Good examples of programming course lecture notes

[Thomas Hawtin]

Taking notes helps because it involves more of your 5 senses. The more of a
person's senses that can be involved, and the more parts of their brain
involved, the faster they learn.

And we only use 20% of our brain?

Actually, I seem to remember an article in New Scientist a few weeks ago
claiming that senses interfered with one another. In fact, listening to
T'Pau as I write this probably makes the content of this post less creative.

Tom Hawtin

 

[clemenr]

I don't dispute that. What I /am/ saying is that it isn't possible (at least
it isn't possible for me, and apparently not for Patricia either) to
listen/think at the same time as writing.

Say you give a 40-minute lecture; how long (in aggregate) would you expect your
students to be writing ? Bearing in mind that writing speeds vary. 5 minutes
? 15 minutes ? 40 minutes ? The difference between 40 minutes and the
aggregate time is how long your lecture /really/ is.

In the past, the lectures at my university are two hours long, with a
ten minute break. That's 110 minutes. I don't really agree that people
work in modes which are either 100% note-taking or 100% listening, but
will adopt this for the sake of the argument. The lecture will only be
about 30%, if that, new information. Much of the rest of the time will
be spent on further explanations and interaction with the students. 20
minutes solid writing time should be possible without missing important
information.

When I aws an undergraduate I had lectures which were frantic writing
all the way through. They were Biology lectures, not Computer Science
ones.

(Just a thought -- not a serious suggestion. It would be interesting to try an
approach where you gave out notes that had key words and phrases missing, but
were otherwise comprehensive. The students would fill-in-the-blanks as you
went along, and the tutorials would provide an oppurtunity to discuss and
correct errors.)

Actually I will be doing this in another module. It wasn't actually my
idea. I inherited some notes from a colleague, and for the first time
(at least) that I teach it, I'm not trying to change much.

Notes taken by students will be reviewed during
practical classes, and feedback given.

It sounds (please don't take this as an insult) as if your students are in the
"don't [yet realise that they] want to learn" category. Fresh out of school
and still expecting to be "forced" to work. That would certainly make a
difference to how you present material, and how you organise the whole teaching
process.

Unfortunately, to the detrmiment of those who do want to learn.

Well, I will have different students this year than in my past
experience (long story). But in the past, the point you make is true.
It is a very very hard task trying to adapt lecturing styles to account
for the full range of attitudes and learning skill sets present in the
audience. Personally I believe I make a reasonable job of it, though
the really able students will have to follow up my "additional reading"
pointers and "challenging" problems to really stretch themselveds.

So let 'em fail...

(Yes, I know the current UK university system makes that approach, um,
infeasible).

No it doesn't. I can't talk openly about these sorts of things in
public but the rumours about students never being allowed to fail no
matter how poorly they do are just rumours. I have only once had an
academic in the UK tell me that they weren't allowed to fail students
who deserved to fail. And I'm not saying which uni but it wasn't one
that I have worked for.

Cheers,

Ross-c

 

[Baxter]

My information comes from several college courses on the subject. As well
as practical experience from being a member of an Apprentiship committee.

 

[Chris Uppal]

No it doesn't. I can't talk openly about these sorts of things in
public but the rumours about students never being allowed to fail no
matter how poorly they do are just rumours. I have only once had an
academic in the UK tell me that they weren't allowed to fail students
who deserved to fail. And I'm not saying which uni but it wasn't one
that I have worked for.

It probably isn't important, but for the record: I wasn't referring to that
rumour (which, in fact I had never heard -- until now ;-). What I was thinking
of is the situation we now have where (as I understand it from an academic
friend who rather specialises -- in part as an academic study -- in this stuff)
there is pressure to pack as many students onto each course as possible; there
is pressure to maintain (not exaggerate) pass-rates; and it is seen as
important that few students drop out. If -- as I believe happens -- there is a
tendency to see "failure" in either of the last two goals as solely failures of
the institution (or its members), resulting in loss of funds, etc, rather than
a natural side-effect of getting too many, or too little suited, students onto
the course in the first place, then that's a nasty bug[*] in the overall system
design.

-- chris

([*] nasty in that it tends to be self-reinforcing rather than self-correcting)

 

[Roedy Green]

I have objective evidence to support my position. I got a 3rd. class
honours degree in mathematics, for courses I took between the ages of 18
and 21, in the late 1960's, when digital cameras did not exist. I have a
4.0 GPA for computer science Ph.D. classes, including Theory of
Computation and Algorithm Design, taken in my 50's, but with a digital
camera. Mathematical ability is more likely to decrease between the late
teens and early 50's, not increase drastically.

Another factor is the distractions of the 50s are not nearly so
distracting as the distractions of the teens and 20s.

I find myself fastasising about taking all my old courses over, and
this time really working to understand every last point, rather than
looking on it as a chore.

It drives me nuts seeing people posting "do my homework for me" "help
me cheat on this term paper". These people don't seem to get it this
is your one big chance is life to spend your full time learning.

Oddly some of the stuff I learned in university I did not properly
understand till much later. It was not that I studied books, just
thought about it over the years.

 

[clemenr]

Another factor is the distractions of the 50s are not nearly so
distracting as the distractions of the teens and 20s.

And there are many other differences. E.g. the greater emotional
maturity can count for a lot, and IMHO would out-weigh any difference
in the way the brain works.

I find myself fastasising about taking all my old courses over, and
this time really working to understand every last point, rather than
looking on it as a chore.

It drives me nuts seeing people posting "do my homework for me" "help
me cheat on this term paper". These people don't seem to get it this
is your one big chance is life to spend your full time learning.

