MIT-AITI Ghana
2004, Ghana-2004 “at”
mit “dot”edu , team G-Unit
Compiled By: Samuel Gikandi, Lauri
Kauppila, Ato Ulzen Appiah, Tamara Stern, Aisha Walcott
Course Materials Website:
http://web.mit.edu/aisha/www/Ghana/Ghana2004_Weekly_Reports.html
Weekly Report:
July 12- July 18
Overall,
teaching the AITI Java and Entrepreneurship course has been a truly
rewarding
experience. It is definitely something that we can not put into words.
Thus, we
would like to thank MIT-AITI for this incredible opportunity.
2 Java Course
While
splitting the class into two tracks has allowed us to connect better
with the
students, it has been quite a challenge managing our time and tasks.
This week’s
lectures for both standard and advanced tracks required a lot of lab
access. However,
in the main computer lab there are not enough machines for students in
both
tracks to use at the same time, thus, it was very difficult to manage
lab time.
More specifically, the standard track was going through the Swing
material and
the advanced track was going through the JSP material. Both topics are
taught
well if the students are working on the computer while and listening to
the
lecture.
2.1
Organization and Logistics
At the beginning of the course, we had students fill out biography forms. You can see these forms on our Ghana 2004 course materials website. We also took pictures of the students, so that it was easier to learn their names as soon as possible. We had Ato go through some of the names with us, so that we could get the pronunciations correct.
We used the information from the student biographies to prepare a grade book for the students. We record all of their grades including labs, exams, quizzes, entrepreneurship assignments in an excel sheet. This helps us to keep everything organized. We also have which computers they work at recorded so that we can go on their computers and grade their labs after class, and know which folders to look for. We try to provide the students with daily agendas, by projecting the agenda prior to the lecture.
We have given report cards to all of the students with all of their grades twice so far – once after the 2nd week, and once after the 4th week. This helps us to let the students know what grades we have recorded for them, and what they need to do in order to pass the course. Many times there are errors in the grades we have recorded (because we could not find a lab that they were working on the grade, for example). It is also a good way to tell the students what grades they should be getting to get a certificate and what grades they should be worried about.
2.2
Advanced Track
The JSP track spent the week wrapping up the Java curriculum in preparation for the final Java exam. The exam was administered on Friday and the students performed very well on it.
We
also held the first three lectures of the JSP curriculum. This went
well but
the students could not write JSP code because we had some problems
getting the
software to work on the machines. We will be spending the whole of this
last
week guiding the students through their final project, which is a JSP
application that uses a MySQL database. There
were a few challenges that we faced. This was mainly preparing the
machines in
the computer lab with the JSP software. The installation process is
detailed Section
2.6.
Results
from Exam 2
We allow 1 page cheat sheets for the exams. We decided to implement this idea when we offered the standard track the exam makeup for exam 1. We thought that it would help them to study for the exam, and that it would be more reasonable because programmers can always look up syntax when programming.
The average on the exam was 75.5 – we were extremely happy with that. The grades ranged from 55-95, which was to be expected, considering we had the students with scores below the 60 or 50 range move to the Standard track.
Re-introducing
Self Learning
The
final project for the JSP class includes the java SPA lab, which
requires the
Collections lectures 1 and 2. We decided to try another self-learning
initiative because we would like to give the students the opportunity,
experience, and confidence to learn on their own, so that their Java
knowledge
does not end when we go back to the
2.3
Standard Track
The standard track has been doing the lecture, lab, review lab routine for the past week, and it seems to be working well. The class has become much more interactive now that we lecture in a lecture hall without computers. We have found that having them work on sample questions at there chairs and in groups really gets them excited about the material, and really pushes them to understand what they are doing. The lectures tend to go much more slowly than they had before, which is what we expected. There is huge improvement in about half the class. They are really eager to understand the material, and now that they see we are focusing on them and putting a lot of effort into them, they are trying hard to work with us.
30 Minute
Quiz Results
The standard track was given a quiz on Friday morning, so that it could be graded and discussed by Friday afternoon, when we would have an exam review for their Monday exam. They performed extremely well on quiz 3. The average grade was 8/10. The average on the other quizzes was usually much lower. We suspected 2 pairs of students (4 student’s total) of cheating because their quiz answers were completely identical (and they sit near one another, and we have seen them look onto each other’s papers before). We discussed the situation as a team, and decided that the 4 students who were caught cheating would have 10% of their final grade (the amount allotted for quiz results) set to 0%. We had Ato address the entire class (JSP and standard track) and explain that this is a serious situation, and cheating counts both ways – letting someone cheat and cheating yourself. We said the same disciplinary actions would happen if we realized they were cheating on another part of the course – for example, cheating on the exam would set 40% of their grade (the amount allotted for exams) to 0%. We them handed out the quizzes, with 0’s on the tops of the 4 we suspected. All 4 came to speak with us after. Two students claimed they studied together and were very upset by the situation. The other pair – it was obvious that one cheated from the other, and the one who cheated made no argument, while the one who was cheated off of said he tried to hide it from the other boy. Again, we discussed as a team, and decided to reset the grades of 3 of the 4 students who made arguments to us back to their original grades. We still think they cheated, but our main goal was to make sure it does not happen again, and we think the class has really gotten the point that cheating is unacceptable in this class. Our advice to future AITI teams: make it extremely clear that cheating is unacceptable right from the beginning. We did include a statement in our syllabus and mentioned it at the beginning of the course, but we should have reminded the students a bit more often.
2.5
Final Projects
This
week we had several discussions about
what exactly the final project should be for both the advanced and the
standard
track.
