- -- Start: Sunday, July 31, 1994 3:24:35 pm DUtime (EDT)
- DanielP turns Recorder on.
- Assistants of the local psychology institute arrive to cart laurap off to their dream-research labs.
- laurap arrives from nowhere.
- laurap says:
- Hi, I'm back...
- DanielP says:
- Are you busy working?
- laurap says:
- No, I got called in because of a problem but it's solved now.
- (DanielP thinks: on call on Sunday :-( )
- (laurap thinks: only once every six weeks )
- (DanielP thinks: better )
- laurap says:
- I read your mail about the VCL...
- that seems to do everything I wanted to accomplish by having the different "visions" of the class, in that it would be a resource for people at different levels of knowledge and with different interests.
- (DanielP thinks: paste is not working )
- laurap says:
- go ahead and just "say" a lot, and let me know when you're done.
- DanielP says:
- it is not really long or important, It was an "agenda" for the earlier meeting
- laurap says:
- um, an agenda sounds like it could be useful.
- DanielP says:
- we should have discussed the end of the course, Jim's awards, the VCL and the starting date for new course and some organizational matters
- laurap says:
- Yes -- I wonder whether the end of the course is on schedule (i.e. whether Marcus has received all the chapter 10 edits).
- (DanielP thinks: I would like to see these weekly meeting run a little bit more efficiently :-) )
- (laurap thinks: an agenda sent out in advance might help )
- laurap says:
- I went to a meeting of the "GNA web users group" recently. They have meeting rooms on several MOOs, and if there are problems with one you can just go to another one.
- DanielP says:
- I think that Tina's LC workshop was the most effective use of this env I have seen
- (DanielP thinks: Poor Tina must have had her fingers burning )
- laurap says:
- Yes -- I think that's because (1) everyone recognized that she was in charge, and (2) she really worked to keep it on track.
- DanielP says:
- According to Marcus's schedule we should release the last chap 13 next monday
- laurap says:
- you mean a week from tomorrow, right?
- DanielP nods
- (laurap thinks: what a relief -- I still haven't written the compilation notes I promised. )
- laurap says:
- What schedule did you have in mind for the next course?
- (DanielP thinks: I might also have trouble with this since I won't have access to my Pc compilers during the coming week :-( )
- DanielP says:
- this is one thing that I wanted to discuss
- I was thinking that we could start on sept 15th if we are going to run the course in a similar to this one
- (DanielP thinks: similar manner )
- laurap says:
- So we would make some changes to the book but not too many drastic ones and set up some sample LCs, but otherwise keep things basically the same?
- (DanielP thinks: a course starting on sept 15, jan 15 and may 1 on an annual basis )
- DanielP says:
- I think that it is a reasonable assumption
- laurap says:
- So those of us who are working on the textbook (do we know who we are?) should try to nail down specific assignments pretty soon...
- DanielP says:
- I discussed with Bill during his office hours sometimes this past week and he mentioned about the posibility of letting ppl in at regular intervals, I said that we have discussed this at one time and I think Marcus believed that I was better to finish the course as we have started it
- beside you and me, Jim and Bill will be in for the next course
- laurap says:
- I agree about finishing the course as we started it. But some of the
- DanielP says:
- I definitely wants to html the answer book for the next course
- laurap says:
- projects may want to let people join as they progress.
- DanielP says:
- that's why I proposed the VCL, I think that projects are, and should be handle separetely from the course
- laurap says:
- Yes (answer book) -- and we should select problems to use as exercises for the text.
- (DanielP thinks: that would be already a good start )
- laurap says:
- About the VCL and projects -- I think that we should make sure that beginning students have the opportunity to work on projects. Some of the projects, at least, should have very lax prerequisites/requirements.
- DanielP says:
- when we started this course we thought that most of the students would be interested in working on projects but it is not the course. One "studnet" mentioned that he was hesitant participating in project with unknown.
- (DanielP thinks: not the case )
- laurap says:
- So the projects will become an optional part of the course? We suggest you get involved with a project in the VCL, but you don't have to?
- DanielP says:
- Also we have to reassess the support that we provide for project (is it sufficient, how can we "package" it to increase ppl participation)
- laurap says:
- I am *trying* to make it easier to share code...
- I do think that most of the projects that were proposed at the beginning were intimidating to beginners.
- DanielP says:
- I appreciate your effort but we have to "debug" the approach before "forcing" ppl to use it. I think that the "experimental" aspect of the course is "turning off" many ppl (I don't know how many)
- laurap says:
- I didn't mean we should foist that approach on the next crop of students! But I think some of the hardier souls who plan to stay with the String project might be willing to act as volunteers.
