I’m glad to see so many enthu­si­as­tic faces here today.

I don’t know if you picked it up from the course cat­a­log descrip­tion, but I need to tell you that this class will be quite a bit dif­fer­ent from your pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence in sec­ondary and col­lege education.

First I want to tell you why. Then I will tell you how. And then we’ll have a ten-​​minute break, where you can gather your stuff and leave if you like.

OK?

To begin, then. Let’s be hon­est: you are igno­rant of the essen­tial facts nec­es­sary to pass this class. Yeah, yeah — that’s why you’re in it, I know. But worse, you’re igno­rant of mate­r­ial you are already sup­posed to have mas­tered. At this stage of your life, you don’t know jack about one or more of: the math­e­mat­ics needed, or the sta­tis­tics, or the pro­gram­ming, or the right research meth­ods, or project man­age­ment, or time man­age­ment, or the proper man­ner of col­lab­o­rat­ing, or the his­tory of the field, or the phi­los­o­phy of the field, or the cur­rent research in the field. Worse, you don’t know how to ask cogent ques­tions, or nego­ti­ate (let alone rene­go­ti­ate) terms or require­ments, don’t know how to dis­cover and get help from your skilled col­leagues, or how to dis­agree pro­duc­tively with one another, or pass on what you’ve learned to oth­ers in a leg­i­ble, per­ma­nent form.

You lack, there­fore, the skills nec­es­sary for life in the Big Old World. And even in the University.

No mat­ter what you might think, this is noth­ing new or spe­cial about you. It has been true in every class you have ever taken since preschool, and will still be true in your Real Life when you’re done here — whether or not you do well in my class. It will be true in the busi­ness world, or the aca­d­e­mic world. I have sev­eral of these same prob­lems myself, as do the Pope and the Pres­i­dent and the Dean and your Mom and your favoritest teacher of all time and the smartest kid in the class. Stu­dents learn from fools, or they are fools, or they learn use­less infor­ma­tion and take it as truth, or they never learn any­thing, or they learn and they for­get, or they learn and then choose to stop. They are merely human.

Indeed, all the peo­ple who might be able to teach you bet­ter are them­selves crip­pled with the same shortcomings.

I dif­fer from almost all your pre­vi­ous instruc­tors in three ways: First, I acknowl­edge that this is true, whereas they have for the most part lied to you (and them­selves) and declared you’re com­pe­tent, even though they’ve had to re-​​train you from scratch in every damned class. Sec­ond, unlike them I intend to do some­thing about it. And, third, in order to do some­thing about it, I will let you — no, make you — cheat.

As your instruc­tor I’m obliged do my best to impart a cer­tain amount of fact, expe­ri­ence and learn­ing to you over the next few weeks. I am not obliged to con­strain your chance to learn by mak­ing you “do your own work” (what­ever the hell that is, beyond the trash it implies to me). I am not obliged to quiz you, or ask you to write essays, or to make you cram just so I can then bitch and moan in my blog about how stu­pid “you” are when I’m grad­ing. I am not obliged to drop you into the water just to see if you can swim, nor assume that some pre­de­ces­sor taught you the rudi­ments and that it’s there­fore your respon­si­bil­ity to drown or not, for all I care. I am not obliged to allow you to fail to learn. Even though all my col­leagues seem hell-​​bent on that very thing.

You’re smil­ing. Don’t get cocky.

To suc­ceed in this class, you will have to ignore cer­tain things you’ve been told since you were first tested in ele­men­tary school. You will have to — have to — col­lab­o­rate with one another. You will have to sup­port one another. You will not be able to com­pete in this class. You will be forced to talk to one another, and get to know each other, and rely on each other.

This is basic train­ing. As it should be. Because most of you lack the basics.

Those of you who have incor­po­rated the lessons of “good” schol­ar­ship into your very beings, and with them the ruth­less com­pet­i­tive spirit expected in most aca­d­e­mic set­tings, those of you most eager to out­shine your com­pan­ions and make your­self stand out? You’re at a dis­ad­van­tage here, in this class. Because you lack the req­ui­site skill of collaborating.

You may want to leave now. Fair warn­ing. Hope­fully we can teach you how to act. If not, It. Will. Be. Reflected. In. Your. Grade.

Here’s what will happen.

On the class wiki I have pro­vided a set of 250 home­work prob­lems of vary­ing com­plex­ity and dif­fi­culty. These are your assign­ments for the semes­ter. These prob­lems are what you are graded on.

Some of these prob­lems can be answered with a quick and sim­ple Google search and some writ­ing. Some would make good Mas­ters The­sis projects. Some have one right answer; some have no right answer; some have many. Some require expla­na­tion, some require pro­gram­ming, some require math­e­mat­ics, some require his­tor­i­cal back­ground, some require num­ber crunch­ing, some require exper­i­men­ta­tion, some require intu­ition, some require ask­ing the right per­son, some require advanced domain skills from out­side our depart­ment. Some are trick ques­tions; some are so obvi­ous you’ll imag­ine they’re trick ques­tions; some are inher­ently time-​​consuming; some have hard and easy ways to solve them. Many are ill-​​posed, and need clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Some are prob­lems you should already know how to answer. Some are prob­lems you might not be able to answer by your­self when we arrive at the final exam.

