TITLE: Course Post-Mortem and Project Notebooks
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 10, 2011  4:32 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I'm pretty much done with my grading for the semester.  All
that's left is freezing the grades and submitting them.

<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2011-01.html#e2011-01-21T10_38_02.htm">
   Intelligent Systems</A>
is a project course, and I have students evaluate their and
their teammates' contributions to the project.  One part of
the evaluation is to allocate the points their team earns
on the project to the team members according to the quality
and quantity of their respective contributions.  As I
mentioned to the class earlier in the semester, point
allocations from semester to semester tend to exhibit
certain features.   With few exceptions:
<UL>
<LI> Students are remarkably generous to one another, as
     long as the teammate makes a reasonable effort under
     the circumstances.  </LI>
<LI> If anything, students tend to undervalue their own
     contribution.  </LI>
<LI> The allocations are remarkably consistent across
     teammates on the same team.  </LI>
<LI> The allocations are remarkably consistent with what
     I would assign, based on my interactions with the
     team over the course of the project.  </LI>
</UL>

All that adds up to me being rather satisfied with the
grades that fall out of the grinder at the end of the
semester.

One thing that has not changed since I last taught this
course ten years ago or so is that most students don't
like the idea of an engineer's notebook.  I ask each
student to maintain a record their of their notes while
working on the project along with a weekly log intended
to be a periodic retrospective of their work and progress,
their team's work and progress, and the problems they
encounter and solve along the way.  Students have never
liked keeping notebooks.  Writing doesn't seem to be a
habit we develop in our majors, and by the time they
reach their last ultimate or penultimate semester, the
habit of not writing is deeply ingrained.

One thing that may have changed in the last decade:
students seem more surly at being asked to keep a
notebook.  In the past, students either did write or
didn't write.  This year, for the most part, students
either didn't write or didn't write much except to say
how much they didn't like being asked to write.  I have
to admire their honesty at the risk of being graded
more harshly for having spoken up.  (Actually, I am
proud they trust me enough to still grade them fairly!)
I can't draw a sound conclusion from one semester's
worth of data, but I will watch for a trend in future
semesters.

One thing that did change this semester:  I allowed
students to blog instead of maintaining a paper notebook.
I was surprised that only two students took me up on
the offer.  Both ended up with records well above the
average for the class.  One of the students treated his
blog a bit more formally than I think of an engineer's
notebook, but the other seemed to treat much as he would
have a paper journal.  This was a win, one I hope to
replicate in the future.

The Greeks long ago recorded that old habits die hard,
if at all.  In the future, I will have to approach the
notebook differently, including more and perhaps more
persuasive arguments for it up front and more frequent
evaluation and feedback during the term.  I might even
encourage or require students to blog.  This is 2011,
after all.
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