> Flipped classroom. To better understand where students are struggling, instructors have switched to in-class activities while having recorded lectures for homework.
Hmmm. I never thought about this before, but it's kind of obvious once someone says it. It's still a bit annoying as AV is always a PITA, but it's probably effective. I'll have to think about this if I ever teach at a college level again.
> Automated grading. A long time dream of CS instructors has been to completely automate grading.
Sigh. It's almost 20 years since I actually implemented this for my CS class and and this STILL isn't the norm? Programming assignments should have online submission and testing. Period.
> Online IDEs and visualizers. To eliminate environment issues, increase engagement, and provide faster feedback, instructors leveraged online coding tools.
Suggestions that don't suck are welcome. However, generally anything less than a professional-grade IDE that you'd use for professional programming is a pile of garbage. I probably wouldn't use anything other than VSCode nowadays. Probably have to put it in a qemu container for people to run on different OSes.
> Interactive textbooks and exercises.
Yeah, no. Anything a textbook manufacturer wants to do other than be a set of dead tree leaves is a non-starter.
> Answering student questions. In contrast, instructors and TAs are overwhelmed with responding to questions and problems. These questions are often last minute, repetitive in nature, and require technical troubleshooting. For example, "Why does Python no longer exist?".
The problem is that there are two different types of questions: actual course questions and infrastructrue questions. I'm happy to deal with course questions. I LOATHE dealing with infrstructure questions.
I really dislike flipped classrooms. I've found as a student that it forces you to come to grips with the most difficult parts of the material yourself, rather than letting the professor help you get there.
Then when you actually get to lecture, there will always be some portion of students that haven't read/watched the class materials. So most of the professor's time is spent helping out those students who know nothing. Anyone who did actually struggle through the material is bored.
>The problem is that there are two different types of questions: actual course questions and infrastructrue questions. I'm happy to deal with course questions. I LOATHE dealing with infrstructure questions.
When I was doing my CS degree, the "infrastructure" type problems I faced were the worst. In fact, it was a huge discouragement for me, and actually led me to drop several courses.
I'm not sure what a solution to these things are, mind you.
I'm semi-flipped. The students have to do the reading on their own, but I spend 20 minutes on the highlights and pain points in class. Gives a chance for some discussion. If you've already read it, great, you can bring the more access questions up. If you haven't, now you have a little bit of framing for when you do.
Weekly quizzes and short answer homework goes beyond the "lecture", so the out of class work is required.
Then the rest of the class is lab time to work on the project.
> I probably wouldn't use anything other than VSCode nowadays.
We use VS Code in a couple of Java papers that I TA, and we have issues with the way the background incremental compilation works. When it works, it's fine. But we see lots of cases of it not picking up and reporting on compilation errors until you go to run the code, where it will then give you a compilation error at runtime. Or the compilation error highlighting being out of date, or it just not compiling classes, or it not copying resource files into the classpath. These tend to require a restart or clearing the workspace cache to fix.
Because anything other than being dead tree leaves is an attempt to increase the publisher's margins rather than improve my course pedagogy.
Online quizzes are one-shot and time limited--it's merely coincidence that they prevent you from reselling the book, right? Anything "online" is only "online" as long as the servers are being maintained (read: profitable). "Renting" a book means it can get pulled from your hands at any time. "Online" means you have to cough up (sometimes quite a lot) of personal information to register for access. I can go on and on.
On the other hand, several copies of dead tree leaves can be placed in the library on reserve. You can resell dead tree leaves, and you can buy used dead tree leaves (any of the books I require for class are classic books--they have reference value to others as well as for my class).
Sure, unencumbered PDFs would be as good as dead tree leaves (maybe better as they are more searchable). I just haven't seen a textbook publisher provide one--ever.
Hmmm. I never thought about this before, but it's kind of obvious once someone says it. It's still a bit annoying as AV is always a PITA, but it's probably effective. I'll have to think about this if I ever teach at a college level again.
> Automated grading. A long time dream of CS instructors has been to completely automate grading.
Sigh. It's almost 20 years since I actually implemented this for my CS class and and this STILL isn't the norm? Programming assignments should have online submission and testing. Period.
> Online IDEs and visualizers. To eliminate environment issues, increase engagement, and provide faster feedback, instructors leveraged online coding tools.
Suggestions that don't suck are welcome. However, generally anything less than a professional-grade IDE that you'd use for professional programming is a pile of garbage. I probably wouldn't use anything other than VSCode nowadays. Probably have to put it in a qemu container for people to run on different OSes.
> Interactive textbooks and exercises.
Yeah, no. Anything a textbook manufacturer wants to do other than be a set of dead tree leaves is a non-starter.
> Answering student questions. In contrast, instructors and TAs are overwhelmed with responding to questions and problems. These questions are often last minute, repetitive in nature, and require technical troubleshooting. For example, "Why does Python no longer exist?".
The problem is that there are two different types of questions: actual course questions and infrastructrue questions. I'm happy to deal with course questions. I LOATHE dealing with infrstructure questions.