- (laurap thinks: the "experimental" nature of this course is what attracted me to it in the first place! )
- DanielP says:
- Some of the projects were more ambitious because ppl background looks much more impressive than we thought (I thought that the majority of ppl would be "beginners"
- I hope that ppl from the String project will volunteer as guinea pig :-)
- laurap says:
- Jim and PMR are interested in having the String project do that.
- DanielP nods
- laurap says:
- Maybe for the future we could think in terms of mini-projects, that would last a few weeks.
- they could range from beginning to advanced but wouldn't be as much of a commitment.
- DanielP says:
- the question I am asking myself about the projects is what can we offer that would make it more attractive to do the project that working on your own
- laurap says:
- I can't answer that -- I wound up working on my own project mostly on my own. Working with others would make the product more likely to be portable...
- also, if your project is something that you really want to use later, it is less work if other people do parts of it. :-)
- (laurap thinks: assuming you trust the other people :-) )
- laurap says:
- Perhaps we should also try to have alternatives for people who don't want to work on group projects. I've mentioned exercises, but also maybe we could have individual projects.
- DanielP says:
- On another subject, we probably have 100-200 ppl waiting for the next course, if we proceed like this course we regular announcement about the different chapters then we'll end up losing a lot of ppl, while ppl not registered will be able to follow by reading what is on the Web
- laurap says:
- It's possible that learning contracts will reduce the number of ppl we lose (or at least weed them out in the beginning).
- DanielP says:
- the "problem" with Lc is that we have never tried them out, this is also "experimental". I don't know how the respone will be. It has the potential to solve many of our problems.
- laurap says:
- Were you going to make some suggestion about changing how many people we allow to register?
- DanielP says:
- I dont have a precise idea about this. That's why I wanted to bring up the subject in a meeting
- laurap says:
- You mentioned in your mail that you don't think that there are that many advantages to being a registered student. I think the main one is the ability to participate in the mailing list.
- DanielP agrees but some ppl considered that a disadvantage!
- laurap laughs
- DanielP is eager to see Tina's evaluation
- laurap says:
- We might be able to use LCs as a way to estimate how much "effort" each student will require, and adjust the number of registered students that way. But this seems complicated.
- laurap would like to see the eval too.
- laurap says:
- ... or maybe we can change what we mean by a registered student (which, actually, we'll be doing with lcs).
- DanielP says:
- Also there is the problem of recruiting consultants, as Marcus pointed out, I will "search" in the newsgroups we'll end up having a 10 to 1 ratio of ppl interested in taking the course as opposed to being a consultant.
- (DanielP thinks: if we "search" in the news... )
- laurap says:
- How were the consultants recruited this time?
- DanielP says:
- I don't know for sure, I guess mostly through Marcus's Web page and announcement on the C++ newsgroups
- (laurap thinks: ahhh -- I never read the C++ newsgroups before starting this course. )
- DanielP says:
- but we made the decision that we are going to accept 10 students for every consultants that we have. We had 8 consultants so we accepted 80 students
- laurap says:
- It's possible that some of the people who are on the "waiting list" might be potential consultants.
- DanielP really hope that we can get most of the consultants this way
- laurap says:
- I doubt that this will turn out to be an issue, but we might want to have a cap on the absolute number of students, so that the mailing list doesn't get too much traffic (i.e. if we had 100 consultants and 1000 students, that would be too many).
- DanielP says:
- Where did you heard about this course?
- laurap says:
- I think it was on the NCSA What's New page. Or one of the www newsgroups.
- (DanielP thinks: we would split the mailing list )
- DanielP says:
- Should we keep the emphasis on an "introduction to ..."
- laurap says:
- as opposed to?
- DanielP says:
- I expect the group will be as diverse as the present one, I think many are not interested in the "introductory" aspect.
- laurap says:
- I think that everyone would benefit if we tried to cater to both beginning and intermediate/advanced people at the same time. I think that beginners can benefit from "overhearing" more advanced discussions, and can ask questions that will make the more advanced people think about things they might not have before...
- I think that we might end up with people who are advanced students but are consultants to the beginners, which would be nice.
- DanielP says:
- I was wondering what is the best way to increase the coverage of the actual tutorial. I mentioned to Bill that we can add chpaters but he said that separate "textbook" would preferable because less intimidating in some sense (many small hypertextbooks instead of a single big one)
- laurap says:
- I had been thinking in terms of perhaps adding optional links (to more detailed/advanced/whatever) material in the text.
- DanielP was thinking along the same lines
- laurap says:
- This would add "depth" to the book -- I think that at this point (when templates and exceptions are added) it has enough "breadth".