Agreed. This is an example of immaturity on the part of the people
making these postings.

Cheers,

Ross-c

 

[HalcyonWild]

I'd like to ask if anyone knows of some programming course they've
taken or are taking where the use of slides/powerpoint was really
effective. It doesn't need to be a Java course as I'm interested in
lookng more at presentation and lecture design styles rather than
content? I've done a lot of searching on the net, but haven't found
anything that I feel is clearly better than what I do now.

You might want to browse through the java.sun.com website. They provide
some slideshows in pdf format/html format. See if you can find
something related. You can make a powerpoint slide after copying it
out. Check if sun allows copying its tutorials/slides. I had once seen
a pdf slide on EJB on the java.sun.com site.

 

[Oliver Wong]

(ii) Make the students write notes. The slides are not complete. The
students are given basically blank paper formated with cross-references
to the slides. They wll have to write down what I say.

Disclaimer: I was not a "typical" student, in any sense of the word.

I studied in Quebec, Canada, where there is a level called "Cegep" which
last 2 years in between of highschool and university. In highschool, I would
essentially be told what to write down, and how to study, so I did what I
was told to do, and went through highschool without much trouble.

Cegep is supposed to be an intermediate between highschool and
university, and thus there is less handholding. I had to figure out for
myself what was important to take down as notes, and what was superfluous
information.

By the time I reached University, I had discovered what my learning
style was: don't bother taking any notes. I realized while at Cegep that I
would never bother to review my notes; it was like watching the same movie
twice (something I rarely ever do); I already knew how it "ends", so the
interest was simply not there for me.

One semester, I had a professor who had slides with "blanks" that we had
to "fill in", which would then be handed in and corrected as "participation
marks". I was appalled. What next? Would he give us diagrams and crayons to
colour them in with? I have nothing against other students who chose to take
notes (whether they use crayons or otherwise). What I didn't appreciate was
a professor thinking he knew the One Way of learning that was the Best for
me. I've discovered on my own what works and doesn't work for me, and I'd
rather not be forced to use a technique which simply doesn't work for me.

There is also the major real-world problem that if notes are too
complete, then certain types of students will decide that they don't
need to attend lectures. Non-attendance at lectures has become a very
very major problem in the UK.

In another semester, I took a course in abstract algebra (you know,
group, rings, isomorphism, and all that stuff). The professor was very
pedantic (even when one takes into account the subject matter he was
teaching!) which some students disliked, but which I appreciated because it
eliminated the potential for ambiguities that might have otherwise arisen if
the professor had used "natural English".

Unfortunately, as a side effect, the professor tended to be very verbose
in his explanation of even the simplest concepts. And should a student ask a
question which even hints at a minor misunderstanding, the professor would
have to go over that section again, clarifying exactly what is meant by
every word he used, and every character in the equation if appropriate. This
is, I think, understandable given the subject matter. For example, one
student had trouble understanding the difference between the empty set, and
the set containing only the empty set, and while the difference,
syntactically, might seem minor (i.e. "{}" versus "{{}}"), the semantic
difference was great.

So I'd quite frequently take naps during his lecture. Naps which could
have lasted anywhere between 1 and 2 hours (the lectures themselves were 2
hours long). For all intents and purposes, I was not "attending" the lecture
in any reasonable sense of the word. However, at the end, when I'd hear the
rustling of students packing away their notes and getting ready to leave, I
could wake up and look at the blackboard covered in formulae, read them from
top to bottom, left to right, and grasp what topics were covered that day.

I forget the exact grade I received for that class, though I suspect it
was an A. It could not have been lower than a B-, at any rate.

The morale of the anecdote, I guess, is that teachers should teach the
subject of the course, rather than "baby-sit" the students on the path
towards a diploma. What is important, in my opinion, is for the students to
learn and understand the material, and only the student him or herself can
actually determine whether he or she understood it. Needing to assign a
"grade" or "score" to their "understanding" is just an unfortunate side
effect of future employers wanting some sort of certificate confirming that
said students really does have the understanding they claims that they do.

- Oliver

 

[Roedy Green]

In that the same length of time spent with a standard text book (and a
syllabus) would be more productive. It only requires that the student
can read. That's not my preferred method of learning, but even that is
significantly more effective than traditional lectures.

A lecture without feedback is a problem, but if you have small enough
classes, you can ask questions. It is hard to get disabused of a
notion just by reading.

 

[Thomas Hawtin]

A lecture without feedback is a problem, but if you have small enough
classes, you can ask questions. It is hard to get disabused of a
notion just by reading.

In a UK university, such as Westminster, you will often have one, two or
perhaps three hundred students in a lecture. Not really small enough for
anything useful to happen, no matter how good the lecturer.

Tom Hawtin

 

[Roedy Green]

In a UK university, such as Westminster, you will often have one, two or
perhaps three hundred students in a lecture. Not really small enough for
anything useful to happen, no matter how good the lecturer.

There were some first year classes like that, but in third year on
most classes were 8 - 15 people at UBC in math. Though granted some
profs acted as if there were lecturing to 300 with no interaction.

 

[Roedy Green]

Taking notes helps because it involves more of your 5 senses. The more of a
person's senses that can be involved, and the more parts of their brain
involved, the faster they learn.

I have heard that theory, but it did not work for me. I would go into
a mindless transcription mode just copying words without
comprehension. The theory is writing, speaking to yourself helps you
remember. That may be true, but for math or science or computer
science, remembering is irrelevant. What you need to understand. I
find stopping those other two activities helps you concentrate.

As I have mentioned before, I used to block my students from taking
notes in order to panic them into paying attention. It worked. None of
my students ever failed the course.