Posts from — January 2008

Just in case you were wondering if getting a degree would improve your job prospects:

Man in Yellow Dog Mascot Suit

I’m not trying to pick on the guy but that couldn’t have been his first career choice.

One suggestion that I received from another student when I told them of my plan to take classes online was to investigate a product called 2xAV by Enounce.

In simple terms, what it does is speed up the playback of video streamed over the Internet. I was skeptical at first but the instant I used this product on a real class I knew I was hooked. It was the best $29.95 I spent. Videos can be played back at significantly faster rates with no loss of intelligibility.

To give you an idea of how valuable this feature is, consider that many classes offered at Harvard Extension are streamed via RealPlayer over a broadband connection and last around 2 hours per class. Each video section is about an hour long.

With 2xAV, I can regularly speed up my videos 1.5 times normal rate and watch those videos in 40 minutes. That’s about 80 minutes versus 120. For some classes where the professor has a particular slow style of speech, I’ve been able to speed up the video two times normal speed! That’s an extra hour!

The best part of this is that you find yourself actually getting more out of the videos because all of the distracting pauses are eliminated. You can’t drift off because the pace of the lecture keeps you engaged.

If you plan to do a significant amount of your coursework over the Internet, you owe it to yourself to investigate this tool. It works on Real and Windows Media codecs (but they are two separate products) and doesn’t require you to download the video to speed it up. It’ll work on streamed video.

If I’m honest, I wish the program (which is a plugin for your media players) was more robust. I encountered some minor problems the first time I installed it but was able to get it working in short order.

I also wish that they developed support for Flash video players. Harvard is experimenting with Flash-based streaming of videos and that doesn’t work with this tool. Unless they drop Real entirely, I’ll probably stick with the provided Real streams. I find that they look better at the higher bitrates and the usefulness of this tool is too much to ignore for some minor Flash convenience.

If you’re constantly looking for a way to cut down the time required to get through the lectures, you owe it to yourself to investigate this tool. I give it my endorsement.

2xAV Plug-in
Enounce

A recent submission on Reddit asked if it was better to quit a job to attend a top 20 CS program or to keep the job and commute part-time to a local school that’s ranked 60th or 70th.

First, setting aside all of my misgivings about how poorly the common school rankings fail to measure the suitability of a particular program for anyone, if you’re already employed in the field of IT or in a technology position, it’s my opinion that leaving a paying job that you enjoy to take up an undergraduate or graduate course of study is a mistake, no matter what the school. Your situation might differ, but once you’re in the field, the name on your diploma begins to matter less and less. The common refrain is that your school pedigree is only important in landing that first job. I have to say that my experience mirrors this sentiment.

[Read more →]

It’s finals season for Harvard.

Examinations for Harvard Extension run through Jan. 8–10 and Jan. 14–19. When everyone else is enjoying the holiday season, HES students are worrying about finals.

One of the tough parts about being a distance student is that you have to find your own proctors. I have been using a guidance counselor that is attached to the adult education section of the public school system where I live but I recently found out that one of my finals is scheduled for a Saturday. I’m pretty sure she’s not going to be available which means I have to find someone else who can be a proctor.

I’m pretty sure that I can line up a proctor for the exam. If I don’t, it means I’m going to have to travel up to Boston to sit for it. That would be expensive but do-able. The biggest concern is the time and hassle of traveling. Final exams are stressful enough without having to add travel stress on top of it. Travel for me means flying which is no picnic these days. Even though it’s only a one-hour flight, the time and effort of getting to the airport can really put you into a sour mood.

I had to do this one time before when it turned out that I was going to have to work in the Boston area during the time when my exam was scheduled. Since I live in the DC area, if I can find a proctor I don’t have to visit campus to take tests. If I lived in the 6-state area called New England, attendance in-person is mandatory.

All things being equal, I prefer using a proctor. It’s less stress on me. I make an appointment for the exam and I have the room all to myself.

I’ll let you know how the weekend exam goes.

Besides telling you about what it’s like to be a CS student trying to complete a bachelors degree via distance ed, I’d like to share tips for getting academic work done easier and faster. At the top of the list for students of computer science is this: learn how to write papers in LaTeX.

