First Classroom Lecture Report

Well, I've survived the first day! Actually, it wasn't so bad. I started out with a PowerPoint that covered the course objectives and syllabus. There was a lot of information regarding TAs, labs, lab rooms, etc, that didn't want to skip and so even though I dislike PowerPoint, I went along with it.

I tried to reiterate the relevant stuff about 3 times so hopefully some of it sank in. I got a few laughs at my jokes that seemed at least mostly genuine. Probably the best part of the PowerPoint portion of class was when I reviewed the Academic Honesty Policy with them. I told them this is something profs babble about on the first day and then most students don't think about it again. But for me, as a prof, if I suspect someone has cheated, it's about 20-30 hours of insane paperwork and meetings that I would gladly go through walking barefoot on hot coals if it meant dragging down a cheater. The class got very silent about that for a few minutes as I paused to let that sink in.

One student was brave enough to ask if I was serious and I responded by smiling gleefully and saying "Yes". I think they got the message.

The only other things to report on are that the students (being seniors) are a rowdy bunch and the room was over 85 degrees, which is too hot to teach. After the PowerPoint, I had to roll up my sleeves and loosen my tie for the Chalk'n'Talk section (GMP's phrase, not mine). The few undergrads that I have met prior to the class which are department helpers mentioned to me after that they thought the class was very good. So some initial praise was nice.

I only covered about 40% of the material that I wanted to cover but that's ok because I don't have set material to cover for the course (since it's labs/projects). That also means I have lecture 2 done so I'm ahead of the game. :-D

All-in-all, it was fine. My nervousness and sleepless nights seemed all for naught, although I didn't sleep again last night and I might have a fever so that could be the reason why I'm not sleeping...

Lesson Plans Down the Drain

Today, I thought I would be writing to say "Yay, I got a few lesson plans done so I won't be totally scrambling in my first few weeks". It turns out, last night, I found out my first Lab Module for my class, and first two lectures are completely wrecked. Plus, all my subsequent labs/lectures (which build on the first one), are all screwed too. I need to back up for second to give some context.

Part of the Lab Course I'm teaching will deal with data acquisition and signal processing. Currently, many of the students use LabVIEW but hate the interface. So, as part of the course, I was going to introduce them to Data Acquisition in Matlab, something I've been doing for the better part of 4 years (and talked about my love of Matlab here).

I wrote a whole new lab based on using Matlab as the data acquisition and data manipulation environment. I made fancy pictures, charts, snippets of code, etc. Then, last night, as I was working on my lectures to compliment the lab, DrWife had a great idea. We were giving NanoGEARS a bath and she was playing with some rattling toys. As she was shaking them, the pitch (obviously) changed when she was loosely holding it versus tightly holding it or when it was underwater. DrWife suggested that would be a great classroom demonstration. I could tie in damping (via water) or adding stiffness (holding tighter). And, because it was audible, it's much more interactive than just showing sine waves to the students.

I could use Matlab to acquire the signals, analyze the signals in the Fourier Domain. Add filtering, etc. So last night, as I was trying to acquire a simple audio signal with Matlab [using instrhwinfo('winsound') ], all hell broke loose. It turns out, in the new x64 version of Matlab (R2011a) only CompactDAQ devices are supported!?!?!? WTF? So all that legacy code that I've built up over 4 years is entirely down the shitter. So none of my sound examples will work using the standard code (now called legacy interface). And basically any DAQ card you purchase from NI, Agilent, or any other vendor won't work. CompactDAQ devices are such a small part of the possible hardware spectrum for data acquisition that this is a joke.

And the beauty of all of this is the computer lab at SnowU just fucking upgraded to x64 Matlab R2011a. So none of those computers can use Matlab to acquire signals with the data acquisition toolbox. Basically, I've planned 5 labs around using a used-to-be-mainstay piece of software that now is completely worthless. Now I have to scramble to make new lectures and a new lab manual centered around LabVIEW (another worthless software).

I've emailed, I've called, I've posted on the forums but I can't get any response as to when Matlab's going to fix their problem. And it is a fucking problem. Researchers want the new x64 Matlab because it supports 8+ GB of RAM, meaning much higher computation rates and memory. But for researchers dealing with instrumentation, like me, I also first need to acquire the fucking signals!

I would love to rant more but I have lectures and labs to redo. Fuck!

Independent Studies for One and All

I haven't blogged any this week because like anything that goes up, it must also come down. I finished last week on a decent high and Saturday was my birthday so I thought it was all going well. And then NanoGEARS caught some daycare baby plague and promptly passed it on to me. She seems to be fine now though, thanks for asking.

I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't post earlier this week because writing usually clears my head and gives me some time to relax. And I know all of you were fretting that my daily post wasn't showing up in your RSS reader so I want to apologize to my ten(s) of fans out there.

Now, on to the topic at hand.

There was an Op/Ed in the New York Times on letting kids make up their own high school curriculum by Susan Engel that had some very interesting things in it. Essentially, 8 students who spanned the spectrum of high school success got to plan their own curriculum for a semester. It talked about the increased student motivation and how they set goals that were at least as high as a typical AP class. It's an interesting study and I think has some potential as an educational method.

One place that I would like to see this curriculum model applied to is at the graduate level. The reason I say this is because I took traditional courses (and wrote a MS thesis) at UGU whereas, at OldEuropeU there are no defined classes for your PhD. So I've seen both types of systems personally which both have some definite pros and cons. I'll tackle the traditional system first.

