If you think this would have been needed, how should the course goals have been explained better?
What if anything would you have added to the course prerequisites?
"Mathematical maturity" may be a bit fuzzy. Especially compared to other courses (at least at master level) where "mathematical maturity" means something like "knowing what a function is and be able to multiply two matrices".
I can't come up with a better formulation, though.
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This would do: "You will need to spend on the assignments far more time than you expect, the 7.5 credits are a misery comparing to the effort it will take you to pass the course with a decent grade. The course will exceed the time it is supposed to take by two weeks. And not for teaching you new stuff, but just to drain your time with yet another never ending assignment probably corrected in an extremely unfair manner."
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Maybe stress a bit more that it is truly a difficult course. E.g., I'm now taking the course Advanced Algorithms and compared to this course it's very easy.
Any comments on the course webpages?
Would be good to have an easy way to know what changed since my last visit (or update) and without resorting to blinking "new" tags.
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KTH Social has the good property of sending mails when updated. Piazza does it too, but not the "normal" web page.
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Much much better than the average course webpage. Always updated and easy to navigate.
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There are not clear requirements for PhD students.
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Structured and on one page, good!
Any comments on the opinion polls?
Lecturers usually wait for the final evaluation to improve for *next year*, while students want the course to adapt (if needed and if possible) *right now*, not for the next generation. In that sense, opinion polls during the course are great.
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They were really good but were also really useless. It does not seem to me that they have been taken into account.
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But some of the aspects we have addressed there were ignored. The course had to finish at the end of Period 1!
Idea is great and provided a good way to get updates on important events by interruption instead of polling. Too bad there was not too much student interaction.
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I think Piazza is a nice tool. I haven't used KTH social a lot, but I'd say Piazza is better.
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Definitely OK. But the course could have managed without it, relaying only on the home page mailing list since very few people asked questions on it. But this, of course, could have been different if the students happened to ask a lot of question.
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It is fairly good.
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Piazza was a nice experience. Usually get feedback on questions without too much waiting.
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I think it is very good.
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I have not used Piazza actively, but followed the posts, mostly through the emails. It have worked well, but I have seen no advantage over KTH Social.
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Liked it big time! Perfect way to find a collaboration partner, excellent that you can ask public questions ( 1 for being able to do it anonymously). Quick replies.
I have not tried anything similar.
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Piazza looks like a good tool. Maybe the class was just a bit too small.. I haven't tried similar sites.
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I think it was pretty nice. It was a good way to get updates quickly. I haven't used KTH Social a whole lot, but Piazza seemed to organize your stuff a bit better.
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The user experience of piazza is much better compared to noodle. Also the possibility to edit posts is very helpful. Furthermore the possibility of asking anonymous questions is a often used feature.
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It was useful, but not necessary to use.
Any comments about the pedagogical contents of the regular lectures? (Bonus points for constructive criticism.)
Great lectures. The content is usually quite complex (at least for me), but very well explained. Being able to give me some knowledge and some intuition about information theory in 2 hours is quite a performance.
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In my opinion optimal with regard to the hardness of the material. I think it's hard to appreciate it until you see someone else try to explain material of the same hardness.
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The lectures were too few compared to the amount of material presented. The selection of the topics to include in the course has to be done way more carefully. Far more material was included than the actual time and workload constraints would have allowed. Do not overestimate yourselves and the patience of your students.
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Probably could have written less on board since we usually get handouts.
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(are you seriously talking about bonus points? give bonus points in the assignment instead!)
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A problem is that the interaction with the students is low and the content is hard. The lecturer has troubles finding out what the students have understand, and the students have troubles telling him.
Maybe one could add (more) reading instructions and let the students read carefully selected paper to get the picture in their own pace. Maybe the lectures should focus more on high level views on the subject and (a little) less on proofs.
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A bit to fast at times, but I guess that was my problem. If I asked questions everytime I didn't follow, we wouldn't get anywhere. But the fact that we more often than not ran out of time before everything in the material was covered, I suppose that made people less willing to interrupt.
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Or maybe 'very good' sometimes. But it was often a bit too fast for me, but of course if there is only so much time then...
