CS50 Updates Course Policies, Asks Students To Go To Class
Okay, not the Onion. But Onion-worthy, no?
Look at this last part of the article, where one of the professor’s teaching assistants praises his experimental, innovative, problem-solving approach to teaching:
For at least one former CS50 staffer, the changes to the course signal [David] Malan’s willingness to solve problems through experimentation.
“Seems like he’s continuing to experiment and learn as I think he should and does relatively well,” said former CS50 teaching fellow Mark D. Grozen-Smith ’15. “I’m glad that we have innovation alive in such an impactful, high-demand class.”
Asking students to attend your course! Why didn’t I think of that?
September 2nd, 2017 at 9:30AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/sports/ncaafootball/florida-state-football.html
September 3rd, 2017 at 7:53AM
Some of my faculty colleagues have expressed concern that the flipped-classroom model of watching the lecture on video before attending an explanatory/discussion section legitimizes non-attendance at lectures in other courses that do not use this model. I don’t know where CS 50 fits in with this observation, but it might foreshadow a debate that could arise if more courses go to this model.
September 3rd, 2017 at 9:46AM
Polish Peter: Absolutely. Versions of that debate have been going on since various forms of technology have made class attendance – in any class – seem superfluous. I was waiting for one of my classes to start last week, and I stood outside the door of a big full lecture hall and listened to the lecturer (this would have been the first day of class) get surprisingly angry as he went on and on about punishments for students cheating with their clickers as a way to skip class pretty much all the time. It was such lovely sight – a professor on the first day of class, addressing students he’d never met before and condemning them for something they hadn’t yet done. Sets such a nice pedagogical tone.
Virtually everything about the highest-tech classes incentivizes not attending them.