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Midquarter Course Survey

Summary

Weekly Assignments

Comments on the weekly assignments focused primarily around the earlier coding assignments and the web genre analysis. Of fourteen (14) respondents, several mentioned specific assignments that they found particularly useful, including the web genre analysis (4), the CSS redesign (2), and the accessible redesign (1). Six (6) indicated more generally that practice with coding was most helpful in preparing for your final projects, and one (1) mentioned issues of audience. Three (3) people stated that more assignments focused on CSS would have been helpful.

Overall, response to the weekly assignments was positive. Of twelve (12) respondents, six (6) stated that all of the assignments were helpful. The other six (6) found some less helpful than others. Each of the following were indicated once as not as helpful: the readings, responding to the readings, the redesign for accessibility, and the web genre analysis.

Readings

While the readings are overall the least positively received aspect of the class, each required reading was described by at least one person as the most interesting. Porter's article on audience was the favorite of the favorites as the choice of four (4) of fifteen (15) respondents, Askehave and Nielson on digital genres and Nothstine and Cooper on persuasion came in second and third with three (3) and two (2) votes respectively. Each of Bolter's chapters was chosen once as the most interesting reading of the quarter. Three (3) people stated that they found none of the readings to be interesting.

Two (2) out of thirteen (13) respondents identified Bolter as not contributing, and two (2) more indicated that while his chapters are potentially useful they are dull. Porter's article on audience got one (1) vote for least contribution, and Askehave and Nielson's was mentioned once as possibly not being useful. Two (2) people stated that none of the readings contributed to the class.

In-Class Activities

Overall the response to collaborative work in class was very positive. Eight (8) out of thirteen (13) respondents mentioned collaborative tasks as the most useful activities, with four (4) of those people specifically mentioning the Guide to Writing Hypertext. Without specific reference to group work, one (1) person mentioned in-class work time for coding projects as working well, and three (3) stated that workshop time with opportunities to ask questions was useful. One (1) person mentioned that they would have liked how-to tutorials on specific coding tasks.

With six (6) out of thirteen (13) respondents mentioning it, the guest lecture on accessibility was clearly felt to have been longer than necessary. Nevertheless, three (3) people stated that all, or very nearly all, class time has been well-spent. Each of the following was named by one person as not as useful: group work, unstructured workshop time, lack of guided tutorials, and the class-generated list of issues to consider when planning a website.

Service Learning

Response to service learning was overwhelmingly positive with ten (10) out of fifteen (15) respondents reporting positive experiences, and six (6) of those responses being quite enthusiastic. Another four (4) respondents were more reserved in their assessments of the experience, with some reporting frustration. One (1) person stated that service learning is not sufficiently integrated into the course.

Blogs

Eleven (11) out of fourteen (14) respondents has positive things to say about the course blogs. Recommendations for improvements included emphasizing the freedom to write on unassigned topics (2), adding a feature to allow responses to be posted (2), using a message board instead (1), and making the blog optional (1).

General Comments

These are so various that it is hard to summarize them; please see the raw data below if you are interested to see what people wrote.

Raw Data

Below are the results of the midquarter course survey numbered by respondent and listed by question. Thanks again for your feedback!

