* STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? @ 1997-04-21 0:00 mrbunny 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: mrbunny @ 1997-04-21 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3546 bytes --] First, many thanks to those who responded positively to my request for information. Having posted a request to assist my computer studies (See simple student problem). I have been e-mailed to tell me that I have made an "inconsiderate mistake" and that if this news group was open to students there would be many thousands of postings every day, making the newsgroup inoperable. I have many objections to this argument, as follows: If paedophiles and sado-masochists can have free access to their special interest groups why can I not have the same equality? If I was a post-graduate student or a final year student working on leading edge Ada applications nobody would object to my postings because they would be interesting. Is the objection therefore really about wanting to avoid "casual" questions? If so the message was clearly marked simple student problem so it could be avoided by those not interested. Would students post in many thousands of messages a day? I doubt the Ada student population is big enough! It seems that not many colleges use Ada as a teaching language. At TVU we only study it in the first year, so I would guess that only a small percentage of computer students have an interest in Ada. Until I mentioned the group to my class-mates none of them knew of it�s existence, and neither did the tutor. If that is the case in other colleges then the number of potential posters dwindles drastically. Not all Ada students go on to become Ada professionals but I would imagine that Ada professionals have over the years accumulated in numbers to the point where the population of Ada professionals probably far outweighs the population of Ada students. Therefore if the quantity of messages posted to the newsgroup is reflective of the entire population of Ada professionals, it would need a vast international army of voracious Ada students to post many thousands of messages a day. Where are they? I see a lot on the Ada web sites concerning the demise of Ada and attempts to promote the greater use of Ada. If the Ada community is serious about this then they are shooting themselves in the foot by banning students from the news group. I study part time attending college one day a week. A lot is crammed into the day and the opportunities for access to specific tutors is extremely limited. As we travel from distant places none of my class mates are on hand to discuss problems outside of college. If I find my current text books inadequate, the supply of college books is so short that I must reserve a book two weeks in advance! The local library also requires me to order books because they consider Ada too obscure to warrant stocking text books. New text books are prohibitively expensive. Having access to the newsgroup for the OCASSIONAL problem would be extremely helpful. Am I right in my understanding that most of the academic newsgroups are on servers sponsored by universities? It seems a bitter irony then, that those organisations tasked with creating the new professionals should wish to deny them access to a very valuable resource. Does familiarity breed contempt? If all that I have said is wrong, and that students really would be a nuisance, then why can the problem not be solved by creating an Ada student�s newsgroup. If there are resources to create newsgroups about sadism and paedophilia then I am very angry that students cannot have an equal share of the webs resources. The spirit of the web is one of equality and freedom, unless it seems, you are a student! Mark. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? mrbunny @ 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-22 0:00 ` mrbunny ` (2 more replies) 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Students, Welcome!, was " Tom Moran ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 3 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-21 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Mark is obviously new to newsgroups, since he has so many misconceptions. Sometimes it seems like more and more such people are around. Anyway, the misconceptions should be set right for the benefit of other neophyte readers of CLA :-) <<Would students post in many thousands of messages a day? I doubt the Ada student population is big enough! It seems that not many colleges >> There are hundreds of schools teaching Ada (go check www.adahome.com for info), to thousands of students. if all of them posted questions about all their assignments, simple arithmetic shows that 99% of the messages on CLA would be from students. An analogy would be in a big lecture if students never read anything, and each asked dozens of qustions like "I couldn't be bothered to read about arrays, how do they work?" As in a lecture, you need to put in some work of your own (e.g. visit www.adahome.com and run one of the online tutorials created by hard work of some individuals contributing their time). <<Am I right in my understanding that most of the academic newsgroups are on servers sponsored by universities? It seems a bitter irony then, that those organisations tasked with creating the new professionals should wish to deny them access to a very valuable resource. Does familiarity breed contempt? >> No, your understanding is completely wrong, the newsgroups are not "academic" nwsgroups and have nothing whatever to do with universities. The newsgroup feeds are of course available to any user of the net, including universities, but they have no special status. <<If all that I have said is wrong, and that students really would be a nuisance, then why can the problem not be solved by creating an Ada studentM-^Rs newsgroup. If there are resources to create newsgroups about sadism and paedophilia then I am very angry that students cannot have an equal share of the webs resources. >> Spend less energy being angry, and more learning how things work. Anyone can form an alt newsgroup (which is where the kind of newsgroups you are talking about live). No one needs to have any authority of any kind to do this. If you think such a newsgroup will be useful (and will attrct people who can help), learn how to send out the message that creates a new alt group, and do it! Altenratively, organize a net vote to form a subgroup of comp.lang.ada. <<The spirit of the web is one of equality and freedom, unless it seems, you are a student! >> This has nothing to do with the Web, we are talking newsgroups here. You need to learn much more about what is going on. Yes, the net is an environment of equality and freedom, but with equality and freedom go responsibility and good citizenship and the need to have educated citizens -- just like any democracy, the smooth operation of society depends on this! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-22 0:00 ` mrbunny 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 2 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: mrbunny @ 1997-04-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) On 21 Apr 1997 23:18:21 -0400, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: > >There are hundreds of schools teaching Ada (go check www.adahome.com for >info), to thousands of students. if all of them posted questions about >all their assignments, simple arithmetic shows that 99% of the messages >on CLA would be from students. An analogy would be in a big lecture if >students never read anything, and each asked dozens of qustions like >"I couldn't be bothered to read about arrays, how do they work?" As >in a lecture, you need to put in some work of your own (e.g. visit >www.adahome.com and run one of the online tutorials created by hard >work of some individuals contributing their time). > This paragraph makes some very broad assumptions. One is that it assumes all students will not do their own research. Yes there are some who will always take the easy way out, but the reality is that these are a small minority. Students know that if they are to have any future in their subject they must do their own research and fully comprehend their subject, if only because once or twice a year they will sit exams in which the only person to help them will be themselves. Another assumption is that if students have a problem they will immediately post a request for help in the Ada newsgroup, and not consider other resources. If that were the case the newsgroup would have by now seen a lot more studnet requests. Finally it assumes that students have easy access to the equipment and facilities to enable them to post to newsgroups. My experience is that even computer students do not automatically have these facilities. Whilst colleges offer the use of the Internet, e-mail is not normally part of the available facilities as colleges are reluctant to provide the uncontrolled use of their e-mail address. Otherwise anyone could give the impression they were posting with the authority and status of the college. The small minority of students in my class possess home computers, simply because as students they cannot afford them, let alone pay the cost of Internet subscription. I find it difficult to agree that there is a plague of lazy students just waiting to overload the Ada newsgroup if they are given half a chance. I must also distance myself from these imaginary students who are saying "I couldn't be bothered to read about arrays, how do they work?" My lowest assignment mark is 80% my maximum 100%, that does not come from not being bothered. Mark. