Greg and Kat's blog

As part of the Computing Science recruitment activities, we often send people to area career/education fairs. The idea is that people (usually high school students) come and explore their options.

I had never been to one of these, and decided I should go and see what they’re all about. Yesterday was the Vancouver Education and Career Fair, downtown at the convention centre. I decided to go, along with Margo, to see what I could see.

An “education” fair is probably a little more focused. An “education and career” fair is pretty all-over the map. There were booths there from a bunch of Universities (SFU, UBC, bunch of Ontario schools, some US schools), but I kind of understand Universities by now. What I found more interesting were the straight-from-high-school jobs: Kara Foods, esthetician training, police, certified accountants, and countless other crazy things. All of the SFU people got their skin analyzed at a nearby spa-training booth as the day started to wind down.

The practical implementation of being a “recruiter” for a day involves standing on concrete for 8 hours, and starting to think that the ratty carpet in the aisles would be really comfortable to lie down on.

I think that the whole thing was worthwhile. People had questions that ranged from “what kind of courses will I take in CS” to general career advising. It’s worth it to have a variety of people from SFU there who can answer a wide variety of questions. Students go away with good information about SFU, and thinking that we’re very helpful.

I took a few pictures at the fair, mostly as a memory-augmenter. It’s interesting to see what they actually look like if you’ve never seen one.

Since I have been living the non-swinging bachelor life, my weekends seem to have been settling into a routine. Here is the most typical weekend plan:

Friday night

Sit on the couch. Stare blankly at TV, trying to recover from the week.

Saturday

Loaf around the house, pretending I’m about to be productive at any moment, but mostly wasting my day. Possibly run a few errands in the afternoon. Possibly even do something social in the evening.

Sunday

Start the day by hopping on the bike and doing a round trip around SFU (which takes about an hour). Celebrate my healthiness by having Taco Del Mar for lunch. Maybe some errands in the afternoon. In the evening, remember that I have no food in the house and get groceries at about 10:00.

The Saturday/Sunday things can swap days, but they’re otherwise pretty consistent. Sometimes, the Taco Del Mar will be replaced with some by some other Mexican-ish fast food.

Some actual productivity might happen at any point, but most likely on Sunday evening. That’s when I remember the things that really have to be done by Monday.

There was definitely less wasted weekend last semester, since I was a lot busier. This semester, I can afford to actually have most of a weekend. There’s something to be said for that.

For the last few semesters, we have been piloting a learning skills program in our first and second year classes. The program is called the “Academic Enhancement Program” (AEP), simply because we felt it had to be called something.

The deal is: each class that is touched by AEP (CMPT 120/126, 150, 225, MACM 101) dedicates one week of labs (or equivalent) and a couple of percent to a learning skills session.

On Wednesday, I went down to Surrey to facilitate sessions for CMPT 120 there. Diana Cukierman usually does the sessions (with somebody from Learning Commons), but she couldn’t go. I’m maybe the only other one who know the CMPT 120 session well enough to lead it. Thus, I had to miss CMPT 376, as I said earlier.

To give you an idea, the session for CMPT 120/126 is a bit of a sampler platter (since it’s the first one students typically see) and contains:

• time management: where does the time go, basic time management skills
• study skill scenarios: “Beth is a CS student who can’t… What is your advice to Beth?”
• learning hierarchy: levels of learning (recall, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create)

A lot of first year students get caught on these things. Time management is, of course, an issue for everybody. There’s no magic bullet, but we can give some tips.

The learning hierarchy stuff is more interesting (to me at least). A lot of struggling students get stuck on the first few levels of learning: “I understand what a for loop does.” But then, we ask questions at the higher levels: “Create a program that…”. The gap between the levels is really hard to bridge for a lot of students. The hope is that some students will realize that they’re living at the wrong level and start to step up.

There are different sessions for the other courses. The idea is that all students get four(ish) different learning skills lessons by second year.

I will admit that I was sceptical when Diana started doing these sessions. The turning point for me was realizing that the point isn’t to give an hour and a half of material that’s relevant for all students. If we can ramble on for an hour and a half and have most of the students take away one thing that’s relevant to them, then the whole thing is a huge success. There are a lot of students who are a few study skills away from an extra grade point.

I’m hoping we can turn some marginal students into reasonable students, and some reasonable students into good students. The top students are going to be good no matter what, and the bad students are going to suck no matter what: the ones in the middle might be able to benefit.

So there you go. I did, in fact, miss 376 for a socially responsible reason. Hopefully we can put the whole program into policy in the next few months.

Since my recent blogging spree is for CMPT 376 (Technical Writing, etc, etc), I have been thinking about the course. It seems to me that a lot of people probably don’t actually know why we suddenly have a writing course in CMPT.

