Making Connections

We had a number of folks from Government organizations and the industry come down to pitch ideas for the Final Project to the students today.

My friend, Dawn, was very kind and complimented me for saying some things after each presentation to try to "make the connections", to which I replied, but that's all very natural isn't it? Learning is all about making connections what.

I didn't think too of it because it was almost an instinct, but then thinking about it a little harder -- maybe it isn't really obvious (by the way, there's actually a term for the stuff I did. Those are called "earn my pay" moments). Hold that thought.

Then I recalled another conversation I had with another colleague about a week ago. This colleague argued that the current student feedback system and ratings were "unfair" because it is plausible that you might have a good prof, who does "the right things" to help students learn, but the students dun appreciate and he gets whacked.

Before people make an assumptions that this colleague of mine is getting low teaching ratings, let me just clarify that this colleague has phenomenally high ratings -- therefore, he is saying this without prejudice.

My view (and I think this view is shared by Yanjie) is that contrary to popular belief, students actually do know whether teaching is effective. If indeed a prof is doing the "right thing", then it is also his responsibility to explain to the students why he's doing the right thing.

Back to my original point - the point I want to make about learning is that it's not about accumulating information or data, it's about making connections.

It would be nice if students can make the connections by themselves. However, given that students don't have all that much experience and are not typically mind-readers, it is often helpful for the profs to help make those connections.

I shall illustrate this principle with the Final Project pitching session we had this evening.

Random people coming to talk about random stuff. At first sight, it may all seem very random -- but it's not.

Well, CS3216 is organized into two segments: "Ideas + Skills" followed by "Execution".

The pitching session we had this evening contributes to the ideas part of the equation.

Obviously, the quality of the pitches were not equally good, but students should always pay attention to learn what's good and also learn what not to do.

Some of the folks who came didn't have a clear idea of what they wanted to do -- but that's very normal. The following is an except of a GChat conversation with Kay Hong:

me: what do you think of tonight's session? interesting?
Tay: yup but i think some companies weren't specific with what they wanted
not sure if that's a good or bad thing
me: normal
everyone wants to get on the boat
but they dun understand the boat
dun understand where they want to go
but they think the boat's cool anyway .... and they are probably right in many cases
:-)

It's true that Facebook is old news -- and that Facebook is probably going public soon. But it's also true that there are many people out there who are still trying to figure out how to exploit social networks to improve their business.

Personally, I believe that there's still significant potential for many businesses to exploit social networks. The viral nature of human relationships (think gossip) cannot be understated.

Is it easy therefore? Hell no. :-)

While opportunity is all around us, it takes effort to learn how to recognize and exploit them.

We'd follow up on this theme of "ideas" in a couple of weeks at a Pitching Party where the students will pitch to each other and former students will be invited back to share well.

For skills, we had the first FB assignment and the Google Wave assignment to get students up-to-speed in a hurry on their technical skills.

The FB app seminar we had last week is a combination of both ideas and skills. On one hand, the students are expected to think about existing apps to understand why they work (or FAIL); on the other hand, they get to learn some presentation and writing skills. Both of which will be helpful to them in the *real* world.

There will also be two more case studies coming up where students will be forced to think about user interaction (not just interface) design and also about team dynamics. These are not like technical skills, but soft skills that will help them execute their Final Project better.

"Execution" = Final Project. That's all.

But execution is perhaps the most important thing that I hope students learn. Ideas are cheap. Execution is what makes people rich (or helps them save/conquer (pick one) the world).

Since I'm blogging about today's pitching session before any of the students (lead by example), it might be helpful for me to provide a suggestion on what to blog about the session since the session might seem kinda random to some students (though students are free to do their own thing and surprise me -- just no gambling and no porn thank you).

Well, I'm really interested in (student) learning. I would be quite happy to hear from each student the (i) three things that they learnt today, (ii) why they think the three things are the most important among all the things they learnt today (hopefully there are more than three) and (iii) how they will APPLY these three things to their lives/final project/job moving forward. Simple? :-P