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-22 0:00 ` mrbunny @ 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Samuel A. Mize 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 2 siblings, 2 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Matthew Givens @ 1997-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: > >This has nothing to do with the Web, we are talking newsgroups here. You >need to learn much more about what is going on. Yes, the net is an >environment of equality and freedom, but with equality and freedom go >responsibility and good citizenship and the need to have educated >citizens -- just like any democracy, the smooth operation of society >depends on this! I came in late on this one, Robert, but it seems to me you don't want students posting in this Newsgroup. IMHO, this isn't the correct attitude. the Newsgroup should be open to those who have questions about things they don't understand. I mean, that's the point, right? Help folks solve problems? Student or professional, a problem is a problem. And, although I'm sure that nobody here would do their homework for them, problems for students can be particularly vexing. Especially when it's their first language. - If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried. << Iceman >> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Matthew Givens @ 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Samuel A. Mize 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Samuel A. Mize @ 1997-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Matthew Givens wrote: > > dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: > > > >This has nothing to do with the Web, we are talking newsgroups here. You > > >need to learn much more about what is going on. Yes, the net is an > >environment of equality and freedom, but with equality and freedom go > >responsibility and good citizenship and the need to have educated > >citizens -- just like any democracy, the smooth operation of society > >depends on this! > > I came in late on this one, Robert, but it seems to me you don't want > students posting in this Newsgroup. IMHO, this isn't the correct > attitude. the Newsgroup should be open to those who have questions about > things they don't understand. I mean, that's the point, right? Help > folks solve problems? What Mr. Dewar said, which I agree with, is that if all students post all their basic questions, the newsgroup will be flooded out. He suggests that students should (1) Use the other online information sources, like the tutorials at www.adahome.com, and (2) get their basic information from their texts and teachers, instead of asking the entire planet "how do arrays work?" However, others have taken a strong anti-student-on-cla attitude (maybe it was Mr. Dewar in another post, I don't know). We need to find a balance, and maybe we need to generate a new group for questions and answers. I haven't seen anyone respond angrily to a student asking for pointers to online resources. often see students get good results from asking for basic understanding about a topic (either explanations or pointers to other resources), but they sometimes get people carping at them too. I do feel it would help to have a pointer posted weekly to www.adahome.com, so when a neophyte hits the group for the first time it's almost sure to be visible. It would be good if this included some information about how to get help via the net and/or on cla without rousing some folks' ire. It would be great if everyone coming into newsgroups for the first time knew how they work, but that generally comes with experience. (Owner of www.adahome.com: if you want me to do a weekly pointer, contact me at my personal account: smize@imagin.net. In a volunteer organization, complaining = volunteering.) Sam Mize -- Samuel Mize (817) 619-8622 "Team Ada" -- Hughes Training Inc. PO Box 6171 m/s 400, Arlington TX 76005 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Samuel A. Mize @ 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) <<However, others have taken a strong anti-student-on-cla attitude (maybe it was Mr. Dewar in another post, I don't know). We need to find a balance, and maybe we need to generate a new group for questions and answers.>> I certainly have no objections to a different group for beginnners questions, an analogy is the use of teaching assistants and recitations in conventional lectures. Still it wories me a bit, because I would hate to see a situation where we get to feel that no questions are appropriate on CLA. My feeling is that carefully asked questions, where the student has done a bit of homework, and thought through things, are valuable on CLA itself, and we see those all the time. Few of the really knowledgable people on CLA are likely to spend time reading a student group, so the danger is that there is a lack of informed expertise in such a group, and you begin to get a lot of false information. On CLA itself, we do occasionally get people trying to be helpful and making entirely wrong statements, but they quickly get corrected. An analogy here again is in conventional lectures. I always welcome questions in my lectures if I think they are useful (indeed sometimes students criticize me for accepting too many questions, and not sticking to the book :-) However, if someone asks a question that shows that they clearly have not read the text book, that annoys other students, and it is not appropriate to spend class time answering such questions. So, speaking for myself, I think we should go out of our way to welcome students who do their homework, and ask useful and well thought out questions and not banish them to a backwater group. Students who have not done their homework are better served by pointing them in the directions where they can help themselves rather than sending them off to another group. Note that the issue is not about simplicity or complexity of questions, sometimes, even are studying carefully, you cannot understand something simple, but in that case your question should at least show that environment of attempted understanding. It is when people start deciding that it is easier to ask newsgroup quesions than to study that I question the apppropriateness, just as I would question the appropriateness of someone deciding it is easier to ask questions in class than to read the book. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.861971618@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: [snip] >So, speaking for myself, I think we should go out of our way to welcome >students who do their homework, and ask useful and well thought out >questions and not banish them to a backwater group. Students who have >not done their homework are better served by pointing them in the directions >where they can help themselves rather than sending them off to another >group. I second Robert here, on both counts. Students studying Ada (or anything else) in a structured college or university course should have access to texts, teaching assistants, the prof teaching the course, and so on. It's unfair of these institutions to expect the net to make up for their unwillingness to provide proper resources to their students. It's also unfair for students to ask folks on the net to do their homework for them. That said, I think we are still under some obligation to be polite in responding to students. First of all, it's common civility. Secondly, we'd really like them to learn and use Ada, and acting like jerks is not going to encourage them. _That_ said, Robert's statement that "there seem to be a lot of people on the net who don't understand how it works" is true, and, in my opinion, definitely a good sign that the net is working as it should, attracting new folks who are feeling their way. How else are they to learn "how it works" unless they try it? What will they find out when they try? The net is like the larger community - some inhabitants are friendly and welcoming, others are impatient and off-putting. The only generalization is that you can't generalize. None of us has a monopoly on truth, or a monopoly on the privilege of setting the rules. For whatever my opinion is worth, if any of you out there feel that a post is inappropriate, PLEASE do not waste bandwidth discussing it. Write a private note to the poster, or, better, just ignore it. If _everyone_ thinks it was inappropriate, the poster will find out soon enough - nobody will follow it up! If someone does follow it up, well, that's life on the net. Nobody appointed or elected me, or Robert, or any of us, to legislate rules. It's a wonderful, anarchic place. (just my $0.02) Mike Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman - chair, SIGAda Education Working Group Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The George Washington University - Washington, DC 20052 USA 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Cooperate with those who have both know-how and integrity." Fortune cookie, Wu Dynasty, Bethesda, MD, Spring 1996. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ada on the WWW: www.acm.org/sigada/education or www.adahome.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Samuel A. Mize @ 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1 sibling, 2 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Matthew said <<I came in late on this one, Robert, but it seems to me you don't want students posting in this Newsgroup. IMHO, this isn't the correct attitude. the Newsgroup should be open to those who have questions about things they don't understand. I mean, that's the point, right? Help folks solve problems? Student or professional, a problem is a problem. And, although I'm sure that nobody here would do their homework for them, problems for students can be particularly vexing. Especially when it's their first language.