tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post6880567143699266248..comments2024-03-27T14:43:28.040+05:30Comments on Musings of Dheeraj Sanghi: Teaching 500+ Students - Part 2 (Conducting Labs)Dheeraj Sanghihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367519409840642182noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-19880662428089558262011-11-19T01:31:22.538+05:302011-11-19T01:31:22.538+05:30Sir, first of all, thanks for posting such informa...Sir, first of all, thanks for posting such informative articles. Given your reputation, I never expected such generous amounts of humor in your articles.<br /><br />I agree with your zero-tolerance policy towards cheating. It is a must. But it is even more important to inculcate "anti-cheating" as a value. It may help if such a stand is uniformly applied across campus life - be it academics or otherwise - and can leverage existing student institutions such as counseling service, gymkhana, etc. Restricting the policy to only your course may by interpreted as "cheat where you can, and not when you can get caught". <br /><br />Secondly, I think it may help to emphasize the value of "algorithmic thinking" beyond writing a piece of code. The same step-by-step approach also forms the basis to conduct business analyses, articulate thoughts, make insightful presentations, etc. - skills essential in any consulting/ finance jobs. You may harness students' aspirations for these jobs by showing how development of "algorithmic thinking" ability directly improves their chances of realizing their aspirations.Nanuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08767239958789947036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-37777531989856788182011-09-15T11:14:33.843+05:302011-09-15T11:14:33.843+05:30Hi. Please don't refer to students as "we...Hi. Please don't refer to students as "weak". "Students scoring low on class tests" may be a longer but more appropriate term. Or may be something else. Weakness somehow gives an impression of irremediable intellectual incapacity or inferiority. There is a lot more than weakness that causes some students to not perform as good as those who achieve the highest grades.cipherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15049448088189884477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-89300635412429339092011-08-31T10:13:36.981+05:302011-08-31T10:13:36.981+05:30@jackofalltrades, In order to use computers to sol...@jackofalltrades, In order to use computers to solve problems, algorithmic thinking is extremely important, but you cannot use computers unless you learn how to convert your algorithm into a program. So, in such a course, you need to have a balance - don't get lost in syntax and details of a programming language, but at the same time, it shouldn't be a paper and pen course.<br /><br />Now, if you restrict yourself to a maximum program size of 50 lines, then it severely limits the examples that you can use for developing algorithms. Also, pretty much any real life problem will have several ifs and whys. Students should be able to write down their solutions, both on a piece of paper as an algorithm or a flow chart, and on a computer as a C program, for at least some simple problems that they can relate to.Dheeraj Sanghihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06367519409840642182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-49371430048880215012011-08-31T03:51:24.210+05:302011-08-31T03:51:24.210+05:30I don't really understand the rationale for co...I don't really understand the rationale for counting the lines of code. Isn't that counter to your goal of teaching algorithmic thinking? Could you elaborate?<br /><br />On a lighter note, you might want to avoid teaching linked lists because of patent issues. See http://www.google.com/patents/?vid=Szh4AAAAEBAJjackofalltradeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14978188354245651264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-73968339188936825482011-08-29T16:25:31.398+05:302011-08-29T16:25:31.398+05:30Your blog reminded me of my sociology teacher Prof...Your blog reminded me of my sociology teacher Prof K.N Sharma (circa 1977) who used to say his lecture is delivered towards median <br />ability students. He never put down a student because of his slow pace of understanding the subject.<br /><br />While admiring your efforts to help weaker students, I am sad (somewhat shocked also!) to note that a size-able number of the students are so poor in their understanding of the class room matter. If this is the case in your course , it must have been the case in other courses too (given a normal distribution ).<br /><br /><br />I am sad because first IIT limited itself to becoming JEE centric, quite proud of the fact that UG students are world beaters, and then tweaked JEE so hard that you got a large number of students who need a lot of hand-holding .<br /> <br />In fact, I hear that some better informed students choose to leave IIT to take admission in IIIT Hyderabad, BITS, Pilani, IICT,Mumbai (of course depending upon what they were offered at IIT), and importantly , they don't regret it (when they compare notes with their friends in IIT).<br /><br /><br /> I have had the opportunity of interacting with recent grads of various engineering colleges and I have found that some of the IIT grads lacking the fundamental understanding of the subject. This was alarming as this was this was one area IIT system really focused at. Further, social skills , which are so important in the industrial atmosphere, are not developed among IIT students (this is problem in general, though). IIT must pay attention to this aspect also.Shishirhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04389343268542481402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-32114917836474932392011-08-29T12:26:46.992+05:302011-08-29T12:26:46.992+05:30Manjeet, we no longer use publicly visible server ...Manjeet, we no longer use publicly visible server for ESc101 website. In fact, we don't use a stand alone website either. We are using moodle, which is hosted on an internal CSE Department server (and not on CC server). If you are interested, send me an email privately, and I can see if we can find a way to make the moodle site visible from outside, and give you guest account for ESc101 course. I don't promise it, but will talk to lab people.Dheeraj Sanghihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06367519409840642182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-43244189678275789872011-08-29T09:36:33.825+05:302011-08-29T09:36:33.825+05:30Dear Sir, The ESC101 course site is not updated.
...Dear Sir, The ESC101 course site is not updated. <br /><br />Can you please provide the new course site in case it is accessible from outside. I would like to follow. <br /><br />I see that this course has been changed a lot. In our times (2002) the language used to be Java. And it was not conducted for one batch together.Manjeet Dahiyahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03378672355942096113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-40479557626545629552011-08-28T00:28:37.744+05:302011-08-28T00:28:37.744+05:30@kshitiz, 200 lines is for the end of the semester...@kshitiz, 200 lines is for the end of the semester, not now. We started with 20 lines in lab1 to 40 lines in lab 2, and about 60 lines in lab3 and lab4 (though I must say that weaker students typically write poorer quality code, and write it in a way that it becomes 100+ lines). For example, a simple program to count use of alphabet characters is written by weaker students as a series of if-then-else statements, some 50 of them, while they could have used a bit of character arithmetic to have essentially just a couple of if statements.<br /><br />I am really being challenged on this dishonesty issue. We used MOSS yesterday and the number of identical codes is amazingly high. I was really expecting that there will only be a couple of students. The message in the hostels is that copying in the labs is absolutely the right thing to do, and the only way to learn, in fact. And our disciplinary body, SSAC, hasn't given (to the best of my memory) any punishment (besides warning) to anyone for copying in the last 5 years. That has really strengthened the "copying is ok" message in the hostels.<br /><br />So, the students appear genuinely shocked that I think of copying as an issue. And while I am not competing for the "most popular teacher" award, I don't want to be the "least popular teacher" on campus either (though I may not be able to avoid it). Failing 50% of the batch is totally out of question.Dheeraj Sanghihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06367519409840642182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273139713770751485.post-56494290005748595262011-08-27T01:55:51.290+05:302011-08-27T01:55:51.290+05:30Dear sir. I always admire you for the kind of effo...Dear sir. I always admire you for the kind of efforts and innovative that you put from your side. I liked the idea of giving small programs rather than the big ones. I think writing a correct first 20 line code is good enough, there is no need to expect a 200 line code in the first few weeks. <br /><br />Anyway, what made me comment here was the last paragraph. Starting from "Short cuts ... chances." I think that you sometimes overdo in this respect. I myself don't like academic dishonesty. Hence, the very first case, if it ever occurs, should be issued a very strong warning rather than awarding an "F" straight-away (Though I know your take on it ;-) ). <br /><br />Kshitiz.Kshitiz Verma.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10207455755546266861noreply@blogger.com