1. How have the weekly assignments have been most helpful in preparing you for your final project?
  1. The weekly assignments have been very helpful, especially with the web genre analysis because other websites give me ideas on what to have for my own website.
  2. All the assignments have been very helpful for my final project. I've made webpages for years and never came upon the types of issues we discussed every week. They were all very useful and helpful in creating my final project site.
  3. There were two main forms of weekly assignments:
  4. They have been good, especially anything to do with coding and CSS.
  5. Gradual exposure to webpage design and coding
  6. I think that it definitely gave me a lot of experience with HTML, CSS and XHTML, before I dove into the final project. Working with the code on my final project definitely will go a lot quicker now that I have worked with it enough in the weekly assignments to have a decent knowledge of what I'm doing.
  7. I liked them. they were good practice in using html and css and looking at other sites to get ideas.
  8. I think the weekly assignments have been very useful in the fact that they have built every week on the idea of what you are planning to do with the final project as well as made me personally think about what it was exactly I was trying to accomplish with the project.
  9. The weekly assignments have been long and time consuming but the experience that I am gaining from some of the projects are helpful for the final project. The most helpful assignment was the redesign project.
  10. good
  11. Most of the assignments were helpful for the final project. The html-based assignments were obviously good, but I thought the web-genre assignment really opened my eyes to what my project was going to look like. We could've spent some more time on CSS though . . .
  12. These assignments were valuable because they required me to do many different tasks. I appreciated this because I felt like we were actually accomplishing something and not just doing useless busy work.
  13. The weekly assignments helped me in preparing for the final project because it allowed me to practice on my HTML skills and what kind of content is expected out of my website.
  14. [blank]
  15. Most didn't help. I did enjoy the CSS redesign though, and I wished I had more time with it. It really showed the power of CSS.
2. Were any of the assignments not helpful? Why?
  1. [blank]
  2. None... They were all helpful.
  3. I found all the assignments to be quite useful in preparing for the final project.
  4. First off what is helpful.......I'm taking this class to learn HTML and get the VLPA credits. The english side of the class doesn't really interest me, so I would say I didn't get much from the readings. What socrates said a thousand years ago doesn't help with CSS.
  5. none were especially tedious, nor did any of them feel like busy-work
  6. I don't think that any of the assignments were pointless in any way. Of course there were a couple that were less enjoyable than others to complete, but that happens in every single class. Every assignment was fun from the aspect that we were allowed to take as much creative license as we wanted to create pages that were uniquely ours. But as always, some were more tedious than others, but in order to learn that is not really avoidable.
  7. no
  8. [blank]
  9. The assignments that have felt least helpful are the response to readings such as persuasion and audience, and web-genres. I understand the intention, but it felt more like busy work, rather than preparation for the final project.
  10. Project proposal was reduntant in light of the genre analysis
  11. I have some issues with the accessibility assignment. After all that lecture, it all came down to copying and pasting the code into Tidy. Accessibility is an important issue, I guess, but I would've liked to have spent more time on CSS.
  12. I don't think that any of the assignments were useless because they were all either focused on getting us used to html or preparing for our final project.
  13. Writing the preliminary project overview and the proposal were slightly similar. Therefore, I found these two assignments to be rather redundant. But other than that, most of the assignments have been rather helpful to me.
  14. [blank]
  15. Web Genre assignment seemed to be busy work. I understood the purposed of it, but it didn't help me.
3. Which of the readings have you found to be most interesting? Why?
  1. None... ^^
  2. I really thought the audience reading was interesting because it got me thinking on how to address to the audience in many different ways.
  3. Porter on audience and Askehave's and Nielson on web genres were two most interesting. Again, both present new information that I had never taken under consideration.
  4. Um.....The last question might hurt me on this one. I guess the last reading about the differences in a grass root organization and propoganda was interesting.
  5. definitely the Breakout of the Visual, I felt it to be the most current and relevant piece that we read, that also offered the most new information. In addition, I felt that this piece found a variety of topics to address, rather than rehashing the same concepts and adding only minute details.
  6. To be honest I thought all of Bolters readings were incredibly boring. I realize that he made good points and that the information he presented was necessary to learn, but maybe someone else has written about that same stuff in a less 'dry' and boring fashion.
    I felt that Porter's article on audience was more entertaining because it felt as though it had more emotion, or more of his personal opinion intertwined within it. I think authors that insert more of a feeling that they care about what they are writing about tends to make their writings less academic as well as making it easier for the reader to relate.
  7. i thought the askehave and nielson article was the most interesting because it helped me plan my site, figure out was important, and how people usually view sites.