A couple of years ago, the University introduced requirements for all SFU students (that started after a certain time). Now, if you want to get a degree from SFU, you have to have taken:

• Two writing (W) courses. One of these has to be in the upper division (300 or 400) and probably in your own discipline.
• Two quantitative (Q) courses. These are math-like courses, but don’t have to be MATH.
• Eight breadth (B) courses: 2 humanities, 2 social science, 2 science, 2 others. These are courses outside of your discipline.

That sounds like a lot, but you can double-count all you like. So, a philosophy course could count as both W and B-Hum. These courses can also count towards degree requirements: a CMPT student that takes MATH 151 fulfills a degree requirement, and gets Q credit.

Anyway, back to CMPT 376. Since CMPT are good members of the University community, we introduced this as a “discipline specific” writing course. That will let our students fulfill the University’s upper-division writing requirement in a way that’s (presumably) relevant to them.

There was talk of making CMPT 320 (social issues) a W course. That course has a lot of problems of its own. We ended up deciding to go for a dedicated, functional writing course, rather than a disfunctional course that did two things badly. Plus, a lot of our students could use a full three credits dedicated to improving their writing.

Because Ted’s a good person, he agreed to design and (initially) teach the brand-shiny-new writing course. So far it has been quite interesting. Ted is a very different kind of instructor than I am. Usually when I say that about somebody, it’s not meant to be complementary, but in Ted’s case, though, I’m really enjoying the course.

I keep oscillating on whether or not I would want to teach the course. Some days, I’m excited to give it a try. Some days, the very idea terrifies me: what the hell makes me think I know anything about writing?

As most of you know, I was stuck on Burnaby Mountain last night, along with several thousand of my closest friends.

The more I think about it, the more I’m annoyed by people blaming the University for all of their woes. First, it’s not the University’s responsibility to wipe your nose and pat you on the head every moment you’re on campus: working/studying on a mountain with a single choke point to leave comes with some risks. We have accepted those risks by coming here.

Second, Burnaby Mountain is a microclimate, and there is just no way to get a reliable forecast for the weather up here. There have been plenty of other days that have been as bad as it was at 3:30 yesterday, and everything was just fine. The University can’t close every time there are a few flakes floating around.

Yesterday, things went from bad to worse very quickly. I was sitting in my office, thinking it was snowing a lot and that I should maybe leave before the rush. By the time I finished a couple of emails, the buses had stopped. There just was no way to get 8000 or so people off the hill in the time window they had to work with.

Then, the roads were clogged with cars. Cars everywhere mean no plows can move, and roads get worse. At some point, I think Security blocked some roads to let the plows get around, and things started to get better

By 9:30, the official message was “some traffic is getting through, but the roads are still bad; we don’t suggest you drive without chains or snow tires.” That was a good message: it kept people leaving in a trickle and crawling down the hill.

I drove Daniela’s car down around then (with her and Nathan), and it was fine (as long as you drove appropriately to the conditions).

This morning, I sent the following suggestion to the emergency preparedness people:

When the roads start to get really bad, close them to private vehicles immediately. Allow only plows, emergency vehicles, and Translink on the roads above the lights. Last night, I suspect the roads could have been kept passable if they weren’t littered with cars, and buses would get as many people off the hill as possible.

That would leave plenty of room for the plows to clear the roads. (Remember: we’re only talking about 2 km or so of roads here. One plow could easily keep it passable if it can move.) If Translink could run a regular schedule of buses, it would have cleared campus in an hour or so. People determined to drive their own cars could then be released slowly (to not create gridlock).

I really think the root problem yesterday was crappy driving. My impression was that every time an accident was cleared, traffic sped up and caused another one. If you aren’t experienced driving in snow, don’t: wait it out or take the bus. There was nothing the University could have done to keep idiots from slamming into each other in the middle of the one intersection off campus (except keeping them off the roads).

Bright points from yesterday: John Grant standing in the ASB exit for probably 3 hours, yelling at the top of his voice about the current road conditions and safest thing to do; Kate Ross, the Registrar herself, standing in the AQ for the same length of time, handing out free coffee tickets and answering questions about the conditions. She could have fobbed that off on an underling and walked home (since she lives on the hill). My platonic crush on Kate continues.

A group of complainers has at least posted some good pictures of the exodus.

As many of you know, Amanda has left Computing Science. Amanda was the manager of the recruitment, advising, and promotions team (and other stuff). Since I’m the undergrad director, and interested in recruiting, we always worked closely together.

She has moved on, and is now the Manager of International Recruitment and Partnerships. Good job. Leaves us with a big hole to fill. Unfortunately, it also causes a lot of work for me.

First of all, somebody has to lead the team while the position is vacant. This is one of those situations where I looked to the left, looked to the right, and realized everybody was looking at me. Annoyingly, I am unique in that (1) I know all the parts of our admissions/recruiting activities, (2) as undergrad director, I can do the strategic decision making, (3) I don’t want the job, so I’ll happily give up all of the responsibilities when a replacement is hired, and (4) it can be argued that I have the time to actually do it.