One of the features of a true computer science program is that a lot of the courses are theory-heavy. That is, they don’t deal with computers or languages as much as they deal with the ideas behind how to compute things. As you might expect, there is a good deal of math involved in this. Discrete mathematics, data structures, and analysis of algorithms are the foundation of a true computer science degree. If you’re involved in these classes, you’re going to find yourself dealing with some pretty hairy formulas and symbols that aren’t necessarily part of any word processing program. It doesn’t matter how well you know Word, it isn’t going to make your job any easier.

My introduction to LaTeX (which is pronounced lay-tek) was a class called “Introduction to Cryptography.” Not knowing any better, I did my first homework assignment in Word and it was a royal pain in the ass. The main problem came from trying to enter in all of the formulas and then edit and align them so they looked decent. I became frustrated and asked my TF for a suggestion. He clued me in to LaTeX.

LaTeX can best be described as a programming language for documents. You use a special markup language (similar to HTML) to enter text and formulas and specify the formatting of a document. It sounds complicated (and it is) but once you know it, it’s easy to create documents with very complex formulas in a snap.

Here’s an example:

And another:

,

One more:

See what I mean? Try doing that in Word. You can, but it’ll take you a lot longer and be much more frustrating to accomplish.

If you want to save time, invest a little now and learn LaTeX. LaTeX has a bit of a learning curve but it’s not impossible. You can get started writing documents in a day or two but you’ll need a reference book to really get the most out of it. I recommend two particular texts: The LaTeX Companion and Math Into LaTeX.

Your professors, TF, and classmates are probably using it already. Free implementations are everywhere. Learn it. You’ll thank me.

An article in the Washington Post reports on the growing interest in online publication of class materials and videoed lectures.

“Studying on YouTube won’t get you a college degree, but many universities are using technology to offer online classes and open up archives. Sure, some schools have been charging for distance-learning classes for a long time, but this is different: These classes are free. At a time when many top schools are expensive and difficult to get into, some say it’s a return to the broader mission of higher education: to offer knowledge to everyone.”

In my opinion, the widespread availability of distance education is by far the most important development in postsecondary education in recent years. The article above is specifically referring to classes that are being offered online without cost; MIT has been an important part of this effort with their Open Courseware initiative.

But free videos and class materials are only one part of the story.  The bigger story is growing comfort and experience with distance learning in the wider population.  Distance learning is breaking out and you will be seeing much more of it in the future.

The Harvard Extension School has been offering online classes for degree credit (and charging tuition) for some time now. In the September 18, 1997 issue of the Harvard University Gazette, a graduate level class, CSCI E-131B: Communication Protocols and Internet Architectures, was first offered online. What made this specific class interesting was that the entire class (including lecture video) was streamed over the Internet:

“Weekly lectures from the course will be recorded and made available to enrolled students over the Internet using new Internet video technology. The lectures can be seen on demand by using an Internet Web browser. Additional multimedia and Internet Web technology will be used to interact with the professor and for working on exams, class projects, and homework assignments.”

Attending Class

When I first started thinking about finishing my Bachelors degree, a key problem I had was juggling class times with work. Attending class is inherently a synchronous event: everyone meets at the same time and place to receive the lecture and ask questions. In the case of undergraduate classes primarily targeted at 18-22 year olds, those classes are held during the day. If you happen to work during the day, you face an immediate scheduling problem.

Online education helps with this problem. In my particular case, I “attend” most of my classes via the Internet. Here is how it works at Harvard:

1. A “live” lecture given on-campus is videoed. A few days later, after some minor editing and conversion to web-friendly streaming formats, the class is available for streaming at a password-protected website.
2. I mostly watch the lectures in the evening after work. If I have difficulty with a particular topic or want to review, I can replay only that section of the lecture within my browser.
3. If I have questions, I can email (or phone in some instances) a Teaching Fellow who will respond with an answer (or a hint).
4. Homework submissions are via fax or emailed files. In some classes, a website drop-box is set up to upload assignments.
5. Graded assignments are emailed or snail-mailed back.