Of the four lecturers I think I liked Jakobs presentations the best.
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Merely stating something is easy doesn't help. Either the students got it, then there is no reason to talk about it, or they didn't understand it and then they only feel dumb, because it is supposed to be easy.
Any comments about the pace of the lectures?
I already said in another poll: a bit too fast for me to grasp everything in class, but it allows to cover interresting stuff, so it's not that a big deal.
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Maybe a bit uneven. Sometimes the beginning could be a little bit unnecessary slow which sometimes made the end (which often contained the hardest parts) a bit unnecessarily fast. Of course, if the students would in fact not grasp the basics fully, the rest would be useless anyhow, so it is a trade-off.
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Again, I know there was only so much time for so much material. But the course is 6 credits, so maybe something could be left out?
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It varied a bit but it sometimes felt too slow.
Any comments or feed-back about the guest lectures in general?
Any comments or feed-back to Joshua?
Great speaker, very interesting material!
Any comments or feed-back to Troy?
Please stop patching things on the board.
We cannot cut-paste-edit handwritten notes, and that's particularly hard to follow for somebody that is 1 minute behind. So please, write that modified equation again, at the right place on the board.
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Good speaker. Hard but interesting material.
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Remember I liked the start of both lectures, but then I couldn't really follow along after a while.
So maybe they were 'good' and the material was just a bit too difficult for me? :(
Any comments or feed-back to Massimo?
I'm sorry but you are the next victim of my anti-PowerPoint crusade.
Slides can sometimes be nice, but I can't remember a single lecture in my student's life where having maths on a slideshow was enjoyable.
Moreover, to my knowledge, any try at making slides that can be used both for presentation and as lecture notes has always failed. It's always bad at one of the two, and usually at both, because there does not seem to be an acceptable tradeoff between presentation and notes.
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Good slides at the first lecture! However, not the best speaker. Although, in Lauria's defense, I can imagine it is a difficult task indeed to give a crash course in proof complexity in half a lecture and then lecture about the connections we saw.
Any comments or feed-back regarding the balance between communication complexity and applications?
Great as it was! Love the way the theory and application was connected in this course!
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We have not focused on applications at all. Unfortunately this course is completely useless to students who do not just want to write a paper on communication complexity.
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But I guess you have to learn the basics first, so probably difficult.
The reasons why I did not want to scribe notes :
- typing latex is long and boring, and that's time that can be better used to actually understand the content and solve the problem sets
- I'm an old fussy student who usually doesn't like the way other people take lecture notes.
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The scribing process can be a lot of pressure on the student. Although it can be handy to have when doing problem sets the notes by Jakob (and the other lecturers) were actually very well written and almost always completely sufficient for usage when solving problem sets.
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Scribe notes would have resulted in one less problem set. We would be finished with this course now, as it should be. Instead we will have to work for two more weeks on a problem set that is even longer than the previous.
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If I only had known how you grade the problem sets... ;)
I'd say for a correctly solved problem set (that means for which I solved a fair amount of problems), the latex typing alone took me 5 or 6 hours.
I would have prefered a lot to hand in handwritten solutions, even with a strict correction rule "can't read == false".
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I think the escalating difficulty was a bit annoying considering the opinion polls showed that most student thought the difficulty was already "about right". However, I wouldn't say the problems became "too hard", but definitely on the brink of becoming characterizable as "too hard".
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The correction of the problem set was ridiculous. And I chose my words carefully. You have completely failed to follow your own code of honor (please have a look at it: "Assignments ought to be of reasonable difficulty and assessment of students' work shall be made in a SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY."). I am asking myself why I should go on following it either. Have a look at your grading and at the solutions of the problem sets from your students. Do you think that the grades you gave reflect the ability of the students? Are you sure you are not just trying to cut points, completely ignoring the spirit you should keep while correcting them? Are the students learning from their mistakes or learning that they should never again follow a course given by you?
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Far too much work. Far too many. Far too unfair correction. In general? a total failure. Remember that a course can be hard, challenging AND fair. You do not need to make it unfair to make it tough. You are completely failed this point. That was worth 40 and you got a 0. So sorry :p
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Preferably the course should finish in time, but it is better to delay a problem set than having to early deadlines.