>> On the contrary, I welcome students questions -- *if* they do their homework before asking -- in particular, as with all newsgroups, the first place to send students off to is the FAQ -- especially since ours (the home page at www.adahome.com) is so well done. The online tutorials are often tremendously helpful too -- I advise all my students to try running these. <<Student or professional, a problem is a problem>> No, that's not quite true. And that's precisely the disctinction that I try to emphasize to people. If a profession posts a question saying "I need to glub a zork", then we help him or her figure out how to glub a zork, since that is the issue. But it a student says "I need to glub a zork [for an assignment]", the point of the assignment is not to glub a zork, it is for the student to FIGURE OUT HOW to glub a zork. It is this process of figuring out for yourself that is absolutely crucial to the learning process when it comes to programming. One of the things that is hard to learn if you teach programming (I have been learning this for 30 years), is that when a student asks a question about their program -- the *easy* thing to do, is just to answer the question -- but if you do that, then you can easily short circuit the assignment. A very common phenomenon, that was around long before the net and newsgroups, since the same thing happens when you ask e.g. teaching assistants, is that students manage to turn in homework assignments that work without ever having learned the foggiest idea about how programs work. They do this by writing some gross approximation, and then asking lots of questions. People give them helpful hints ("you should initialize this variable, you should do the multiplicatoin first ... etc") and they manage to get the program working by assembling this advice. This certainly is not cheating, but it does short change the students, and the trouble with the newsgroups and the net is that now this effect can be greatly multiplied. I often see people trying to be helpful to students, but they don't have the experience to do it the "right" way. That's because they don't understand the distinction ("a problem is a problem") between problem solving in a professional environment and students learning. So I would encourage everyone who wants to help students to be careful to bear this distinction in mind, and try to help them sove the real problem, which is learning how to figure out the solution for themselves, rather than solving the problem directly. By the way, I communicate with many students who post to CLA, and most often, these dialogs are very constructive, and students appreciate being pointed in helpful directions (books, tutorials, the home page etc). Occasionally, someone, like mrbunny, reacts very negatively, but perhaps even in that case, eventually he will go off to www.adahome.com, run the online tutorials etc, and find that useful! I quite understand that students can get frustrated. When a student comes to me with a program that does not work, and I refuse to fix it from them, they are often angry, and I quite see how, if you like to be helpful, it is very tempting to fix the problem for them, and the student goes away feeling you have been terribly helpful, and they are thankful for it, but you have not really helped them in such a situation. So, always think about how to help people learn, not about how to help people get their program working -- the two are not quite the same. Robert Dewar ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Kevin Cline @ 1997-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: > A very common phenomenon, that was around long before the >net and newsgroups, since the same thing happens when you ask e.g. >teaching assistants, is that students manage to turn in homework assignments >that work without ever having learned the foggiest idea about how programs >work. They do this by writing some gross approximation, and then asking >lots of questions. People give them helpful hints ("you should initialize >this variable, you should do the multiplicatoin first ... etc") and they >manage to get the program working by assembling this advice. Shortly after I left CMU in 1981 they started requiring that all engineering and science majors pass a practical final exam in programming. They were put in front of a terminal, given a specification, and allowed a few hours to produce a working program. I don't know if that practice continues today. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline @ 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) iKevin said <<Shortly after I left CMU in 1981 they started requiring that all engineering and science majors pass a practical final exam in programming. They were put in front of a terminal, given a specification, and allowed a few hours to produce a working program. I don't know if that practice continues today.>> This is still done today, and it is an excellent idea, but very few places do this. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline @ 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Matthew Givens @ 1997-04-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: > >Matthew said > ><<Student or professional, a problem is a problem>> > >No, that's not quite true. And that's precisely the disctinction that I >try to emphasize to people. If a profession posts a question saying >"I need to glub a zork", then we help him or her figure out how to >glub a zork, since that is the issue. > >But it a student says "I need to glub a zork [for an assignment]", the >point of the assignment is not to glub a zork, it is for the student to >FIGURE OUT HOW to glub a zork. It is this process of figuring out for >yourself that is absolutely crucial to the learning process when it comes >to programming. I think that's the point of contention, here. Certainly you don't give someone the answer to the assignment. But if the question is something like "I don't understand inheritance, can anyone help?", then we have a different situation on our hands. And forbidding the students from accessing the group where the knowledgable people congregate isn't the answer. Instead of banning all students, ban those who repeatedly misuse the privilege. >One of the things that is hard to learn if you teach programming (I have >been learning this for 30 years), is that when a student asks a question >about their program -- the *easy* thing to do, is just to answer the >question -- but if you do that, then you can easily short circuit the >assignment. A very common phenomenon, that was around long before the >net and newsgroups, since the same thing happens when you ask e.g. >teaching assistants, is that students manage to turn in homework assignments >that work without ever having learned the foggiest idea about how programs >work. They do this by writing some gross approximation, and then asking >lots of questions. People give them helpful hints ("you should initialize >this variable, you should do the multiplicatoin first ... etc") and they >manage to get the program working by assembling this advice. > >This certainly is not cheating, but it does short change the students, >and the trouble with the newsgroups and the net is that now this effect >can be greatly multiplied. I often see people trying to be helpful to >students, but they don't have the experience to do it the "right" way. > >That's because they don't understand the distinction ("a problem is a >problem") between problem solving in a professional environment and >students learning. I have worked as a programmer since I graduated in 1987. I have spent some time teaching programming (1 year full time, 5 years part time), and understand the distinction. But each question should be evaluated separately. By condemning all student, you close a valuable resource away from the ones who will use it wisely. > >So, always think about how to help people learn, not about how to help >people get their program working -- the two are not quite the same. Of course it isn't. But if you don't allow ANY students in the newsgroups, where the experienced programmers regularly visit, then you're not helping anybody do anything. - If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried. << Iceman >> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Matthew Givens @ 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Matthew said <<I think that's the point of contention, here. Certainly you don't give someone the answer to the assignment. But if the question is something like "I don't understand inheritance, can anyone help?", then we have a different situation on our hands. And forbidding the students from accessing the group where the knowledgable people congregate isn't the answer. Instead of banning all students, ban those who repeatedly misuse the privilege.