Building a Better Tech School

An anonymous reader writes "In late 2011, Cornell University won a prize from NYC Mayor Bloomberg's contest to design a new science school. Google donated some space in Manhattan, and since January this year students have been enrolled in the school's 'beta class, a one-year master's program in computer science.' The beta curriculum is designed to equip the students with all the knowledge they need to jump right into a tech startup: there's a mandatory business class, the U.S. Commerce Department stationed a patent officer on-site, and mentors from the private sector are brought in to help with design. 'The curriculum will not be confined to standard disciplines, but will combine fields like electrical engineering, software development and social sciences, and professors will teach across those boundaries. In fact, no professor has an office, not even the dean, and Dr. Huttenlocher insists they will not when the campus moves to Roosevelt Island, either. Instead, each person has a desk with low dividers, and people can grab conference rooms as needed — much like the headquarters of a small tech company.' It's a long, interesting article about how they're trying to turn 'tech school' into something a lot more rigorous and innovative than something like ITT Tech."

Comments

Well this sounds totally scalable

[drsquare]

Will every other school be getting perks like a government bureaucrat working for you full time, and free expensive office space from a company?

Re:Well this sounds totally scalable

[phantomfive]

What difference does it make? For the students that graduate from there, it's great (assuming it really is a great school, which I have serious doubts).

The thing is to try a bunch of different things and find out what works. When you find something, then worry about scaling it up.

Why master's level? and not AA/AS and BA/BS level?

[Joe_Dragon]

Why master's level? and not AA/AS and BA/BS level?

The devry and ITT Tech's are main at the AA/AS and BA/BS level.

At the AA/AS and BA/BS level is where need to rework and add in more of a apprenticeship like system and the older idea of it needing to be 2-4+ years also needs to be reworked as well.

at the NON devry and ITT schools it can very but some of them have to much theory and a lacking in real skills also they are some what loaded with fluff / filler classes as well lot's of required classes (some schools still have swim tests) Why should you be foreced to take PE at (college price levels).

Also about people who learn better hands on who may do very good at tech stuff but are not so good at other stuff at hurt the GPA / forced to retake classes in the forced art history classes and other NON core big lecture classes?

  The devry and ITT have smaller classes as well more teachers who are in the field and not people who have been in the school system most of there life.

And booked solid into eternity.

[khasim]

Instead, each person has a desk with low dividers, and people can grab conference rooms as needed â" much like the headquarters of a small tech company.

I've seen attempts at that. It quickly turns into whomever has the highest status permanently booking a conference room. In effect, turning it into their own office.

I'd recommend focusing on teaching science and skip the gimmicks.

Not really

[tlambert]

Instead, each person has a desk with low dividers, and people can grab conference rooms as needed â" much like the headquarters of a small tech company.

I've seen attempts at that. It quickly turns into whomever has the highest status permanently booking a conference room. In effect, turning it into their own office.

I'd recommend focusing on teaching science and skip the gimmicks.

This is how the Google workplace is arranged, and I have zero doubt that this was heavily influenced by that. The "Open Plan" at Google was in turn influenced by Intel's Andy Grove, a hero of the Google executives.

Having spent some time teaching, and having worked at Google, I'd say that this is, as another poster called it, a gimmick.

The conference rooms tend to be booked for project meetings, which they will likely not have there, and interviews, which they will also likely not have there, and tend to have a smaller number than you'd like because of tearing down space to make labs and/or more room for new hires due to space pressure, which they don't have there. The conference rooms are more likely to also be 2-4 people sized, where you can jam in 4-5 people if you have to, rather than class-sized things.

The Patent Officer is clearly their way of saying "we expect great things of you, don't disappoint us", but is unlikely to have much work, as things do not go to a patent officer unless the patent has been proposed, approved, filed, and then after that, it goes to them -- this is unlikely to happen unless the persons there get patentable ideas in the first six to nine months. Unless, it occurs to me, that the Patent Officer is there as a benefit to the faculty?

The cross-disciplinary work isn't going to pan out, either, unless they only hire faculty who are already cross-disciplinary, since teaching is easier and more effective when you teach what you know. It's unlikely they are going to be able to hire James Burke to work in a cubicle farm, for example.

"How many trends and buzzwords ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... can we cram onto a single campus?"

"I don't know, but let's find out!"

Sigh

[sootman]

3 things I almost never see mentioned in "let's make schools better!" articles:

• Learning is hard, and not always pleasant.
• If you're interested in a subject, it is generally more pleasant to spend time and effort learning it, but it's still work.
• Some people are just naturally good at or well suited for certain things.

Making school fun, or like a game, or like a startup, or like an ice-cream parlour, or whatever, will help some people, but it's not a magic fix that will suddenly make everyone a successful learner.

