Sunday, November 18, 2007
Happy 35th Birthday Computer Science Faculty
Our faculty celebrated it's 35th birthday this week. Our university was the first in Germany to establish a faculty for Computer Science in 1972.
It was surprising to hear that our Professors from the first and second year, Prof Gerhard Goos and Prof Peter Lockemann, were actually among the founding father of the faculty and therefore of Computer Science as a whole in Germany.
The celebration ceremony itself was a bit boring though. I think the Dean's office somehow didn't invite the students for the event, I think I was almost the only student in the event. The next older bunch of people were some PhD students, the rest were all Professors, former professors and representatives from the ministry, city etc.
Somehow I had the feeling that the ceremony didn't live up to my expectations. When we think of ourselves as such a great Elite-University and our faculty is among the largest on campus and arguably the most renowned, I would have expected a bigger "firework". The whole event had less that 100 people in the audience, I would say.
So long and thanks for the coffee and cake :)
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Do non-graded assignments improve teamwork?
This week when I was looking for a study place in university (unsuccessfully), I realized a difference between the study room here and the study room in NUS, except that the one in Singapore is cleaner and air-coned.
Here students were all gathering in small groups, discussing and solving their assignments (Uebungsblaetter) together. A typical scene in the NUS study room would show people sitting in front of their books and laptops alone.
First and foremost, NUS study room is a quiet area, where you are not supposed to discuss, but I realized that there is another more significant reason why students solve their assignments in groups or not.
We have one assignment per week for almost every class. The assignments are a help to practice and understand. They are graded, but don't contribute to the final grade. Usually you just have to get a certain percentage of the total points to be admitted to the exam at the end of the semester.
So by collaborating and doing the assignments, students only benefit from each other. They don't compete among each other.
In NUS the assignments usually contribute to your final score and are more a test, that is supposed to be done individually, of course. So students do their assignments alone, and even if they would (sometimes you are allowed) to solve the problems together, the motivation is less as you don't benefit from the solution as much as if you had solved yourself (see my posts concerning relative grading).
Here students were all gathering in small groups, discussing and solving their assignments (Uebungsblaetter) together. A typical scene in the NUS study room would show people sitting in front of their books and laptops alone.
First and foremost, NUS study room is a quiet area, where you are not supposed to discuss, but I realized that there is another more significant reason why students solve their assignments in groups or not.
We have one assignment per week for almost every class. The assignments are a help to practice and understand. They are graded, but don't contribute to the final grade. Usually you just have to get a certain percentage of the total points to be admitted to the exam at the end of the semester.
So by collaborating and doing the assignments, students only benefit from each other. They don't compete among each other.
In NUS the assignments usually contribute to your final score and are more a test, that is supposed to be done individually, of course. So students do their assignments alone, and even if they would (sometimes you are allowed) to solve the problems together, the motivation is less as you don't benefit from the solution as much as if you had solved yourself (see my posts concerning relative grading).
Labels: KIT, NUS, University
