3 ms·

Maybe make them work on open source projects? Or even the college's own toy systems?

OJFord 7y ago
That's exactly what many UROP schemes are (/were, anecdotally after all). (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Placement, I think. Speaking from UK but I believe it's a pan-European scheme.)
donw 7y ago
There's a wealth of opportunities here. Annually from the second year on during a computer science or software engineering program, students should be required to have one class where they spend at least one full day per week contributing to their choice of one of the following: (1) An open-source project approved by the instructor. (2) Production software used within the university, excluding systems dealing with student or faculty PII or sensitive information (grades, schedules, etc). Lots of opportunities here to contribute across the sciences! (3) Non-commercial software benefitting the community or government at any level (from local to national).
repolfx 7y ago
The problem is then their grade ends up being heavily affected by the quality of work done by other people. It'd be impossible to objectively grade such a task. The key difference between university and work is that in the former you are supposed to receive a pretty fine-grained assessment of your own skill, which is isolated and repeatable. In work, it's understood that promotion and slotting is a much more arbitrary affair and the marking criteria may not even be documented, let alone applied consistently. Also if your project fails because of bad work done by others, well, tough luck, that's what your salary is for. In university you're paying to be there, not the other way around, so the amount of random failure tolerable is much lower.
- nickpinkston 7y ago
  Maybe it's less about the quality of your code for this and more about how you do on: estimating your time, hitting your schedule, collaborating metrics (response time, ticket closing, etc.)?
  - repolfx 7y ago
    By those metrics many of the industry's top companies and engineers would get a fail grade.

That's exactly what many UROP schemes are (/were, anecdotally after all). (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Placement, I think. Speaking from UK but I believe it's a pan-European scheme.)

donw 7y ago

There's a wealth of opportunities here. Annually from the second year on during a computer science or software engineering program, students should be required to have one class where they spend at least one full day per week contributing to their choice of one of the following: (1) An open-source project approved by the instructor. (2) Production software used within the university, excluding systems dealing with student or faculty PII or sensitive information (grades, schedules, etc). Lots of opportunities here to contribute across the sciences! (3) Non-commercial software benefitting the community or government at any level (from local to national).

repolfx 7y ago

The problem is then their grade ends up being heavily affected by the quality of work done by other people. It'd be impossible to objectively grade such a task. The key difference between university and work is that in the former you are supposed to receive a pretty fine-grained assessment of your own skill, which is isolated and repeatable. In work, it's understood that promotion and slotting is a much more arbitrary affair and the marking criteria may not even be documented, let alone applied consistently. Also if your project fails because of bad work done by others, well, tough luck, that's what your salary is for. In university you're paying to be there, not the other way around, so the amount of random failure tolerable is much lower.

nickpinkston 7y ago
Maybe it's less about the quality of your code for this and more about how you do on: estimating your time, hitting your schedule, collaborating metrics (response time, ticket closing, etc.)?
- repolfx 7y ago
  By those metrics many of the industry's top companies and engineers would get a fail grade.