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Time requirements for watching the video nuggets
Dear Prof. Kohlhase,
I have a concern about the video nuggets. As I understandd it, you compressed the recordings from the previous semesters in a more compact form in order to spare us from watching the entire two lectures per week. But for the last weeks, the total duration of all the video nuggets has been at around 180 minutes (which is the equivalent of two lectures), sometimes even more (the last two weeks for example).
As much as I enjoy your lecturing style and think you are explaining the content very well, I think this is a bit too much time per week. If the length of the compressed version is as long as the uncompressed version, this means that we basically have to look at more content each week than the previous semesters (unless the compression rate is 1, then it is the same amount of course).
In addition to that, we should attend the discussion sessions (+3 hours per week), attend the presence exercise (+1.5h per week) and solve the exercise tasks (the time for this obviously varies from student to student). For me, this adds up to a lot more than 10 hours per week which would be my reference (since 30ECTS = full time study = 40 hours per week → 7.5ECTS = 0.25 * full time study = 10 hours per week).
I understand that the semester “holidays” also count towards the average time requirement over the semester, but I think you know as well as we students that the lecture-free period between the semesters is required for exam preparation, even if you were already following lectures and exercises during the semester.
I would be grateful if you commented on this.
Kind regards.
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That’s actually exactly true!
But it’s not just the problem in this lecture, but rather in some other ones this semester. The estimated “time complexity” during the online semester is quite high because of preparing a whole lecture, just to visit the actual assigned timeslot for answers to your questions in the same length as the prequisites you already worked through and after that meet some foreign people online to discuss quite complex tasks, which is most of the time inefficient due to “not sitting next to each other and having the same thing in front of you” and connection/hardware/time budget issues.
EDIT: And everyone has to rush his content because the semester started much later so there is in addition a natural hurry even if your working optimal
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I have made the same experience in other courses. I prefer to simply upload the video recording from the previous year. Instead of wasting the time of the lecturer and myself with additional discussion formats.
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Thanks for bringing this up. I completely understand your concerns, and indeed I have been feeling the stress of preparing the (new) plenary sessions myself.
I will answer your concerns inline below.
You misunderstood, we only recut the videos so that they are in a better-to-digest format. The overall course coverage and thus the material stays the same. That being said, I have been packing a bit more than 90 minutes into the reading lists to make up for the two weeks this semester is shorter than (all) the other winter semester. I went back, the average is 95 minutes/lecture; this may have been a bit much and I will ease up for the rest of the semester.
Actually the correct way to calculate is that 1 ECTS (officially) correspond to 25-30h of overall work. With 7.5 ECTS for AI-1 and 13 Weeks (this semester) gives us 14-17h/week and on a regular WS 12.5 - 15 h/week.
I agree, this is why the 13 Weeks of semester do not count the holidays. BUT the ECTS calculation does take the exam preparation and homeworks into account.
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I acknowledge that AI-1 is a taxing course.
I had hoped that the „plenary sessions“ are efficient for you as this takes care of some of the pre/postparation time you would normally have to invest in understanding the course. The fact that there are still students coming seems to point out that it is efficient for some at least.
You are right. I had not taking this into account.
In any case, we seem to be caught up, and I am expecing to be able to ease up; I have already decreased tomorrow’s reading/watch list
That is a perfectly good way of dealing with the situation. Do what works for you.
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The time concept of the AI lecture
Dear Students,
If you are shocked by the ECTS => Hours calculations above, let me remind you that these are not my numbers, but the ones in EU legislation.
You should also consider that the time without lectures (aka. semester break = vorlesungsfreie Zeit) are part of the semester (except for 30 days of vacation per year) and thus counted into the ECTS considerations by the EU.
AI time concept: As most courses at FAU seem to have the exams at the end of the semester break, I chose to have the AI exam at the beginning. This makes course involvement heavier during the lecturing times (hence the stress you are currently experiencing), but keeps your breaks AI-free. This allows you to spend more time on the other courses then and reduce the involvement in those during lecture times. You just have to plan accordingly.
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Dear Prof. Kohlhase,
I understand the time/ECTS calculation and how the EU calculated it.
However I just want to add that this assumes a full time student with no additional work. On the other hand, if you want to get a job after your studies, companies require work experience - especially as a working student.
With 12.5-15h/7.5ECTS * 4 + 15h working student job one can do the calculation itself.
I don’t want any explicit action from you, I just think that this thought should be more lived at the FAU.
[m][/m]
While I certainly can relate to the sentiment behind this, I usually feel that arguments like these tend to forget that the computer science curriculum at universities (or any subject for that matter) is not a „coding bootcamp“, but a self serving institution of higher learning. The fact that parts of the private sector outsource the „burden“ to educate their to-be employees, by requiring this or that degree, shouln’t be seen as an issue of academia, if you ask me. Some might say that this position might be too academic or detached from the real world, but I just think that this is a classical conflict or interests.
[m][/m]
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fully agree. Sometimes you need to remember why your are here - because you love computer science and nothing else :).
I don’t think you can calculate the time required to take a course like this. Sometimes you need more time to solve the homework and in the next week it is done in one hour. It also depends on the student. I had no problems to solve the homework in reasonable time so far. Just do what is best for you to cover the content. You don’t need to attend to plenary sessions AND watch the lecture AND read the book AND go to tutorials AND read the script. For me it was enough to just watch the lecture, look up the stuff I needed for the homework and go to the tutorial. That’s by the way exactly what I would have done without covid. Of course it might be more difficult for non CS students especially the prolog part if you did not do recursive programming before.
Doing a masters degree is a full time job, that means everythting you do besides that is extra. If you want to get work experience you have to do that in your free time or do less ECTS, which is absolutely no problem btw (nobody will kick you out because you need one more year). Otherwise you obvioussly might have a lot of work to do which might be unhealthy on the long term.
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[quote=matze123]However I just want to add that this assumes a full time student with no additional work. On the other hand, if you want to get a job after your studies, companies require work experience - especially as a working student.[/quote]Work experience is nice but not necessary to get a job as a computer scientist.
[quote=matze123]With 12.5-15h/7.5ECTS * 4 + 15h working student job one can do the calculation itself.[/quote]Do you really need 15 hours a week for AI? During the lecture period? Reality is often different from what you tell yourself.