ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel) (08/07/87)
How many microcomputers should be available for a given number of students who are computer science majors? That is, should there be one micro for every ten students, every five students, every twenty students? WHat would be an optimal number and what would be a satisfactory ratio? How well equiped should the micro's be? How much money per year should be available for software per student?
sysop@stech.UUCP (Jan Harrington) (08/11/87)
in article <398@ndsuvax.UUCP>, ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel) says: > Posted: Fri Aug 7 06:49:38 1987 > > > How many microcomputers should be available for a given number of students > who are computer science majors? That is, should there be one micro for every > ten students, every five students, every twenty students? WHat would be an > optimal number and what would be a satisfactory ratio? How well equiped > should the micro's be? How much money per year should be available for software > per student? We give every freshman and software, majors and non-majors alike, their own portable PC. Students lease the machines, but can buy them if they choose. Juniors and seniors have the option of leasing and/or buying. Since that is the case, our micro labs are rather small. There are about 70 PC's, each with a hard disk and printer, for an about 5,000 students (grad and undergrad) but remember that fully three-quarters or more of that number will be using their own machines. And many courses don't use micros but are taught on the mainframe (especially for majors). The portables this year are the new HP portable, which I understand hasn't even been officially announced to the public yet. I therefore can't give details, but our written specs for a machine included 512KRAM, 2 - 3 1/2 half inch disk drives, a readable screen, and AT compatibility. Each student will be purchasing WordPerfect, a spreadsheet (a Lotus clone, since Lotus wanted $100/student to put 1-2-3 on the small disks!), BASIC, and a demo version of dBase III+ (limited to 25 or so rows per file). The micro lab has HP vectras, each with a hard disk on which software has already been installed. The packages vary with what instructors need. Each faculty member, by the way, gets some sort of micro. The Vectra in my office is hooked to our broadband network, off which the mainframes and minis are hung. For exmaple, I can reach a Prime 9955 and a Microvax II. There are student terminal labs scattered around campus, though the largest has about 80 terminals. Dial-in access to the broadband is also available. Jan Harrington, sysop Scholastech Telecommunications seismo!husc6!amcad!stech!sysop
gwl@rruxa.UUCP (George W. Leach) (08/12/87)
In article <398@ndsuvax.UUCP>, ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel) writes: > > How many microcomputers should be available for a given number of students > who are computer science majors? That is, should there be one micro for every > ten students, every five students, every twenty students? WHat would be an > optimal number and what would be a satisfactory ratio? How well equiped > should the micro's be? How much money per year should be available for software > per student? At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, each and every full time undergraduate is required to purchase a selected PC upon entering the university. I'm not sure about part timers. In addition, currently three public PC labs are available for general usage. Each lab consists of 50 PCs connected to a hard disk system and several laser printers via a local area network. Thus students may access common software resources. I know that the total student population within the CIS department is somewhere in the area of 1500 or so. However, many students in the junior and senior classes as well as graduate students don't depend only upon the micocomputers to do their work. For the freshmen and sophomores the micros are the only computing resource available. It does seem to be working quite well. And from my experiences as an undergraduate dealing with long delays while waiting for my printout from a line printer, or punching hollerith cards I feel that today's students are lucky! George W. Leach Bell Communications Research New Jersey Institute of Technology 444 Hoes Lane 4A-1129 Computer & Information Sciences Dept. Piscataway, New Jersey 08854 Newark, New Jersey 07102 (201) 699-8639 UUCP: ..!bellcore!indra!reggie ARPA: reggie%njit-eies.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere Dr. Seuss "One fish two fish red fish blue fish"
neitzel@infbs.UUCP (08/15/87)
/***** infbs:comp.edu / rruxa!gwl / 4:51 pm Aug 12, 1987*/ > At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, each and every full time > undergraduate is required to purchase a selected PC upon entering the > university. > [...] > And from my experiences as an undergraduate dealing with long delays > while waiting for my printout from a line printer, or punching hollerith > cards I feel that today's students are lucky! > George W. Leach But there is nothing bad about waiting for something! In fact it gives you a good opportunity for talks with all other students waiting for printouts, too. Students that work on the same problem. You can read Gerald M. Weinberg's "Psychology of Programming" about this. There is one place, where he writes about the change from batch operation to time sharing systems. In short, he regrets the loss of communication among the programmers. I think, the same applies to the students today and to the change from time sharing systems to (further isolated/isolating) micro computers. I am badly aware at this CS dept. here, that more and more students do all their work at home == on their own == without seeing different concepts ( == without learning ?!?! ). Looking back over the past five years I get the impression, that all activities amongst students, which went beyond/beneath any lecture, have vanished and were not repeated or even continued by younger fresh{wo}men. [ BTW: This *is* related to the last debate on assignments/cheating. Sometimes I was very startled, how cooperation between students was strongly discouraged. Yes, "the 1st language should be English" is okay, but then let them use it, too! ] Martin Neitzel Tech.Univ. Braunschweig, W.Germany, Europe ...!mcvax!unido!infbs!neitzel
