Slashdot Mirror
Convincing Colleges to Upgrade Their Classes?
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?"
What next? Sneakernet?? 80K hard sectored 5.25" floppies??? Two tin cans and a string???? And this college degree is supposed to show that you are educated and get you a job in the real world?
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.
When it comes down to it, the stuff you are learning is the same as all the modern interfaces. The same concepts, not much different. Sure, USB is a bit faster than 56k serial/RS232. But in the end, having the *tools* it takes to learn the stuff you will in the are those that would enable you to learn what is behind USB and Firewire with relative ease. Hell, at least half the class (probably a lot more) will probably forget the information out of lack of it being useful down the line.
Eventually, USB and FireWire may be what is taught in that class, provided they stand the test of time like *MODEM and RS232 have.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
...but I do remember it's fairly different from standard TCP/IP. Which would make it quite a useful platform to teach concepts, as there would almost certainly be a dedicated TCP/IP class in most curriculums anyways. It's good to demonstrate different (if unusual) concepts.
This is why CS curriculums include not widely used in industry languages such as LISP; just because they do things radically different.
These interfaces are much simplier and are a good base for moving forward. While your not likely to use them the concepts are the same AND if you go into a lab you have a reasonable chance to use one of the older interfaces.
That said a brief discussion of newer interfaces towards the end of the class is probably relevant.
I know when I was in college we studied the PDP-11 architecture. Well, I've never done anything on a PDP-11 and except for hobbiests I doubt you could find one BUT I do have a solid understanding of concepts that started with that class.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
If you really want to learn about Firewire, do something with it for your Senior project.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
You can teach fundamentals with Cobol and Logo too.
.NET, firewire, usb, irda, would hopefully give you a better chance of getting a decent job than one still using older technology.
A school teaching the 'fundamentals' using newer technology, like php,
As it turned out, the real problem was not teaching OOP to the students. OOP is easier to explain to new programmers than structured programming (people use real-world objects all the time - not so much real-world procedures). Half-way through the first semester, the students could implement Tetris.
The real problem was retraining the faculty. Even though they knew OOP was a good thing, it took them a while before they had internalized OOP enough to present, e.g., algorithms and data structures in an object-oriented style. No one believed that you could teach inheritance and polymorphism before you taught loops, conditionals, and arithmetic.
Faculty teaching the intro courses may be in touch with industry and research. That's not enough. The faculty need to rethink an entire course to present the right academic material in a modern, industry-relevant way. If the faculty can do that (and, make no mistake, it isn't easy), they you'll get a course the students love, that will get them a job, and that will prepare them for a strong academic program as well.
For the truly curious, the textbook for that course is actually still in print, even though it depended on Borland Pascal, which is long-since defunct.
-----
Klactovedestene!
Meanwhile, and most students don't realise this, but you are allowed to do research of your own beyond the scope of any given class. I know you may not have the funds to pursue everything you want, but neither does the college.
There are two types of jobs out there: 1) ones that require experience and 2) ones that don't want experience because they want groom you.
:)
For the first group, there is no way that you could possibly gain enough experience in 6-9 hours a week for four years. That's only about 4-6 months of professional experience (about two full-time internships if you're so lucky).
For the second group, employers are more interested in finding someone who is a good problem solver and has the ability to pick up newer technologies quickly. In a lot of ways, as an employer I'd rather have someone who learned COBOL at school for fear that they'd carry bad habits if they knew C++ or a newer language that I'd expect them to use on the job.
<Open Source Evangelizing>
Of course, working on Open Source software can give you the desired experience and prove you have the ability to learn quickly on your own
</Open Source Evangelizing>
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
It's basicly the same here at Vermont Tech. Granted I think that RS232 and XMODEM are still relevant, as they're SIMPLE. Also RS232 is still widely used, and while XMODEM may be garbage it is still the basis of many other protocols and is easy to understand. At least I thought so. I got in an argument with a professor once, as a lab assignment he asked us to connect two computers with a null modem, set the link to 7 bits, and transfer a file using XMODEM, in that order. I told him XMODEM doesn't work over a 7 bit link. He told me it does. It took me about a half hour to convince him that he was wrong.