All of them are impor­tant. None are throw­away, or filler, or make-​​work. I want you to answer each and every one of them.

No, not smil­ing now. Buck up. It’s not that bad.

You your­self — the indi­vid­ual you — you are not respon­si­ble for doing any prob­lem at all. Frankly I don’t care if you do no work what­so­ever, as long as you show up for class. You do need to come to class.

I will not grade your per­sonal con­tri­bu­tion to any answer, ever. Indeed, no mat­ter how the ques­tions get answered, I per­son­ally will not care one whit whether you, Jane Q Stu­dent, did the lion’s share of the work, or looked it up and copied it out of the ency­clo­pe­dia, or took that week off and went to Florida.

But some of the prob­lems must be answered, on the web­site. On time. Correctly.

I see there are 30 of you in the class today. There are what? Twelve weeks in the semes­ter? 250 ques­tions, worth I believe a total of 7200 points. And then the final exam.

You see, that’s a lot of problems.

Every Thurs­day at noon I will select the prob­lems that are most impor­tant for you to com­plete in the next week. I’ll pub­lish this list on the wiki.

In Friday’s class we will spend the entire ses­sion nego­ti­at­ing the assign­ment. I will stand up here and tell you I want all of it done, and why. And then you will sit there and (because you’ve pre­pared for the class ahead of time) tell me it’s impos­si­ble for you to do all that in one week. And you’ll ask me ques­tions about what I’m look­ing for, and you will talk to each other, and you will pro­pose which prob­lems you think can be done by the noon the next Thurs­day. I may have some prob­lems I really want you to answer that week, and I may try to force them onto your list by cajol­ing you, or by teach­ing you cool stuff, or by giv­ing you hints, or by mak­ing them worth more points. I may even add new ques­tions to the main list, and delete ques­tions from the main list, now and then.

By the end of class each Fri­day, we will have final­ized what prob­lems need to be done, and how many points they’re worth. You will have, col­lec­tively, promised that you’ll try to get them done.

In order for the prob­lems we choose to be answered cor­rectly, you will have to “cheat”. You are not only allowed to search the Inter­net, you’ll have to. You are not “encour­aged to work in teams”, you’ll have to. You will have to ask pro­fes­sors in other classes, and stu­dents who took the class before, and go to the library, and talk to each other, and share notes, and make reports, and read things in for­eign lan­guages, and write sim­u­la­tions. You will need to do back­ground read­ing, and express your opin­ion to one another. You’ll need to edit each other’s writ­ing, and depend on each other’s authority.

These are the things that are pro­hib­ited in your other classes. Some of them are even explic­itly pro­hib­ited by the “honor code”, that rag we use to mask our edu­ca­tional lazi­ness and our own unques­tion­ing buy-​​in of the sta­tus quo. If you pre­fer the other aproach, then I sug­gest you with­draw from this class early on and go back to the sta­tus quo, before it makes your head hurt.

One hard and fast rule: your answers can­not include any pla­gia­rized mate­r­ial. In case you do not know what pla­gia­rism is by now, I have pro­vided a handy and very explicit def­i­n­i­tion on the class wiki. If any answer on any of a week’s prob­lem set is pla­gia­rized from an out­side source, the score for the entire prob­lem set is zero, and that week’s ques­tions will appear on your final exam. You may, how­ever, cite the work of oth­ers all you want. You may even quote it, so long as fair credit is given where it’s due.

You may (by what­ever mech­a­nism you want to work out) decide not to answer some of the ques­tions that week. For each answer, there is a “com­mit” but­ton, and only when a major­ity of the class mem­bers have pushed that but­ton will the answer count for the week’s assign­ment. When­ever a sub­stan­tive change is made to the answer, the “com­mit­ment” is reset, though the peo­ple who pressed it before will get an email alert. All your (com­mit­ted) answers must be posted in the class wiki in order to be graded. At exactly noon on Thurs­day, an archive of the Answers sec­tion for that week will be saved for grad­ing. The com­mit­ted answers will be graded; the rest of the prob­lems will return to the pool to be attempted again later.

Some of these ques­tions are very hard, and some are off-​​topic. Given a cogent argu­ment to that effect, pro­vided as a com­mit­ted answer, I will con­sider elim­i­nat­ing such ques­tions from the ros­ter before the final exam comes around. Such argu­ments to dis­miss work will have to be robust and skilled, not petu­lant or con­fronta­tional. That said, even such ques­tions will be con­sid­ered answered, and your argu­ment will be graded like any answer would, on all five scales. It may appear on the midterms, too.

