With the Bologna process, teaching got a bit more structured than it was before: Students have to sign up for classes, they have to prove they learned something for each course, etc. Even before Bologna, there were occasions when students had to sign up: There were always obligatory seminars with too few places, so you had to put your name on a list (on paper, of course) or be there one hour or more before it started to make sure you could attend this seminar.
Today, we've gotten rid of paper lists and we now have electronic tools where students can "book" classes -- everything has become very service-oriented. However, there are different approaches on how and when to book a class. In Basel and Zurich, booking starts some weeks before the beginning of the semester and ends two or three weeks after the first lesson. It is thus possible for students to step back without any harm after attending a course for some weeks; but within four weeks into teaching, lecturers know who is a regular attendee and who will take part in the exam. So from week 4 on, you can plan actual group work.
In Konstanz, students can attend classes without prior booking -- they have to sign up for the respective ILIAS course, though. They have to sign up for the exam in the middle of the semester and can do so for two or three more weeks. As an instructor, you only get to know who is interested in actually doing the exam when the semester is almost over!
Students have a lot of time deciding if they like your class or not. Which is OK, but has a major drawback: I usually have some group work in my classes which are part of the exam. So if one of the group members decides to not to be interested in this class anymore, the group is shrinking or even reduced to one student. Which makes no sense and we then need to find other solutions for the left over group members.
What is even more annoying: Students often drop out without sending a note to their colleagues or to me. So for some weeks nobody knows whether someone is sick or has left the class.
Most universities also have introduced compulsory attendance, which is a bit strange when you consider that students are grown-ups with a certain interest in the subject. However, you have to count heads every lesson and make sure everyone who should be there actually is there. Students are allowed to skip up to two lessons (out of 14 or 15) without any negative consequences -- if they are seriously sick or have other duties (going to the WK [annual refresher course of the Swiss Army] or participating in an excursion) negotiations will start. However, I always tell students to drop me a short note when they cannot attend a lesson -- it may have an impact on what we do in class. Most of the students send me an e-mail or tell me in person if they cannot come the next week for whatever reason. So this works quite well.
However, some students don't tell you when they cannot show up for the next lesson and they also don't tell if they decided to drop out. In small institutes with only a few instructors and classes each semester, you always see those students again. And it's a bit awkward attending one class but having skipped the other one. At least I would feel a bit awkward, but when I ask students if they had been sick the other day in the other class, I sometimes hear: "Oh, I've decided to drop out, it's too much, I wanted to tell you, really! And, it's not about you, really!"
Maybe I have to change my attitude and see myself as a service provider, not a mentor: Attending a class or not is not about the subject or the instructor, it's just about balancing costs and benefits. And when there's no "contract," there are no commitments, you just leave.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Professor for one year (week 38 and 39): Professional health pattern
The last teaching week in 2013, I was quite happy to still feel good. I didn't catch a cold so far although a lot of people got sick around me. But then came Christmas and a two weeks break. And guess what? After three days off (I slept longer, started to read one of the books from my ever growing to-read-shelf, had nice walkings in almost sunny weather, no class preparations, checking my e-mail accounts only once a day, ...), I first faced a sore throat and that was the end of my holidays.
As usual, I had a really bad cold and couldn't enjoy my vacation as much as I hoped to. But I could have probably guessed it: There seems to be a professional health pattern with teachers/instructors. Everybody thinks they have a lot of vacation and in general don't do much. However, comes vacation, they get sick and don't do all the exciting stuff they planned to do. We do everything to not get sick during a lecture period, we try all kinds of household remedy to fight first signs of sore throats, colds of even flu. We actually give classes on crutches or with really bad back aches. We even try to schedule surgeries and long-term treatments to take place during vacation and live on painkillers until then.
You can probably guess the profession of patients when looking at when they get sick -- people facing health problems during their vacation are most probably teaching somewhere.
However, we could enjoy a few Winter days at the Baltic Sea:
It looks a bit like a Caspar David Friedrich painting, doesn't it?