  8. I found the reading on persuassion to be most interesting becuase it talked of the different ways that you can language and images and order to influence an audence with the medium of communication you are using.
  9. Although I did not particularly like the assignment, I did find the Porter reading on audience to be interesting, because it brought light to what the actual intention for writing is.
  10. the first one
  11. I liked the digital genre piece, but the assignment did a better job of "teaching" me about genres and the web. The rest were irritating to say the least (see #4 below).
  12. None. They all lost my interest quickly and took a long time to say anything of note. I feel like a fifteen minute summary by Melanie would have been much more helpful to the class' understanding of the readings because 1. No one read them (I didnt buy the packet) 2. They confused everyone and 3. Melanie did a good job of explaining the readings on a level that we could understand. Most of the readings seemed to be long for longness' sake and were rarely clear regarding exactly what they wanted to say. For the most of us, who are taking this english class as an elective, we are not used to reading such literary works and this style was completely over our (or at least my) heads.
  13. The readings on Audience was rather interesting. Probably because I learned about taking into account different kinds of audiences and figuring out which ones I should be targetting for the websites that I am making.
  14. I didn't really appreciate any of the readings. I find the style they are written in, although no doubt excellent modern writing, to be of a rather pompous style. This style is incredibly dry, and I do not enjoy reading it.
  15. The persuasion reading by Nothstine and Cooper. I really found it to be the most interesting and helpful.
4. Are there readings that you feel don't contribute to the class? Why?
  1. [blank]
  2. I can't recall a reading that didn't contribute to the class. Each reading had something useful for our final project. They also help out on how we should be creating webpages for companies and organizations.
  3. Bolter on Hypertext. Why? Because I don't remember any of it! Maybe it was because it was such a long time ago! No, I'm just joking, actually, the reason why I think I don't remember it as well is because most of the information presented in that particular article is mundane in sense... I remember reading that article on the bus with a highlighter in my right hand. When I finished reading, as I looked over the text, I noticed that nothing was highlighted; which meant that I wasn't able to extract any new or useful information that may benefit myself from. It was a good read for a bus ride, but all in all, I think this reading can be skipped in the future.
  4. I think this class could be split up into a lecture and lab class. Then make the lecture section optional, or required for english majors.
  5. the rest of them
  6. As above, Bolter's information contributed, but it was very hard to pay attention while reading it. I understand that the subject matter didn't allow it to be "griping" but Porter was at least able to keep my attention.
  7. the bolter articles were ok but i found certain sections for helpful than others.
  8. [blank]
  9. Possibly the reading on web-genres simply because the genre of our project is totally dependent upon the organization that we are working with. Having to distinguish one genre from another seemed to over simplify the actual project.
  10. Bolter aka "Commander Obvious"
  11. I thought a lot of the articles were too informative for their own good. Sure, they were concepts and ideas that I learned, but am I going to apply these concepts to my project? Doubt it. The content that revolves around our final projects is just too simple; why do we need to read a long, boring article about persuasion when my service learning requires me to wash dishes and serve food?
  12. All. They all lost my interest quickly and took a long time to say anything of note. I feel like a fifteen minute summary by Melanie would have been much more helpful to the class' understanding of the readings because 1. No one read them (I didnt buy the packet) 2. They confused everyone and 3. Melanie did a good job of explaining the readings on a level that we could understand. Most of the readings seemed to be long for longness' sake and were rarely clear regarding exactly what they wanted to say. For the most of us, who are taking this english class as an elective, we are not used to reading such literary works and this style was completely over our (or at least my) heads.
  13. Not really. They all make sense after you read them, but the readings were rather long.
  14. Yes. The readings were probably the worst part of this class. Although easy to draw references from, and thus easy to write about, it is hard to comprehend and to understand, and to recall any of the material over any length of time.
  15. The audience was really more of a history, and wasn't as directly applicable as the other essays I thought.
5. What types of in-class activities do you feel have worked best in this class? Why?
  1. [blank]
  2. The first assignment we did during class worked out very well. Where we got into groups and summarized hypertext and each team had their specific duty.
  3. Up to this point, I enjoy the collaborative work the best. My partner and I are actively communicating with each other on our vision of how our final project is going to look like when it is completed. It's fun to get together somewhere outside of class, and just "chill" outside and work on our final project. Not only limited to the final project, but some of the collaborative work inside of class with the smaller assignments also proved to be quite useful for myself. Not only do I usually work at my best at finding new ideas, but the ideas presented by my colleagues find even fresher and newer ideas which is always great.
  4. I wish we looked at more code, or had more little projects, like making a drop down bar, or making a slide show using CSS and html.