So. How will you coor­di­nate? How will you divide up the prob­lems? How will you check each other’s work? How will you find out who knows what? How will you com­pose your answers?

And how will you be graded?

You will be awarded 25 atten­dance points per class ses­sion. At 12 weeks this semes­ter, I fig­ure that to be 900 points. No excep­tions or excuses what­so­ever. If the build­ing burns down, you will all lose all 25 points every day until we find a new venue. You show up late or leave early, you get one point for every six min­utes you’re here. You go ski­ing, or your aunt dies, no points those days. Because it will work out in the end.

You (per­son­ally) will also get ten points on any day you log into the wiki and add make sub­stan­tive addi­tions or edits. Doesn’t have to be a class day.

Prob­lems: I will grade them every week, based on the answers saved at noon on the Thurs­day they’re due. They will be graded on thor­ough­ness, accu­racy, orig­i­nal­ity, read­abil­ity and con­text. Thor­ough­ness points are given depend­ing on how com­pre­hen­sively you’ve addressed the prob­lem. Accu­racy points for how accu­rate the num­bers (if any) or writ­ten account (if any) end up being. Orig­i­nal­ity points are awarded for novel approaches or crafty solu­tions, not for show­man­ship or silli­ness or ani­mated gifs. Read­abil­ity points are given for how well the mate­r­ial is com­mu­ni­cated. Con­text points are given for how well the mate­r­ial is intro­duced, and for analo­gies drawn to other mate­r­ial in the class, or for insights made explicit, or for com­pre­hen­sive and up-​​to-​​date bib­li­o­graphic references.

“Sub­jec­tive!” some will cry. They always do. But I am stand­ing right here! I have office hours! I have review ses­sions! We have recita­tion! We have lab! We have how many? Two real Help­ful Grad­u­ate Stu­dents loi­ter­ing around the class­room and their dun­geon­like rat-​​warren offices, at your beck and call! And did I not say you could do any­thing you needed to get the answers cor­rect? You can ask us any­thing you like, and per­haps we will tell you what we believe to be true as of that moment. If we have the time. We will surely do our best to help. And also you can use the lit­tle “TRIAL GRADE” but­ton — see it there, in the upper right? — to sub­mit drafts of your solu­tion (on the wiki) at any time dur­ing the semes­ter, and I will do “trial grad­ing” on them. I will “trial grade” no more than one prob­lem per day, and no prob­lem more than once, and first-​​come first-​​served in a 24-​​hour period.

I will even be happy to “trial grade” prob­lems that have not yet been assigned.

Every­body in the entire class will get the same score for the prob­lems each week. There is, after all, just one answer for each.

On Fri­day, Marnober 16 (just before First Break), we will have our first midterm in the com­puter lab. You will be set down in front of archived copies of some of the prob­lems, along with your answers from the first part of the class. You score will depend on how much you improve the answers. You can pick the prob­lems, and decide how to improve them: you can focus on hard ones or easy ones, and try to improve any of the five graded aspects. You won’t get “neg­a­tive scores” if you break one, but you can only get pos­i­tive points for improv­ing them.

On Fri­day, Novuary 21 (just before Sec­ond Break): we will have a sec­ond midterm in the same for­mat, cov­er­ing all the prob­lems answered so far, includ­ing those from the first midterm.

Finally, on Fri­day, Decay 12, just before Study Period, we will have our Progress Review. We’ll dis­cuss the prob­lems you’ve solved, the points they’ve earned, and look in detail at the wiki. Before the end of our last class the next Mon­day, you have the option to give some or all of your atten­dance points (just those) to any set of up to five of your class­mates, using a form on the class web­site. You can choose to give 900 points to one per­son, 100 points each to five peo­ple, 500 points to one and 73 each to two oth­ers, or no points to any­body. You may give points away as a reward, or with­hold points if you feel they are undeserved.

All point trans­fers will be entirely anonymous.

At the end of class on Mon­day, any atten­dance points you have remain­ing will dis­ap­pear. Poof. Only the atten­dance points you have been given by your class­mates will count towards your final score.

Your final exam will con­sist of every one of the 250 prob­lems which have not been answered with a “com­mit­ted” answer dur­ing your 12 weekly assign­ments. Yes, there is the final exam now, sit­ting right there in front of you on the wiki. In plain sight, every ques­tion, all semes­ter long! How­ever. Dur­ing the final exam, unlike the rest of the course, you will be expected to work entirely on your own, with no book, no notes, no cal­cu­la­tor, no wiki, no com­puter. You may have one stan­dard “cheat sheet” of (flat) paper with notes on both sides. The prob­lems will be graded on all of the five bases men­tioned above.

If by some quirk of fate there are no prob­lems remain­ing of the 250, then the final exam will con­sist of an atten­dance sheet, which will be graded on the basis of your abil­ity to spell your name.

Let’s take that ten-​​minute break I men­tioned, shall we?

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