As usual, I had a really bad cold and couldn't enjoy my vacation as much as I hoped to. But I could have probably guessed it: There seems to be a professional health pattern with teachers/instructors. Everybody thinks they have a lot of vacation and in general don't do much. However, comes vacation, they get sick and don't do all the exciting stuff they planned to do. We do everything to not get sick during a lecture period, we try all kinds of household remedy to fight first signs of sore throats, colds of even flu. We actually give classes on crutches or with really bad back aches. We even try to schedule surgeries and long-term treatments to take place during vacation and live on painkillers until then.
You can probably guess the profession of patients when looking at when they get sick -- people facing health problems during their vacation are most probably teaching somewhere.
However, we could enjoy a few Winter days at the Baltic Sea:
It looks a bit like a Caspar David Friedrich painting, doesn't it?
Professor for one year (week 37): Winter term break
Some weeks ago, I commented on term dates and my feelings towards winter term. Actually, it's not 4 but 6 weeks of teaching after New Year. This means, the Christmas/New Year break is roughly in the middle of winter term.
I felt uncomfortable with teaching after New Year, but this was mainly due to having still contact with colleagues teaching in Switzerland. I don't feel exhausted the way I usually feel at the end of a semester, i.e., like this owl posted on Facebook some time ago:
In fact, having a break in the middle of the term offers some chances:
I felt uncomfortable with teaching after New Year, but this was mainly due to having still contact with colleagues teaching in Switzerland. I don't feel exhausted the way I usually feel at the end of a semester, i.e., like this owl posted on Facebook some time ago:
In fact, having a break in the middle of the term offers some chances:
- I will start the second part of the term with a repetition/summary. When there's no break, I usually don't do this because I'm hesitant to "lose" a session while there is so much students should get to know/practice.
- Students have a bit more time for "homeworks." And I hope this pays off with respect to quality. Usually, they have two weeks for submitting assignments. I don't include the days of the Christmas/New Year break.
- I have some time to unwind and I hope to be not as exhausted as usually at the end of the term.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Professor for one year (week 36): Being cheered
Last weekend, I had a non-academic adventure: I ran the Silvesterlauf in Zurich. I was one of the Happy Runners, which means I did the four big rounds in 60 to 70 minutes, summing up to 10km.
I love long-distance running, I did the Berlin Marathon several times and I ran some of the races as part of the ZüriLaufCup over the past years. I will never win my age group, in fact, I'm always in the last quarter or sometimes even at the very end of a race. But guess what: That's perfect!
People cheer for the very first runners, but those are usually very fast; so as viewer, you can hardly identify them. And they are so focused, they won't realize who is cheering and what people are shouting. In the middle field, it's mostly extremely crowded and runners hear a lot of cheering and shouting -- it's hard to identify the viewers who are actually cheering for you.
When it comes to the last runners, the situation is easy to grasp. Runners are slower and only a few at a time, viewers can easily read the names on the number bib -- the Swiss print the actual number consisting of digits and the first name, most of the time the name even in a bigger font (Germans don't print the name or only in a very small font, so nobody can read it). And viewers like it when runners react to their cheering. There is a lot of high-fiving at the end of the field. And even the marshals are a bit relaxed and cheer for you. I served as marshal for the marathon part of the Zurich IronMan a few times, so I know both perspectives.
Of course, people pronounce my name differently, depending on the cultural background, or it's even changed into "Christin". As long as it's close enough to the original, I take it as cheering for me -- when I hear "Natalie" or "Beat", then I know there are still runners following me.
So the last Silversterlauf was a one-hour cheer-up -- you hardly find this in academia. Recieving notifications for accepted papers or grants isn't as exciting as being cheered by completely foreigners all the way. Or when was the last time somebody rung a big cowbell (Treichel) just for you as you ran up the Rennweg?
I love long-distance running, I did the Berlin Marathon several times and I ran some of the races as part of the ZüriLaufCup over the past years. I will never win my age group, in fact, I'm always in the last quarter or sometimes even at the very end of a race. But guess what: That's perfect!
People cheer for the very first runners, but those are usually very fast; so as viewer, you can hardly identify them. And they are so focused, they won't realize who is cheering and what people are shouting. In the middle field, it's mostly extremely crowded and runners hear a lot of cheering and shouting -- it's hard to identify the viewers who are actually cheering for you.