After putting intense pressure on this same professor, he did spend a couple of days at the end of the class talking about USB, but it was uselessly superficial. It would have been far more beneficial for us to have done some USB programming in lab, or something.
It is hard for schools to keep up with all of the modern hardware and software and protcols, as the industry moves to fast. But why should they keep right on the bleeding edge? While RS232 may be old, learning about RS232 teaches you the PRINCIPLES of communication, thus better equipping you to learn new interfaces. The same goes for XMODEM. USB and FireWire are pretty fucking complex protocols to jump right into when you haven't covered any time of communication standard before. But I think that considering how ubiquitous USB is becoming, it should absolutely be included in the curriculum.
On the other hand, there's no excuse for teaching TokenRing. For the love of god, spend that time teaching ethernet.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
A lot of the courses had already been changed.
But to higlight an example, the 3d graphics course in 3rd year is revised each year to adapt to new developments in the past year. For example, pixel shaders are taught in the current 3rd year course, and who knows what else next year.
However, the second year introductory graphics course has stayed mostly the same, introducing the basic concepts which are applicable to more than one situation, and dont change very often.
I would assume that a lot of the concepts, if not the specifics, would stay the same even between say RS-232 and USB. Sure, there are a lot of differences in protocol specifics, and a lot of extra features of USB (otherwise there wouldnt be much point to using it), but the general idea of transmitting a signal down the wire, and having to deal with flow control, error correction, and whatever else (now I _know_ I didnt revise hard enough - memory's failing me here).
Of course, updating the specifics can help, but not at the expense of clouding the basic concepts, or just for the sake of something being newer and more in fashion at the moment (think replacing a C course with a java course, losing any concept of memory management with free(), and confusing students no end when they finally do come to c/c++ ). Tomorrow, USB will be obsolete, and all the specifics learnt today will also be obsolete, but the next big thing that replaces it will use the same basic concepts, have the same problems to deal with, just at a higher speed, and with more features.
I started school at BYU this semester. I'm going into CS. The first required class had a horrifying syllabus. We were to learn about C, basic electronics, and assembly language built for a theoretical computer. I was disgusted that we would learn just about NOTHING which would be practical. I transferred out of there so fast. Now, I just hope I can get exempted from that class or take a C++, Java, or X86 assmebly course instead.
void
void
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.
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
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.
- Get the lecturer replaced with someone else - this means someone else has to be willling to teach the course
- Find the lecturer a whole lot of free time to revise the course material (which I assume has been generated over a period of years) all at once. This probably means them taking time away from research, which is what you professor probably feels he's there for anyway.
Even if you succeed, the material won't be updated while you're on the course. At best, the next course would start with the new material.(This reflects the situation in the UK, where academic teaching staff in Universities almost always have research commitments (and publications are used as a performance metric).
Some of the material you are working with is not so bad, either. Learning about RS232 might teach you several things that are generically useful in designing system interfaces :-
It's been a while since I've worked heavily in industrial interfacing, but I'd be surprised if USB is even relevant to that at all. Think more along the lines of RS422, 10baseT, and optical fibre (often carrying converted RS232, in fact).
I'm not particularly familiar with XMODEM, but I think it's likely to help you undersand valuable facets from the above (bandwidth/reliability tradeoffs, protocol features for catching errors, latency versus throughput, bandwidth-delay products). Token Ring seems an odd choice to me, though. After all the hardware must be tricky to get these days (or perhaps your course has no hands-on component, which would make hardware availability irrelevant).
One of the most interesting hardware interfacing things I've done was implement both ends of a mostly-symmetrical serial protocol. One end was implemented as a set of four cooperating threads, and the other as a state machine. One way of doing it was (in that case) much much easier than the other (less code and more reliable).