You’ll notice that nowhere do I mention working with other classmates. That’s the way it is: in distance ed, there is VERY LITTLE interaction with the other students. Consequently, you have no one to lean on or work with who is as unfamiliar with the material as you are. In some cases, web forums are set up to facilitate interaction between students and faculty but in my experience, very little participation is the norm. In only one class out of three that had forums set up for class participation did I see any substantial effort on the part of the students or the faculty to embrace the medium. Most students just work alone. If they can’t figure it out themselves, they might ask a TF.

Which brings up another aspect of distance ed that is absolutely critical: your professor and TF’s should be comfortable with being reachable via email or phone and providing assistance. In my opinion, no factor is more important than good support from the TF’s. If you have a bad TF in a distance ed class, your time will be much more difficult. An on-campus student can pin a TF down in person to get an answer to a question. Emails are too easy to ignore. Timely responses to emails are essential.

I like to test my TF’s early in the class for their responsiveness. Way before the drop deadline, I’ll email an innocuous question to see how long they take to respond and how complete the response is. If the response is too short or delayed by a few days, that’s a bad sign. I’ve dropped two courses (and delayed my ultimate graduation date) because TF’s were either unable or unwilling to provide timely answers to emailed questions. In one case, before a big paper was due, my TF took off on a several week long trip to India where she would be unable to answer emails!

Exams

You might be wondering now how exams are handled. At Harvard Extension, they approve proctors that students locate and coax into monitoring their exams. In my case, the proctor that I’ve used the most often is a student counselor for the local high school system. She’s attached to the adult education division and typically deals with adults who dropped out of high-school or are returning to high-school in adulthood for some other reason.

Don’t let that put you off. While it may seem incongruous to take your final exam at Harvard in a place most often seen by dropouts, the whole process is pretty straightforward. The send her the materials via email and she holds them until I arrive. She puts me in a room where I can work undisturbed and then faxes my exam back when I’m done.

In some classes, there are no exams, just papers. Those are handled like any other assignment.

Commuting to Campus and “Sitting In” on a Class

At Harvard Extension, there are three types of classes: on-campus only, online-only, and on-campus with online availability.

The on-campus classes are like any other: you show up at the required time for a specific class. Most of the classes at HES are like this.

Some portion of the on-campus classes are videoed for the distance students. In this case, if you can’t make a class in-person, you can always watch the lecture online later.

Online-only classes are a special case: most of them are videoed lectures of the traditional classes offered to the undergraduates and graduate students of the other Harvard Schools (namely, Harvard College and Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences). In a sense, if you are enrolled in these classes, you are “taking” a class at Harvard alongside all of the wunderkind that got in. I’ve taken several of these types of classes and I can’t say that I find them to be much different from the other classes that are offered as on-campus with online option via HES. You might feel differently.

In either case, the online-only distinction is because they don’t want to mix the “extension” students with the “regular” students who had to apply for admission to these prestigious schools. Professors sometimes bend this rule if you ask nicely. I’ve been able to “visit” with the regular students in a Graduate CS class at Harvard even though I wasn’t an admitted student in the GSAS. The rumor is that the CS professors are pretty liberal with HES students sitting in.

Which brings up an interesting point: if the class is the same, the material is the same, and the grading is the same, isn’t taking a FAS or College course online like being at Harvard?

Yes and no. It’s the same and it’s different.

Online education: What You Gain and What You Lose

Remember the part where I mentioned that you have little to no interaction with your fellow students?

That’s the difference.

In my opinion, a big part of the learning environment is interaction with fellow students. Once you take that away, you really modify the experience.

It’s certainly possible to learn course material over the Internet and excel at it. I’m doing well in all of the classes that I’ve taken so far and the vast majority of them have been via the Internet. Yet as crazy as it may seem, I find myself longing to join the other students in the classroom and discuss the topic. Several times a year I arrange to “visit” with my professors during the term even though I live in another city. The exercise is very useful. I highly recommend this hybrid approach if distance learning is something you think you might want to try.

I make an appointment with the professor and after sitting for the class, I have a separate appointment with the prof or TF. You only need to do this one or two times to really get a lot of value out of the experience. A vacation day isn’t too much to give up where your education is concerned and you’ll find that your educational experience will be much richer for it.