When it comes to the last runners, the situation is easy to grasp. Runners are slower and only a few at a time, viewers can easily read the names on the number bib -- the Swiss print the actual number consisting of digits and the first name, most of the time the name even in a bigger font (Germans don't print the name or only in a very small font, so nobody can read it). And viewers like it when runners react to their cheering. There is a lot of high-fiving at the end of the field. And even the marshals are a bit relaxed and cheer for you. I served as marshal for the marathon part of the Zurich IronMan a few times, so I know both perspectives.
Of course, people pronounce my name differently, depending on the cultural background, or it's even changed into "Christin". As long as it's close enough to the original, I take it as cheering for me -- when I hear "Natalie" or "Beat", then I know there are still runners following me.
So the last Silversterlauf was a one-hour cheer-up -- you hardly find this in academia. Recieving notifications for accepted papers or grants isn't as exciting as being cheered by completely foreigners all the way. Or when was the last time somebody rung a big cowbell (Treichel) just for you as you ran up the Rennweg?
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Professor for one year (week 35): Should everybody know how to program?
This post is the report, I wrote for the GPP 2013.
One aspect of the 2013 GPP motto "University and Society -- Meeting Expectations?" is the aspect of university as the institution to prepare students to be successfull in today's society. In the last decade, we saw the emergence of more and more electronic devices, "digital" is one of the buzzwords in several scientific fields, technology becomes pervasive. We speak of the "Generation Y" as being "digital natives." However, if we look how today's students use technology, they are only users, they are not creators. They often even don't know how to configure programs.
Douglas Rushkoff in his book Program or be Programmed argues that everybody should know how to program to understand today's technology and to be able to control it instead of becoming a slave of the electronic devices surrounding us. So my personal focus in the GPP 2013 was to explore how universities support or enable learning to program. Of course students in computer science (CS) and related fields (like computational linguistics) are trained in programming, but I was interested in courses for non-CS students.
At North Eastern University, Dr. Neenah Estrella-Luna, an assistant academic specialist, as she described herself, argued that indeed, computer literacy would be a valuable topic to teach considering that university should empower students to deal with current challenges. However, she admitted that there are no courses offered to all students, not to mention being required. My question was understood as asking about "teaching students how to program."
At swissnex in Boston, we met Dr. James Honan, senior lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He understood my question differently and answered that students would keep faculty busy and push them to use more technology. He talked about MOOCs before and probably this influenced his answer. However, his statement made clear that there is a view of "computer literacy" as "being able to use devices", including the expectation that instructors offer digital content and e-learning material.
At this moment, I was a bit disappointed. Either the necessity of teaching and learning how to program is not recognized, or, when it is recognized, it is impossible to offer such courses for all students.
While at the MIT, we visited the Media Lab and the "Lifelong Kindergarten" headed by Professor Mitchel Resnick. We got an introduction into scratch, the programming language and online community intended to teach kids how to program using a game concept. They learn abstraction, algorithmics, and data structures while they play with code snippets, interact with other kids around the world, and program their own games and worlds. It's an advanced model of learning the concept of recursion while playing "Towers of Hanoi." I was aware of scratch before and I really enjoyed seeing some demos and talking to the researchers involved in designing and implementing scratch. I think using games as a vehicle for teaching important concepts is a good strategy -- the users aren't probably not even aware that they acquire valuable knowledge they will use later in school, in university, and in their jobs.
However, here we talk about serious teaching, not about fun instruction as in the case of scratch.
Larry Hardesty talks about the "programmable world" that surrounds us and that will change the world as we know it by making the distinctions between virtual and physical objects obsolete. To make good use of the new world, we should be able to understand opportunities and challenges (and issues) and how to manage them.
In England, efforts are on their way to teach algortithms to primary school kids. The government acknowledges the need to "catch up with the world's best education systems." However, this new curriculum is still under development and the teacher's union isn't sure about when would be a good starting point to introduce it -- they object to only react to governmental decisions. According to Sean Coughlan it will include computing defined as:
It would be great if England could manage to design and actually implement this aspect.