I ended up taking 8 classes at UGU during my MS work to satisfy the coursework part. Of those 8 courses, I only really learned anything in 3 of them and none of that stuff I learned is knowledge I really use now. I still remember the stuff from those 3 should I happen to need it but I really couldn't tell you what was useful in those other 5 classes. I remember doing work for them (and a lot of work for that one stupid graduate math course that was the biggest waste of....) and taking tests and getting good grades but nothing really stuck with me.

Taking 5 classes that were essentially useless for my previous research and my current research (I made a big left turn when starting my PhD) seems like a lot of wasted time and effort on my part and the part of those professors. It seems like going through the motions for the sake of going through the motions. I read all these blogs and hear all of these professors discuss how much work their doing for teaching, research, and proposals. Maybe not teaching unnecessary classes is the way to go.

On the contrary, at OldEuropeU, I didn't have any classes for my PhD work. This is a blessing and a curse. The good part about that is you don't have to take any unnecessary courses. You can spent all of your time doing research, which is what you and your advisors really want anyway. Without classes your first two years, you can really make headway on your research. This will hopefully translate to more papers, more conferences, and a competitive advantage for you when you finish your PhD. Also, you really focus on the things you need to learn for your research. You don't get sidetracked by "the new shiny" that occurs when you do take a class you like.

There are some extreme downsides too. You need to be 100% self motivated to learn something. Just going through the motions so you didn't ruin your graduate GPA isn't enough. You end up lacking in something. In some cases, this is diversity, i.e. you weren't exposed to different concepts and different ideas because you had to take new classes. In other cases, you lack a basic and fundamental understand of the field. This is where I lack because of not taking PhD classes. I started out with some basic assumptions which allowed me to skip over the whole fundamental background in the field where my PhD subject rests and now it's hard to go back over to learn that.

I think graduate classes should largely be based around independent studies in predominately your research field. For instance, I took a controls class that I couldn't tell you a thing from it. Yet, during both my MS and PhD work, I had to build working control systems. In both cases, I managed to get them working but that was mostly though trial and error. Rather than taking a book-heavy course on controls, it would have been much more useful for my class to be a study on this particular control system. In both cases, I didn't need an advanced understanding to get it working nor for papers and such, but it would have been to my betterment to gone through it more thoroughly. Once I had a real system that I was using, then I could apply all of those textbook things like loop shaping, and overshoot minimizing, etc etc. It wouldn't have been entirely necessary for my research but it would have expanded my actual knowledge in an area that I should have known something about.

I think most graduate students could pick about 4-6 topics in their research and do independent studies more thoroughly on the subject than if they took a class on it and just went over the theory.

What do you think? Would you rather have defined your own series of independent studies than taken classes? How many classes during your graduate work have been useful for you and your research?

And so it begins...

In preparation for starting at my new position and university in a few months, the Chair was kind enough to pass along the specs for my new lab space and asked about my desired modifications. Additionally, I’ve agreed to teach the first year and take my free semester during year two. The first class I am teaching is a senior level laboratory class. I know Profs during my UG used to bitch about laboratory classes and the amount of workload. I’m not too worried (right now) because this University (BTW, I need a cool, recurring nickname…) is a lot smaller than my UG and by the time they are seniors, most of the weeding should be done. Also, as an experimentalist, laboratory classes are something that I should promote because I hated learning from people proclaiming their greatness in front of powerpoint. For instance, in Controls, we always started knowing the frequency response (or transfer function) of the plant. That’s a helluva lot harder to get in real life, and IMHO way more difficult than actually designing the control loop.

There is a point to all of this; I’m just taking my sweet time today. So in the spring, I have to teach another course, but this time a course of my choosing. Currently, I have two courses in mind. Course1 is a lecture-based course with some in-class demonstrations on a topic that I am very familiar with. During my PhD (and now in my short PD) I’ve taught at least 3 MS students and 4 UGs on this topic. Sure, I would need to make formal lectures and plan, etc etc, but it shouldn’t be any more different than a normal course.

Course2 is a laboratory-based course encompassing all of the Shit I Wish They Taught Me (SIWTTM). SIWTTM would be significantly more difficult to set up. I would need some financial support from the department(s) and I would probably have to beg companies for software/hardware donations. Also, it would require some teaching lab space and significantly more time from me to debug labs, write lab procedures, etc etc. I’ve pitched this idea to a few colleagues (not at the new University) and they have said this course is a good idea and it’s something they wish they had in the late UG or early MS.

So I’m in the process of writing a proposed syllabus for both classes, as well as descriptions for the labs. The Familiar Lecture syllabus was fairly simple to write because it’s a topic that I’d like to write a book on someday so I already have an outline of topics I want to cover. SIWTTM is a little more difficult but the more I think about, I think it’s a class that would be very rewarding to teach if successful. Plus, it resonates with my experimentalist side and will really test my skills as a teacher.

If you were a senior UG or an early MS student, would you rather take an elective lecture from a n00b prof or would you rather take an elective laboratory class? If you were Chair, and your newest prof hands you two proposals, one for a standard lecture and another for a laboratory class, which would you assign? Would the workload for the laboratory class (second lab class in a year) plus the startup inertia combined with all the trappings of a tenure track position mean this is career suicide from your newest prof? Or would you, as Chair, see this as a chance to add something to your curriculum that you probably have desired but cannot find anyone to champion?