INTERVIEWER: Hi.
Can you tell us your names and what course you teach?
LERMAN: I'm Steve Lerman. HARWARD: And I am Judd Harward.
LERMAN: And we teach course 1.00 which in MIT is
Introduction to computation and engineering problem solving.
INTERVIEWER: And can you tell us what are
the goals of this particular class?
LERMAN: The course is designed for students who are not
majoring in computer science but need to have a basic
comprehension of computational methods and computer
programming. So we draw students from all
the departments of MIT. Even once in a while a computer
science major takes the course. So our goals are to teach
students about computing, teach them a programming
language, and introduce them to some introductory algorithms in
several different areas. INTERVIEWER:
So what happens on a daily basis in class?
HARWARD: We used to teach it as a standard lecture and problem
set course, but we found that many of the students would delay
until the night before the problem set to really come to
grips with the material, often in the wee hours of the
morning. And so, inspired by colleagues
in physics, we tried to incorporate active learning
techniques in the course. So, in an average week,
we will have one to two standard lectures.
But we will also have at least one session where,
after presenting the material, we then ask the students to
work through a problem, while we are available,
to answer questions. And the TAs in the course
circulate, too. And, in working out the
problem, very often that involves programming.
So we have introduced the use of laptops in class.
INTERVIEWER: So is a small group type of
structure then? Or how does the lecture versus
the small group aspect of it work?
LERMAN: Well, both those activities take
place in a lecture style hall but the students are doing very
different things. In lecture, it is very
traditional. One of us is in front of the
class for sustained periods of time teaching the students.
In the active learning, we typically pose a problem.
And those of you who look at the Open Courseware site will
see notes where we switched to that mode.
And the students are solving guided problems.
And then Judd and I and our teaching assistants are
wandering around the room looking over people's shoulders
and helping them get through the guided exercises.
And then we will talk about them.
We will reassemble everybody in more a lecture style to have a
discussion about what that assignment was about.
And that might go back and forth several times within a
course of an active learning session.
INTERVIEWER: So how are students assessed in
this area? Is it mostly on their coding
assignments? Are there also exams and
quizzes? Or can you say more about that?
HARWARD: There are exams and quizzes, but nobody programs
best under pressure. So the problem sets,
we feel, are a more reliable means of assessing the students.
And, actually, we think a lot of the learning
in the course comes from working through those problem sets.
So, by the end of the course, we actually combine two problem
sets over two or three weeks where we ask the students in the
first problem set to plan a much more major assignment.
And we pair them up so they are working in teams.
And then they code their own design for the final problem set
of the course. INTERVIEWER:
And what size teams would they be working in?
LERMAN: We usually use teams of two.
It is always a tradeoff. Larger teams could do bigger
projects. But then the logistics,
particularly at the end of a busy semester of the students
getting together to cooperate, turn out to be complicated.
So we have decided on teams of two.
Occasionally, we will have a team of three
or, in some rare cases someone will just do the assignment on
his or her own. HARWARD: Actually,
the undergraduates in management who were taught to
work in teams, they sometimes ask to work in
teams of three because they are used to it.
INTERVIEWER: Now, are there any other
special course elements such as fieldtrips or guest lecturers or
anything like that that you incorporate?
LERMAN: No. The course is,
in that sense, pretty traditional.
Most of the activities happen either in class.
We do have tutorial sessions. So, in addition to four to five
hours of in-class time with one of us, the teaching assistants
take small groups, usually ten to twelve students
and spend an hour a week in a much more interactive style
where they can talk much more closer to one-on-one.
And then we all have extensive office hours where we meet
individually with students. HARWARD: If there is a problem
set that the students particularly enjoyed,
sometimes we have a competition.
We had them program The Game of Life a couple of years ago,
and we had a competition to see who could add the most
interesting features to the game.
INTERVIEWER: Now, is there anything else
that is sort of unique or special about the class that you
haven't talked about so far? LERMAN: Well,
we are part of a group of courses at MIT that are
experimenting with laptops in the classroom.
Right now MIT does not have a laptop requirements so all
students don't have laptops. Many do, of course,
a growing fraction buy them on their own.
So we ask those who have them to bring them to class.
We loan students, who don't have them,
laptops. And many of the exercises
require using the laptop in the class, and as well as being used
outside the class. INTERVIEWER:
OK. Any final thoughts?
LERMAN: Well, one thing to emphasize about
this course is while right now we teach it in the Java language
and the Open Courseware site reflects the notes,
we have actually taught it over time in many different
languages. A central element of the course
is it really isn't about the programming language.
They learn the programming language, but it is really about
algorithmic design, reusable code modules,
the notion of object-oriented programming.
And I personally have taught it in, I think, four or five
different languages over the last 25 years.
INTERVIEWER: OK.
Well, thank you very much for participating in Open
Courseware. We really appreciate your
input. HARWARD: Thank you.
LERMAN: Thank you.