>> Let me say once again, no one proposed banning all students, no such action is possible, and it is not desirable to ban anyone, we don't even have a mechanism for banning people who repeatedly abuse the newsgroup, and I think that's just fine. Yes, occasaionlly we get some noise, but everyone (I assume) knows how to use kill lists and can do the banning for themselves. You are the only person so far to suggest banning anyone at all, and I disagree with the sentiment -- I prefer CLA to be kept as an unmoderated group. Robert ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-22 0:00 ` mrbunny 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Matthew Givens @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` mrbunny 2 siblings, 2 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >Mark is obviously new to newsgroups, since he has so many misconceptions. >Sometimes it seems like more and more such people are around. Mark? What about your own misconceptions? >Anyway, the misconceptions should be set right for the benefit of >other neophyte readers of CLA :-) Setting it right, doesn't consist of providing mis-informed readers with more bad information, does it? >>Would students post in many thousands of messages a day? I doubt the >>Ada student population is big enough! It seems that not many colleges >There are hundreds of schools teaching Ada (go check www.adahome.com for >info), to thousands of students. if all of them posted questions about >all their assignments, simple arithmetic shows that 99% of the messages This is by far the most illogical thing I've ever heard. If every person on earth screamed at the top of their lungs we'd probably destroy the Earth too, but we both know neither of these is GOING to happen, therefore you're making up fictional situations to argue with non-fictional statements, Robert. Second, do you honestly believe that each and every one of those schools permits usenet access freely, much less every student know it is acessable? Hmm. >>on CLA would be from students. An analogy would be in a big lecture if >>students never read anything, and each asked dozens of qustions like >>"I couldn't be bothered to read about arrays, how do they work?" As And this is reason enough to disallow students with legitimate questions, what if they had felt that way about you? I'm sure you've asked a question inappropriately in your life. >>in a lecture, you need to put in some work of your own (e.g. visit >>www.adahome.com and run one of the online tutorials created by hard >>work of some individuals contributing their time). This may come as a surprise, Robert, but www.adahome.com isn't exactly the best known WWW site. They sort of have to be TOLD about it. On top of this, many student have put in their work, thay have text books, albeit useless ones, but they have looked in many cases. Obviously anyone who posts "My teacher gave me assignment X and I'm busy so could you do this for me," should be bound, gagged, and given a taste of a cat o' nine tails, but we're not specifing cheaters, but rather students who deserve every chance than can get to learn something in a way which they can understand. Not everyone can learn by reading a textbook, some may need a logical explanation behind the answer that only a user of that language can provide. Such as "I know there are DO and FOR loops, and I feel a DO loop is better to count from 1 to 100, but someone else says a FOR loop is more appropriate, can anyone explain why?" >>Am I right in my understanding that most of the academic newsgroups >>are on servers sponsored by universities? It seems a bitter irony >>then, that those organisations tasked with creating the new >>professionals should wish to deny them access to a very valuable >>resource. Does familiarity breed contempt? >No, your understanding is completely wrong, the newsgroups are not >"academic" newsgroups and have nothing whatever to do with universities. >The newsgroup feeds are of course available to any user of the net, >including universities, but they have no special status. Both of you are wrong. Usenet was FORMED by universities for the free exchange of information by/from students and professors. It then expanded to other users as the Internet became avaialble to more than schools and milliatry operations. However, at no time were students banned from using the service, Robert, and AFAIK, universities are still the primary carriers/supporters of usenet with Texas being the largest. it is Texas we can thank for helping put AOL and P* into a mode where spamming is a little less common, BTW. A few years back it was out rageous, every group had a 1-800-I-WANT-YOU message, so UT decided to filter out anything going to or coming from aol and P*. Needless to say, both decided the cost of cleaning up theor act ws not the same as the cost for bankruptcy. [SNIP] I must say I am shocked. It was my understanding that you were a well thought of and highly intelligent person, Mr. Dewar. However, last time I checked, improper usage of inductive logic was not a sign of high intelligence. In fact, I beleive racism, sexism, and homophobia are generally considered ignornat, correct? And your "studentism," is no different. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-26 0:00 ` mrbunny 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) <<This is by far the most illogical thing I've ever heard. If every person on earth screamed at the top of their lungs we'd probably destroy the Earth too.>> A good analogy, if I meet someone screaming at the top of their lungs I will ask them to stop! <<This may come as a surprise, Robert, but www.adahome.com isn't exactly the best known WWW site. They sort of have to be TOLD about it. On top of this, many student have put in their work, thay have text books, albeit useless ones, but they have looked in many cases>> Actually it is easy to find this site using any of the standard search engines (give it a try and you will see what I mean). Besides which all students (including mrbunny) immediately get informed about adahome as soon as they post here (by me if no one else -- I always send this information out to anyone whom it seems it will help!) <<And this is reason enough to disallow students with legitimate questions, what if they had felt that way about you? I'm sure you've asked a question inappropriately in your life.>> Not at all, I absolutely encourage students with legitimate questions, and no one is talking about disallowing anything -- this is a newsgroup. I certaily have not proposed making CLA moderated -- I think that would be a big mistake, since there is no enough consensus about what should be here -- so talk of disallowing anyone or anything is arguing against a strawman! <<I'm sure you've asked a question inappropriately in your life.>> ABsolutely, and when I do, I expect someone to tell me, and I concentrate on understanding why it is inappropriate, and trying to avoid asking inappropriate questions in the future. <<I must say I am shocked. It was my understanding that you were a well thought of and highly intelligent person, Mr. Dewar.>> Hmmm! interesting that what started out as not an entirely unreasonable post has to deteriorate into insults -- well one of the primary rules of the internet is not to let such attempts bother one :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: ><<I must say I am shocked. It was my understanding that you were a > well thought of and highly intelligent person, Mr. Dewar.>> >Hmmm! interesting that what started out as not an entirely unreasonable >post has to deteriorate into insults -- well one of the primary rules >of the internet is not to let such attempts bother one :-) Don't patronize me. This thread was one big insult to anyone who is, has been, or ever will be a student, Mr. Dewar. The basic premise is students should be banned form usenet because they are stupid and serve no purpose in the original posters eyes. I call that slightly unfriendly, myself. If you find the truth insulting, I'm sorry. But from what I have read in this thread, it started out as ALL STUDENTS go away and not ALL CHEATERS go away. I find such statements very poorly thought out and down right unintelligent. In fact, I find it rather Nazish if you want to know the truth. It seems you were arguing for this point and that your reasons were that students ask inappropriate questions. This may not be so, but that is what the thread has appeared to show. As well, what makes you think a new college student taking an Ada class, has a clue what a search engine is? I know my college CIS labs didn't tell me what such things were. In fact, I had to experiment just to find out the labs permitted internet access, and figure out what types of access it supported. Furthermore, you make the assumption that no student is learning from the solutions people have posted on usenet. My last Psych class didn't seem to agree with this broad assumption. In fact, research showed that multiple forms of stimulant were te best way to learn something. IE, hearing and reading it, or seeing and hearing it or whatever. It also showed that reading something in a book and talking with someone about that subject promoted greater learning than just reading or just talking. I may be wrong, but typing through usenet and chat is the closest thing we have to talking to people on the net wihtout buying some $150+ Netphone. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-28 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-04-29 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 2 siblings, 2 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Daniel said <<Don't patronize me. This thread was one big insult to anyone who is, has been, or ever will be a student, Mr. Dewar. The basic premise is students should be banned form usenet because they are stupid and serve no purpose in the original posters eyes. I call that slightly unfriendly, myself.>> Despite Daniel's energetic attempts to persuade people to favor such a ban, at least for some students, the fact of the matter is that no one has suggested banning anyone -- nore is there any mechanism to do so, nor has anyone favored putting such a mechanism in place. So you are tilting at windmills here I am afraid! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-30 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-05-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1 sibling, 2 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >Daniel said ><<Don't patronize me. This thread was one big insult to anyone who >is, has been, or ever will be a student, Mr. Dewar. The basic premise >is students should be banned form usenet because they are stupid >and serve no purpose in the original posters eyes. I call that slightly >unfriendly, myself.