will benefit. It's the old question about stick and carrot. If carrot isn't tasty enough, stick is better than nothing (of course, lectures are a form of carrot when compared to just reading by yourself. Exercises are a stick, if they are compulsory, or maybe a carrot, if they are voluntary but can raise your grade[1]. I don't think even the greatest minds on Earth can make exercises without some reward that large part of students would consider a carrot).

This is really basic, you know. I don't think anyone disputes the fact that some coercion is good in studying.

[1] This is, of course, an illusion. If sizable part of students get "bonus points" from voluntary exercises, grading will be skewed, and the situation is actually pretty much the same as with compulsory exercises. Students, however, like to be fooled and prefer bonus point system.

> 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.

Perhaps we should talk a bit more about what you mean by exercises in usual sense. I had ten years to form my mind about what an exercise is, and it seems it differs from yours.

For example, do you think my example of implementing email client can be called "an exercise", and if not, what word would you suggest instead?

> 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?

What discussion can do that? Where do you think such discussion would take place in a university setting?

Students are more than welcome do discuss by themselves, if they wish. Many courses even have newsgroups, where course staff can chime in if need be. Very seldom does one see spontanios discussion on relevant topics.

> 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.

And just providing material will?

> 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.

I've seen this tried several times with bad results. I don't know whether it is Finnish CS students or simply the fact that when there are tens of people in a lecture hall, no one wants to answer. If lecturer persist, he can probably find someone to answer his questions. And next time, there's a lot less students attending (seen that too).

The less culturally dependent problem here is the size of class. With more than hundred students, it gets taxing to just answer the questions. It is also pretty clear, that at such setting it is easy for a student to just sit at the back of the class not participating. Also, few, or even one bad student with constant stupid questions or comments can cause much inefficiency with that style of lecturing (at least on normal lectures it is pretty easy to told someone to shut up).

Don't get me wrong. If that style of lecturing works, it is better or at least as good as just talking at the front, even for those students who don't participate. However, I don't see it having much benefit when the number of students is larger, or much change of succeeding, when the students are Finnish CS students.

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

It's not either or. Skill of "source provider" is also variable. And once again, I don't consider lectures to be subtitute for good source material.

>> 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.

Well, you are wrong. They are only enough for the top students (which I think are a lot less than 20 percent. More like five, but twenty is quite enough to make my point).

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

Yes, but stating that is pointless unless you have a suggestion on how to achieve that.

>> 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.

For me what she did sounds like suffering. I don't see many (Finnish CS) students going to that sort of lectures or participating to discussion unless they are forced to.

For small, voluntary courses with motivated participants this would work. Partly, though, just because those who don't like that style could stay away.

> Good luck with real life.

Thanks.

>> 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.

I'm not quite sure what you mean with "contact-establishing thing". From educational aspect it is pretty important to understand that most people aren't able to stay alert through two hours of lecturing, if there aren't some sort of breaks.

> 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 you are wrong here. The students who participate on lectures won't (on average) spend the lecture time reading a good source, if lectures are dropped.

It depends on details, of course. How good or bad are the lectures or the sources, how interesting the subject matter. Also, of course, how much money does the lecturing take.

> 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.

Yes, and many problems are much harder than they seem. So far all your suggestion seem to miss the same problems most books about education do: what to do when students (on average) aren't too interested and there are lots of them.

I've actually have had a priviledge of discussing this issue with two experts on education (I don't remember exatly what they're background was, but it was academic). They acknowledged the problem and pretty much said that most of the suggested teaching methods can't be used in such situation. They actually tought that (compulsory) exercises are a great way to activate students since obviously you can't do that on the lecture very well.

They did have many suggestions on how to make mass lectures better and exercises more motivating, but couldn't really offer anything great that wouldn't have considerable cost. The most cost effective way is of course to hire great lecturer and great exercise designer, since you are paying pretty much the same regardless of performance :) .

We didn't discuss whether lectures should be dropped altogether. I don't think any of us had enough data on costs (real and the ones shown in budgetary calculations) to make any real argument.

-JLarja