Harvard Extension already makes this a mandatory aspect of their degree programs. In the case of the ALB, students must take 16 credits of on-campus only classes at a minimum. For the ALM, a minimum of one semester of residency is required to complete the program. It might seem counterintuitive to require class attendance when online education makes up the bulk of the instruction but I find that mixing the two approaches provides a “mutliplier effect” for the experience.

I don’t think it will be long before the distinction between on-campus and online ed will be moot. Both approaches in combination can solve a great deal of the problems associated with cost and time constraints that hinder the efforts of those pursuing higher education. That’s certainly been my experience. Without the flexibility provided by the online option, I wouldn’t be able to complete the bachelors. But having the option to join the events on-campus as I’m able fills in the gaps that are left by strictly online programs.

One of the first things I noticed when attending classes at Harvard during the evening or walking around the campus during the day was that there was an unusually high percentage of Apple laptops in the hands of students. To boot, many of the professors were using Mac products during classroom demonstrations. Finally, many many people I know who code professionally were moving over to the Mac as a primary machine.

I began to think that maybe there was something to this Mac “renaissance.” Yet I still resisted.

My very first computer was an Apple IIc. It was a small, all-in-one job with an integrated floppy drive and keyboard. It was supposed to be portable but I never took it anywhere. It didn’t have a battery. This was WAY before there was a suitable portable power source for laptops. It had all of that Apple funkiness. I absolutely loved that machine.

I learned to program in Pascal on that machine and wrote my first real applications designed to solve problems I encountered in school. Partly as a result of having so much coding time in front of a machine, I was able to ace the AP Computer Science test in high school, earning a 5 out of 5.

(NOTE: My teacher had a deal with us students: if you got a 5 on the AP exam, you got an A. No ifs, ands, or buts. If I hadn’t earned a 5, it would have been C’sville for me.)

I absolutely LOVED that machine.

Of course, towards the end of high school, IBM clones were beginning to take over the marketplace. It wasn’t until a few years later that I got a Zenith 286 clone and said goodbye to Apple forever. The market had spoken. The variety of x86 machines and the power of Microsoft were an unbeatable combo. Apple was a machine for graphic designers and zealots. Then Jobs was pushed out of Apple and started NeXT. Apple faltered. It wasn’t long before it looked like Apple might not survive another decade.

That all changed when Jobs came back. He simplified the product line, brought over a lot of what he learned or developed at NeXT, and rescued Apple.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Which brings us to today. A few months back, I changed tack and bought a MacBook Pro. After almost 20 years of using exclusively PC/x86/Microsoft computing platforms, I was changing platforms. What convinced me?

1. Parallels. With Parallels, I was able to keep all of my existing applications. I don’t care what the zealots say. There are some things that are just easier to do on a PC because there is an application to solve that specific problem. Macs are getting better, but they’re not there yet. Parallels was the first software product that I purchased for my Mac.
2. Unix. One of the big perks of the OS X family is that it’s all Unix under the hood. Yes, it’s a hacked up version of Unix, but if all else fails, you can get pretty good software for free that will solve a lot of nagging problems. Since I’m an avid Linux user, the Unix background helped ease the transition.
3. Community. One of the interesting things about the Mac platform is the range of users that adopted the platform once OS X took off. To a lot of people, the Mac is the best Unix workstation they’ve ever used. They’re not newbies to computing; they’re professional code hackers or computer scientists. These people choose good tools that accomplish specific tasks. They don’t have tons of time to solve dumb software problems. For me, this was a big factor. When people you trust choose a specific product, you’re unwise to discount their opinion.

For me, 3 was most convincing, 2 was comforting, and item 1 reduced the risk and cost of switching. A few months ago, I decided to take the plunge and just buy one.
I’ve been a happy owner ever since.

If you’re planning on returning to school to study Computer Science, you owe it to yourself to forget your previous PC experience and look at a Mac for your academic endeavors. I can guarantee you that it will save you a lot of grief and enrich the learning experience that much more. When you realize that most schools teach Operating Systems by delving into the internals of the Unix OS, you’ll be thankful a command prompt is nearby for you to learn on.