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Subject : Re: LUG: Schedule for the coming semester - ideas

From : Jay Goel <jpgoel@ncsu.[redacted]>

Date : Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:24:05 -0500

Parent

So what I take from all of this is that, from students' perspective,
there is not a clear mapping between each "item on the syllabus" and
"how it pertains to the course objective."

Perhaps that can be a good project for the LUG. Work with E115 faculty
(who always face a barrage of complaints about the course) and enumerate
that mapping.

Normal courses do something similar - the syllabus states how the
material maps to accreditation requirements.

Cite specific classes where a given piece of E115 knowledge is
prerequisite (eg, "In CSC116 students must be able to traverse dir trees
via the commandline, thus we are teaching *these* concepts.") Then maybe
talk to faculty in the intro engr classes (across ALL disciplines) and
say "What were you expecting E115 to teach that students weren't
well-prepared for?"

Gather the data, write a report, and submit it to the dean with
recommendations. We can work with E-Council.

My intuition is that the best course of action might be to have
specialized E115's for different disciplines. I believe MIT did this
with great success; give me time to find the reference, I believe CACM
wrote about it.

Many E115 skills seem esoteric but are actually widely used. Nukes use
Fortran in their internships; other engineers take entire courses in
Excel programming.

And take the Ruby example you cited: "puts Dir.new(".").entries"

To those of us on this list, this is intuitive. But the presuppositions
required to understand this are: "puts", which means "display something
on the screen" which is a cognate of C's puts() function. "Dir" assumes
an idea of what a "DIRectory" might be, "new" presumes familiarity with
the 'new' OO keyword, and (".") assumes knowledge that "." means
"current directory" and that it is an argument to new().

The point is that its easy to say "this should be intuitive" but
examining the facts points to a very different conclusion.