And there are discussions going on in the emerging field of "Digital Humanities": In a twitter post, Jan Hecker-Stampehl (@heckerstampehl) asks "Should humanities scholars learn to program or trust that the programmers in DH projects will understand them?", obviously not aware of the more than 30-year old answer, Jacques Froger gave 1970 (Froger, J. (1970). La critique des textes et l'ordinateur. Vigiliae Christianae 24 (3), 210-217.), as Michael Piotrowski responds:
However, even in fields where you would expect learning to program to be part of the curriculum, it is rather rare, as the blog post by Philip Guo shows. He argues: "If you're a scientist or engineer, programming can enable you to work 10 to 100 times faster and to come up with more creative solutions than your colleagues who don't know how to program." Students would need more concrete motivation than only arguing that programming helps them become an empowered citizen (the argument Estrella-Luna used at North Eastern). Guo accepts that programming tools, i.e., text editors, should be improved to foster programming, but in the meantime we should focus on teaching students programming skills to support creative problem solving.
Selena Larson emphasizes the need to teach programming to students in schools already. She supports the Hour of Code initiative during Computer Education Week 2013, following a similar strategy as scratch: Using games and fun figures, kids should understand basic principles and get an idea about what it means to program.
As I agree that school would be an appropriate place to start teaching basic concepts of CS, university should be the place to empower students to actually program. Maybe learning to program, acquiring knowledge about algorithms and data structures should be a required course in every curriculum. I strongly support the statement made by Steve Jobs in an interview in 1995 saying "It teaches you how to think. I view computer science as a liberal art. It should be something that everybody learns."
However, we are still on the way to implementing those ideas into education, be it in school or at university. If we have the chance to support initiatives like the Hour of Code or panels and experts groups designing curricula, those of us having the respective knowledge, should take part and see this as opportunity to serve society.
Introduction
Being a computational linguist, I was trained in programming as well as in linguistics. After school in the mid-nineties, I couldn't decide whether to focus on linguistics (or nowadays "humanities") or computer science/math (or nowadays "STEM"). So I was quite happy to be able to focus on both when studying computational linguistics. I always loved algorithms, abstraction -- and yes, I also loved Latin. Maybe that's a rare combination, but in today's world it turns out to be quite handy.One aspect of the 2013 GPP motto "University and Society -- Meeting Expectations?" is the aspect of university as the institution to prepare students to be successfull in today's society. In the last decade, we saw the emergence of more and more electronic devices, "digital" is one of the buzzwords in several scientific fields, technology becomes pervasive. We speak of the "Generation Y" as being "digital natives." However, if we look how today's students use technology, they are only users, they are not creators. They often even don't know how to configure programs.
Douglas Rushkoff in his book Program or be Programmed argues that everybody should know how to program to understand today's technology and to be able to control it instead of becoming a slave of the electronic devices surrounding us. So my personal focus in the GPP 2013 was to explore how universities support or enable learning to program. Of course students in computer science (CS) and related fields (like computational linguistics) are trained in programming, but I was interested in courses for non-CS students.
Answers from US professors
During our visit in the US, I asked my question at two places explicitely and I got two different answers.At North Eastern University, Dr. Neenah Estrella-Luna, an assistant academic specialist, as she described herself, argued that indeed, computer literacy would be a valuable topic to teach considering that university should empower students to deal with current challenges. However, she admitted that there are no courses offered to all students, not to mention being required. My question was understood as asking about "teaching students how to program."
At swissnex in Boston, we met Dr. James Honan, senior lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He understood my question differently and answered that students would keep faculty busy and push them to use more technology. He talked about MOOCs before and probably this influenced his answer. However, his statement made clear that there is a view of "computer literacy" as "being able to use devices", including the expectation that instructors offer digital content and e-learning material.
At this moment, I was a bit disappointed. Either the necessity of teaching and learning how to program is not recognized, or, when it is recognized, it is impossible to offer such courses for all students.