  5. group work involving coding, as this provided both a great setting for input, as well as allowing for questions to be asked and answered without one person feeling put upon or the asker made to feel ignorant.
  6. I enjoyed breaking into groups to create the page on Hypertext, and then having different groups review each others writing. Seeing it all come together as a class effort was cool.
    Another idea that sounds cool, that we haven't done yet, but has been mentioned, is where a couple students give a sort of "seminar" on a certain aspect they have used in their pages that the rest of the class might be interested in. Bringing music and having the class have a sort of "workshop" sounds fun. Not sure how it will work, but it sounds cool in theory.
  7. i liked the collaborative work. if we had to continue the group stuff at home it was a little difficult to continue discussing, but overall, i enjoyed getting to know the other people in the class.
  8. The creation of the websites taught me the most for the fact that it was a new thing and was excting, it was much harder to try to talk about a reading than it was to get excited about creating a website.
  9. Working on the redesigns was the best use of time in my opinion. It allowed the students to create something together, ask questions during class that related to the homework assignment, and then branch out on our own to complete the task.
  10. I like the group work, but I wisht aht I could be grouped with the advanced students more often.
  11. I think the more we were "on our own," the easier it was for us to learn. That's probably not what you want to hear, but it was hard to pay attention for 40+ minute lectures. With the computers in front of us, I figured we'd have this interactive approach to learning. When creating our web sites and tech narratives, it was very easy to learn html and css when we were on the computer looking at code. But once we started specifically talking about the articles in the course pack, it was easy to lose interest.
  12. I think that the work days were helpful because Melanie was available for help throughout the period and that was nice. Also, I think that the days that Melanie briefly explained the readings created a clearer understanding of the readings.
  13. I think the best in-class activities that worked best for the class were the ones that urged groups to come up with some sort of output (ie such as making part of the webpage for the "Guidelines to Hypertext").
  14. I think the assignment we did at the very beginning, where everyone worked to redesign the page where we described effective and ineffective html worked the best. I feel this because, as we went on learning, we were doing something, and not simply sitting listening to someone lecture, like the other 4-class hours every day.
  15. [blank]
6. Have we spent class time on any activities that you felt were not useful? What were they and how could they be improved?
  1. [blank]
  2. I can't recall any activities that weren't useful.
  3. One particular event that sticks out of my mind was when the senior editor of CSC came in to discuss about the 508 guidelines. To be honest, I thought it was really long and drawn out-- I think I would have been able to discover some of the 508 guidelines myself using the World Wide Web in less amount of time. Surely, it was useful information for our in class assignment, however, I didn't think it was really necessary to have a presentation... maybe a few links to the concepts behind the 508 guidelines would be more efficient in respect to time. Time is money! =)
  4. The accessible redesign lecture was very boring. It could be compressed into 5 minutes. Other than that most of the class time was engaging and interesting.
  5. more vaguely structured periods of time where there is little opportunity for assistance.
  6. I don't believe that any large chunks of time were a huge waste or anything. The guest speaker on accessibility was kind of boring, I felt that you could have probably taught us the same things and it would have been more interesting. But other than that it was only small chunks of time where because I didn't have certain programs on the computer or the right files with me, I felt I had nothing to do.
  7. no
  8. I would have liked to spend more time in class learning about code and how to structure a website. I think watching the teacher create a website from scratch would have been more useful than just testing things on existing pages I felt like I started in the hole with my lack of experience with HTML. The fact that so many people had experience with it and hit the ground running made it hard pick up on the basics.
  9. Too much time was dedicated to the accessibility presentation. I understand that the topic is very important, however I think that it could have been presented in a much less time consuming manner. Also, the activity of reading over the resources in groups and making a list of how to prepare for the project felt like it could be improved.
  10. I didn't like that list that we created.
  11. I guess I talked a little about this in #5. The articles just really sucked. They didn't feel related to the web (except for the last), and so I felt they were unnecessary to the class.
  12. I feld like the accessability section was not that useful for us (well maybe because we dont have disabilities), but the day with the guest speaker was just plain BORING. What he taught us could have been explained in ten minutes by Melanie and I wished that it had.
  13. Although I do find it useful to collaborate and share ideas and opinions with other classmates in small groups, it was rather difficult to stay interested when all the ideas were basically the same. Plus, it's hard to talk with other students and think with other students when there's a computer right in front of them. People can get easily distracted with computers nowadays.
  14. YES. Accessiblity? Although a worthy subject, 3 full 2-hour class periods on this subject, with not even any busy-work is EXTREMELY excessive. I would ask that, if we are to spend any length of time on a given subject, we are at least given something to do while we study it.