gwl@rruxa.UUCP (George W. Leach) (08/17/87)
In article <18100001@infbs.UUCP>, neitzel@infbs.UUCP writes: > /***** infbs:comp.edu / rruxa!gwl / 4:51 pm Aug 12, 1987*/ > > At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, each and every full time > > undergraduate is required to purchase a selected PC upon entering the > > university. > > [...] > > And from my experiences as an undergraduate dealing with long delays > > while waiting for my printout from a line printer, or punching hollerith > > cards I feel that today's students are lucky! > > > George W. Leach > > But there is nothing bad about waiting for something! > In fact it gives you a good opportunity for talks with all other > students waiting for printouts, too. Students that work on the same > problem. > I only remember being always pressed for time between classes to maybe get two runs in! I also quite clearly remember begging the operator to run my deck through one more time at 2:00 AM. Perhaps one benefit of all this was to make damn sure that those precious few runs were not stopped by dumb typos and other errors that could be hand checked. Today my students have Turbo Pascal, which not only detects errors, but takes them into the editor at the appropriate place in the code where the syntax error occured. My they are spoiled! > > You can read Gerald M. Weinberg's "Psychology of Programming" about this. > There is one place, where he writes about the change from batch operation > to time sharing systems. In short, he regrets the loss of communication > among the programmers. I have read Weinberg's book and the incident that you are talking about (I think) is when an intelligent manager removed some vending machines from the area in which printouts were picked up. He felt that the programmers we wasting too much time congregating around them. Well sure enough, that stopped when the machines were removed and so did the communication. People were talking about programs and comparing notes. The end result was people were taking longer to fix bugs!!! > > I think, the same applies to the students today and to the change from > time sharing systems to (further isolated/isolating) micro computers. > I'm not so sure about this point. From my own experiences as both a student and a teacher I have found that people tend to talk amongst their friends and not with total strangers about such things. And what about the communication opportunities that e-mail affords a student? Or what about all the students who have access to the net? (I know, it is but a small fraction, but still it is more than in the batch, card oriented days). Networking the PCs at school and providing phone links to the ones at home can provide the same benefits. > > I am badly aware at this CS dept. here, that more and more students do > all their work at home == on their own == without seeing different > concepts ( == without learning ?!?! ). Looking back over the past five > years I get the impression, that all activities amongst students, which > went beyond/beneath any lecture, have vanished and were not repeated or > even continued by younger fresh{wo}men. > > [ BTW: This *is* related to the last debate on assignments/cheating. > Sometimes I was very startled, how cooperation between students was > strongly discouraged. Yes, "the 1st language should be English" is > okay, but then let them use it, too! > ] The problem is the form that the "cooperation" assumes. For the most part you have one or possibly two very intelligent students from whom the rest are simply obtaining the solutions without regard for trying to understand them!!! This is the problem. They are not learning. They are simply getting the program done to get a grade. That is why tests are given in a classroom. Programs alone won't do the trick. > > Martin Neitzel > Tech.Univ. Braunschweig, W.Germany, Europe > ...!mcvax!unido!infbs!neitzel George W. Leach Bell Communications Research New Jersey Institute of Technology 444 Hoes Lane 4A-1129 Computer & Information Sciences Dept. Piscataway, New Jersey 08854 Newark, New Jersey 07102 (201) 699-8639 UUCP: ..!bellcore!indra!reggie ARPA: reggie%njit-eies.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere Dr. Seuss "One fish two fish red fish blue fish"
steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) (08/20/87)
In article <398@ndsuvax.UUCP>, ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel) writes: > who are computer science majors? That is, should there be one micro for every > ten students, every five students, every twenty students? WHat would be an If you expect your students to learn computing science instead of the pharmacology of stimulants there should be enough interractive workstations to go around. I have been through a CS program that used resource limits to weed out the physically weak rather than a demanding curriculum to weed out the intellectually weak. You can tell what I think of that strategy. I guess it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. But as a rule of thumb if more than half of the workstations are occupied at 3:30 am some of your students won't be in top form in class tomorrow. Steve Nuchia {{soma,academ}!uhnix1,sun!housun}!nuchat!steve