The lecture was delivered to two separate sections of the course. The lecture was given in the computer lab, with students sharing HP TC4200 Tablet PCs.
The lecture generally went very well - students participated in all of the classroom activities. Unfortunately, at the end of both classes, Classroom Presenter failed. Later, this was determined to be a problem inside of Classroom Presenter - various GDI objects are not being disposed of properly, so after extended use, resources are exhausted. This is a high priority error to fix. In one class, this happened while displaying the final student submission, and in the other the one before the last. It was disappointing - but did not prevent the lecture from achieving its goals.
The application failure meant that the student submissions were all lost, which is too bad, since there were quite a few interesting submissions.
The lecture consisted of two separate portions. The first was an introduction to the class and classroom presenter - this had a bunch of our standard activities. The second was an assessesment of the students background where students answered a series of simple data structures problems. This turned out to be good practive for the types of submissions that will come up during the term.
Actual use:This activity was available as students came in. From experience, having an activity for students as they arrive works very well - so that students can immediately start playing. Students were given some instruction in use of presenter. The olypmics were a common example. Other included Pandas, Tianamen, and traffic.
Evaluation of activity: This activity is probably better than the "Draw a picture of yourself". This works well to get people involved with the software, and also to explain how it will work in the classroom. Dividing the slide into regions for multiple writers is unnecessary.
Actual use:Use is straight forward - ask people to submit and then show all of the answers. In both classes, I used this slide to talk about submissions being anonymous.
Evaluation of activity:This activity consistently works well. I had been able to find a very good map of china to use. My one worry was that all the students would be from Beijing - this was not true at all, many different provinces were represented.
Actual use:The activity was introduced, and answers were discussed. Quite a few answers were displayed with comments, followed by showing the 15 minute fall off in attention. When the activity was introduced, several students indicated with their hands the expected downwards curve of attention.
Evaluation of activity:This activity always works well! The activity also works consistently across cultures, and age groups. Results have been very similar from Chinese students, Latin American Professors, Japanese businessmen, American Computer Scientists, and prospective undergraduate CS majors.
Actual use: After the introduction of the course, this slide was used as an opportunity for students to ask questions. It worked much better for the second class than the first - in the first there was a verbal question, and one submission. In the second there was a series of submissions relating to logistical questions of the course - such as "will there be homeork". I suspect these questions were only raised because of the submission format. The questions also indicated that information about things such as homework has not been communicated very well.
Evaluation of activity: This was particularly effective in the second section - but even in the first section, it was a useful transition to the second half of the lecture.
Actual use: Students provided answers which were discussed. A moderate number of students consulted their data structures texts. The answers showed a basic awareness of sorting algorithms, and were pretty much what I would have expected from the UW data structures course.
Evaluation of activity:This was successful in evaluating background - and was great for identifying language issues - algorithms which were known - but not by their standard English names - fast sort for quick sort, and popup sort for bubble sort. Several submissions just had the chinese name for bubble sort.
Actual use: In the first session I had students do both activities, while in the second I only asked them to do the first. The results on the geometric sum were mixed - some students remembered it exactly, and others approximately. (When I used this at UW - I was surprised at how few students knew this one.) Students in the first session did not know the answer for the recurrence question - so I assumed that the second session would give similar results.
Evaluation of activity: This activity worked well for assessing background.
Actual use: I added a small example to ensure students were familiar with my terminology. I collected examples and displayed them. In the first class, I misrecognized several answers, thinkign they were incorrect (where they were correct). Display of the answer was used to verify they were correct.
Evaluation of activity: The problem was a good level of difficulty. I had not expected several of the solutions, so it took me a while to recognized them as correct. I had one solution in mind - and was surprised by topologically distinct solution.
Actual use:This was a natural follow on to the previous one - students drew examples, and got stuck. I think everyone started drawing. Students sent in submissions indicating that it was impossible, with a few giving the reason. CP crashed in the second session on this activity.
Evaluation of activity:This is a perfect discovery activity and fit the students background. They had probably seen the relevant graph theory - but this was a chance to apply it.
Actual use:This was only done in the first section (due to technical difficulties), and presenter died when I started to show the answers on this one. Students found and submitted the trees. It would have been useful to go over the solutions for this one.
Evaluation of activity:From viewing the submissions as they came in - students had seen MSTs , and many found the correct solution. This was a good background assessment activity, and an appropriate level of complexity.
