On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 8:18 AM, Fluid Dynamics <a2093...@trbvm.com> wrote:
> On Monday, August 3, 2015 at 10:26:34 AM UTC-4, kirby urner wrote: >> >> >> (A) when a student hacks on a Python or Java project and want's mentor >> feedback, it's *not* a matter of the mentor remoting in to the student >> instance or accessing the students V: drive. Rather, we have software >> infrastructure by the talented Michael Long that zips up the entire Eclipse >> project and sends it to the mentor's computer, where it unzips. The mentor >> can run the code, find bugs, make changes, without touching the student's >> original. The mentor can send the whole project back, though usually >> quotes and comments are sufficient. >> > > Oh, dear God. You *do* know what used to happen to any unix box where > "Help! I'm a newb, please help me, why won't my script work" was reliably > synonymous with "sudo root" except for not needing the root password, right? > Better that it be the virtual box in the cloud than the mentor's computer > if that should ever happen. > Good points! Yeah we don't do that. The provisioning of an Ubuntu instance in the cloud (or a Windows instance in today's version of the ALE) is all about not helping students with complicated configuration / installing; all platform specific -- and they don't need sudo rights on the instance we give them, which instance vanishes without a trace when coursework is done. There's no huge tech support staff necessary to this picture, since the only umbilical cord to the learning environment is RDP (remote desktop), which is platform specific. But is also the only piece we have to help with, many free and easy solutions available (I use CoRD from a Mac OSX (where I'm root if I wanna be -- but this is not part of ALE). As a mentor I'm on this very same setup in the cloud (running ALE, in-house version -- we call it Nano). I'm doing my job in a cloud instance via remote desktop to a rack space somewhere. In role of "mentor" I've never been root and don't need to be; Eclipse fills my entire desktop, no need to touch Windows guts at all -- Terminal takes me to my Linux sandbox (where I'm just another user, like the students are)). We do, on the other hand, encourage students to SFTP their own work back to local platforms where they take responsibility for setting up their own setup, mirroring ours if they like (Eclipse + MySQL... basically LAMP) or going their own way. It's not for us to tell them what to do when home alone. > > PS: another thing ALE does not do in my world is give mentors a way to >> assign letter grades or compute grading curves or whatever. >> > > On the other hand, if a mentor grades on a curve, he deserves anything > that happens to his computer from running students' code there. :) > > We let mentors pick their own pronoun. :-D I'm trying to stay open minded about curve grading. I was a classroom teacher in the brick and mortar sense, both full and part time, and I know there's such a thing as healthy competition. I also know a lot of our students really like a tough coach who takes no nonsense, but on the other hand there's no comparison, no standing out as better or worse. Sometimes I'll say "good job, most students average three attempts to get this -- par for the course -- you got a hole in one" (no I'm not a golfer in real life) but there's no public scoreboard, no "grades" one has to live with (or live up to, as the case may be). Everyone gets the same certificate. Good grades helped get me into Princeton though (from the Philippines), i.e. those of us at the high end of the curve have always liked the curve, or benefited. But I see no reason to bake it into ALE at a primitive level. Could be an add on: curve-grade.clj :-D Kirby -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