>> >Despite Daniel's energetic attempts to persuade people to favor such a ban, You must be sick. I have not tried to persuade ANYONE to favor ANYTHING. I have stated I am shocked at some of your over generalizations of students. >at least for some students, the fact of the matter is that no one has >suggested banning anyone -- nore is there any mechanism to do so, nor You don't think "STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!" suggests anything of the sort, correct? Considering a thread title is supposed to "reflect" the content, I must disagree. >has anyone favored putting such a mechanism in place. So you are tilting >at windmills here I am afraid! First, I know that it isn't possible to physically ban students from posting. Second, it is possible to make the group so unattractive and vicious they will not visit it. The EMAIL recieve by this reader was one such attempt Mr. Dewar. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-30 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-05-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1 sibling, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: John M. Mills @ 1997-04-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) afn03257@freenet2.afn.org (Daniel P Hudson) writes: >dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >>Despite Daniel's energetic attempts to persuade people to favor such a ban, >You must be sick. I have not tried to persuade ANYONE to favor >ANYTHING. Guess you missed the @;^/ there. On the other hand you just earned a place in my [very small] 'Kill' file. Congratulations! Hasta la vista, Mr. Hudson! -- John M. Mills, Senior Research Engineer -- john.m.mills@gtri.gatech.edu Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0834 Phone contacts: 404.894.0151 (voice), 404.894.6258 (FAX) "Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Simulations" ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-30 0:00 ` John M. Mills @ 1997-05-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-05-03 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-05-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Daniel said <<You must be sick. I have not tried to persuade ANYONE to favor ANYTHING. I have stated I am shocked at some of your over generalizations of students.>> Perhaps you should look up "irony" in the dictionary :-) <<You don't think "STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!" suggests anything of the sort, correct? Considering a thread title is supposed to "reflect" the content, I must disagree.>> You must have joined us late. This thread title was coined by a student, not by any of the egular contributors to CLA. It reflects a particular students misunderstanding of what was being said -- in fact I think that particular student now has a bit better understanding, but thread titles stick around (partly so that people can follow them, or perhaps in this case more likely, kill them) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-05-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-05-03 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-05-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-05-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >Daniel said ><<You must be sick. I have not tried to persuade ANYONE to favor > ANYTHING. I have stated I am shocked at some of your over > generalizations of students.>> >Perhaps you should look up "irony" in the dictionary :-) Yes, how silly of me, I always use IRONY in the MIDDLE of a serious discusion, especially one that is trying to make students feel unwanted in usenet. I also forget to put a smiley next to my ironic statements so everyone can mistake irony for confusion. >8-> [Sarcasm] ><<You don't think "STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!" suggests anything of the sort, > correct? Considering a thread title is supposed to "reflect" > the content, I must disagree.>> >You must have joined us late. This thread title was coined by a student, Nope : Basically the first message was a FOLLOW-UP to an E-mail he got Mr. Bunny says he got a disturbing E-mail which says students shouldn't post to CLA, then says he does not believe the statements about all Ada students in the world flooding the group, and simple logic supports his claim. He then goes on to say that he thought usenet was an academic system, which it was originally. He also mentions that if CLA members DON'T want students participating they could surely MAKE a student Ada newsgroup. Did I miss anything? Your follow up. Yes, every Ada student would crush us, yadda, yadda, yadda about something that will never happen and is just an excause to harass the few students we have that DO use this group. Followed by a statement saying usenet has nothing to do with academics, and that Mr. bunny should create an alt group instead of wasting his time posting here. Good to go so far? Followed by me, saying your usage of an imaginary situation of 1000's of Ada students posting here is a poor reason to have told Mr. Bunny he is not welcome here in the E-mail he got [not that you mailed him], correcting your mis-conception about usenet and academics since it was academic communities that created usenet some 2-3 decades ago, and I don't think I commented on the ALT group remark even though you misunderstood his original statement which was for you, the people who know how to create newsgroups and don't want the students visiting your precious group, to creata a comp.lang.ada.4.students newsgroup. Now there were other side threads going on, but they were not of concern in our discussion. I'm going to return to lurking now, and you are your screwy quoting style can say what you want, but your post appears to argue against STUDENTS posting to CLA, and particularly Mr. Bunny, period. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-05-03 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-05-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-05-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Daniel said <<Nope : Basically the first message was a FOLLOW-UP to an E-mail he got Mr. Bunny says he got a disturbing E-mail which says students shouldn't post to CLA, then says he does not believe the statements about all Ada students in the world flooding the group, and simple logic supports his claim>> No that's plain wrong, the subject line of this thread was indeed typed into the computer by mrbunny and no one else! The "disturbing email" that you refer to (but which you have not seen) was a message from me that suggested that before posting questions asking for help on assignments, it was appropriate to make an effort to find out answers for yourself, and I pointed him to www.adahome.com among other sources. He reacted by posting the message that gave rise to this thread -- I think he misinterpreted what I said (I have subsequently tried to make my position clear -- and it is one which I think most people understand -- and indeed I have subsequently exchanged a number of messages with mrbunny and as you may have noticed, he found this and other exchanges helpful (and posted a message to this effect). P.S. I suspect that the great majority of other people on this newsgroup immediately detected the irony in my original statement. I didn't consider a smiley appropriate, since the whole point of ironic statements is that they are delivered as though serious, but intended to be immediately understood as non-serious. The fact that you did not pick up on it is of course the joke, and that does warrant a smiley :-) P.P.S. The reason I maintain this silly subject line is so that all those who have killed it already will not see these messages. I suspect that is a large number of readers :-) P.P.P.S. One cannot followup an email message, the word followup is used in this environment to refer to replies to posted messages. The initial message in such a thread has a subject coined by the creator of the thread, as in this case. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1 sibling, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >Daniel said ><<Don't patronize me. This thread was one big insult to anyone who >is, has been, or ever will be a student, Mr. Dewar. The basic premise >is students should be banned form usenet because they are stupid >and serve no purpose in the original posters eyes. I call that slightly >unfriendly, myself.>> >Despite Daniel's energetic attempts to persuade people to favor such a ban, You must be sick. I have not tried to persuade ANYONE to favor ANYTHING. I have stated I am shocked at some of your over generalizations of students. >at least for some students, the fact of the matter is that no one has >suggested banning anyone -- nore is there any mechanism to do so, nor You don't think "STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!" suggests anything of the sort, correct? Considering a thread title is supposed to "reflect" the content, I must disagree. >has anyone favored putting such a mechanism in place. So you are tilting >at windmills here I am afraid! First, I know that it isn't possible to physically ban students from posting. Second, it is possible to make the group so unattractive and vicious they will not visit it. The EMAIL recieve by this reader was one such attempt Mr. Dewar. