The lectures are always recorded, while the recordings along with their related material such as slides and assignments are posted on the course's website, therefore accessible from anywhere and by anyone. Also note that past course recordings are not removed. This gives students the freedom to access the lecture's material even if they were not present in person, or even in the case that they need to review and revisit some of the topics covered. In some hot lectures, live streaming and live chatting for asking questions posted over the Internet is also offered.

Yet another online convenience, is that there's also an online forum where students can post questions which are subsequently answered by other students or the TAs themselves. This is helpful, promotes collaboration and even forms communities which help each other. That's not the end of the story though as email is yet another popular way of offering personalized assistance;emails which instructors do actually respond to. This helps students immensely but also gives back to the course too as within the emails emerge patterns of the problems which students face, which are subsequently analyzed and then their solutions finding their way into the course's core itself as such much improving it.

If that wasn't enough, there's still the weekly office hours where students receive face to face assistance on their assignments or on topics covered in the class.

On the topic of assignments, they are preferred over mid-terms and/or finals because :

we think that having almost one assignment per topic covered offers us the possibility of evaluating with much more fine granularity the knowledge gained by the students. It also offers the students the opportunity to practice the concepts discussed in class

Something for the rest to ponder upon...

And what about Gamification ? Well it's incorporated too!

Usually we like to set up the assignments with a sort of “hidden message”, a learning opportunity, something the students can discover by themselves by following specifc guidelines and clues that we leave for them. In this case we believe this self-discovery process is much richer than the knowledge one can transfer in any sort of direct or explicit message delivered in lectures

Finally, web based quizzes are also employed for immediate feedback.

But how do they measure the course's success? Because the course's evaluation says so, based on anonymous feedback questionnaires, the raised level of participation, students' testimonials, the remarkable interest in becoming TAs, and because 97% of the students' graduated with an “A”.

At the end of the day, it certainly is a course well thought through and I hope that its underlying principles presented in the paper will be followed by others in the construction of post modern classes. In these times when brick and mortar institutions are strongly challenged by bootcamps, MOOCs and other alternative sources of education, initiatives like this might just get them back at the top of the league.

More Information

Bridging the Educational Gap between Emerging and Established Scientific Computing Disciplines

SciNet - Training and Education

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