TA Again
Like last year, I was invited by my advisor to work as a Teaching Advisor to his “robocup simulation” for the 3rd year undergrad students. Last year, the experience was not completely satisfying - the students didn’t seem to work very hard in their projects or the reports - it gave me a bad impression of the students in our undergrad course.
This year, however, the experience is being quite different. When I asked who had Java programming experience, most students raised their hands. Questions about the programming aspect of the assignment were made right on the first class. And there was this one group of students who all were running Ubuntu in their laptops. Seems that we might be seeing some interesting results this year. I hope so.
I also learned something about teaching in a programming laboratory course. On the first two days, there were almost no questions or clarifications requested of me. But on the second day I noticed that a team seemed to be dozing off. Two team members were just staring at the ceiling, and the other was just staring at the laptop monitor. I decided to ask if they had already decided on a strategy for the team and for their programming, and eventually they told me that they were not really sure on how to program a soccer strategy for independent agents. They had divided their group into those who would do the programming for the forward players, and those who would program the defence players. When I gave some very vague suggestions, they seemed to pick up interest and started to have some good ideas of their own.
It dawned on me that our work is much more than just grading reports and answering questions, but also to try and light the creative spark in the student’s head by showing some interest into what they are doing.
Let’s see if this year I can put together a programmed team of my own to compete with theirs in the last class.