Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!news.funet.fi!funic!santra!cs.hut.fi!juh From: juh@cs.hut.fi (Juha Hyv|nen) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Resource & Responsibility (was Re: Automatic checking...) Message-ID: Date: 22 Oct 90 15:22:38 GMT References: <2028.27218c6b@waikato.ac.nz> Sender: news@santra.uucp (Cnews - USENET news system) Distribution: comp Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Lines: 69 In-Reply-To: coms2269@waikato.ac.nz's message of 20 Oct 90 22:54:19 GMT From: coms2269@waikato.ac.nz (Brent C Summers) Subject: Resource & Responsibility (was Re: Automatic checking...) Date: 20 Oct 90 22:54:19 GMT +------------------------ ! I am one of three and two-half tutors in Comp. Sci. at our New Zealand ! university. Our positions exist primarily to administer our department's ! two part 1 courses in all aspects save lecturing (left to "proper" academic ! staff) i.e. weekly tutorials, lab supervision, marking of weekly assignments, ! administrivia etc. With all this person-power (plus a large corps of casually ! employed laboratory staff) we _still_ cannot adequately serve 1x1000 plus ! 1x350 (figures approx.) courses. !........................ Is that 3 + 2 x 0.5 tutors = 4 (full time) tutors? And that is for 1350 students. That makes 1350/4 = 340 students per tutor. What we have here is (my estimate only) 0.5 tutors for 500 students in this course. That makes 1000 students per tutor. (Actually we have 3 "casual employees" who work approx. two weeks in total each. That is 1.5 months during a four-month semester => "0.5 tutors".) We have a weekly two-hour "appointment time (?)" when students can come ask for help (is that what is called tutorial?). No lab supervision is necessary because no programming is required. The time left is spent marking the assignments. Guess if we can adequately serve the students. +------------------------ ! Automated marking has been considered, but dismissed because of ! a) high implementation costs ! b) the restrictive nature of such a system on assignment form ! c) fear of Murphy's Law !........................ a) Any figures/estimates? b) What kind of assignments do you have? c) We are optimists :-) The first implementation of our system will be quite limited. First year (next spring) it will only be used as a prototype to get some estimate on its usability etc. To ensure the students get fair markings all of it is done manually, too. (And we get information on usability, reliability, etc.) +------------------------ ! laboratory staff will mark assignments on the spot as Fine/Attempted/Nothing !........................ Please define "fine", "attempted", and even "nothing". What kind of questions are you asking? How much "intellectual effort" (and time) is required to understand the answer? +------------------------ ! Our major crime over the last 4-5 years, in my opinion at least, has been an ! increasing willingness - even determination - to take responsibility for the ! students' education from them and upon ourselves. This is not to say that ! we (lecturers and tutors) should not be responsible for the quality of our ! teaching, but that we must stop pretending that we can force feed unwilling ! victims (we have numbers of these due to various degree regulations). !........................ Why are there so many unwilling victims who only want to pass the course (because they have to)? Because of the low quality of teaching due to insuffient resources (just my opinion on the situation here). / (.___o .. /_/ ___/ Juha Hyvonen ! / ! !/ ) ! juh@hutcs.hut.fi ------