While at the MIT, we visited the Media Lab and the "Lifelong Kindergarten" headed by Professor Mitchel Resnick. We got an introduction into scratch, the programming language and online community intended to teach kids how to program using a game concept. They learn abstraction, algorithmics, and data structures while they play with code snippets, interact with other kids around the world, and program their own games and worlds. It's an advanced model of learning the concept of recursion while playing "Towers of Hanoi." I was aware of scratch before and I really enjoyed seeing some demos and talking to the researchers involved in designing and implementing scratch. I think using games as a vehicle for teaching important concepts is a good strategy -- the users aren't probably not even aware that they acquire valuable knowledge they will use later in school, in university, and in their jobs.
Situation in Switzerland
On the morning of the day I took my flight to Boston, I took part in a meeting of an experts panel on CS competencies of the Hasler Foundation in Berne. The foundation is working towards a proposal for a general subject "Computer Science" at Swiss schools. Currently, some schools in some cantons offer CS as supplementary subject (in German: Ergänzungsfach). However, this subject is often taught as it was in the 1990s: students learn how to use certain software, they don't learn to program, they don't learn about abstraction, algorithms, and data structures. In the publication "informatik@gymnasium", published by the Hasler foundation through NZZ Libro (note that the German version of this book is already sold out!), the authors argue that CS and using software are two differnt things and that school should teach students the basics of CS to prepare future citizens to cope with everyday life. It is probably a long way to achieve this goal, but it's a goal worth all the effort.However, here we talk about serious teaching, not about fun instruction as in the case of scratch.
Answers from the Web
After coming home, I searched the web for comments about computer literacy and opinions or activities on teaching programming. Bill Gates, in a questions session at Microsoft's Faculty Summit, confirmed that there is indeed a "gap between how computer scientists use computers to automate their lives and how most people don't really know how to use them effectively."Larry Hardesty talks about the "programmable world" that surrounds us and that will change the world as we know it by making the distinctions between virtual and physical objects obsolete. To make good use of the new world, we should be able to understand opportunities and challenges (and issues) and how to manage them.
In England, efforts are on their way to teach algortithms to primary school kids. The government acknowledges the need to "catch up with the world's best education systems." However, this new curriculum is still under development and the teacher's union isn't sure about when would be a good starting point to introduce it -- they object to only react to governmental decisions. According to Sean Coughlan it will include computing defined as:
Computing will teach pupils how to write code. Pupils aged five to seven will be expected to "understand what algorithms are" and to "create and debug simple programs". By the age of 11, pupils will have to "design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behaviour of real-world problems and physical systems".
It would be great if England could manage to design and actually implement this aspect.
And there are discussions going on in the emerging field of "Digital Humanities": In a twitter post, Jan Hecker-Stampehl (@heckerstampehl) asks "Should humanities scholars learn to program or trust that the programmers in DH projects will understand them?", obviously not aware of the more than 30-year old answer, Jacques Froger gave 1970 (Froger, J. (1970). La critique des textes et l'ordinateur. Vigiliae Christianae 24 (3), 210-217.), as Michael Piotrowski responds:
Il n'est pas indispensable que le philologue établisse lui-même le programme, encore que ce soit infiniment souhaitable ; il devrait au moins connaître assez le langage de programmation pour contrôler le travail du technicien ; en effet, l'expérience m'a appris qu'il ne faut pas s'en remettre les yeux fermés aux électroniciens, mal préparés par leur formation mathématique à se faire une idée juste de problèmes concrets qui se posent dans la domaine de la philologie.
(English: It is not absolutely necessary that the philologist writes the program himself, even though it would be extremely desirable; but he must at least know the programming language, so that he is able to check the work of the technician; in fact, experience has taught me that one should not blindly rely on the electronics people, whose mathematical training has hardly prepared them for fully understanding the concrete problems encountered in the domain of philology. (translation by Piotrowski))
However, even in fields where you would expect learning to program to be part of the curriculum, it is rather rare, as the blog post by Philip Guo shows. He argues: "If you're a scientist or engineer, programming can enable you to work 10 to 100 times faster and to come up with more creative solutions than your colleagues who don't know how to program." Students would need more concrete motivation than only arguing that programming helps them become an empowered citizen (the argument Estrella-Luna used at North Eastern). Guo accepts that programming tools, i.e., text editors, should be improved to foster programming, but in the meantime we should focus on teaching students programming skills to support creative problem solving.