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It seems weird to me to get the last problem set available at the very end of the course, thus having to work well into the 2:nd half of the semester. Perhaps the last one at least could have been a bit smaller. Instead it was the most time demanding problem set.
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Not sure what to answer about the level of difficulty: No doubt a lot harder than other 'advanced' courses I have taken/take, so in a sense 'very hard'. But of course it said this would be a difficult course, so it's not really a complaint..
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The timing of the last PS was a little unfortunate.
If yes, in which way?
This would have been fun. I guess this is the only think that did not happen here! ;)
Not sure I understand the question.
Not sure "we'd like more girls" is an appropriate answer.
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I feel sorry for the course responsible persons that they have to ask these ridiculous politically motivated questions :)
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what? (-> I don't understand what this question asks)
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It was okay
We would maybe have covered less material, we would not have had time for insights or going carefully through difficult parts and the guests lectures would have been far less meaningful.
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I think an important part of the content *really* benefits from the explanations of a lecturer. I think more lectures actually saves time (for the students) and improve understanding.
I wouldn't have liked homework like "go read about information theory, we'll use it next time".
If ever this should change, I'd recommand 90 min sessions, at least to factorize the warm up time.
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It would be a lot harder, of course. It could work. But the course would definitely have a different character than it had now.
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The course could end up being ever worse than it is. Please focus on presenting the right amount of material you can actually cover. Your students will gain from it enjoying what they do and understanding it better. You will gain from it by getting more students to your course.
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Do as you wish.
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The subjects were pretty hard. More self-study could have lowered the quality and amount of learning, but it could also have deepened it and increased the engagement.
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I think such set-up would have been worse. This stuff takes time to explain.
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I don't think 'It should still cover essentially the same amount of material' is correct, since I think this course required a bit too much for 6 credits. I already spent quite a bit of time reading lecture notes.
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Hard to say. I have tried 45-minute lectures in the past, and they had an advantage in that it can be hard sometimes to stay concentrated over all 90 minutes in a theory-heavy course like this.
More self-studying? Perhaps a good idea.
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The lecture was already very stressing. Trimming it even further wouldn't have any benefits.
Personally I do not like the idea that future students will get a more appropriate amount of material, a fair correction and a better timing for the end of the course. I would prefer that the course remains as it is. Observe that once the set of PhD and thesis students in your department ends, you will remain without a single soul in your class.
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The topic should stay the same, and the teacher DURING the lectures. The rest has to be wiped out. Including assistants, the teacher itself when he is not lecturing and the problem sets.
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The examination form with the problem sets should be kept, IMO.
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It is okay to stay the same.
Try to relax a bit and be more flexible. Try to finish on time, at the end of the study period. Try to downsize the amount of work you are asking from the students, it is far too much. Try to be less harsh in your grading, you are teaching not punishing. If the students are good, show them they are. There is nothing more annoying than a teacher trying to convince himself that his topic is too hard to be learned.
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I want to know what I did wrong on those questions I didn't get full score. See solutions to the problem sets (or at least the basic ideas).
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I agree with the posts on piazza that it was unfortunate that we are running very late on the problemsets. Considering the amount of work required for the course, and that we agreed on finishing in period 1, I think it would have been fair to give a shorter ps4
I also agee on the points that the point scale for individual problems was not used enough. As I did well on first psets, I didn't think much off it then, but on pset3 it was clearer. But for ex: on pset1, problem 4, I said something like 'If Alice and Bob just split the random string between them then ...', instead of saying 'If Alice use the even part and Bob the odd part of the rnd string then ...'. And as far as I can tell this was the difference between 0 points and 20 points (100%)?
There was no "free expression" form on the number of credits, so I put it here.
Compared to other 6-credits master's courses I've had, or even 7.5-courses I'm currently having, I strongly feel that this course deserves 7.5 credits.
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Just a huge regret to have taken this course.
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Remember that you are not trying to make the students angry. You are trying to teach them something.
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Thanks for the course, really liked it! Cool to get an intro to real cs research.
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It was so demanding, but I learned a lot.
Denna sammanställning har genererats med ACE.