Interesting Links for 23-02-2012

[andrewducker]

• Science Finds a Better Way to Teach Science. (Lectures are pointless. I wish I was even slightly surprised)
  (tags: academia teaching research science )
• The British idea that ordinary people don't need to understand mathematics causes appalling problems
  (tags: mathematics economics uk )
• How the European Internet Rose Up Against ACTA. (Gives me a warm feeling inside.)
  (tags: copyright acta europe internet censorship )
• The myth of the eight-hour sleep - humans may be adapted for two 4-hour naps, with a 2-hour gap in the middle
  (tags: sleep )
• What NOT to do when relaunching the Conservatives in Northern Ireland
  (tags: uk politics conservatives northernireland )
• A week of picking on trans people
  (tags: media uk lgbt transgender )
• The Only 4 Monitors You Should Buy
  (tags: lcd technology monitors )
• The iPhone umbilical cord charger. If I had an iPhone, I'd have one.
  (tags: awesome iphone )
• How Bots Seized Control of My Pricing Strategy
  (tags: pricing ai amazon )
• Orange, T-Mobile ready to launch 4G together in UK this year
  (tags: orange t-mobile 4g mobile_phones uk )

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

Yes, these days, all course notes for courses in my dept are on the departmental virtual learning environment. While it may seem non-eco friendly, they are also printed and given to students before the course start -- otherwise students tend to spend the time writing. I also have copies on my own website.

http://www.richardclegg.org/lectures/

http://www.richardclegg.org/ccourse/

(The C programming course stuff is pretty old now -- would not teach that these days).

I also do separate slides and lecture notes, some lecturers just send out copies of the slides but I think that means either (a) lots of explanatory text on the slides or (b) slides which make no sense out of context.

Also UCL puts all our lectures on video (to enjoy and enjoy again) so students can recap the main points -- though I doubt that many do.

I know it's easy to bash a "lecture" as a way to deliver information but actually, listening to a lecture is a skill like any other. As I often attend conferences and need to be able to pick up information from a 40 minute verbal presentation with slides, it's a good skill to have.

[andrewducker]

Yes, these days, all course notes for courses in my dept are on the departmental virtual learning environment.

I think I'd like to use a time machine to take my degree now. I think I'd be a _lot_ less frustrated.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean... these days departments very much frown on "chalk and talk" as a learning method. There are people who regard the lecture as "obsolete" but I'm not one.

[andrewducker]

Also, I do think that you can extract information from lectures. But I can do it about five times as fast from the same contents written down, and go back to bits to re-read them if I get stuck.

I guess I just don't see the advantage of someone reading some text to me over me reading it myself.

[steer.livejournal.com]

In my case when I do the lecture I'm also taking questions from students, explaining parts where they do get stuck, asking them if they understand where we are at so far... posing questions for thinking about in the break and giving demos of software.

Students have an opportunity to privately discuss with me at the end as well.

However, for the top-end students, missing the lecture and reading the notes might well be 90% as good. That said, I've regularly encountered high-flying students who miss out on learning because they are good enough to get through without reading lecture notes and sometimes have missing techniques in their armoury -- so I've occasionally taught students who were better coders than I am and sometimes regretted that they felt there was little they could learn by going at the pace of the majority.

I'm perfectly happy for students to skip the lecture and read the notes but unfortunately my institution is not and attendance is compulsory and checked with a register -- I wish it weren't.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Did the students who were better coders also have a better idea of the underlying theory and algorithms?

[steer.livejournal.com]

In my experience there was not a strong correlation between underlying theoretical mathematical ability and coding. I was teaching mathematics undergraduates and post graduates so almost everyone had reasonable maths skills. However, it was often the case that outstanding coders were poor mathematicians and poor mathematicians were outstanding coders.

In general I think a good coder only needs to know "this is the efficient algorithm" to code it not really to understand fully how the proof of the order of execution time follows.

[andrewducker]

Most coding, so far as I can tell, is holding together complex patterns in ones head, and building structures out of them while understanding the interactions between them. This is usually better correlated with pattern matching and chunking ability than maths, in my experience.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I think the "chunking" ability is critical -- being able to split a task down into logical sub units -- but it's hard to know if other people go about coding in the same way I do.

[andrewducker]

Well, I work with Objects, so it's easy for me to think in terms of those chunks. I suspect that people who work functionally think differently. When I worked in Prolog I definitely thought in a different way after a few weeks with my head in the code. Oh, and when working with highly recursive code I think differently after a while too.