Thursday, May 22, 2014

Georgia Tech OMSCS - Week 1 Recap

I know, it's only Thursday!

So I just finished my first "week" of class for Georgia Tech, and I wanted to get some of my thoughts down on virtual paper. I'd like to chronicle my adventure semi-frequently in this manner, so please bear with me if this isn't your cup of tea.

Some Background

So one of the things I'm willing to admit right off the bat is that I was pretty nervous. Given my prior trials and tribulations trying to even get into the program, I had no idea what to expect. I remember some of the experience of getting my MS the first time around, and some of the courses I took as an undergrad, but I wasn't sure how this experience would compare. What is an education like at a top-10 institution? Would I be able to measure up to the bar and finally put some of my constant inferiority complex to rest?

Well, we'll have to wait a while for the answer to that last one. I'm not very confident by nature, even though I know I have a modicum of programming and communication skills. I'm always looking for ways to "prove" myself, so to speak, and I tend to take on more than I can handle as a result. I am not sure that that personality trait will ever truly go away, and honestly this Georgia Tech experience stems from that whole complex - I had had a couple of bad interview experiences with companies that rhyme with Moogle and Bamazon, and was trying to figure out how to bolster my knowledge and not feel like I was incompetent. I guess this way I'll be able to point at a fancy piece of paper and say "Well, I was good enough for that".

Provided I am actually up to the task, that is.

The experience so far

Anyway, enough navel-gazing. I'm taking CS-8803 - AI for Robotics - and so far the experience has been pretty good. On the one hand the course is delivered almost entirely via lecture. I have mixed feelings about this, and feel another digression is in order. I know that there are different ways people learn, and that some people feel that they learn best visually. I also, though, have taught several classes where the student claims to only learn well visually but, if you really got down to it, what they really wanted was a step-by-step guide on how to do an assignment rather than a lecture that builds the foundations for a concept that they then apply themselves. In other words, they were (in my eyes) using the "I'm a visual learner" mantra as an excuse rather than a legitimate gripe. If you couple this with my NOT being a visual learner (I want nothing more than a big textbook to work through), I tend to be skeptical of the approach to begin with.

I have to say, though, I was pleasantly surprised. Aside from minor frustrations the lectures do a decent job of presenting the material. The way a module works is that a video of the lecture plays up to the point of a "quiz," which in a classroom setting would be the instructor asking a question of the class, and stops to allow you to input an answer into a form that is then checked for correctness. Once the answer is entered (or skipped, if you get stuck) the lecture continues until the next quiz. The lectures themselves vary widely, using video recordings in some cases, recorded whiteboard sessions in others, and still others with the professor simply talking to the students. Of most use to me were the intermittent programming quizzes - the instructor would explain a concept, then say "Ok, now you try to write a function that does this," and suddenly you're presented with a minimal Python IDE to develop code in, along with a test run and evaluation button to determine if your code is correct. It's obvious that a lot of thought went into these lectures, and it comes through in the design of the course.

Frustrations

My frustrations with the course so far are two-fold. First is that the course is programmed in Python - a language I had a passing familiarity with, but which is subject to its own quirks. If the course was in C++ or Ruby I'd have no trouble, but as it is I am learning the language as I go along. On the one hand that's good - I'll have another language under my belt when I finish the class - but it is also frustrating and increases the time I spend on assignments. I'm not sure there's any way around this, though.

The second frustration is with the video-based learning. It is extremely challenging to reference material in a video, particularly when programming. Programming is a lot about copy-and-paste, and you can't paste from a video. I have had this argument with any number of people, and I remain unconvinced - for these type of topics you can provide a video if you like, but the most useful thing to a professional programmer is a text version that allows you to 1: keep it open in a browser next to your IDE for reference, 2: allows you to review without having to hunt through a video, and 3: allows you to learn without needing to break your concentration for audio and visual stimuli. To me this is reminiscent of a problem I had at Enova, which is that for some reason the IT department thought it was a good idea to do all of their internal support tutorials as videos. Videos are an extremely poor choice when adding a VPN key, or when you want to save the information for future reference. If OMSCS is going to be mostly video-based, I suspect I'll be lamenting this for a while to come. But then again, I was able to complete the first week's assignment and understand the material (with one exception, as Bayes rule is still kicking my ass for some reason), so I guess the point is moot.

