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Convincing Colleges to Upgrade Their Classes?

Posted by Cliff on from the updating-those-old-20lb-text-books dept.

Pray_4_Mojo asks: "I'm an engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh, and I'm currently taking a required class known as 'Computer Interfacing'. While I enjoy the instructor, I find most of the material to be severely dated. We will spend the majority of the class covering RS232/XMODEM/Token Ring means of computer-to-computer communication. Almost no mention of USB, Firewire, or IRDa is made within the class. I am trying to convince my professor that this material is relevant, as these types of interfaces will be dominate in the world we future grads will be working in. As an example, I demonstrated that the keycard access system to gain access to the Interfacing Lab has a USB port for data download/firmware programming. The professor seems interested, but it seems that I need to convince the department to revise the course requirements. Has anyone attempted to modernize their CS/Engineering program and met with success?"

7 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. The concepts you will learn are the same... by gtwreck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not about whether or not you have experience in the latest tools and technologies. It's whether you have the fundamentals in place to allow you to apply that fundamental knowledge to any other system.

    In the specific case of serial interfaces, there really isn't all that much different between RS-232, RS-485, and USB or Firewire. They are all serial interfaces that employ the same fundamental concepts. In the real world you'll have to apply that knowledge to any number of serial interfaces.

    The same logic can be applied to a discussion yesterday about using MS or open source programming environments in a CS department.

    1. Re:The concepts you will learn are the same... by itwerx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, not at all. (Are you trolling? :)
      You are told to forget the technology which was used to convey the concepts, but the concepts are where the value is.
      Here's an example.
      If you want to learn how to fly a 747 you don't start out on one! You spend many years and tens of thousands of dollars learning on the concepts on smaller aircraft. Granted, knowing the gauge layout of a Cessna has zero relevance to a 747 but the concept of watching your fuel levels applies equally well in either case.
      So yes, when you get to 747 school they will say "forget all that other airplane stuff" but they're not really telling you to forget the concepts, just the nitty-gritty details that you don't need any more.
      Compres vous?

    2. Re:The concepts you will learn are the same... by kooshball · · Score: 3, Insightful
      It costs an unbelievable amount of money (millions of dollars) to design and test a curriculum.

      I'm not sure where you went to school, but I've never studied or taught anywhere that spent ANY money on designing the curriculum. And testing it? Forget it!

      Most professors are left to their own devices to cover what they like in class as long as they hit a few basic points. For instance, compare the syllabi of the same Macroeconomics course as taught by a Keynesian and a Monetarist who studied under Milton Friedman. They will look like completely different courses!

      The first course that I ever taught was a core undergraduate Microeconomics course. When I asked the chairman of the department what I should cover, he told me that I should take a look at the last semester's syllabus for ideas, but could really cover anything I wanted.

  2. Teaching would be a great job by hengist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    if it wasn't for the students.

    I teach two undergraduate courses. I know what it's like to have students complaining about the content of a course, and I have two comments about this topic.

    Firstly, changing what is taught in a course is very very very very hard work, and a course that has been restructured or had its content changed is very very very likely to have problems with said new content. It is simply not practical to keep updating a course to deal with new technology. Once a course is stable, it is far better to leave it that way. Also, the staff teaching that course must spend time doing research and likely supervising postgrad students. They must do this to keep their job and to maintain the reputation of the university.

    Secondly, universities are not vocational training institutes. University teaches the basic theory and concepts behind the technology, and teaches students how to learn these concepts. The student should then be able to apply these theories and concepts in an employment situation.

    If you want to learn how to use new technology solely to apply those skills to a job, go to polytech or do a training course. Don't sit around whining to the course instructor, because frankly he probably knows a hell of a lot more about how to run a course than you do.

    1. Re:Teaching would be a great job by i_am_nitrogen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      DUDE, you're not getting the POINT. University is NOT FOR GETTING PEOPLE JOBS!!! It's for academic enrichment, broadening your horizons, learning things because they're interesting, and simply learning how to learn. Stop complaining and either be the change you want to see in the world, or go somewhere else. Why don't you teach your own course about the latest industry standards?

      As nearly everyone else has said... it's the concepts that matter. Whether it's at 128kbits or 1mbit, a serial communication interface with a tx line and an rx line will always have the same basic concepts.

      --
      A solution to the problem with music today
  3. RS232 Is EVERYWHERE by muscleman706 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't know about Token Ring, but RS232 is all over the place in industrial hardware like barcode scanners and other non-PC hardware. I think it is much simpler to program both for the programmers and the hardware designers. Also, remember that Intel came up with USB to sell processors because USB is a total CPU hog as compared to FireWire. So, while your PC does not have a problem with this now, certainly industrial hardware does not have the infrastructure on board to deal with USB. So, I think the appropriate thing is to talk about RS232, USB, IrA, BlueTooth, and WAP. You want BlueTooth because it is going to be in all cellphones, hence proliferate into everything else. You want WAP because for things where BlueTooth is too slow, you will want a higher-speed wireless system. For instance, you could have a WAP enabled Digital Video Camcorder that automatically pops up a recording window when you start recording, all without any wires!

    --
    My DVD and Game Collection Tracking L
  4. Math by jbolden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When you first learn math we don't nursery school / kindergarden with "Let Delta be a derived functor mapping abelian catagories...."; you don't learn 20th century math at all. Rather what you learn is:

    counting -- a technology that is certainly tens of thousands of years old
    arithmetic -- a technology that is many thosands of years old and was fully developed 5000 years ago
    algebra of one variable -- a technology that is a thousand years old
    geometry of 2 dimension -- a technology that is over 2000 years old.

    And if you are really good at highschool you learn
    calculus of one variable -- a technology that is over 300 years old

    By college the undergraduates make it up to about the civil war.

    ____________

    There is a difference between education and vocational training. Education teaches you how to evaluate information and how to learn new information. Vocational training teaches you specific information for a specific field. There goal is to teach concepts not technologies.

    What you are learning are very simple hardware / software interfaces. Why use complex interfaces of modern hardware that confuse the issues on an academic course? Leave that for vocational schools.