I gave my first lecture in CGA today. I think it went well, but the real test is the Traynor 12 Step Guide to Better Lecturing. So how did I score:
Do you explain to your students why they are taking this module? I think so. I asked them individually why they want to take the module and prepared material on what I expected them to say. As I thought, most were there to develop games. But, I think I got accross some other uses of CGA.
Do you maintain a course website where all the support materials for your course can be found? Yes and, what’s more, it’s a wiki. To which a student has already added the Junit fix.
Do you define the bounds of your course so students know what, precisely, the course covers? Probably not as well as I should have. I explained the Haber-McNabb visualisation pipeline and explained that we only consider the rendering aspects. This is something to improve on.
Do you write your own lecture notes?Yes and they’re on the wiki. I have a custom XML docbook to LaTeX publishing system which I think rocks.
Do you update your lecture notes every year, and frequently change aspects of your course? Not applicable as it’s the first year of the course.
Are you teaching the most advanced technologies in the area? Yes, probably too much and No probably not. I use Java 1.5 and Eclipse. Some students are having problems with Eclipse, but we’re working through them. I’m also using source control which seems to be causing them problems, particularly because the network is a bit broken. I use GNU Arch but am going to switch to Subversion as everyone (meaning Eclipse) speaks svn. As for the graphics tech I’m not using cutting edge. In fact I’m using old-tech software rendering in order to explain the underlying concepts, not bleeding-edge hardware rendering.
Do you use real world examples to support the topics you cover in lectures? Yes, I refer to computer games that are currently on the market, though I should improve this.
Are you using the best courseware/resources that are available for teaching your course? would say that I am as I developed the courseware, but I’m open to criticism.
Do you take at least two sets of feedback from your students, and react to what they say? No, not yet. Something to improve upon.
Do you offer your students weekly tutorials with anonymous question submission? No. I offer weekly formative assessment but it’s not anonymous. I could make it anonymous I suppose. I’ll have to get Des’s reasons for this one.
Do you verify all your assumptions about the prior knowledge of the class? No I didn’t. That’s why some non-mainstream CS students are having a problem with Eclipse. But I have offered to put on extra tutorials to make up for my mistake.
Do you assess your class correctly, offering questions at different level of Blooms taxonomy, and using ‘truth in sentencing’? I’ve planned the assessment that way, but we’ll see how it goes.
So three definate No’s and some maybe’s. I’ll have to have a look at improving that over the coming months.
Good work man, congrats.
Not to be suggesting how you’d do your job, but if you can, it would definitely be worth while to throw in at least one lecture/workshop on modern realtime graphics techniques – ie hardware fixed-function pipelines, or the newer shader-based approaches. Particularly if your folks want to get into games dev, software-based 3D rendering is of some interest for deeper background, but it’s compeltely obselete for mainstream games development, and has been for some years now. I know it’s not the focus of your course, but even one quick overview of how things are done in a hardware-based rendering pipeline would prob be very useful for folks who want to look into games development. Regular hardware APIs for fixed function T&L, etc aren’t “bleeding edge” by any means – the bleeding edge would be the shader-based programmable pipelines, and even those have been evolving for years now.
Other than that, sounds good, though one thing did strike me on the lecture notes – if they’re published in Latex, do your students have readers/viewers of some kind already on their lab machines/personal machines? Along with writing your own lecture notes, making them accessible would probably be important too.
Good work.
anonymous question submission: You should allow this cause may be a group of students are stuck on a really simple problem, but are not confident enough to stand up and ask in front of every one.
Yeah, Vish got it in one.
If anyone ever questions the anonymity rule, its pretty simple to demonstrate. Say “Hands up who has questions/comments” then deal with the questions you get (if any), then hand out a blank piece of paper to the students and ask them to write questions/comments on it. (I haven’t found a better way to get the feedback yet).
If the piece of paper comes back empty, then you can ditch the anonmyity rule. It has never came back empty for me, therefore I believe there is a lot of things students are willing to say, but not say publicly. My first feedback form had important stuff like
* The font for your code is too small
* How do we print your pdf slides 6-per-page
* We were taught to use X, but you’re doing it Y way.
Its important to get this stuff out of the way early. If there is anything you are paranoid about (i.e. lecture speed, difficulty, etc) ask them to comment on it as you pass it around. You will get the occasional “The lecturer thinks he’s cool, the lecturer is a babe etc” comments, either ignore them take the piss out of them. Don’t pay them any heed, you’re not paid to be friends with students.
Oh , and to Dave C, I presume the slides end up in pdf form for the students.
Also, your link to wiki is broken Aidan
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