Re:Sigh

[Half-pint HAL]

Sorry, you're both wrong.

Question: What is fun?

Answer: "Fun" is the sensation experienced when the brain is focused on an absorbing and mentally stimulating task.

Question: What is "learning"?

Answer: Learning is the process of stimulating the brain to develop new connections.

Logically, then, we can conclude that all learning is fun. In fact, learning is the core of all fun. Whether you're barrelling down a steep hill with two planks tied to your feet or choosing a square of marble to stand your carved stylised queen on, you're not just repeating a familiar motion, you're refining your strategies to get better.

What does that mean for education? Simple: if it's boring, it's because the pupil/student isn't learning -- the material's either too easy or too hard.

Unfortunately, most teachers get the fun thing back to front, and try to add external "fun" to the lessons rather than trying to find the internal fun of the subject itself. This leads to the subject taking a back seat, and the actual learning becomes less and less fun, hence less well learned.

Re:Sigh

[Half-pint HAL]

No, sometimes if you want to learn something, you need to work. Language learning is a good example, eventually you just have to learn a lot of vocabulary.

Do you say that as a polyglot fluent in 4 adult learned languages, conversationally capable in 3 others and knowing bits and pieces of another half-dozen, and currently working teaching your native language, having also taught 2 of your non-native languages in the past? Because as one of those, I say: yes, you need to learn a lot of vocabulary, but if the course is well structured and well taught, it's surprisingly easy. Sadly my courses aren't brilliantly structured or taught, but I'm working on it.

It's like lifting weights, you feel good after, but while you're doing it, there can be pain.

It's nothing like lifting weights. The pain you feel after lifting weights is caused in no small part by the buildup of lactic acid in the muscles, as an after-effect of extended anaerobic exercise. Many believe that this pain is compounded by the tearing of muscle fibres, although this has not been verified in a lab. Regardless, either the pain or its source triggers the body to rebuild and repair after exercise, making the muscle stronger.

Synaptic reinforcement is physiologically non-analogous. Any strain in the brain is not caused by "working" the appropriate connections, but an inability for the brain to determine what the appropriate connections are. Efficient use of neurones and synaptic pathways is always effortless.

Re:Sigh

[Half-pint HAL]

At the same time, if you are going to sit back and wait for someone to spoonfeed you all the time, then yeah, you might be able to have fun the entire time you learn things. Otherwise, if you want to progress beyond classes, to where you are teaching yourself things, and learning things no one has ever learned, then you're going to hit roadbloacks, pain, and need to work through hard times to reach your goal of knowledge.

...aaaaand that's what we call "moving the goalposts".

We were talking about learning in schools.

Sootman said "Learning is hard, and not always pleasant." and criticised the idea of trying to make learning fun.

You agreed with him.

My point was that "making learning fun" is a natural consequence of "making teaching better", but that they generally do that the wrong way in modern teaching.

Yes, when you leave the classroom, you're on your own... but the fact that there's no teacher when you're genuinely dealing with new stuff doesn't mean we should be practicing "learning in the absence of a teacher" when there is actually a teacher present -- that would be stupid. Our ability to learn new things is in no small part governed by the amount of similar and/or analogous knowledge we already have. In learning new information, we develop schemata that we can generalise and reuse to learn and remember similarly structured knowledge. The more information and the more skills we learn during our school years, the better our capacity for learning in our adult years. So there's no excuse for teachers not to try to be better teachers each and every day.

Re:Sigh

[Half-pint HAL]

lol so do you have an easy way to learn vocabulary or not?

Not really, because the logical structure behind vocabulary isn't visible to the learner -- it's the teacher's job to structure it in a way that takes advantage of this logic and teaches the logic to the learner.

The simplest tips I can give are:

Learn vocabulary that is of immediate relevance first, because it only sticks if you use it.

Read full-length novels. By page 150, you'll have encountered most of the vocabulary and phraseology that the author tends to use, and it will repeat again and again and again. The first few chapters will be hard going, but by the end, you should be reading fairly fluently...

Completely worthless

[gweihir]

You cannot even teach a classical master of any worth in a year. Now they want to do something like this in a year? This will be completely worthless, as it will have absolutely no depth. And the "no office" BS is going to make it worse. Thinking of any quality requires quiet and solitude and real communication between people much the same. Forcing everybody in a noisy, focus-preventing environment when doing knowledge work is just the height of stupidity.

Creating owners, not workers

[SuperKendall]

To me it seems like the intent of this school (especially with the business classes and in-school patent office!) is to create a new class of startup owners, not just technical workers.

Also all of the lower level stuff can be pretty well learned online or at a lot of schools, this school can operate at a higher level by presuming a strong technical background in all candidates.

I've never thought about going back to school after graduating but this school is tempting.