  15. [blank]
7. How are you feeling about your service learning experience in this class?
  1. Good.
  2. Very good. It's tough but I believe I am gaining a lot of experience in the real world.
  3. Well, I'm still not too sure how I feel about my service learning experience just yet. The past couple weeks, I was frustrated, she was frustrated on getting things worked out for the both of us. After a period of time where she had not kept in contact with me, I chose to go to my service learning center and see her myself. As expected, she was very busy; but today we have set up a time in order to meet and see what's going on. Now since I do have a glimpse of what she wants, I feel a lot better about myself in knowing what I have to do to complete what has to be completed. My point being, it would be great if the service learning centers would provide useful information to volunteers in regards to what's going on, when are available dates to drop in and hold conferences, things of that nature. I was very frustrated the past few weeks just trying to get in touch with the supervisor. I would call her every day, which I'm sure she got sick of, and would always be busy in a meeting, doing something or other. It would be remarkably fabulous if this issue can be resolved, because I'm sure it will be detrimental to some students' grades if left unresolved.
  4. It was fine however, I would rather make up a web site that interests me, or for some company that I make up that isn't so boring.
  5. excellent, an interesting and fun way to get out of the classroom and provide a new setting for learning and experience.
  6. Well, my particular project doesn't really give me hands on community service experience. I did a lot of that in high school and this is very different. But all in all I feel it will be a good experience to have taken on the responsibility of creating or redesigning an organizations website. I can't be sure if I will have a lot to write about in the final paper though, but it's not over until the fat lady sings.
  7. i think it's really cool that i can apply what i learned to something useful and contribute to society in that way.
  8. I think that the service learning has so far been a very valuable experience, it has incorporated the use of the webwriting with a practical real life example which further emphasizes the importance of having a tool like writing for the web.
  9. I am enjoying my service learning experience. I like the freedom that I have with the organization and think that the final project will be worth the work.
  10. It's alright, but I don't think that my organization had a good idea about what it was getting itself into.
  11. Service learning is interesting. Every Friday, it seems pretty lame to have to work for 3 hours, but its something different from a normal class. And the option 2 project gives my group a lot of creativity-freedom, so go freedom! I just feel sorry for the option 1 people who have became web page bitches for their respective company. Then service learning would totally be lame.
  12. Service learning is a blast. I have enjoyed working at ______________ (this is confidential and if I told you where I worked then it wouldnt be, would it?). I think that I have enjoyed by service learning more than my other partners because I entered it with a good attitude, expecting to have a good time. I think that that was an important decision in starting to work at
  13. Before I walked into this class, I never thought that I would even have to be doing service learning for that class. I just thought this class would be strictly web-oriented and we would focus more on writing. I didn't think it was going to be like a CSE class where we had to take time outside of class to fulfill requirements to get credit for the class. However, the service learning experience is new to me and I do enjoy the time working and helping others.
  14. I do not like it. It seems that is a poor offshoot of the class, sort of a 'go do it and report back', with no integration into the class itself, and more than doubling the workload of the class.
  15. I think it is very interesting, and it is good for a resume, but truthfully, it was like taking another class at the same time. I barely have time as it is, and the service learning was just one more thing on my plate.
8. How do you think the course blogs are going? What might make them work better as a way to think through and share ideas with the class?
  1. [blank]
  2. It would be nice if we had the option to add comments to each other on our pages. However, the blogs are okay but there are those that dislike blogs and rather not do it. I rarely write blogs myself.
  3. At first, I thought the definition of a blog is just like a diary, in which one expresses his or her own ideas of what's going on in their life. However, there is a connotative definition of "blog" in this class. This type of "blog" is more like where you write your assigments for your reading, which I didn't figure out for a few weeks.... I wrote things such as my progress in the class, how I was thinking about a certain assignment, rather than about the course readings! I don't think the actual blog needs to be fixed because the idea is great; I check them all the time. It's the information that is expected from the blog. It was a miscommunication for me, because I had no idea what was expected from them, so I did my own work on it rather than what was expected.
  4. It is a good way to post how things are going. It at least shows how far behind you are to other students as far as the final project goes.
  5. a fun way to share opinions and views while still learning a bit of formatting and other web design basics.