Communication

The course also has a separate message board on piazza.com, which is used to speak with your fellow classmates and ask questions of the instructor and TA. This is a great feature, I think, and has helped me a couple times. Most of the people in the course are active on the boards and very willing to help, and it is also helpful to see that some people have the same questions I do. Where I've had trouble in the course I've quickly been able to get a response on the message board, as both my fellow students and the instructors are active there.

Self-direction

One of the things I really like at the moment, but could see myself coming to dislike, is that the course is largely self-directed. If I had the time to spare, I could push through the entire course as quickly as possible. While the lectures are organized into "Lessons" that represent a week's worth of work, there is nothing preventing you from moving ahead as you work. On the plus side, this means that I was able to finish the first week's assignment well over a week before it was due, which is great as I maintain a far too busy schedule to begin with. However, I can see this causing problems near the end of the term as if we are looking at a time-based submission and grading process, I won't be receiving feedback on my submissions until they are officially "due". So for example, if I was to power through module 2 right now I wouldn't see any feedback until June 4 at the earliest, by which time the assignment will likely be out-of-mind.

I suppose time will tell on how successful this approach is for me. For now I like that I can work ahead when I have some spare time!

Evaluating my own teaching experience

Another thing the OMSCS experience is allowing me to do is evaluate my own teaching, and see what is effective. I teach college courses online for a couple universities, and seeing how this course is conducted provides some interesting contrasts. From the start, it's obvious that more effort went into the Udacity course design than goes into the courses I typically teach - which has been a constant frustration point for me as, with one exception, I often don't get to design my courses so that they have the material I feel is necessary. However, a lot of the assignments in the class I'm taking now are "did it or not" evaluations - you get points for completing the activity, but no partial points are awarded. I don't know what grading will be like yet (doesn't happen until next week), but I think "all or nothing" assignments are a disservice to the student and fail to recognize that it IS possible to half-understand something.

Conclusion

To sum up, I'm very much in a wait-and-see pattern right now. Some of my frustrations with the format may be exclusively due to this course's design - I've already heard that some of the other courses handle things a lot differently - while others may be due to the format. I guess my opinion will continue to evolve as I run through the experience. I know that's kind of a weak close to this lengthy post, but to be honest that's about how I feel right now - not very strongly on the "good" or "bad" spectrum, just "different."

I do think it will be interesting to come back and read this after I have a few more classes under my belt. So stay tuned, I guess.

2 comments:

  1. I just started this semester and am taking Advanced Operating Systems. So far it is a beastly class. Our first project was writing a user level thread library along with a mutex implementation that was a clone of pthreads. The projects are in C , and I have a strong C++ background, so I've been able to get the work done. I feel sorry for anyone that isn't well versed in C/C++ though. I have been a bit frustrated with the chopped up video formatting too. I've seen all 90+ MIT OCW physics videos when getting my bachelors (they took them down because the lecturer was sexually harassing students), and those were recording of the actual on campus class. I though that format was so much better. I also find not having a text book frustrating. The subject is not new, but there are a lot of details not covered in their videos that are hard to find out on the internet. For our first homework I had to dig out the text book I had for a Computer Hardware class a long time ago, because I couldn't find what I needed online. My only other gripe is it seems like they tried to package things up nicely but failed on the last 10%. The syllabus for my class has assignments out of order, as in the dates are not sequential. And there is conflicting information about the papers we are supposed to read for the class. For the first project I found 3 versions of the starter code. It should be extremely clear, what we are supposed to have done by what date. All of that said, I am still really excited about the program. The projects are difficult but very interesting, and the TAs get back to you very quickly on the message boards.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How is the difficulty of assignments? Can you put those assignments?I am looking to take the same course but just want to test the assignments. Any link to assignments and projects is quite helpful and appreciated

    ReplyDelete