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teaching in the fall, input requested!
Hey, so, this course I'm teaching in the Fall. It's real; it's happening. There are 29 students signed up for it.
I want your wisdom about classes. What was the best course you took as an undergraduate, or took at all? What do you think made it the best?
Moreover: what do you think about having little intermittent non-graded quizzes, once or a few times during a class? I'm imagining something like the quizzes in the Coursera lecture videos: "if you understood the last five minutes, you should be able to work this out". They're typically multiple choice, which I like.
Also moreover: for mid/upper-level undergrad classes, tell me all your thoughts on course projects. Lindsey has pointed out that term projects are often terrible, especially if left unconstrained. My mental model is that an NLP course should have a course project, and it's OK if they turn out badly. But reflecting on this, a bad course project can be demoralizing...
Thoughts and considerations?
I want your wisdom about classes. What was the best course you took as an undergraduate, or took at all? What do you think made it the best?
Moreover: what do you think about having little intermittent non-graded quizzes, once or a few times during a class? I'm imagining something like the quizzes in the Coursera lecture videos: "if you understood the last five minutes, you should be able to work this out". They're typically multiple choice, which I like.
Also moreover: for mid/upper-level undergrad classes, tell me all your thoughts on course projects. Lindsey has pointed out that term projects are often terrible, especially if left unconstrained. My mental model is that an NLP course should have a course project, and it's OK if they turn out badly. But reflecting on this, a bad course project can be demoralizing...
Thoughts and considerations?
no subject
This is how Dybvig did the IU compilers course, too (except we were working on our own, not as partners). Aside from being fun, I think it actually did a lot for learning, because assignments were due weekly on Sunday night, but the test cases (which had to exercise some new feature that we were adding to the compiler that week) were due the previous Wednesday, so it forced people to at least get some early understanding of what they were supposed to implement. If we hadn't been forced to do that, I know I would have put it off until the weekend and run out of time more than once.