- to answer a question from much earlier -- one advantage that working on group projects has is that it's possible that, while you may have found a way that works to do something, someone else will come up with a more natural approach that you wouldn't have thought of originally. This is especially true, I think, in C++, where there are so many different ways of doing things.
- DanielP nods
- rodrigc arrives from nowhere.
- rodrigc says:
- Hello
- laurap [to rodrigc]:
- Hi.
- DanielP says:
- You said that we spent too much time on the C part of the course, I think that PMR would have liked to get into classes much more quickly, should we do this for the next course?
- hello
- laurap says:
- I think that we should start the course with something like a tour of C++ (like Stroustrup's intro). Then get to classes very quickly.
- I think this means that ppl who don't already know C will have to work very hard at the beginning of the course to keep up, which might not be fair.
- DanielP says:
- but according to Stroustrup (latest book and I think I agree), it is not a good idea to "skip" the "better than C" part (it comes back to haunt you later)
- laurap says:
- So how would you proceed?
- (laurap thinks: I've bought the latest Stroustrup book but haven't read very much of it. )
- DanielP says:
- Are we going to issue a regular announcement like this course? For example, if we use differents type of lc for beg/int/adv than we might ignore the issue
- DanielP thinks it is a very interesting book (for any C++ ppl)
- laurap says:
- You mean, no "unit N starting" announcement? That sounds reasonable but we need to find some way of keeping in sync.
- DanielP [to rodrigc]:
- The new S's book is about the decisions behind the features of C++
- laurap says:
- One thing we could do for the book is have the intro be a "tour of C++" with links to all the other chapters (including the chapters on C-like stuff). Then people could read the material in whatever order they wanted -- non-C-programmers might read the C stuff first. But I don't know how that would translate into running a course.
- (laurap thinks: if we want to go to extremes, we could not number the chapters. )
- DanielP says:
- That's another issue that was brought by Marcus, the course is essentially "asynchroneous". I argued that the present one was asynchroneous but the future one needn't be.
- laurap says:
- I think the more different types of ppl you have in the course, the more difficult it will be to run the course synchronously at a pace that's reasonable for everyone.
- (DanielP thinks: divide and conquer )
- laurap says:
- Yes, that will work (but will require committed consultants).
- (DanielP thinks: or committed students! )
- (laurap thinks: perhaps we should all be committed ;-) )
- DanielP says:
- we should have different tracks (beg/int/adv)
- rodrigc says:
- How many consultants do you have for this course?
- (DanielP thinks: this is ideal (like "in theory" but in reality ...) :-) )
- laurap says:
- Different tracks can wind their way through different paths in the textbook..
- laurap [to rodrigc]:
- several :-)
- laurap says:
- I was thinking that each consultant would be assigned to a specific track, but actually I guess that's not necessary...
- DanielP [to rodrigc]:
- I think 10
- rodrigc says:
- That's a decent number
- DanielP [to laurap]:
- Is sept 15th ok with you for a tentative starting date?
- rodrigc says:
- How many people have expressed interest in this course (students or consultants).....I've seen this course being hyped quite a bit in different places
- laurap says:
- I expect I'll be pretty busy at the end of September. But I think I'll still be able handle "normal" consulting then. (Assuming we've got the text finished in advance).
- DanielP [to rodrigc]:
- where?
- rodrigc [to DanielP]:
- Mostly on news.answers (the GNA FAQ), and in comp.lang.c++
- DanielP [to laurap]:
- I have a research grant proposal due Oct 1st :-)
- laurap laughs
- laurap [to DanielP]:
- I know you've mentioned this before, but when is it in August that you'l be mostly off-line?
- DanielP [to laurap]:
- next week and the week of the 22nd
- I will be able to connect every two or three days (instead of the usual every day)
- laurap [to DanielP]:
- oh, okay -- I thought you'd be completely unavailable for a long block of time (and was a little worried about how the text and stuff would be coordinated).
- DanielP says it is not going to be that bad but I will not have so much time during this month (August)
- laurap says:
- Okay. I need to go soon...
- DanielP says:
- Just one quick question, I have to go too
- Marcus mentioned that he wants some help moving the web stuff from desy.de to mit.edu. Does this involve more then taring the directory and ftping it to mit.edu?
- laurap says:
- I don't know -- he may have relative links to other web pages on desy that wouldn't move, so they'd need to change from "/whatever" to "http://info.desy.de/whatever".
- this wouldn't be difficult but it might be time-consuming to find them.
- DanielP nods
- DanielP waves Laura
- laurap wave all
- laurap [to DanielP]:
- don't forget to turn the recorder off.
- DanielP [to rodrigc]:
- Did you solve your problem (I have to go shortly too)
- laurap has disconnected.
- -- End: Sunday, July 31, 1994 5:20:49 pm DUtime (EDT)