Selena Larson emphasizes the need to teach programming to students in schools already. She supports the Hour of Code initiative during Computer Education Week 2013, following a similar strategy as scratch: Using games and fun figures, kids should understand basic principles and get an idea about what it means to program.
Conclusion
Studies by professional assocations like the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) regularly show an increasing number of jobs requiring programming knowledge. They also show that there is a lack of people with appropriate skills meeting these requirements. So there is an urgent need in society.As I agree that school would be an appropriate place to start teaching basic concepts of CS, university should be the place to empower students to actually program. Maybe learning to program, acquiring knowledge about algorithms and data structures should be a required course in every curriculum. I strongly support the statement made by Steve Jobs in an interview in 1995 saying "It teaches you how to think. I view computer science as a liberal art. It should be something that everybody learns."
However, we are still on the way to implementing those ideas into education, be it in school or at university. If we have the chance to support initiatives like the Hour of Code or panels and experts groups designing curricula, those of us having the respective knowledge, should take part and see this as opportunity to serve society.
Professor for one year (week 34): GPP2013 aka higher education bootcamp
This year, I could take part in the Global Perspectives Programme (sorry for the British spelling) -- GPP2013 --, a joint program by the University of Basel and Virginia Tech. In Basel, we were 8 participants (mostly PhD students) from Chemistry, Law, Sports Medicine, and Computational Linguistics (that's me). We met in March for a kick-off and started our social-media journey: setting up blogs, joining Facebook and LinkedIn groups, creating a Twitter account, becoming familiar with document sharing applications (Adam, a Moodle clone in Basel, and Scholar, a Sakai clone at Virginia Tech).
We subscribed to three groups working on aspects of this years topic "University and Society -- Meeting expectations?" Those groups were formed by participants from Basel and Virginia Tech. However, we didn't invest much in this groupwork before meeting in person when the Virginia Tech participants visited Switzerland in early June. They were based in Riva San Vitale (TI) and visited several universities in Switzerland, France (Strasbourg), and Italy (Milano). We could join them for two days in Riva San Vitale, got to know each other, and started exploring the topic. Similar to us, the US participants came from different scientific fields and were at different stages in their academic career -- there was no postdoc, though.
In the middle of June, we flew to Boston to start our visit of US institutions of Higher Education. An two days in Boston, we visited Northeastern University, Boston College, swissnex (where we met James Hanson from Harvard), and the MIT. On the evening of the second day, we were supposed to travel to Blacksburg. However, due to bad weather conditions, our flight was delayed and we spent a few hours at a bar at the Boston airport before taking the last flight to Charlotte. We slept a few hours in a motel and then took the first flight to Roanoke Regional Airport -- of course we couldn't access our luggage, so we had to come up with innovative solutions for cleaning contact lenses and brushing teeth.
Our colleagues from VT picked us up at the airport and gave us a ride to Blacksburg. I guess nobody slept in the vans, we chatted a few hours and arrived at the campus quite exhausted and looking for a shower. However, we started exploring the campus immediately, looking at student housing, meeting with faculty, and trying to make a good impression. In the afternoon we visited the New River Community College and then we headed back to the VT campus to finally get a shower and dress up for the formal reception.
We started the next day with a working breakfast, discussing how to present group work outcomes at the Swiss embassy in Washington, D.C. at the end of the day. Then we took the vans again to go to Washington, D.C, and to visit two other universities on the way: George Mason University and Virginia University. More and more, the journey turned into an academic bootcamp: We had less and less time to meet with faculty at each station -- and thus needed to shorten our introductions and ask short and precise questions -- and finally we dressed for the formal reception at the Air and Space Smithsonian (we could take part in welcoming the crew of the Solar Impuse who had almost finished their journey across America a few days before) within 15 minutes on the George Mason parking lot. And I think we all looked great and behaved well!
