Marking Schemes

If you're a true gamer at heart you're constantly looking at life through a particularly odd lens. How do I play? How do I win? It doesn't matter if normal people could possibly imagine something as a game... To you everything is a game and you need to win!

MITx's first course, Circuits and Electronics, started today. The first thing I did after logging in to the system was check out the syllabus and find the marking scheme. This was always the most important thing to do for a class back when I was still in school. It lets you know what the professor thinks is important and where you're likely to need to focus your energy.

I can remember having a class with 10% for assignments, 20% for the midterm, and 70% for the final. There were 10 assignments so each was worth only 1% of the final grade and they were each likely to take 10ish hours to complete. By contrast studying for the final was only likely to take 10ish hours on its own and would be worth 70 times as much. These numbers are really out of whack! It's here that you need to figure out what exactly you're trying to accomplish with the class. Are you trying for the highest mark possible? Do you just want to barely pass? Do you want a merely good mark? Is your goal to learn the material? Will pounding away at long assignments help understand the course or will it merely occupy a lot of time?

Personally I found I learned things just fine from a book and didn't have a lot to gain from doing overly long assignments. It depended on the class, of course, but the one referenced above? I didn't do those assignments. I wish I could say I spent the saved time on something more valuable than sleeping and playing bridge but that would be a lie. On the flip side I remember spending a lot of time on low value assignments for some of my programming classes because I enjoyed doing them and thought I did have something to gain by slogging away at them.

At any rate, what is the marking scheme going to be for 6.002x? 15% assignments, 15% labs, 30% midterm, 40% final. There are 12 each for assignments and labs where they're only counting your top 10 scores. The claim from the announcement is that the whole course should only take 10 hours per week which includes the assignment, lab, watching the lectures, and reading the book. This seems like a split more in line with actually forcing people to do the work each week than my anecdote. The assignments should be substantially shorter and worth more. The final is worth significantly less. And the threshold for success is higher, I think. You need to get at least a C to get the credential for the course. I don't know how they're translating numbers into letters but I think 63-66 is a C. (Looking at the course profile it seems 60 is a C.) So it's not possible to pass with only doing the final. Midterm and final combined could do it but they've come right out and stated that problems from the assignments/labs will be on the midterm and final. Also everything is being marked by a bot and not real people so there's a lot to be gained by doing the work to see how the bot will mark things. So even if I was interested in just doing the least work possible to get a credential I'd probably want to do some of the assignments anyway.

Of course, I am interested in actually playing around with their lab environment! So even if optimally I should game the system by skipping the labs I'd be trying them out anyway. I'm just happy to see that's probably not the case. The assignments can be done with other people and the exam is a solo affair so it makes sense to have it be worth proportionally more per time invested but the 70:1 ratio from some of my older courses was just too much. This course feels, on the surface at least, like it has a better ratio. Time will tell if I end up wanting to do even 10 assignments let alone all 12.

MITx

Today's post is only tangentially related to gaming but I think it could really interest some people who may be reading. (I found out about this program from an article linked on Facebook by Mike Turian and I wouldn't know him if not for my Planeswalker Points posts a few months ago.) The program is called MITx and the basic idea is that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is planning on putting out free online versions of some of their courses. There will be video clips from lectures, excerpts from text books, and automatically marked assignments and exams. Passing the course won't get you any closer to a degree but can get you a certification stating you took the course and passed.

Personally I miss being in school. I was never really big on actually attending class since I've found I learn best from books and have a real aversion to talking to people so I never really asked questions in classes anyway. I like actually being in a course though. Having someone who knows something plan out what they think is important to learn is useful. Knowing what book to read, and what sections are important, and having a schedule to get it done are all really important.

I've often thought about taking night/weekend classes somewhere and regularly browse the 'continuing education' things that come in the mail from various Toronto based universities but I've never found a course I was actually interested in taking. I hated electives/'bird courses' when I was in school and the continuing education stuff all seems to be even simpler than those or are business courses which don't really appeal to me. It makes me think what sort of course I would want to take... Statistical modeling, quantum physics, psychology, robotics...

It turns out MITx is launching it's pilot class on the 5th of March. They're starting with 6.002X which is one of the starting electrical engineering courses. Maybe not my first choice but certainly something interesting. They make it sound complicated with all kinds of US based prerequisites. Part of me worries that I don't know enough about magnetism to follow along. Part of me worries that I already know everything covered in the course from CS256 and the electronics class I took in high school. But CS256 was one of my favourite classes and I hope if the pilot is a success they'll bring further courses along this chain to the program later. I'm pretty psyched about the class. I've already enrolled and am considering buying the textbook to more easily follow along. And since it's free and there's no penalty for failure I figure it can't hurt to sign up and give it a shot.

Sound interesting? Check out the webpage and enrol before it starts next week!