Computing as a CS Major: In & Out of the Classroom

BP#1 — 8.28.2017

Matthew Alicea
Aug 28, 2017 · 4 min read

Throughout my time in my degree, I’ve been led to feel that the courses in my degree could benefit from a change in structure. Why do we sit and listen to lecture for 90% of the in-class time?

I’m an art kid at heart. I took as many art classes I could possibly take in high school. So I naturally love the idea of studio courses. Now, what if CS classes could also benefit from a studio structure? Imagine starting class and the professor lectures for 50 minutes to an hour, and then you program something relevant to the lecture for the next 1–2 hours, in class, with your professor there maybe showing a live-code demo of something similar to your assignment, or simply there for you to ask questions to help you better understand the lesson. I know I often have trouble “getting it” without actually doing it, and I think this learning style lends itself to Computer Science, as I believe it is very much a creative field akin to art and writing.


The closest course to this structure, and thus among my best computer science course experiences, was CS 3240, Mobile Device Programming. This course didn’t have much lecture, but we worked as a class on individual projects at our own pace for the nearly 3 hours a day. Being a summer course, and me not having any other responsibilities outside of class, I was able to learn about the subject both in and out of class. My daily schedule: I’d go to class at 9:30, work on my assignment, maybe chat a little with some classmates about particular things we were working on, and then stay after class ended for usually 45 minutes until about 1pm to let myself slowly slip out of my workflow and finish up my train-of-thought. After that, I’d walk to a coffee shop and continue working, often-times researching something referenced in the textbook that spiked my interest, or simply an Android library class I wanted to learn more about. Because I had nothing to do but eat, sleep, and take that class for 4 weeks, I was able to let myself drift off the direct trail of the course, and get as much as I possibly wanted out of it. I usually wouldn’t leave the coffee ship until 4–6pm. That means I did classwork for nearly 8 hours a day for 4 weeks and loved it.

Sure, I could’ve bought the same Android development guide and followed along on my own and not gotten up at 8am for a month of the summer, but the class structure helped me stay on track and pushed me to learn. We got extra credit for “enhancing” our app with what the guidebook had listed as “challenges” at the end of each chapter. Typically they asked the reader to add something that wasn’t discussed or walked through in the text, but would be something we’d want to learn when developing a real application. I tried to do every challenge, and I did for the first application. I found it fun. It helped me learn Android, how to use Git, and I had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.


So was the fact is was a studio course the sole reason why I enjoyed it so much? Probably not, because I’d been looking forward to taking the course since freshman year and ended up really loving the content. But I think the studio structure of it did allow me to feel like I had the opportunity to seek out more knowledge when I wanted to. No other class in the CS department have I felt that way. I’ve always wanted to get out of the classroom as soon as I could most classes, and move on to the next so I could simply be done for the day.

The expediency of learning at a university is something I’m starting to feel is actually punishing the students. Sure four years sounds like a long time, but if I could’ve taken only classes that made me feel the way this one did for 5 or 6 years, I’d probably do it. I think a course that can make you want to learn more of the course content (or related content) on your own time is an example of education at its finest and purest form.

If I wasn’t going to be penalized for graduating in more than four years, maybe I’d have been able to actually enjoy more of my classes, as I enjoyed this one. If the stressors of taking 16+ hours a semester and scoring appropriately high grades was lessened, I think I could both enjoy and excel in the class by a significant margin. Sadly, this is a mere utopian wish, for a better education for myself, my peers, and future students.

)

Matthew Alicea

Written by

Designer/Programmer in the making.

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