The next morning, our colleagues from VT drove us to the Swiss embassy in Washington, D.C., where we presented the outcomes of our group work and posed some answers and even more questions to the audience. We had a lively discussion during this official session and then we had lunch at the embassy. It was very nice to continue discussions we had to cut short during our trip -- people from George Mason University and from Virginia Tech attended the meeting.
After coffee, it was over. We had to find our way back to the hotel on our own -- of course nobody was prepared which subway to take or even knew in what part of the city the embassy was located. Later we met for a final dinner and a short debriefing and then we started our trips home (some of us with a stop over in New York, some stayed a bit longer in Washington, D.C.).
A few weeks ago, we had the final closure of GPP2013 at the Institute for European Global Studies in Basel. We had met before during summer for attending doctoral defenses or birthday parties. We have become friends, and this is probably due to those bonding experiences during the GPP bootcamp. I really enjoyed this experience! And yes, I would do it again.
We subscribed to three groups working on aspects of this years topic "University and Society -- Meeting expectations?" Those groups were formed by participants from Basel and Virginia Tech. However, we didn't invest much in this groupwork before meeting in person when the Virginia Tech participants visited Switzerland in early June. They were based in Riva San Vitale (TI) and visited several universities in Switzerland, France (Strasbourg), and Italy (Milano). We could join them for two days in Riva San Vitale, got to know each other, and started exploring the topic. Similar to us, the US participants came from different scientific fields and were at different stages in their academic career -- there was no postdoc, though.
In the middle of June, we flew to Boston to start our visit of US institutions of Higher Education. An two days in Boston, we visited Northeastern University, Boston College, swissnex (where we met James Hanson from Harvard), and the MIT. On the evening of the second day, we were supposed to travel to Blacksburg. However, due to bad weather conditions, our flight was delayed and we spent a few hours at a bar at the Boston airport before taking the last flight to Charlotte. We slept a few hours in a motel and then took the first flight to Roanoke Regional Airport -- of course we couldn't access our luggage, so we had to come up with innovative solutions for cleaning contact lenses and brushing teeth.
Our colleagues from VT picked us up at the airport and gave us a ride to Blacksburg. I guess nobody slept in the vans, we chatted a few hours and arrived at the campus quite exhausted and looking for a shower. However, we started exploring the campus immediately, looking at student housing, meeting with faculty, and trying to make a good impression. In the afternoon we visited the New River Community College and then we headed back to the VT campus to finally get a shower and dress up for the formal reception.
We started the next day with a working breakfast, discussing how to present group work outcomes at the Swiss embassy in Washington, D.C. at the end of the day. Then we took the vans again to go to Washington, D.C, and to visit two other universities on the way: George Mason University and Virginia University. More and more, the journey turned into an academic bootcamp: We had less and less time to meet with faculty at each station -- and thus needed to shorten our introductions and ask short and precise questions -- and finally we dressed for the formal reception at the Air and Space Smithsonian (we could take part in welcoming the crew of the Solar Impuse who had almost finished their journey across America a few days before) within 15 minutes on the George Mason parking lot. And I think we all looked great and behaved well!
The next morning, our colleagues from VT drove us to the Swiss embassy in Washington, D.C., where we presented the outcomes of our group work and posed some answers and even more questions to the audience. We had a lively discussion during this official session and then we had lunch at the embassy. It was very nice to continue discussions we had to cut short during our trip -- people from George Mason University and from Virginia Tech attended the meeting.
After coffee, it was over. We had to find our way back to the hotel on our own -- of course nobody was prepared which subway to take or even knew in what part of the city the embassy was located. Later we met for a final dinner and a short debriefing and then we started our trips home (some of us with a stop over in New York, some stayed a bit longer in Washington, D.C.).
A few weeks ago, we had the final closure of GPP2013 at the Institute for European Global Studies in Basel. We had met before during summer for attending doctoral defenses or birthday parties. We have become friends, and this is probably due to those bonding experiences during the GPP bootcamp. I really enjoyed this experience! And yes, I would do it again.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Professor for one year (week 33): Coding is the new Latin
A few days ago, I tweeted this:
With a link to a short statement by Steve Jobs. Two sentences in his statement triggered this tweet:
And I added a follow up tweet stating that Latin and Algorithms and Data Structures should be required for all studies at a University.
