Thursday, September 8, 2011

Classes at CMU: First Impressions

Let me skip the intro and jump to what positively impressed me in how classes are taught at Carnegie Mellon.



1. Well-equipped classrooms with comfortable with adjustable chairs and individual power sockets. I don't mention ubiquitous free wireless -- it's a very basic amenity on campus.

The classroom I have a pleasure to attend.
2. Slides for every lecture (shared after it), demonstrated through several projectors.

3. Extensive use of an uniform information system - Blackboard - to store and share course information, exchange assignments with students, post announcements, etc.
    A number of screens, for viewers' convenience.
4. (not exactly positive) Mandatory written homework every week.

5. What struck me the most, one of my classes features an online connection to University of Coimbra, Portugal to a joint program. Guys over there, despite the time difference, can listen to our lectures and participate as if they were in the same class. It's more an organizational achievement than a technical one, but still it's very cool. 

Electricity for everyone. 
So far, I've signed up for two major courses for this semester - Models of Software Systems (some formal methods in SE, including concurrent systems) and Methods: Deciding What to Design (requirements engineering - have to close this gap in my knowledge).

Screens through which we videoconference to students in Portugal.


As it seems to me now, Masters degrees at Carnegie Mellon here are worth every penny spent.

Update from December 2012: CMU undergrads at work during the final exam.


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    Location: 300 South Craig Street, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

    5 comments:

    1. MikeSeptember 9, 2011 at 5:05 AM

      Awesome.

      Have you tried playing HM&M on these screens? :)

      ReplyDelete
    2. Vladimir PrusSeptember 10, 2011 at 8:15 AM

      In practice, do students end up using power sockets and wifi to for Skype chat, or the presentation quality or discipline is good enough to actually listen?

      ReplyDelete
    3. IvanSeptember 10, 2011 at 11:03 AM

      Students are alike everywhere - they want to procrastinate, not to study.

      However, there's a number of reasons why they wouldn't do it here.
      - They will miss ideas about how to do mandatory homework, which sometimes contributes up to 30% of the final grade.
      - They payed a considerable sum of money for these classes.
      - They will lose a significant component of their grade, "class participation".

      In most of cases, even one of these points is enough to make people listen to lectures. Three is an overkill.

      ReplyDelete
    4. IvanSeptember 16, 2011 at 4:28 AM

      what's wrong with image layouting? post looks ok.

      ReplyDelete
    5. IvanSeptember 16, 2011 at 7:47 AM

      In fact, it's impossible to say to image "stay here relatively to other pictures". They start floating! There's no way of layouting 3 pictures in a row - they look different under various browsers. The relation between text and pictures is also very vague and changes with every new line.

      The post is a result of a 10-minute circus performance with the pictures.

      ReplyDelete

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