Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category

Two down, three to go…

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Well, it looks like the graph I made last Wednesday has been pretty accurate so far. I’m not sure if that’s something I should be happy about though. :P

First off was CS 245. Yeah… I’m not going to lie: the final for this course was made of pure suck. It might not have been so bad given a very strong grasp of the concepts, but that wasn’t going to happen. I’ve already mentioned how woefully inadequate the given resources were; throughout the term I was drawing knowledge from various sites, textbooks and similar course offerings at other universities (go Wikipedia!). Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind having to do extra studying. But when I learn more on my own time than in class (say approximately 75%), why am I paying for tuition? Meh.

Despite my rant, I still did relatively well throughout the rest of the course so I should pass comfortably. *Knocks on wood.* The main thing I’m worried about is how adversely it will affect my performance in the future (for example, when I take databases next term). It hasn’t been too bad thus far, but eh…

CS 240 is on the other extreme. Typically people don’t complain when a course is too easy, but I think there’s a limit. Throughout the term, the class has been relatively quiet and disengaged (in contrast with CS 246 where questions were being thrown around left, right and center). I’ve even heard some comments along the lines of whether this course actually prepares us for CS 341. Guess we’ll know soon enough. :P

I just wrote CS 240’s final a few hours ago and I’d say it was a pretty fair exam. Approximately half the questions were derived from assignments (so they were kind of trivial in nature as long as a few key facts were memorized), but the other half actually required quite a bit of thought (for example, adapting generic algorithms to solve a given problem). Surprisingly there weren’t any short-answer questions, despite the fact that we covered complexity classes and such.

I kind of wish we were given more time though; I didn’t actually get to finish despite rushing through quite a bit of it. Time has been my adversary on pretty much every exam I’ve taken; very rarely do I get the chance to do things like proofreading and whatnot. I don’t like that – time limits test dexterity, not knowledge. My brain just isn’t wired for short, intense sessions. :P

Actually, I can go one step further: I have a bone to pick with the notion of writing exams as a whole. I’ll rant about it in another post though, since I would have to delve into different learning styles and whatnot (plus I’ve deviated enough already)…

Anyway, CS 246 is up next! It should be “fun”. :P

In other news, Facebook changed some privacy features (and in the process ignited a lot of controversy), RockYou gets hacked (exposing some 32 million accounts with passwords stored in plain-text – I didn’t think any company could be so incredibly stupid in 2009) and Google implements personalized search (thus changing SEO completely). Oh, and it started snowing here with temperatures dipping below 0 degrees celsius. Yay. (In contrast, central Alberta dipped below -45 degrees last Sunday. :P )

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Feedback and its Effect on Educational Quality

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Apparently yesterday was evaluation day for all of my courses at UW this term. We get to fill in a sheet of paper for each class, rating the instructor and the course on various criteria. Most of it is multiple choice (so we don’t have to think too hard :P ) with a few short answers. These evaluations are supposed to be feedback for the staff to improve the course in future offerings.

That’s nice. My question is, does it really matter? How much consideration is even given to those forms? Is there even a third party inspecting them and taking proper action? After all, those evaluations could easily be a facade, an illusion to make us think that our opinions matter.

Sure, there are many good (nay, even great) instructors at UW who strive to improve themselves and their course offerings. On the flip side of the coin, there are those who seemingly couldn’t care less about the class (perhaps they were forced to teach a topic they disliked or something). Now, I won’t question their intelligence; they’re obviously insanely smart to get where they are. It’s just that there are people who are better suited at imparting knowledge upon others.

At TED2009 last February, Bill Gates spoke about education (and malaria, but that’s out of the scope of this post :P ). While I believe his focus was on primary and secondary education, several of the points he made are still relevant at the college and university level. What kind of process do lecturers undergo to improve their teaching? How are they rewarded for doing well?

Gates mentioned how video can improve quality of education as a whole. It can be used as a feedback mechanism and gives students another resource to learn / study from; an example of this is the OpenCourseWare project at MIT. Funny that technology use at UW seems to be sorely lacking given its reputation in the area. :P I mean, only recently was video recording equipment added to classrooms (and only a few). Even my high school in a rather small town made use of that particular piece of technology before UW did. Blah.

I figure, given the recent referendums on a new student complex, a health services building and the reinstatement of a radio service fee, we should have one on installing new equipment in existing classrooms. Something like that might actually have a measurable impact on student performance. Heck, it might even get people involved in some decision-making process – kind of important given the amount of student apathy in recent years.

I probably deviated from what I wanted to rant about, but whatever… Something to think about at least. :P

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The dangers of procrastination…

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

On November 1st, many Canadians turned back their clock and enjoyed an extra hour of sleep. Alas, I wasn’t part of that group. ;)

Last week was largely dominated by CS 240 (Data Structures and Data Management). Assignment #5 was due on Tuesday and the midterm was scheduled two days after. They were worth 12% and 15% of the final grade respectively (yeah, a midterm worth only 3% more than an assignment :P ). For me, at least, those were the only immediate tasks at hand. Easy, right?

Not so, apparently. The assignment, which was about implementing a B-tree structure, took nearly 30 hours. It definitely didn’t help that I had little experience with Java and completely underestimated the length (my estimate was <10 hours using C++). Anyway, there goes my weekend. :P I did end up finishing though, albeit with some minor bugs; the program length measured up at over 700 lines (with comments and braces) and the documentation at another 250.

Now, what’s really interesting was the number of people who asked for an extension on the assignment. Fine, there’s nothing wrong with that – indeed, I’m sure most professors wouldn’t mind accommodating their students (given a valid excuse ;) ). However, what really happened was that people essentially pressured the instructor into extending the deadline. It even went as far as implied insults directed towards the course staff (criticizing their lack of foresight in putting a major assignment right before the midterm).

If you ask me, most (if not all) of those arguments in favour of an extension were just BS. There was at least two weeks of notice given in advance (not including the clear weighting on the syllabus). Indeed, both the instructor and the tutor clearly said to start on the assignment early. There was really no real excuse why a mass extension was needed – those arguments were literally a façade to cover up people’s inability to manage time. Now, I’m sure there are those with legitimate reasons (perhaps coming down with the H1N1 flu), but those seem few and far between looking at the posts on the newsgroup.

Anyway, it turns out the extension (’till Friday) was reluctantly granted with a 30% penalty. I think those who needed it should be thankful the course instructor is so lenient; he was well within his rights to refuse (and he did, until an hour before the deadline). The tutor should be given some credit for dealing with this issue too; by trying to accommodate the class (asking the prof. for an extension in lieu of the students), she was essentially adding to her own workload. I later found out that approximately half the class didn’t submit on time; now that’s some statistic right there.

This is coming from someone who literally gets through university procrastinating (I have a pretty good reason for it, but that’s another topic). As I implied earlier, I pretty much rushed through the assignment and could have used some extra time. But I also realized that it was entirely my fault for miscalculating the length of it. It seems like a lot of people have a hard time admitting that.

Bah, whatever. What’s done is done…

As for the midterm? It was a breeze. ;)

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