flameflameflame! :-P

Jay

Daniel Marcus wrote:
> This is the whole problem. e115 has unspoken purposes, and official
> purposes.
>
> We don't need to be equipped on Excel conditional cells. That purpose is to
> introduce programming. HTML is to introduce coding. Using Putty/X and WinSCP
> are sort of useful for Windows folks, but the way it is taught makes it seem
> like a useless pain.
>
> The ability to to basic scripting is incredibly useful in today's world. I
> can't speak for Python (I've never liked it much) but when I played with
> Ruby, it was incredibly intuitive and efficient.
>
> One of the big pains in e115 was learning about file system trees. I really
> don't think this is too beyond ANYONE:
>
> *puts Dir.new(".").entries*
>
> (That's Ruby for listing directory contents)
>
> Sure, it might be a big project for the uninitiated to learn how to use that
> to make a clone of "ls", but even if it takes two weeks, it achieves the
> same thing as the two weeks that are currently spent filling in those darn
> diagrams!
>
> Personally, I think that e115 should be split into two classes, each
> targeted at a different group, but this discussion really gets beyond the
> scope of this thread.
>
> Positively,
> Daniel S. Marcus
> Omni Impact Small Business Services
> Phone: (XXX) 926 9624
> Business: daniel@omniimpact.[redacted]
> Personal: daniel@d-site.[redacted]
> Website: http://omniimpact.com
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Kyle Bolton <kabolton@ncsu.[redacted]> wrote:
>
>> qq. As Ive heard some of what is but never taken, what is taught in csc200?
>>
>> Also, e115 is not to teach programming. Thats what all the other csc 100s
>> are for.
>>
>> You also have to remember this is freshmen, most with no programming
>> experience, no care to learn programming, and most who will never learn
>> programming. Exposure is good, but you are better off getting them to come
>> to a LUG meeting and having more success that way. This said, e115 is
>> already getting fire from students as a lot of the stuff that is taught
>> that needs to be, they dont use or dont see a point for as of yet.
>>
>>
>>> Personally, I am all for us working on a presentation involving
>> rethinking
>>> e115. That said, I think if we really wanted to re-think e115, we would
>>> need
>>> to go back and discuss what the purpose of the class is.
>>>
>>> The point is to introduce fundamental concepts. The Excel section's
>>> purpose
>>> is to introduce if-then statements!
>>>
>>> So, I think we might to better to (for example) lead e115 as an
>>> exploratory
>>> lab of Python or Ruby programming, including basic file operations,
>>> permissions, and control structures. A program to list a file-tree would
>>> certainly cover the requirement of file systems!
>>>
>>> Really, NCSU needs to re-think the way that our departments structure
>>> their
>>> learning to make it more informative and interactive. We should be
>>> result-based, not necessarily process based. I would love to see classes
>>> with challenges where the person with the most efficient algorithm gets
>>> extra credit, and points are docked for poor coding style, not because
>> you
>>> called a function that kills cells "die()" instead of
>>> "performOneIterationOfGameOfLife()". Not to mention, those poor people
>>> that
>>> have to waste their time with Fortran. (gag.)
>>>
>>> Positively,
>>> Daniel S. Marcus
>>> Omni Impact Small Business Services
>>> Phone: (XXX) 926 9624
>>> Business: daniel@omniimpact.[redacted]
>>> Personal: daniel@d-site.[redacted]
>>> Website: http://omniimpact.com
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Jack Neely <jjneely@ncsu.[redacted]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jay,
>>>>
>>>> Does E115 ever cover OSX? My two cents would be to cover all of the
>>>> basic, common computing platforms supported on campus.
>>>>
>>>> Jack
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jan 09, 2010 at 11:35:58AM -0500, jpgoel@ncsu.[redacted] wrote:
>>>>> Thing is, I think we tend to think of E115 as "intro to linux". But
>>>> from
>>>>> what I hear, it also aims to serve as a "intro to managing your own
>>>>> computer." This explains why more E115 sections are laptop-based, and
>>>> I
>>>>> think its also a good goal.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've worked with CSC116 students who didn't take E115 or place out
>>>> (they
>>>>> were still in first year college or something, and thus were not
>>>> required
>>>>> to take it.)
>>>>>
>>>>> They were extremely bright, but had no concept of what a "directory"
>>>> was
>>>>> or the difference between Windows' "shell" vs "gui". So I agree that
>>>> E115
>>>>> can't just be about "linux", because the course is preparing people
>>>> for
>>>>> hardcore computing classes. So it also needs to cover the bread and
>>>> butter
>>>>> of filesystems and other underpinnings - on both Windows and Linux. It
>>>>> does us no good to have people who are experts in linux commandline
>>>> but
>>>>> can't see the Windows analogies, they are both important technologies.
>>>>>
>>>>> As of late, the E115 folks seem to have shifted to more of a
>>>>> Windows-centric approach to teaching the material. This is fine -
>>>> students
>>>>> will learn whatever linux they need as they take more courses. But I'm
>>>> in
>>>>> favor of bumping up the linux-ness not so it doesn't seem arcane, but
>>>>> because it will boost students' grades when they enter CSC 116.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jay
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, January 9, 2010 11:06 am, iyare omoruyi wrote:
>>>>>> I placed out of E115 back in the summer of '96. It was a summer
>>>> session
>>>>>> before being formally accepted as a freshman in the college of
>>>>>> engineering.
>>>>>> We were provided an instructor who gave us classes for like 2 weeks
>>>>>> instruction or so in order to have enough information and place out.
>>>>>> E115,
>>>>>> for me, was just to get over the initial shock of linux. That is
>>>> it.
>>>> I
>>>>>> was
>>>>>> able to navigate to files, create directories...the basic stuff.
>>>> What
>>>> was
>>>>>> lacking was the reason why it should have been taken further;The
>>>> benefits
>>>>>> it
>>>>>> would provide later in life. I think if the college of engineering
>>>> where
>>>>>> serious, they would provide something beyond E115. But then again,
>>>> I
>>>>>> guess
>>>>>> they figure "You know where the library is."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Iyare
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 10 years of newbiness
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Daniel Underwood
>>>>>> <daniel.underwood@ncsu.[redacted]>wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I don't get it. What's wrong with the current material? I kinda
>>>> like
>>>>>>> it. Granted, it's simple, and granted, it doesn't represent the
>>>> state
>>>> of
>>>>>>> Linux art. Is the dissatisfaction just due to the fact that the
>>>> course
>>>>>>> does a poor job of "selling" Linux?
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Daniel Underwood
>>>>>>> North Carolina State University
>>>>>>> Graduate Student - Operations Research
>>>>>>> email: daniel.underwood@ncsu.[redacted]
>>>>>>> phone: XXX.302.3291
>>>>>>> web:
>>>> http://www4.ncsu.edu/~djunderw/<http://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Edjunderw/><
>>>> http://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Edjunderw/>
>>>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Jack Neely <jjneely@ncsu.[redacted]>
>>>> Linux Czar, OIT Campus Linux Services
>>>> Office of Information Technology, NC State University
>>>> GPG Fingerprint: 1917 5AC1 E828 9337 7AA4 EA6B 213B 765F 3B6A 5B89
>>>>
>>
>> --
>> Kyle Bolton
>> Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA)
>> E115 Senior Instructor
>> ITECS EOS HelpDesk Consultant
>> Electrical And Computer Engineering
>> North Carolina State University
>>
>>
>

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