Tag: education

Educators/Corporate Trainers: Hire professional evaluators

I realized something. When I did my first public facing presentation in front of a Java User’s Group, I didn’t do as well as I thought I would. I’ve done numerous talks for class, and work things before. Those weren’t a huge concern. Instead of attempting to scour all of the material I could find on improving. I found out that by asking the right person to give feedback: you can improve a lot. Not only did I get great feedback from the recorded talk, but he, Mark Thompson, was there for my second talk. After the second talk, I got even more feedback to improve for my next talk. (Still undecided on what to do next)

This should be done for any kind of training related event. A person that fits the roll of evaluator/feedback giver should be required of any organization providing training/education. Many of the classes that I’ve taken before have asked for feedback from the students. However, this is not best approach as that teaching is very different from learning. It’s a bit like taking advice on how to fish from fish. Students can only give feedback about how they felt about the class, but not give actionable advice on how the teacher can improve.

For the context of large corporations that provide training, this should be a no-brainer. The better your students understand the technology that you’re teaching: the more units/services you’ll eventually sell. In addition, you’re going to sell more training classes. Students will tell other students about the classes that were the most effective. The next question comes to how should we find evaluators? Firstly you should find a group who has experience and has had success with their feedback before. In my case, my friend was a member and officer in his local Toastmasters group. Secondly, you may want to find someone that doesn’t have a lot of knowledge in what you’re already presenting. If you’re not able to find that I would suggest talking with some of the most influential speakers in the industry if they’ve heard of such things or who they would approach in that situation.

In my 6 years of university, undergraduate and master’s degree, I never once saw a professor be evaluated for their performance. I’ve had some rough classes and I’ve had some great classes. I personally believe that the difference between the great classes and the bad classes were:

  1. Passion for the material
  2. Preparation
  3. Understood the material
  4. Pacing of the material
    1. This includes interactivity with what is being taught

Later in another post, I may delve into some of the classes that I found influential in my education.

Computer Science Classes I Would Like To See Offered

My friend Warren recently expressed a very “scorched earth” opinion of the standard Computer Science curriculum. He suggested that given the available of free CS courses (OpenCourseWare and the like) and experts at your fingertips (Blogs and Stackoverflow); wheres the value of a formal CS degree?  That lead me to think …. What are some classes that would be very interesting to take: [Even as an alumni of 2 CS programs, I would be interested]

  • Software Development Tools: A lot of classes mention tools, but not how to actually use and extend them. [Build systems, version control systems, formatters, emulators/virtualization]
  • Debugging: The goal of this class is to teach basic skills and then go through labs of finding/fixing bugs. Later, to write unit tests to verify the bugs.
  • Testing software: This would be a hands-on class to teach students how to write unit tests, implement mocks, test black box software, and write up reports on testing procedures. This would also the involve testing of embedded hardware and software, black box systems, functional languages, network services, concurrent software, and even components that lack a stable test environment.
  • Computer Vision: It’s just interesting, and visual, often you don’t hit this class until graduate school.
  • How to design an API/Surveying APIs: Let’s get rid of bad APIs. This would also be responsible for demonstrating the differences [good and bad] of available APIs.
  • Open Source: Not really a history of open source. But this is to take an open source project, and extend it. The goal of this project is to get students involved with working with one project, and demonstrating improvement to the project.
  • Marketing: How to market your work, or someone else’s software. This isn’t designed to replace developers with marketers, but it just helps the developer understand how their work is sold.
  • Automation: How to automate manual tasks with software. This could be with build scripts, batch scripts, testing automation software, or even simple system scheduling.
  • From hardware to software: The goal of this class would be 2 things. To create a small embedded device, and then go all the way up the chain to a working software client. This would involve writing a device driver, interfacing with hardware ports, and using the driver. The second part of this class would involve creating a simple processor either as a circuit or a manual build. http://blog.makezine.com/2009/10/03/building-a-cpu-from-scratch/
  • How Computer Science relates to [Field x, y or z]: This is more of an open ended suggestion. For example: Offer a class on Bioinformatics [It’s a class that combines biology, and computer science], combine a class on art and computer science (that’s more of visualizations though), history and CS [examine potential DSLs involved with history research], or even math and CS [shows the tools, and libraries that one can use in their application].
  • How to crack software/re-engineer a binary: [Probably with the permission of the publisher] Crack a copy protection system. Many students know about software cracks, but very few actually know how to create them or how they work. The goal of this class would to familiarize the student with how software is compiled, and can be reworked after compilation. Also, this would demonstrate how to protect their application as well.
  • Alternative Language Survey: Yes, this is technically a standard class. But I’d like to see one on functional languages, Groovy, BF, or even creating your own domain specific languages be taught.
  • Community Service: This really isn’t as altruistic as the title may imply. This is more of a class to create a software component [as a large group] for a member of a local community. This could be a small interesting game [example I worked with a group for a class], or working with a small company or individual to improve or sofware-ize their product. Elon’s CS department did this a while back with the game deflection. even taking an existing board game [with the original creator] and making  a software version. The goal of this class is to research market need, create something usable and getting their fellow peers involved in using it. This would help communicate to the rest of the students about some of the cool things that CS can produce.
  • Author selected: Get an author of a quality software related book to teach a class. Have John Skeet teach a C# class. Paul Graham teach a class on LISP. Brian Goetz to teach a class on Concurrency.
  • Hands on Software Optimization class: Take an open source system, and optimize it. This class would teach formal procedures on how to optimize an existing application to perform as quickly as possible, monitor, and document the improvements.

