coms2269@waikato.ac.nz (Brent C Summers) (10/21/90)
juh@cs.hut.fi (Juha Hyv|nen) writes: > Presently, checking the homework is done by a person. Last spring, > over 500 students took part in the course. That meant that a total of > 500 students x 5 parts x 4 questions = 10,000 answers had to be > checked (and the results registered). At the rate of checking one > answer a minute it would take over 160 hours to check all the answers. > That is one working month! I think that the time should be spent > teaching than doing a routine job that could be done by a computer. I am one of three and two-half tutors in Comp. Sci. at our New Zealand university. Our positions exist primarily to administer our department's two part 1 courses in all aspects save lecturing (left to "proper" academic staff) i.e. weekly tutorials, lab supervision, marking of weekly assignments, administrivia etc. With all this person-power (plus a large corps of casually employed laboratory staff) we _still_ cannot adequately serve 1x1000 plus 1x350 (figures approx.) courses. Our main downfall is in turn-around time for the marking. It gets back to the students too late to be (or to be percieved as being) usefull feedback on their progress. Automated marking has been considered, but dismissed because of a) high implementation costs b) the restrictive nature of such a system on assignment form c) fear of Murphy's Law Instead, from next year, the laboratory staff will mark assignments on the spot as Fine/Attempted/Nothing, and the aggregate of these is to be combined with test results to form the internal component of assessment. > We do not have the resources for direct interaction other than the > classes (lectures). (Most students skip the classes -- attending is > voluntary.) Here are some other observations: > > The students could ask questions. They do not. > The students are asked questions. They do not want to answer. > > If the students are made to answer, even more of them tend to skip the > class. ...[Deleted]... > > Conclusion: direct interaction (with too limited resources) does > not work (with 500 Finns). Believe me, it's not just Finns. Our major crime over the last 4-5 years, in my opinion at least, has been an increasing willingness - even determination - to take responsibility for the students' education from them and upon ourselves. This is not to say that we (lecturers and tutors) should not be responsible for the quality of our teaching, but that we must stop pretending that we can force feed unwilling victims (we have numbers of these due to various degree regulations). To use a cliche: while we can talk until we turn blue, we can *teach* only with the permission of the individual student. > PS2. The course is valued (by the university) as being a "three-week" > course, i.e., the amount of work needed to learn and understand > all issues is about 3 working weeks (120 hours) -- including > classes, homework, and additional personal effort. The course > deals with sections 1...23 and 29...32 (Fundamentals, Sorting, > Searching, String Processing, and Graph Algorithms) of the book > > R. Sedgewick, Algorithms, 2nd ed. 650 p. Addison-Wesley, 1988. > ISBN 0-201-06673-4 > > Do you (the net people) think that 3 weeks is reasonable? All the > algorithms are supposed to be totally new to the students. Every > student here seem to think that it is a joke. Uh, I think this depends (haha - very useful). The chief determining factor of rate seems to be the mind-set of the students. Ours are generally what I might call "uninspired" (on a good day), but I think if their attitude could be engineered a little (and I have seen this done shamelessly and successfully) significantly greater rates might be possible without undue stress. I think 3 weeks sounds reasonable, for our students - I don't know yours. Regards - bcs (Oh, "All opinions expressed are, of course, soley my own.")