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-28 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-29 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 2 siblings, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: John M. Mills @ 1997-04-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) afn03257@freenet2.afn.org (Daniel P Hudson) writes: >dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >>Hmmm! interesting that what started out as not an entirely unreasonable >>post has to deteriorate into insults Mr. Hudson: When I sent you e-mail noting that personal character attacks in newsgroup postings seemed inappropriate to me, and that they rather diminish the credence I place in the poster, rather than in the person attacked, my e-mail bounced. Therefore I remark here that, though I am impatient with much of the flameage which sometimes greets naive postings in c.l.a., personal insults are inappropriate in any newsgroup, and primariy tarnish the image of their authors. Now that you have net access, I suggest you read the newusers notes on netiquette. -- John M. Mills, Senior Research Engineer -- john.m.mills@gtri.gatech.edu Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0834 Phone contacts: 404.894.0151 (voice), 404.894.6258 (FAX) "Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Simulations" ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-28 0:00 ` John M. Mills @ 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Daniel P Hudson @ 1997-04-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) jm59@prism.gatech.edu (John M. Mills) wrote: >afn03257@freenet2.afn.org (Daniel P Hudson) writes: >>dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >>>Hmmm! interesting that what started out as not an entirely unreasonable >>>post has to deteriorate into insults >Mr. Hudson: >When I sent you e-mail noting that personal character attacks >in newsgroup postings seemed inappropriate to me, and that they rather >diminish the credence I place in the poster, rather than in the person Frankly, I could care less how you determine my credence. >attacked, my e-mail bounced. Sorry, my server is on the FRITZ, and has been for some time now. >Therefore I remark here that, though I am impatient with much of the >flameage which sometimes greets naive postings in c.l.a., personal >insults are inappropriate in any newsgroup, and primariy tarnish >the image of their authors. Yet, you don't find a thread titled "STUDENTS GO AWAY" offensive or insultive at all? Well, to each his own I guess. >Now that you have net access, I suggest you read the newusers notes on >netiquette. And you don't think this was an attempt at an insult by any means, either correct? "Do as I say not as I do," seems to come to mind here. I'd love to make you think you accomplished something here, but the truth is I read news.newusers over 4 years ago. Don't worry though because I, unlike you, won't judge you on your attempt at an insult. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-28 0:00 ` John M. Mills @ 1997-04-29 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 2 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-04-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <5jufaq$r5l@huron.eel.ufl.edu>, afn03257@freenet2.afn.org (Daniel P Hudson) writes: > dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >><<I must say I am shocked. It was my understanding that you were a >> well thought of and highly intelligent person, Mr. Dewar.>> > >>Hmmm! interesting that what started out as not an entirely unreasonable >>post has to deteriorate into insults -- well one of the primary rules >>of the internet is not to let such attempts bother one :-) > > Don't patronize me. This thread was one big insult to anyone who > is, has been, or ever will be a student, Mr. Dewar. The basic premise > is students should be banned form usenet because they are stupid > and serve no purpose in the original posters eyes. I call that slightly > unfriendly, myself. I had the advantage of being on vacation last week, so I saw this thread all at once. It was started by someone assuming the view of a student, not at all by Robert Dewar. Reading the thread all in order at once shows me nobody patronizing, and just a few people resenting. Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` mrbunny 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: mrbunny @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Daniel P Hudson wrote: >And your "studentism," is no different. Guys! Please don't dig trenches, otherwise we will all be losers. --An attempt to put the problem in perspective.-- If all computer students studying ada used newsgroups for all their assignment questions the probility of them posting messages would be 100% However few if any students will study Ada exclusively, course work is likely to include maths, other languages, system analysis, applications, business studies, etc., bringing the probability of an assignment qustion being Ada related down to maybe 25% Not all of a students time is spent on assignments, there are lectures, tutorials, revision weeks, exams, inductions, demonstrations, etc., maybe only 50% of effort is spent on assignments, reducing the likely hood of an assingment question arising down to 12.5% Of the assignment questions, not all will cause the student a problem. He/she will answer many of the questions from what they have learnt. Maybe only 50% of the the assignment causes them a problem, reducing the probability of them needing assistance down to 6.25% Of these students how many have the knowledge, equipment and facilities to access the newsgroup at a time when the help is required. Maybe only 50%. The probability of them posting to the newsgroup reduces to 3.125% Of these students, how many know of the Ada newsgroup, again maybe only 50%, the probability of needing assistance is now down to 1.56% Of these students how many would use the Ada newsgroup as a source of information instead of text books, tutors, class discussions, course notes, online tutorials even. Maybe 25%? The probability of them using the newsgroup is now .39% If the international student population studying Ada is 100,000 then the .39% of students wishing to post to usenet amounts to 390 students. A student is at college for around 30 weeks of the year giving 210 days in which to post to the newsgroup. This means that an average of 1.86 postings a day will be received from students. And this only during term time. I know this is a crude simulation but it does give some "shape" to the problem. Mark. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-26 0:00 ` mrbunny @ 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Dale Stanbrough @ 1997-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mrbunny@mail.zynet.co.uk writes: "I know this is a crude simulation but it does give some "shape" to the problem." At RMIT, we have a local newsgroup devoted entirely to Ada discussions, as well as newsgroups for each subject. These tend to capture 99% of all Ada questions before they get out of the door (We have over 300 students studying programming and SE using Ada, and you don't see too many posts from rmit students on c.l.a.). I think that local newsgroups are a much better way to handle these sort of students requests, as the volume is a lot lower than c.l.a., and the answers are knowingly pitched at the appropriate level for other students to pick up on. Dale ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough @ 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Dale said <<I think that local newsgroups are a much better way to handle these sort of students requests, as the volume is a lot lower than c.l.a., and the answers are knowingly pitched at the appropriate level for other students to pick up on.<< At NYU, we use class mailing lists in much the same way, very sucessfully. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Students, Welcome!, was Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? mrbunny 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Tom Moran 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1997-04-22 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey 1997-04-22 0:00 ` John M. Mills 3 siblings, 2 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Tom Moran @ 1997-04-21 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) If novice questions threaten to overwhelm c.l.a. then surely we can split it up. Until then, I'm in favor of inclusion. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: Students, Welcome!, was Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Students, Welcome!, was " Tom Moran @ 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) One thing that will help is if all students even coming near CLA know about www.adahome.com, since many of their questions are answered there. We have one of the best home pages around, thanks to the folks who do such a good job of putting this together and maintaining it. I guess we should point to it frequently! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: Students, Welcome!, was Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.861817424@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: >One thing that will help is if all students even coming near CLA know >about www.adahome.com, since many of their questions are answered there. >We have one of the best home pages around, thanks to the folks who do >such a good job of putting this together and maintaining it. I guess >we should point to it frequently! Also www.acm.org/sigada.education, which is designed specifically for students and educators. Both of these URLs are in my .sig, which I generally include at the bottom of CLA posts. Mike Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman - chair, SIGAda Education Working Group Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The George Washington University - Washington, DC 20052 USA 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Cooperate with those who have both know-how and integrity." Fortune cookie, Wu Dynasty, Bethesda, MD, Spring 1996. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ada on the WWW: www.acm.org/sigada/education or www.adahome.