Last of all, these classes should be fun and engaging. If you’re not actively involving the student, don’t even bother trying these suggestions.

I’m a student, what [language, framework, API, concept] should I learn?

Part one of a continuing series.

There are two ways to learn something. The first way is to learn from another’s advice [the easy way], and then there is the hard way [through experience and making mistakes]. When starting out in a Computer Science degree, learning the material and concepts will require a lot of effort. [the hard way] It’s not a wrong way to go about it. The hard route helps to reinforce the material. However, not everything in your journey to become a software developer has to be difficult.

One of the most frustrating things for a student, when in a Computer Science program, is producing a deliverable to submit. Many students, outside of the introductory course, quickly find out that a few quick hacks won’t get the highest grade available. Many professors require documentation, specific file layouts, compliable code, funky submission instructions, build instructions, shout-outs in the comments (1), or even coding conventions. These extra/non-technical requirements add to more complexity and make assignments more difficult. However, they do have merit and “build” the student’s technical character. In academia, there are very few courses in the US that will teach the tools of the trade, this is something that the student is left to learn on his or her own.

So what does this have to do with answering the question: What should I [as a current Computer Science student] learn? Build systems. Learning how to consume a web service to Facebook or writing the next twitter client is great, however learning how to use a build system will make your professor’s, and your life much easier. A build system is an external tool [usually separated from an IDE] that defines the instructions on how to build an application. In addition, it makes your life easier when questioning if your attempt was worthy enough to submit. Did the build system pass and produce a deliverable? If you have all of the rules and unit tests configured to run, the answer is easy… Yes! Once you are confident that the assignment was completed to satisfaction, you can go party err study ‘social algorithms.’

So let’s imagine that you have the following requirements from a professor:

  • Build a chat system [One client, and one server]
  • Include unit tests for every method used
  • Include Java Doc
  • Email to: professor@university.com
  • FTP The resulting zip file to: ftp server.
  • Create a readme at the base, and include your name and the word “Screaming Monkeys” within the readme file.
  • Include instructions on how to build your software
  • Use the following file format:
    • /
    • Readme
    • BuildDoc
    • Doc/
    • Source/Client/*….
    • Source/Server/*…
    • Binary/*…

Building a working chat client and server solution may be difficult for someone that has just learned about sockets and lacks experience. The non-technical requirements could become overwhelming. However the assignment never required all of the non-technical instructions to be performed manually. I have NEVER heard of a professor that will take points off for using these tools. If anything, using a build tool will improve your grade. It allows for you to plan for these requirements ahead of time, and let software handle the rest for you.

“But hey! That looks like a lot of work to do a few simple steps!” You’re right; all of those steps can be performed manually and probably quicker. However, if you screw up part of your final deliverable , you’ll have to perform all of those menial tasks all over again. With all of those tasks, Ant can perform those automatically by just typing in “ant.” You can configure ant to build the software, run all of the unit tests [and stop the build if one fails], configure the output of the java doc, run utilities [to confirm that your name is there, and the “special word”], perform all of the file manipulation and deliverable locations, and even submit the result [ftp, email, source control]. If there is an ant task for the action, you can use ant to do it.  Another benefit is that it can even run the source code through a “coding convention” checker. Have a professor that requires you to use the K&R coding convention? No problem, just add a check or reformator in the build environment. Problem solved.

In summary, assignments in computer science are difficult with the shear amount of demands. Reduce the potential for mistakes by automating the tedious tasks. Learn a build system early in your education. It will help ensure consistency in your code, get rid of annoying non-technical requirements, and make your work a lot simpler.

Need another reason? Do it for getting a job after you get out of school. There are very few students that have even used a build system prior to entering the work world. Most students entering the work world have to learn at least one build system as soon as they start their first job. The software industry thrives on build systems. If they aren’t working, the developers are unable to progress. Hey, worst case scenario: Let’s assume that you’re not a very good CS student, and you barely pass with your CS degree. If you know a build system extremely well, you can still proceed with a career of being a “Build Systems engineer.” Those guys can still make quite a lot of money. [Indeed claims that a build engineer starts at $50k and has a sizable amount of jobs that will earn $130k+ a year]

Some of the build systems that are currently in use:

  • Ant [Good for nearly every language out there]
  • MSBuild [Good for the MS supported language (VC++, VB?, anything .NET)]
  • Maven
  • Gradle
  • Make [Good for C++, and bash]
  • Apache Ivy

(1)    In my prior work as a teaching assistant I am guilty for supporting the shout-outs rule. The requirement was for the student to include his or her name in the top of the file. This was mentioned on the grading rubric (included in the assignment writeup/specs).  It’s a simple request to complete, and it makes the grader/professor’s life a lot easier. It’s akin to asking elementary school children to write their name on top of the assignment. A lot of new students don’t add their name to their code.