russ@prism.gatech.EDU (Russell Shackelford) (10/22/90)
In article <2028.27218c6b@waikato.ac.nz>, coms2269@waikato.ac.nz (Brent C Summers) writes: > juh@cs.hut.fi (Juha Hyv|nen) writes: > > Presently, checking the homework is done by a person. Last spring, > > over 500 students took part in the course. That meant that a total of > > 500 students x 5 parts x 4 questions = 10,000 answers had to be > > checked (and the results registered). At the rate of checking one > > answer a minute it would take over 160 hours to check all the answers. > > That is one working month! I think that the time should be spent > > teaching than doing a routine job that could be done by a computer. > It is entirely clear that the grading of student work is perhaps *the* most wasteful aspect of current instructional practice. In theory, grading is a crucial part of the evaluation-and-feedback process and, as such, is an essential component of any learn-by-doing experience. In practice, however, it (a) consumes immense amount of available resources, and (b) does little more than providing an adminstrative function. In short, we are expending LOTSA resources and have precious little to show for it. This is a key place where the deployment of info processing tools is called for. The key appears to be the exploitation of the fact that student responses are typical. At one end of the spectrum, there's "soft" responses, like essays; at the other "hard" responses that are simply right or wrong. In either case, students screw up in a finite number of ways. An appropriate Grading Environment will exploit this fact, such that student's receive better feedback than they currently do, while graders spend less time in rote, redundant activity. We studied this for a couple years as Georgia Tech. For some months now, we've been "on the verge" of releasing "Optimus, The Teaching Information System." It is designed to address this and other aspects of universal teaching activities. I'll post again when it's released. It can help alot. russ -- Russell Shackelford The College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332 russ@prism.gatech.edu (404) 834-4759
juh@cs.hut.fi (Juha Hyv|nen) (10/22/90)
From: coms2269@waikato.ac.nz (Brent C Summers)
Subject: Resource & Responsibility (was Re: Automatic checking...)
Date: 20 Oct 90 22:54:19 GMT
+------------------------
! I am one of three and two-half tutors in Comp. Sci. at our New Zealand
! university. Our positions exist primarily to administer our department's
! two part 1 courses in all aspects save lecturing (left to "proper" academic
! staff) i.e. weekly tutorials, lab supervision, marking of weekly assignments,
! administrivia etc. With all this person-power (plus a large corps of casually
! employed laboratory staff) we _still_ cannot adequately serve 1x1000 plus
! 1x350 (figures approx.) courses.
!........................
Is that 3 + 2 x 0.5 tutors = 4 (full time) tutors? And that is for
1350 students. That makes 1350/4 = 340 students per tutor. What we
have here is (my estimate only) 0.5 tutors for 500 students in this
course. That makes 1000 students per tutor. (Actually we have 3
"casual employees" who work approx. two weeks in total each. That is
1.5 months during a four-month semester => "0.5 tutors".)
We have a weekly two-hour "appointment time (?)" when students can
come ask for help (is that what is called tutorial?). No lab
supervision is necessary because no programming is required. The time
left is spent marking the assignments. Guess if we can adequately
serve the students.
+------------------------
! Automated marking has been considered, but dismissed because of
! a) high implementation costs
! b) the restrictive nature of such a system on assignment form
! c) fear of Murphy's Law
!........................
a) Any figures/estimates?
b) What kind of assignments do you have?
c) We are optimists :-)
The first implementation of our system will be quite limited. First
year (next spring) it will only be used as a prototype to get some
estimate on its usability etc. To ensure the students get fair
markings all of it is done manually, too. (And we get information on
usability, reliability, etc.)
+------------------------
! laboratory staff will mark assignments on the spot as Fine/Attempted/Nothing
!........................
Please define "fine", "attempted", and even "nothing". What kind of
questions are you asking? How much "intellectual effort" (and time) is
required to understand the answer?
+------------------------
! Our major crime over the last 4-5 years, in my opinion at least, has been an
! increasing willingness - even determination - to take responsibility for the
! students' education from them and upon ourselves. This is not to say that
! we (lecturers and tutors) should not be responsible for the quality of our
! teaching, but that we must stop pretending that we can force feed unwilling
! victims (we have numbers of these due to various degree regulations).
!........................
Why are there so many unwilling victims who only want to pass the
course (because they have to)? Because of the low quality of teaching
due to insuffient resources (just my opinion on the situation here).
/ (.___o ..
/_/ ___/ Juha Hyvonen
! / !
!/ ) ! juh@hutcs.hut.fi
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