[Cse461] Feedback for Homework 2, Question 2 [anonymous feedback] (fwd)

jlnd_at_cs.washington.edu

-- 
Janet Davis
jlnd_at_cs.washington.edu
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/jlnd/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 21:54:38 -0800
From: Anonymous Sender <webmaint_at_cs.washington.edu>
To: jlnd_at_cs.washington.edu
Subject: Feedback for Homework 2, Question 2 [anonymous feedback]
>Related to this, I've gotten feedback that question 2 on homework 2 was
>time-consuming for its educational value.  This is a question that's been
>used on 461 homework assignments for several years, and likely will be used
>again in the future.  If you have any ideas for improving it, please let me
>know.
I think that I learned quite a bit from this question. However, I must
agree that it was time consuming. I will venture to guess that the major
source of complaints is that people aren't scheduling their homework well.
Many, myself included, did the bulk of the assignment the night before it
was due. The reason for this is as follows:
We all have numerous other homework assignments that are known to be
time-consuming like programming projects, etc. When an assignment is
distributed, we must glance it over and make a rough guess at how long the
assignment will take. Then, we schedule it accordingly, often putting the
known time-consuming projects first. However, until we actually DO the
assignments we have no way of knowing that our estimates are accurate.
>From the outside, question 2 looks to be relatively short. But as it turns
out, the finer details consume loads of time. When I first got this
assignment, I estimated it to be about as long as the first one. It turned
out to be twice to three times as long.
I think that a very good solution to this "time-consuming" problem is to
have MORE SHORTER homeworks. Question 2 could have fit nicely into its own
little assignment. Many of us may suffer from "one-sitting syndrome",
where we like to do everything all at once. This is, after all, the most
efficient way of doing individual work. Others may have classes that also
have more frequent homeworks that put long-term projects like our written
homeworks off further and further. It doesn't seem to make much sense at
all to cram several questions into only 3 assignments for the entire
quarter. What is wrong with putting only one or two questions in a
homework every week? The graders will still end up grading the same amount
of work, and we learn the same amount of information (probably better,
since we revisit the topics more frequently).
One may argue that long-term projects are more representative of real-life
tasks in the workforce. While this may indeed be true, the schedule of a
student is very different from a schedule of an employee. If this analogy
holds, then students work 3 or 4 different jobs (each class is a job), not
just one. In addition, the work day is dedicated to doing the assigned
task, whereas the class day is dedicated to attending lecture. For the
student, "free" time is dedicated to doing the assigned task. Finally, the
employee is simply trying to complete an assigned task, whereas a student
is trying to learn (and remember) at the same time. Thus, I don't believe
this argument holds much credibility in this regard.
In conclusion, I think that a more evenly distributed homework regimen
would help the outlook on the assignments considerably.
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