Initially, both tweets are an reaction to the initiative Hour of Code, which is simply great.
However, the more I think about it -- and look at my Twitter timeline following Digital Humanities conferences over the last weeks --, the more I believe that coding actually IS the new Latin already; it just hasn't hit universities while Latin is on it's way out of universities (fewer and fewer study programs require proper knowledge of Latin).
When you look for arguments supporting Latin for everybody, you find:
Usually, it's "critical thinking" what we want to trigger in students, but I think "being able to abstract" is a more appropriate goal. And probably a prerequisite to critical thinking -- you have to discover large lines of arguments, you have to abstract from singular examples, you should see commonalities and general discrepancies before making your own arguments and expressing pros and cons. Being trained in logical thinking and abstraction helps you to do so. And there is no better way to learn those two than via learning Latin, math, or programming.
Actually, there might be another link between Latin and programming -- it's a kind of closed community of those who know it. Therefore a programming language could be seen as a kind of "code" -- i.e., a "cipher" --, and you have to be an insider to decipher it and grasp the true meaning. It's a kind of jargon spoken and understand in a closed group. Maybe people referring to "programming" as "coding" are not aware of the ambiguity of "code," but I think the sense of "speaking an encrypted language" is a valuable one.
There's already a lot of research literature with respect to "code literacy," also emphasizing that you should learn how to program to become part of "the club of the privy." And of course discourse following the book Program or be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff supports this view. In this regard, the term "hacker" -- often used as a derogatory term by society, but as a badge of honor for expert programmers in hacker culture (see the definition of "hacker" in the Jargon File) -- could even become a synonym for "member of the new elite."
- "It teaches you how to think." (with "it" referring to learning how to program)
- "I view computer science as a liberal art."
And I added a follow up tweet stating that Latin and Algorithms and Data Structures should be required for all studies at a University.
Initially, both tweets are an reaction to the initiative Hour of Code, which is simply great.
However, the more I think about it -- and look at my Twitter timeline following Digital Humanities conferences over the last weeks --, the more I believe that coding actually IS the new Latin already; it just hasn't hit universities while Latin is on it's way out of universities (fewer and fewer study programs require proper knowledge of Latin).
When you look for arguments supporting Latin for everybody, you find:
- It's fun.
- It's the basis of European languages, you learn other foreign languages much easier if you know Latin.
- It's the basis of European languages, you gain competencies in your native language.
- It teaches you how to think.
- You learn a lot about logic and abstraction.
- There's no better way to learn grammar.
- It's part of our (European) cultural heritage.
- It teaches you how the world works today.
- It's fun.
- It teaches you how the world works today.
- It teaches you how to think.
- You learn a lot about logic and abstraction.
Usually, it's "critical thinking" what we want to trigger in students, but I think "being able to abstract" is a more appropriate goal. And probably a prerequisite to critical thinking -- you have to discover large lines of arguments, you have to abstract from singular examples, you should see commonalities and general discrepancies before making your own arguments and expressing pros and cons. Being trained in logical thinking and abstraction helps you to do so. And there is no better way to learn those two than via learning Latin, math, or programming.
Actually, there might be another link between Latin and programming -- it's a kind of closed community of those who know it. Therefore a programming language could be seen as a kind of "code" -- i.e., a "cipher" --, and you have to be an insider to decipher it and grasp the true meaning. It's a kind of jargon spoken and understand in a closed group. Maybe people referring to "programming" as "coding" are not aware of the ambiguity of "code," but I think the sense of "speaking an encrypted language" is a valuable one.
There's already a lot of research literature with respect to "code literacy," also emphasizing that you should learn how to program to become part of "the club of the privy." And of course discourse following the book Program or be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff supports this view. In this regard, the term "hacker" -- often used as a derogatory term by society, but as a badge of honor for expert programmers in hacker culture (see the definition of "hacker" in the Jargon File) -- could even become a synonym for "member of the new elite."
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