  6. I think the Blogs are fine. It gives people who don't feel comfortable talking in class a chance to voice their ideas where classmates can read them, without being put "on the spot" so to speak. I think the only way to get it more involved is to somehow make sure that everyone takes a little time to read even just a few of other peoples blogs. I know that in the beginning I didn't really do that. I'm not sure how this could be enforced, becuase you don't always have time to go reading through everyones blogs.
    But the activity that better connected them was when we went through a few in class, and found some ideas that classmates had brought up that we thought were unique or helpful or interesting and then shared them with the rest of the class.
  7. they are fine. adding a comment section or something would be nice.
  8. I like the idea of course blogs when I have become stuck on a subject they have been a great catalyst for thicking about the subjects in a diffent way and furthering the understanding of the subject by seein someone elses point of view
  9. The blogs are fine with exception to responding to the readings. Maybe choosing a subject to write about instead of a reading would make the blogs more interesting and the idea of having to do a blog more appealing.
  10. I'm not sure how they could be more useful. I think that they are an efficient way to submit work to the instructor, though.
  11. The blogs are okay. I think more emphasis on freedom to write on different subjects should have been stressed, because writing on the articles sucked. Surprised?
  12. Course blogs are great. I think what could allow for a greater collaborative effort is if you made it a message board and then required people to respond to a post by a deadline. We did this in a poli sci class and it was amazing! It would also allow for us to get to know people better. I dont know anyone in this class except for the people I work with.
  13. Course blog are a good way in working with hypertext and HTML skills. However, I don't think there are many students that share the same interest in blogging as others do. Also, being "required" to blog has not done much either for making blogs more appealing for this class. For those who do not enjoy blogs, they just end up writing enough to respond to general questions that the instructor would like them to think about in the blog. I think blogs should have been recommended, but not required.
  14. I actually do like the blogs. If taken seriously, it is a MUCH better way to ensure knowledge of a subject, than simply asking questions about the readings.
    Of course, I prefer short/long answer to multiple choice, so this may just be a preference I have.
  15. I enjoyed the blog, it was kinda fun using a different medium to discuss assignments.
9. Is there anything else you'd like me to know about your experience in this class?
  1. [blank]
  2. Just would like to say Thank You for helping me out with service learning and the class in general. Learned some interesting facts about audience.
  3. All in all, I really like the ideas and content of this class. The idea of integrating an English class through rhetoric with the ever-evolving technology of the World Wide Web is a brilliant idea. That's what made me select this class over any other English class. At first, I thought the idea of service learning was going to be something like a horribly marked webpage; not useful. However, after attending my service learning center for the first time and to see how much these organizations really need volunteers, it makes me feel important in a sense that I can share my ideas and talents with the world. Even though my grades aren't as what I have planned them to be up to this point, what I have learned mentally is a satisfying thought. Learning the importance of audience awareness, CSS and HTML, providing services to the community, it's a touch of diverse perspectives in a neat package!
  4. The Carlson center needs to find more interesting projects. A website for a yacht club, or an actual business would be much more interesting.
  5. nothing comes to mind
  6. Not really. I have to admit that I was scared sh*tless in the beginning because I missed the first day of class and thought that I was horribly behind. But it turned out that I was able to catch up, and no longer feel as lost as I did the first day.
    The service learning kinda threw me for a loop in the beginning since the entire responsibility was kinda dumped in my lap, but that is going fairly well so far too.
    I guess as far as the service learning goes, make sure that every organization that volunteers through the Carleton Center knows that for most this class is a beginning class as far as computer code goes, and that having their people dump the full responsibility on a student, as if our free time isn't scarce as it is, is kinda scary. Thanks!
  7. i think this is a great class. fun combination of writing, computers, and community involvement.
  8. I really enjoy the class and wish I would not have been sick during the quarter. I really feel like my service learning experience is going to pay dividends in the future as well as the ability, as small as that may be, to create a web document. I definitly would like to have learned more about the actual creation of webpages but my lack of knowledge about them is no doubt related to my lack of presence in class.
  9. Nope! Great job for your first time around! :)
  10. I like the class overall.
  11. I think most of my thoughts and questions are written on the previous 8 questions, so I'll just leave this area blank.
  12. This site crashed when I clicked the next button! I enjoy class when it is more of a work day structure because it is annyoing when it is only three or four people carrying the discussion and everyone else is looking up crap in their computers.
  13. This class has given me a new view on web design. I really enjoy it.
  14. The structure of the class is alright, it'd be nice to have more in-class activities, a full 2-hour lecture isn't exactly conducive to keeping the attentions of a roomful of students with computers in front of them. Even busy-work is nice, it gives something to keep the attention of the student, while still learnign the subject matter, and avoiding a looong series of lectures.
  15. [blank]