Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

In article <0313A6944836C48E.193DB760B2AB7789.7A79EA9ECF40F6E3@library-proxy.airnews.net> clines@delete_this.airmail.net (Kevin Cline) writes:

  > I wonder if the student was even informed that he should read the
  > manual.  In all seriousness, I feel sorry for Mr. Eachus students.
  > I don't think Mr.  Eachus would be very happy if he were told that
  > a file he accidental deleted while working at Mitre was
  > unrecoverable because no backups were made.

   First of all, it wasn't my student, it was Richard O'Keefe's.

   Second, there are levels of blame.  Back when I was teaching, if I
handed out an assignment that was too hard because of a mistake I
made, the students didn't suffer for it in grading.  But if the
assignment was within the realm of possibility, I would certainly give
credit to those who got it right.  And if in such a situation a
student called me to say "this can't be right," I'd check that the
problem was solvable.  (And spread the word if it wasn't, but I never
had to do that.  I always solved and checked solutions before I handed
out a problem, even if it was in the text and had an answer in the
back.  I was going to hand out solution sets anyway, might as well do
them ahead of time.)

    But it is the student's responsibility to follow the directions.
I had no problem holding people to the problems as stated.  And I did
say, and still feel that:

   >> eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
   >> >   But in reality it is the responsibility of the students to get the
   >> >knowledge that they need.

   Professors have lots of responsibilities, but they can't use
telepathy to find out what the students don't know.  The (good) profs
will help if asked, but can't help if they don't know there is a
problem.  (How many hands are we up to now?)  I always adjusted hours
to reality.  If I was teaching a programming course with an assignment
due Tuesday, I was in the computer lab Sunday night. Thursday office
hours weren't going to help.   

--

					Robert I. Eachus

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