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: Students, Welcome!, was Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Students, Welcome!, was " Tom Moran 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1 sibling, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <335C3071.6EE0@bix.com>, Tom Moran <tmoran@bix.com> wrote: > >If novice questions threaten to overwhelm c.l.a. then surely we can >split it up. Until then, I'm in favor of inclusion. So am I. If I think a student is going too far in asking us to do his or her homework, I will simply and politely (and probably privately) say so. Mike Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman - chair, SIGAda Education Working Group Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The George Washington University - Washington, DC 20052 USA 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Cooperate with those who have both know-how and integrity." Fortune cookie, Wu Dynasty, Bethesda, MD, Spring 1996. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ada on the WWW: www.acm.org/sigada/education or www.adahome.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? mrbunny 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Students, Welcome!, was " Tom Moran @ 1997-04-22 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey 1997-04-22 0:00 ` John M. Mills 3 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Jerry Petrey @ 1997-04-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5193 bytes --] mrbunny@mail.zynet.co.uk wrote: > > First, many thanks to those who responded positively to my request for > information. > > Having posted a request to assist my computer studies (See simple > student problem). I have been e-mailed to tell me that I have made an > "inconsiderate mistake" and that if this news group was open to > students there would be many thousands of postings every day, making > the newsgroup inoperable. I have many objections to this argument, as > follows: > > If paedophiles and sado-masochists can have free access to their > special interest groups why can I not have the same equality? > > If I was a post-graduate student or a final year student working on > leading edge Ada applications nobody would object to my postings > because they would be interesting. Is the objection therefore really > about wanting to avoid "casual" questions? If so the message was > clearly marked simple student problem so it could be avoided by those > not interested. > > Would students post in many thousands of messages a day? I doubt the > Ada student population is big enough! It seems that not many colleges > use Ada as a teaching language. At TVU we only study it in the first > year, so I would guess that only a small percentage of computer > students have an interest in Ada. Until I mentioned the group to my > class-mates none of them knew of it�s existence, and neither did the > tutor. If that is the case in other colleges then the number of > potential posters dwindles drastically. Not all Ada students go on to > become Ada professionals but I would imagine that Ada professionals > have over the years accumulated in numbers to the point where the > population of Ada professionals probably far outweighs the population > of Ada students. Therefore if the quantity of messages posted to the > newsgroup is reflective of the entire population of Ada professionals, > it would need a vast international army of voracious Ada students to > post many thousands of messages a day. Where are they? > > I see a lot on the Ada web sites concerning the demise of Ada and > attempts to promote the greater use of Ada. If the Ada community is > serious about this then they are shooting themselves in the foot by > banning students from the news group. I study part time attending > college one day a week. A lot is crammed into the day and the > opportunities for access to specific tutors is extremely limited. As > we travel from distant places none of my class mates are on hand to > discuss problems outside of college. If I find my current text books > inadequate, the supply of college books is so short that I must > reserve a book two weeks in advance! The local library also requires > me to order books because they consider Ada too obscure to warrant > stocking text books. New text books are prohibitively expensive. > Having access to the newsgroup for the OCASSIONAL problem would be > extremely helpful. > > Am I right in my understanding that most of the academic newsgroups > are on servers sponsored by universities? It seems a bitter irony > then, that those organisations tasked with creating the new > professionals should wish to deny them access to a very valuable > resource. Does familiarity breed contempt? > > If all that I have said is wrong, and that students really would be a > nuisance, then why can the problem not be solved by creating an Ada > student�s newsgroup. If there are resources to create newsgroups about > sadism and paedophilia then I am very angry that students cannot have > an equal share of the webs resources. > > The spirit of the web is one of equality and freedom, unless it seems, > you are a student! > > Mark. Students most certainly should be welcome on cla. No one controls access here. However, a lot of users of this newsgroup object to students who just want someone to do their homework assignment for them. We all know that no one will learn anything that way. If a person doesn't want to take the time to study and really learn something from the class he is taking (for whatever reason), then he should just drop it. But asking for help in understanding is fine and should be encouraged. It's all a matter of what you ask and how! I think your approach of identifing that your request was a student question in the header was a good one - if people don't want to help, then they can skip it. We get far more worthless messages on cla all the time than a legitimate student question! I do disagree about there not many Ada students however. I think there are a lot more than you realize and rightfully so - Ada is becomming more and more popular and there are a lot of Ada jobs paying good salaries out there. Good luck with your studies. Jerry -- ===================================================================== == Jerry Petrey == == Consultant Software Engineer - Member Team Ada and Team Forth == == Rockwell Collins Commercial Avionics Group == == Melbourne, FL email: gdp@mlb.cca.rockwell.com == ===================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-21 0:00 STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? mrbunny ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1997-04-22 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey @ 1997-04-22 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline 1997-04-25 0:00 ` mrbunny 3 siblings, 2 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: John M. Mills @ 1997-04-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mrbunny@mail.zynet.co.uk writes: [..] >Having posted a request to assist my computer studies (See simple >student problem). I have been e-mailed to tell me that I have made an >"inconsiderate mistake" and that if this news group was open to >students there would be many thousands of postings every day, making >the newsgroup inoperable. I have many objections to this argument, as >follows: [.. eliding Mark's well placed comments, ..] Basic_Student_Advocacy is new Soapbox(hearsay_evidence); with Basic_Student_Advocacy; use Basic_Student_Advocacy; package body Ventilation is begin I have long been bemused by CLA correspondents' tendency to leap on basic language questions, particularly those which might be related to class assignments, as inappropriate, and generally suggesting that such posts are an attempt to "get something for nothing," to the detriment of the educational process, and a potential dilution of the serious content of the group. There is even a FAQ on it! My Net experience has been that posts and responses are a good way to get answers to common but confusing questions which plague many beginners in areas from programming to sports, and a rather poor place to follow reasoned, abstract, academic discussions. I think that more bandwidth could be freed by summarily diverting the language flame wars to the appropriate [!] *.advocacy newsgroups than is ever likely to be burned up by low-level mechanical language questions. If CLA readers are so offended by encountering introductory-level questions, split the group as has been done for other groups, isolating basic and tutorial questions from more specialized and/or complex ones. Castigating posters of elementary questions and impugning their motives is a pretty funny form of advocacy. If students can "cheat" on their classwork by asking questions on the net perhaps the intellectual content of the classes needs a bit of beefing up and the mechanical content a bit of reduction to pre-programmed materials. However, I do not believe that students are generally being shortchanged in this manner -- I rather think that rumors of the supposed damage to their classroom experience are, as Mark Twain said about reports of his death, "greatly exaggerated." end Ventilation; -- John M. Mills, Senior Research Engineer -- john.m.mills@gtri.gatech.edu Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0834 Phone contacts: 404.894.0151 (voice), 404.894.6258 (FAX) "Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Simulations" ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-22 0:00 ` John M. Mills @ 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-25 0:00 ` mrbunny 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Kevin Cline @ 1997-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) jm59@prism.gatech.edu (John M. Mills) wrote: >My Net experience has been that posts and responses are a good way to >get answers to common but confusing questions which plague many beginners >in areas from programming to sports, and a rather poor place to follow >reasoned, abstract, academic discussions. > And there are many inexpert instructors in the world (probably not so many teaching Ada as C++ for obvious economic reasons), so for large numbers of students c.l.a. is the best place to get authoritative answers to subtle questions. