Organizing a Course

Ph.D. Professional Seminar. 3 February 1997.

Brian Smith

These notes are a supplement to the slides which were used during the seminar and record a few extra points brought up during the seminar.

Knowledge

A person acquires three different levels of knowledge about a subject:

• Rote Knowledge: Rote knowledge entails having a basic understanding of the overall structure of a subject. This knowledge is superficial and deemphasizes details. A student with rote knowledge of the area has some intuitive understanding of the subject but few tools with which they can solve concrete problems.
• Application Knowledge: Application knowledge is deeper than rote knowledge. Students with application knowledge can solve concrete problems given to them that pertain to the subject area. To attain application knowledge some amount of formalization of the subject is required.
• Correlation Knowledge: Correlation knowledge is the deepest form of knowledge. Given a problem, the student is able to identify a technique that might be used to solve the problem and then proceed to apply the technique. This knowledge requires deep intuition on the subject and is consequently the most difficult to teach or acquire.

Regardless of the type of knowledge you are trying to convey in a course, the students need to know what is expected of them. At the beginning of each lecture, briefly state a few goals so the students know where you are going. Tell them you only require superficial knowledge of the day's topics when you are trying to convey rote knowledge. Or, when appropriate, tell them they need to reread the day's lecture notes and do several examples if you are trying to teach application or correlation knowledge.

Designing Lectures

Theft was the primary recommendation here. Pilfer, steal, pickpocket, filch, and purloin other people's ideas, notes, and materials. The more sources the better. Talk to friends, colleagues, and those who have taught the course before.

Some advice on eye contact: Identify three or four people who are paying attention in different parts of the room. Rotate your eyes from one to the next. This should give the illusion of scanning the entire class and focuses your attention on different parts of the room. (If you are really worried about students falling asleep, distribute chocolate-covered coffee beans.)

When considering the level or goals of your teaching, Brian suggests that you "Teach to the middle of the class". The class can be divided into three segments:

• The students who will fail despite your greatest efforts.
• The students who will succeed despite your greatest efforts.
• Everyone else.

Lecture Notes

We had a bit of debate about lecture notes. On one hand, if students know that handouts of the day's lecture are readily available, there is considerable temptation to skip class and pick up the notes later. Furthermore, students tend to glaze over when you get to big equations or other more complicated material if they have it already written out for them. Taking notes keeps them awake. On the other hand, some students find that if forced to scribble notes for the entire period, that is all that they do, ending up with a set of notes but having missed the lecture. As a compromise between these extremes, consider giving out incomplete notes. At points during the lecture, students may have to fill in sections, or answer little problems.

Tests and Cheating

• Some things such as design, planning, cooperation, group skills cannot be measured on a test.
• Tests are "noisy." Mood, amount of sleep, and breakfast cereal may all affect a student's performance on a test on any given day.
• Given these problems with tests, they can still be important. Students collaborate on homework so you don't know which answers are whose. Policies which strictly prohibit collaboration will not be completely effective and may not be best for the educational process (students can learn a lot from working together). Thus, while giving homework helps students learn, it may not be an effective evaluation technique. Tests are more controlled.

• The most important advice was to state your policy in the initial handout and repeat it in the first class. Make sure there is no ambiguity.
• Find out what the policy for cheating is at your school. It is different at every school. Know your rights as a teacher and the students' rights.
• Since the process of prosecuting someone for cheating may be long and involved, it may be completely infeasible for you to try and prosecute every minor cheating case. Brian takes the approach of "legislating" cheating away. By making homework worth little, it is not worth the student's while to cheat and if they do anyway, you do not have to feel bound to prosecute because it makes little difference in their final grade.
• Keshav proposed a karmic view of cheating. Let them cheat, you can't stop them anyway. They are the ones who will end up losing in the end. Some pointed out, however, that this can devalue the grades for the entire class, and more generally, lower the quality of the university. There did not seem to be consensus on the best approach to handling cheating.

Teaching Tools

Finally, Brian mentioned a few tools you can use in your courses. The first is a new program from Addison-Wesley called "Custom Books". Apparently, you can name chapters from a variety of books that they publish and give them some notes of your own and Addison-Wesley will bind them all up in a text for your class. Addison-Wesley needs to sell some minimum number of texts so it won't work for a small class but if your class is upwards of 100 or 150, you could look into it. A second tool is called CoNotes. This is a system for annotating documents on the web. For example, you can put an assignment up on the web and one student can post a question about it (which is laid out beside the text of the assignment in the appropriate place) and can be answered by another student. This can serve as a useful reference if you teach the same course again at a later time.

Notes by walker@cs.cornell.edu. Edited by millett@cs.cornell.edu