So, I suddenly find myself the unofficial supervisor of something like eight people. Fortunately, the team is pretty good, and doesn’t actually need much guidance. I’m hoping that their “supervision” will consist primarily of occasionally asking “is everything going okay?” and making sure nobody else meddles with the team dynamic.

Of course, we have to hire a replacement. Since I’m the one that dealt most closely with the position, I’m doing a bunch of legwork on that. The job description has to be revised, and the job’s pay grade reevaluated. HR is resistant to upping the pay grade for some reason, but we really need to bump the pay to get decent applicants. All of this is very bureaucratic and a little painful.

Basically, if I never have to talk to HR again, I’ll be fine with that. Overall, it’s probably good experience for me. Amanda still owes me, and revenge will be mine.

I’m feeling a little directionless today. I have a bunch of possible blog topics queued up, but none of them are really calling out to me. So, I’m going to tell some six word stories that summarize things.

Not teaching causes lack of structure.

Lack of structure causes low productivity.

Teaching students is addictive: in withdrawal.

I don’t care about HR issues.

Two day weekends are too short.

I find the Superbowl fundamentally uninteresting.

Could live with wife any time.

Well, it’s Link Friday again. I thought I had a lot of links to share, but I don’t have nearly as many links backed up as straight-up blog topics. Maybe Link Friday won’t be every Friday.

Anyway, for this week I have some links related to teaching. I teach stuff to people all the time, and suppose I must know something about it. Believe it or not, there are people that have made observations that even I haven’t had.

First are a couple of things my students should read. Everybody below about 85% in CMPT 120 should read How NOT to go about a programming assignment (Google cache link). Part of teaching a first year programming course is seeing each and every one of these things. Repeatedly.

This prof’s Top Ten No Sympathy Lines are really interesting. In particular, his answer to “There Was Too Much Memorization” was really insightful.

For the last several years, I have been trying to minimize the textbooks required for my classes: the pricing is criminal and they usually aren’t all that good. My rule has been to only require texts if they are really good and if I’m going use them very heavily. Otherwise, they are only recommended. So, this guy is my hero: UVSC prof. quits books.

I’m not sure that Taylor Mali on what teachers make particularly applies to me, but it makes me think that the high school teachers I know are a lot cooler.

Finally, the… um… darker side of teaching. Apparently, according to a peer-reviewed article, Teaching may be hazardous to your marriage. And the complementary article: If College-Themed Porn Were Real.

As most of you know, Amanda is leaving Computing Science and movin’ on up to Student Services. That’s very sad, and I’ll blog about it later.

Because Amanda’s a good boss, she wanted to do something for her team before she left. She decided on playing hookie on Friday afternoon and taking the team to a movie. (But shhhhh! It’s a secret: no sane manager would play hookie with their entire team.)

We discussed the movie a bit before we went. I was campaigning for Juno. Instead, she chose 27 Dresses.

Now, I’m not above watching a decent chick-flick. I remember About a Boy being okay, for example. Actually, I kind of like Hugh Grant. This movie, on the other hand, wasn’t “decent”. Not even close.

None of the characters were sympathetic: I hated them all. Even the protagonist (who I suspect I was supposed to care about) was whiney, meek, and generally annoying. The “pretty” sister wasn’t actually as pretty as the not-as-pretty, practical one. Both guys were dicks and too stupid to live.

Basically, if the movie had ended with everyone dying in a fire, I would have been fine with that. The only exception was Judy Greer, who I think I have a bit of a crush on, and whose character was actually compelling (but on screen for maybe two minutes).

So guys: if you have a choice between seeing 27 Dresses and paying nine bucks to sit in the theatre lobby and play video games, get yourself a roll of quarters. The women in the crowd seemed to like it, though.

Subject: Re: Project Don’t Die Before I Reach The Age Of 28

As one of the facultative vegetarians that you were probably referring to, I feel like I should respond.

My first thought to the taste-of-vegetables problem is fairly straightforward, I think. If you like the taste of meat, do the same thing you would when trying to give a dog a pill: mix it with meat. The obvious device for this is probably the stir fry.

Also, consider the wonders of cheese. Nothing makes broccoli palatable like a cheese sauce. Might I also dare to suggest you have a look at a cookbook or two? They’re like algorithms textbooks, but for food.

One of the things that really pisses me off are people I refer to as “penance vegetarians”. These are the people that seem to treat vegetarianism like it’s punishment for something and have been doing it for far too long. They are the ones that like tofu and snack from little bags of what appears to be bird food. They rave about the food at the Nam.

Vegetarian food can have fat in it. It can even have flavour if you play your cards right.

On the subject of gastrointestinal stress: I’m sure you’ll be fine. The system seems to get used to whatever one has been giving it. For example, I don’t think Mexican people are in a constant state of distress, but Mexican food it’s always an easy way to a punchline for American sitcom characters. Stay the course, and you’ll be fine.