Perspektiven der Informatik

Dear all,

we have received a number of requests concerning grading. We realize that the first quizzes have been too hard for what is intended for this course. We therefore decided on a number of measures.

• Lowering the passing requirement to 50% of the total points (25% for those study programs where this is a 1 ECTS course).
• Taking single questions out of the requirement that almost no one got correctly (with agreement of the instructor).

However, please be aware that there are still quizzes this week and next week, and that both quizzes fully count towards the required points. 

Dear all,

the whole team wishes you a happy and relaxing holiday season. We understood your feedback from the last lecture quiz that it was too hard again. Unfortunately, we do not know lecture contents in advance and the quizzes usually not too far in advance, so we typically cannot test them. We have re-emphasized again to all lecturers that the quizzes should be very much on the easy side. We will take the holidays to prepare some statistics and use the first week of January (when there is no lecture on Monday 02.01.) to present them here in the CMS.

Enjoy your free time!

Dear all,

we have received quite some feedback from some of you, which can be (very briefly) summarized as follows.

1. You like the general idea of this lecture series, i.e. being introduced to a variety of topics.
2. Most of the lectures so far are to specialized, to deep, and/or require knowledge that you do not have yet.
3. Given 2., the quizzes are (much) too hard; the questions sometimes tricky or vague
4. There is a high level of anxiety that you may not pass

Please let me explain first how it should actually work and have worked.

1. Indeed, the intention of the series is to give an overview of the possibilities that exist at Saarland Informatics Campus.
2. Each lecture should present a topic in breadth, not in depth, and be accessible without prior knowledge (except general Abitur or equivalent).
3. The quizzes should be easy. In fact, if you pay attention, it should be easy to get 100%. We want you to listen to the lectures, get an overview of our research topics, not over-analyze each single question. There should be no trick questions.
4. The quizzes are there because we have to have a certain kind of "exam". We want to verify that you listen and get the "take-home messages". We also want you to think a little bit about the contents. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to read and grade 300+ summaries of each lecture. Therefore, we decided on a system that grades more or less automatically. We want everyone who takes it seriously to pass this lecture series without investing a lot of time.

To explain this a bit further in view of the CP system: Every CP should translate roughly to 30 hours of work. In this case, you have to listen to a 2h lecture every week (actually, 90 min or less, but this counts as 2h); so this is already 1 CP just for "viewing". The second CP is for whatever else you have to do: watch the video (or parts) a second time, review the slides, think about it, look up some information on the web, do the quiz.

And to be honest, if there is one lecture that is too specialized, we are not worried. This is why we don't demand 90% but "only" 60% (again, it should be relatively easy to get close to 100%). However, in this semester, it seems that most of the lectures so far didn't reach the overall goal that we have for this series.

So what have we done? We have just reminded everyone (all PIs at Saarland Informatics Campus) about the idea of this series. In particular, we have asked everyone to give basic lectures and ask simple quiz questions focusing on the major take-home messages. Please continue to give feedback so we can see if the situation improves. If necessary, we will dynamically adjust the scoring of the previous lectures (after doing some more statistical analysis). In the meantime, we would like to ask you to focus on the contents of the lectures, not on the mechanics of the quizzes.

The lecture recording of Prof. Weber is now online (link: Information > Materials). The quiz is open till Wednesday 23:59. Note that there is a time limit of 120 min for the quiz and there is only a single attempt. Once you start, the clock is ticking.

As you can see, we have made it a bit easier:

• The quiz can be taken till WEDNESDAY evening (instead of Tuesday).
• The time limit is now 120 min (instead of 35)

These changes were made in response to a comment that pointed out at the lectures were, partially, not very basic, and the quiz questions hard to answer.