Transcript Artificial Intelligence - University of Sheffield

Learning and Teaching
Conference 2012
Skill integration for students through
in-class feedback and continuous
assessment.
Konstantinos Dimopoulos
City College
Talk Outline
• Some background
• The challenge – Skill and knowledge
integration
• Course outline and structure
• Teaching and assessment methods
– Lectures, workshops and continuous
assessment and feedback
• Student achievement and impressions
• Conclusions / Future directions / discussion
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Student skills
Presentation Skills
Group work
Analytical and
Synthesis Skills
Time management
?
Good quality products
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CS Course outline
Programming
Methodology
and Design
Level 1
OO Analysis
and Design
Industrial
Project
Databases
Level 2
OO
Programming
Web
programming
?
Level 3
Final Year
Project
• Levels 1 and 2 gather knowledge and
develop necessary skills
• Level 3 produce good quality software
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Problems Identified
• Temporary knowledge and skills:
– Students learn how to program in level 1 but do not apply their
knowledge when the time comes to do it as part of a project
• Modularity:
– Students do not connect knowledge received from different courses
together.
• Lack of understanding of usefulness:
– Students fail to understand why some courses are done, and what
they should gain from them.
• Lack of experience:
– Students have not worked at a large project until they have to do the
Industrial Project or worse their Dissertation
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What was needed
1. How to create good software
2. Experience in taking part in a large project
3. Somehow to put all the things they have learned
together
• Good software = correct and usable
– HCI component missing
• Experience and integration = develop software from
“scratch” in practice
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The Challenge
• The course should not repeat material they already
know, but rather put to practice skills they picked up
earlier, but they have to learn about usability and
other HCI Concepts.
• A large project from scratch should be developed.
• Lots of work for the students = Assessment through
the project only (no exam).
• no previous experience = continuous supervision
and feedback over the whole project.
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HCI & SDiP course
This course is about two things:
1.
2.
•
•
•
•
•
Principles of Human Computer Interaction (HCI).
Complete process of producing proper software from
conception initial idea  testing & maintenance
It ties together processes and concepts that students
have been introduced to in the previous semesters.
It introduces some new material regarding building
good User Interfaces.
The process is demonstrated in class with the use of
a case study (an example system), that the lecturer
develops in class together with the students.
20 credits, 4 contact hours per week
30% new material, 30% case study, 40% workshops
and presentations
8
Main Assessment
• In groups of 3-6 students develop a software that
will satisfy a need of a “customer”.
– Meet with the customer (a member of staff, different for
each group, with a different project) and understand what
he wants and what he needs.
– Build the system, test it and release it.
– reports: 20% and 50%, demonstration 25%, participation
15%.
– Group sizes depends on cohort. Groups are made by the
students with the approval of the lecturer
– Difficulty of the project can vary. Its up to the clients to
adjust it according to the potential of the group.
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Teaching methods
• Lecture / case study presentation (usually first 2
hours of the week)
– Present HCI concepts
– Develop a system in class with the students
• Workshop session / presentation (usually last 2
hours of the week)
– In groups students follow the same steps as the case
study earlier that week, and demonstrate their progress,
getting direct and instant feedback
– Present a major component of their project to the class
and exchange ideas
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Workshop classes
• At the end of a lecture the lecturer assigns tasks to the
teams for the workshop session.
• Students should prepare on their own and come to the
workshop session with their solutions.
• During the workshop session all the groups work on their
tasks, and the lecturer discusses with each group separately
giving feedback (timesharing), assigning specific tasks to
group members and assessing each student.
• Students are required to keep a log book that they present
at the workshop sessions, and are encouraged to use online
collaborative tools.
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Problems
• Students sometimes come unprepared.
– They are marked with a fail in that weeks
participation. Then they are assigned specific
tasks that they have to do in the class and are
checked by the lecturer at the end.
• Usually 4-6 groups are created, and one of
them are not working at all.
– The problematic group is given specific individual
tasks, and the students that do not cooperate fail
the course (have to repeat the process on their
own to a limited degree).
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Feedback in the
workshop sessions
• Using time sharing, the lecturer deals with one
group at a time, while the rest are working on their
current tasks.
• The group on focus first presents how the feedback
from the previous week was utilised. Then their
progress on the tasks assigned the current week.
(Oral) feedback is given for the new progress in the
form of:
–
–
–
–
Direct observations on their work
Correlation to the case study
References to the taught material
References to taught material from previous courses
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Things to be aware of
• Not to present the solution to the students, but let
them discover it themselves.
• Each project is different and has its own
particularities. However, there are common points.
• Each project has a different difficulty, and this has
to taken in to account in the assessment.
• There is more than one approach to create any
software, let the students find their way.
• All members of the group must be involved in an
equal amount. Part of the workshop session is to
detect who has done what in the group.
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Student impressions
• Liked the developmental feeling of the
course.
• Believed that the HCI part would be very
useful for their next projects.
• Commented about how different information
from previous courses was necessary
– “That’s why we discussed this in …”
• In most cases the resulting software was of
top quality:
– (http://csdprojects.city.academic.gr/)
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Conclusions and
Future Directions
• A hand on mainly course was created to provide
the students with the necessary experience in
working on projects from start to end and to
integrate the skills and knowledge received from
past courses.
• Continuous assessment + feedback in class
individually to each group and each students was
used in “workshop sessions”
• Better management of the time and feedback could
be achieved with small informal deliverables, but it
takes time
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