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Kevin Cline said <<And there are many inexpert instructors in the world (probably not so many teaching Ada as C++ for obvious economic reasons), so for large numbers of students c.l.a. is the best place to get authoritative answers to subtle questions.>> And unless you have a *very* different idea about what might constitute a subtle question, I have never seen anyone object to a student or anyone else posing such a question to CLA (although I have seen plenty of inexpert answers to such questions on CLA :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-22 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline @ 1997-04-25 0:00 ` mrbunny [not found] ` <01bc52a3$c91b7ce0$28f982c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> 1 sibling, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: mrbunny @ 1997-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3003 bytes --] Thank you all very much for your responses, particularly to Mr Dewar who has also taken the time for a few "off air" discussions. Unfortunately many assumptions have been made about students. Yes there are some that would post in at the drop of a hat but a very unfair assumption has been made that "all" students are lazy and unresourceful. Saying "If all students....." condemns us all to the bottom of the heap and does not remotely provide a true picture of the range of personalities that exist within the maligned collective "students" In my experience of two university courses lazy students are the minority. I believe that time constrained examinations (in my case a 3 hour program modification task sitting at the terminal) are still a crucial part of most technical courses, and therefore students are well aware that they must develop a proper "learning process" to fully understand their subject. Contrary to the the implications being made that "all" students are lazy and unresourceful, in todays economic climate many students work very hard to cope with both financial and academic pressures. My "negative" response to being told not to post to the group arose from the sweeping assumption (yes another one!) that my simple question was evidence of my unresourcefulness and lack of understanding of the learning process. I had in fact looked through my course notes, through text books, and through sample programs and not found what I was looking for. The simple reason being that what I was looking for did not exist A single command for deleting one record from an array. I now understand that the method is to move all records above that to be deleted down one level, an idea I was toying with. But with the manipulation of arrays being so commonplace I could not believe that there was not a simple command I had overlooked to perform this. Also if you consider yourself to be an intelligent resourceful person it hurts to be told you cant talk to someone because you are not an intelligent resourceful person. I am now 39 years old. I left school with only low level qualifications but despite that I rose to director level of a recruitment company turning over �3 million p.a. I own two houses, and the mortgage is paid on one of them. (The recession and stress led me into computing) So to be labelled as someone lacking in resourcefulness and having no understanding of the learning process is dissappointing, to say the least. More than 25% of the UK student population are over 25yrs old. They are usually like myself, looking for a career change, often they are single parents raising children as well as studying. These are very resourceful people. So you see, this concept that students are so unresourceful that given half a chance they will "all" post into the newsgroup for each and every assignment question is ridiculous! We are being discouraged from the group as a result of a fears based on little hard evidence. Fears based on assumptions. Mark ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <01bc52a3$c91b7ce0$28f982c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com>]
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? [not found] ` <01bc52a3$c91b7ce0$28f982c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> @ 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-28 0:00 ` mrbunny 0 siblings, 1 reply; 39+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Nick said <<I have myself experienced 'higher' education in this country (as a mature student), and it is certainly not easy. Resources for Computer Science departments are generally poor. I can only concur with this post, and others, that students should not be shunned wholesale from this newsgroup. Should we not be aiming to encourage students of the Ada language, and trying to make them feel good about both the language, and the Ada community? It would be a good idea to try to ensure that a flyer giving a few 'ground rules' to all new posters to this newsgroup be made available, perhaps by means of a regular automated posting. I'm a great believer in the concept of consensus: if students do not abuse the newsgroup, they needn't pose a problem or a threat. They are the Ada programmers of the future.>> I don't think anyone suggested that students should be "shunned wholesale" (unless you take mrbunny's suggestion to form a separate newsgroup as being along these lines -- but as I said earlier, I don 't really favor a separate newsgroup). What I do favor is the idea that students should make some effort to look at standard useful stuff starting at www.adahome.com before firing off questions that they should be able to at least attempt answering themselves (and sometimes this attempt can be a very good way of learning, even if it is unsuccessful). Actually your suggestion for a flyer for all new posters is attractive, really all it needs to do is to point to www.adahome.com. A number of newsgroups do this, but I had the impression that to achieve this, a newsgroup must be moderated, and that seems a bad idea for CLA. I don't like the idea of restricting anyone from posting ... But if I am wrong on this, and we can set this up without introducing a moderator that would be valuable. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
* Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-04-28 0:00 ` mrbunny 0 siblings, 0 replies; 39+ messages in thread From: mrbunny @ 1997-04-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Nick Roberts said; > >It would be a good idea to try to ensure that a flyer giving a few 'ground >rules' to all new posters to this newsgroup be made available, perhaps by >means of a regular automated posting. I'm a great believer in the concept >of consensus: if students do not abuse the newsgroup, they needn't pose a >problem or a threat. Speaking as a beginner student, what would be helpful is a suggestion as to the way forward from a problem. Eg. "To delete a record from an array try rearranging the structure of the records." I still have to resolve most of the problem and of course do the coding. I think giving students coding might be more confusing than helpful, as you may be using commands etc. that we have not yet come across. If we did figure out how to use them we would perhaps have missed the point of the assignment, ie. to show mastery of the commands we do know. This may not be the case for more advanced students who are presumably expected to be more adventurous. I suspect most beginners will look at the coding examples in some of the postings and scurry off elsewhere for fear of embarrassing themselves! Students who are posting in weekly I would guess are taking advantage. When our little boats of learning get stuck on the rocks all we need is a shove in the right direction. We will still do the paddling! Mark. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 39+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1997-05-04 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 39+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1997-04-21 0:00 STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!?????? mrbunny 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-22 0:00 ` mrbunny 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Samuel A. Mize 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Matthew Givens 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-30 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-05-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-05-03 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-05-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-28 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Daniel P Hudson 1997-04-29 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1997-04-26 0:00 ` mrbunny 1997-04-27 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough 1997-04-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-21 0:00 ` Students, Welcome!, was " Tom Moran 1997-04-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1997-04-22 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey 1997-04-22 0:00 ` John M. Mills 1997-04-25 0:00 ` Kevin Cline 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-25 0:00 ` mrbunny [not found] ` <01bc52a3$c91b7ce0$28f982c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> 1997-04-26 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-04-28 0:00 ` mrbunny
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox