[SPAM] - Re: [GAP] advice on Ada in general programming languages course - Email found in subject

[ed schonberg]

Ted Baker wrote:

>Ed,
>
>In general, to what extent and under what terms are you willing
>that I borrow/steal/reuse bits of stuff from your class web pages?
>  
>
I'll be flattered if you find any of it useful in your context, feel free.

>I have looked over the assignments and examples, and expect I
>might like to steal some bits from them.
>  
>
Ditto.

>I have not looked at the Powerpoint slides yet (I use HTML for all
>my notes and do not have anything capable of displaying .ppt files
>on my workstation.), but I guess I might like to include them in
>the sources from which I steal bits as I write up my own notes in
>HTML.
>  
>
For many of the lectures I have also provided a pdf, and this should be 
readable on any platform, of course. I still have to convert a couple 
lectures from their ppt format.

>Regarding the assignments, I have another question.  It seems you
>only gave a general idea of what you wanted for each assignment,
>leaving a lot to the imaginatination.  Is that all the detail you
>provided, or were there other documents with more detail?
>  
>
No, this is it, although typically I discuss in class the intent of the 
assignment, and afterwards discuss some of the approaches that students 
came up with.

>Around here we tend to give much more detailed specifications,
>or else the students get confused and insecure about what we
>expect of them, and we have difficulty doing the testing and grading.
>I guess maybe your course is small?
>  
>
This semester it is a small course (24 students) so this makes it 
easier. The grading is generous, I want them to try hard and solve the 
problem as well as they can, reasonably within the deadlines, rather 
than having a preconceived solution for which they get very narrow 
specifications.

>Our course here typically has about 75 students in it (three sections
>of 25) and we use a TA to do the grading, so the testing has to
>be pretty much automated and the spec's on the assignment need
>to be tight.  I often end up providing a test driver framework
>to the students so that they can test their work in a context
>similar to the one in which we will test it.
>  
>
That's optimal of course, modulo the time you have to invest in writing 
the driver!

Ed