In the early 90's I worked at a company that had a technical writer who was responsible for editing our Intro to UNIX course. One day he was waltzing down the hall singing:
"Going to grep my pipe and chown my sticky bits, yea..."
What bothered me the most was that in the movies the elves are portrayed as being alien--a sort of unnatural creature of Middle-Earth. Even the cadence of their speech in the movies is unnatural.
By contrast in the book the elves are "supernatural" meaning that they are extremely natural. Their magic is one that is in concert with the earth, not alien to it. In the books the elves are characterized as more at home in Middle Earth than other races.
I'm sure you're a clever individual, but there are also very clever people at mission control. They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know, and I really was a rocket scientist, albeit only for a few years (it doesn't pay well...) Engage brain before fingers...
IIRC, they forgot the difference between yards and meters. Given that foible, I wouldn't be so quick to berate the parent post's question.
Is this really what companies want of today's graduates?
Where I live, a couple years ago the state's high-tech industry told higher educators: "You are giving us graduates who are not ready to meet the challenges of the workplace. Therefore we want to form a consortium with you, pool money, and give out grants to higher-ed institutions in the state that can create change to existing curriculum that better meet the needs of the workplace."
This summer, the consortium sent out an RFP for developing an online program that would have the same rigor as the face-to-face curriculum, yet still meet the mission of the consortium (i.e. make it relevant to the "real world"). The computer science department wanted to write a $300K proposal to put 1/2 of the computer science curriculum online. They asked me to help develop the proposal to give it the industry bent required to have a chance at success.
I rewrote their original proposal, describing 4 certificate programs that would use all of the content of the current face-to-face curriculum, but would re-chunk it according to certificate. For example, an algorithms course would be split across the 4 certificates, where algorithm content relevant to network engineers would go in that certificate, algorithm content relevant to database engineering would go in that certificate, etc. Students would learn the material through authentic, industry-relevant problems, rather than the normal decontextualized presentation you see almost without exception in current face-to-face curricula.
Anyway, after much debate, they threw it 90% of what I had produced out of the window, saying that professors (who would be responsible for the bulk of development) would have neither the time nor the inclination to do anything like that because it would be 1) very hard work, 2) would require them to be a bit more "cross-disciplinary" in order to develop these kinds of courses, 3) wouldn't contribute to tenure, and 4) would take away from publishing activities which are weighed very heavily toward tenure.
End result? A proposal describing nothing more than putting their existing courses online with little, or no change. To their credit, they left my course-development methodology section in the proposal, so at least they will utilize instructional designers to help them.
What amazed me is that their proposal was accepted! They were awarded $300K to, in essence, do nothing to make education more relevant to industry. "One of the best proposals we've seen" were among the consortium's comments. Sheesh. I'd hate to see what the bad proposals were like.
The experience has left me feeling more strongly than ever that true innovation in today's engineering curricula is going to come from outside universities and that universities will be the laggards when it comes to curriculum innovation.
Slashdot Mirror
In the early 90's I worked at a company that had a technical writer who was responsible for editing our Intro to UNIX course. One day he was waltzing down the hall singing:
"Going to grep my pipe and chown my sticky bits, yea..."
What bothered me the most was that in the movies the elves are portrayed as being alien--a sort of unnatural creature of Middle-Earth. Even the cadence of their speech in the movies is unnatural.
By contrast in the book the elves are "supernatural" meaning that they are extremely natural. Their magic is one that is in concert with the earth, not alien to it. In the books the elves are characterized as more at home in Middle Earth than other races.
I'm sure you're a clever individual, but there are also very clever people at mission control. They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know, and I really was a rocket scientist, albeit only for a few years (it doesn't pay well...) Engage brain before fingers...
IIRC, they forgot the difference between yards and meters. Given that foible, I wouldn't be so quick to berate the parent post's question.
After seeing the pictures of RoboSweep, I was curious how well Roomba (the original product) performed. Here's a review
The machine that breaks wind
and (best of all) an under-table tube network using hollow gravity-fed balls to deliver secret messages to players.
Knowing the geeks I knew in high-school, they'd probably put more than their balls in the under-table tube network.
I bet by the 3rd show the producers will make Shatner say "Where no chef has gone before"
Is this really what companies want of today's graduates?
Where I live, a couple years ago the state's high-tech industry told higher educators: "You are giving us graduates who are not ready to meet the challenges of the workplace. Therefore we want to form a consortium with you, pool money, and give out grants to higher-ed institutions in the state that can create change to existing curriculum that better meet the needs of the workplace."
This summer, the consortium sent out an RFP for developing an online program that would have the same rigor as the face-to-face curriculum, yet still meet the mission of the consortium (i.e. make it relevant to the "real world"). The computer science department wanted to write a $300K proposal to put 1/2 of the computer science curriculum online. They asked me to help develop the proposal to give it the industry bent required to have a chance at success.
I rewrote their original proposal, describing 4 certificate programs that would use all of the content of the current face-to-face curriculum, but would re-chunk it according to certificate. For example, an algorithms course would be split across the 4 certificates, where algorithm content relevant to network engineers would go in that certificate, algorithm content relevant to database engineering would go in that certificate, etc. Students would learn the material through authentic, industry-relevant problems, rather than the normal decontextualized presentation you see almost without exception in current face-to-face curricula.
Anyway, after much debate, they threw it 90% of what I had produced out of the window, saying that professors (who would be responsible for the bulk of development) would have neither the time nor the inclination to do anything like that because it would be 1) very hard work, 2) would require them to be a bit more "cross-disciplinary" in order to develop these kinds of courses, 3) wouldn't contribute to tenure, and 4) would take away from publishing activities which are weighed very heavily toward tenure.
End result? A proposal describing nothing more than putting their existing courses online with little, or no change. To their credit, they left my course-development methodology section in the proposal, so at least they will utilize instructional designers to help them.
What amazed me is that their proposal was accepted! They were awarded $300K to, in essence, do nothing to make education more relevant to industry. "One of the best proposals we've seen" were among the consortium's comments. Sheesh. I'd hate to see what the bad proposals were like.
The experience has left me feeling more strongly than ever that true innovation in today's engineering curricula is going to come from outside universities and that universities will be the laggards when it comes to curriculum innovation.