Advanced
Track
The JSP project for the JSP track will be worked on in pairs. We wanted to give them the benefit of learning to work in teams. We also thought this would lighten their load for the final week a bit because we want to make sure we get through all of the JSP lectures, and have them finish the Java lab. They will create a website that will have certain requirements that we will decide by Monday. You can find the handout that we are giving them on guidelines for their final project on our course website.
Standard Track
The
standard track’s final project with be the Collections labs – they will
be
asked to complete the SPA game. We will
be actually lecturing the collections lectures to that class. We have realized that they would not benefit
from attempting to learn the material on their own because they have
very much
trouble even grasping the most basic concepts that we have been going
over for
the past 5 weeks. We decided this would
be the best choice for them because it would expose them to the Java
API, as
well as a number of classes, so they could get used to reading other
people’s
code.
2.6
JSP Software Installation
Installing the JSP software on the machines was a bit tricky because the machines are not fully networked, and also because the CD drives on most of the machines were faulty. We first installed Netbeans to run JSP code. However, this did not work well with some of the machines and we had to reinstall tomcat on its own and have the students use JCreator to write the JSP code.
The network in the lab has been unpredictable over the course of our stay here and we would advise next year’s team to start copying the files required for the JSP curriculum into the machines early enough.
3 Course Evaluations
On Thursday, we handed out an evaluation to the class about how they felt about the split into the JSP (advanced) track and the standard track. We also wanted to know more specifically how they felt about the entrepreneurship class. We also wanted to see if they would be interested in a class get-together J. You can view the evaluation (Form 2) on the Ghana 2004 AITI course materials site
http://web.mit.edu/aisha/www/Ghana/Ghana2004_Weekly_Reports.html
We list the topics from the evaluation below along with a summary of the responses.
Thoughts
and Suggestions on the Java Course After it was Split into Two Tracks
Overall, the students seemed very happy with the split-up. Many of them said they wished that it had been that way from the beginning. Others said that it showed great initiative from the teachers to work hard to meet all of the students’ needs. Students who are now in the JSP track said they were frustrated with hearing the same questions over and over. Students who used to be in the OCW track said they wish they had lectures from the beginning. Many students appreciate that there is much more interaction with the teachers now that the class sizes are smaller.
Many students are saying that the JSP track might be a bit too fast, and that we are expecting too much of them: “we are normal people too,” says one student. We explained to the JSP students that we really want them to work hard this final week to draw everything together. This discussion just happened at the end of Friday, and they seemed understanding. We will see if they continue to complain about the workload next week.
Entrepreneurship
Assignments
Students
tended not to like group assignments.
They said they could not find groups.
Some did not think the assignments/class were related to
Entrepreneurship
Guest Speakers
Students really appreciated the guest speakers. It was good for them to see how successful entrepreneurs put the theory into practice. They appreciated our efforts to get them to come speak with the class.
Entrepreneurship
Lectures
Students seemed to think they were simple and to the point. Some thought they were monotonous and very self-explanatory. Others thought they were interesting.
Additional
Comments
The students love us J and are very thankful that we are spending our summer “tirelessly” imparting knowledge on them. They seem to really feel that they have gained a tremendous amount from the course. God should bless us, according to more than half of the class!
4 Entrepreneurship Course (written with a
lil’ pigeon slang
by Ato)
Chale, we received the final drafts of the business plans on Monday. Are you peeps thurr? We set the deadline this late (this day) to enable the students to find time to do some research (okay) and find time and resources to make digital copies of their plans. It is not a walk in the park to get stuff typed in this country, as unfortunate as it is, so many of the assignments handed in are handwritten. I mean, what is we gon’ do?
We hope to grade their business plans by the start of Tuesday. This would be done by all 5 of us. We created a score sheet / grading scheme, which detailed below. Six business plans which we feel address the issues and objectives of a viable business plan would be short listed. These plans would be presented to 3 entrepreneurs and businessmen for further understudy and grading. These six plans are gonna be sent to Eston for him to contribute his quota. We hope to receive final feedback and grades by the end of Thursday after which we would adjudge the winner who would receive the 3 million cedi prize. We can close the pipeline on that on Friday!
Entrepreneurship
business plans score sheet
Business
plan
Formatting, clear cut divisions
Business summary
Market Analysis (5 each)
Biz team (5 each)
Strategy Information (5 each)
Product Overview (5 each)
Financial information (5 each)
Venture viability (15)
Full
marks: 130
We’ve
a week more to go to
PS:
greetings to y’all, Akwaaba from
5 Awarding Certificates
The
students are very interested in getting certificates at the end of the
class. Some of them are only concerned
with the certificate. We were only
planning to give certificates to students who have an average above a
50% or
60%, leaving about a third of the class without the certificates. We had lunch with the professor who has been
dealing with much of the administrative work for the class (Professor
Aryeetey
– head of Computer Science department at
6 Mindstorms
This week we brought changes to the course that made a change for the better. As promised in the last week’s report, we took back the sets from the Accra Girls teams (who quit), and then got to work on making the atmosphere more fun and competitive.
On Monday we held a talk to the students about what the class is trying to achieve and what changes we want to make in order to meet those goals. Here are some of the major points covered in the talk:
- The class set out to teach fundamental theory about constructing robots, including some basics in mechanical engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. We hoped to drive home the point by allowing students to build their own robots with legos. This way, they would have a chance to understand what it takes to build a successful robot, and they would also remember their theory lessons better (with practical application). Although the students had now learnt some theory in mechanical engineering (gearing, specifically), they were woefully behind in understanding how to build good robots. Dead-reckoning robots and poor structures abounded because enough time/effort was not invested in building. Our conclusion was that the theory could wait for the future, and it was now much more important to leave the students with an idea of how to design/build successful robots without complicated theory.
- Dead-reckoning robots are no longer allowed. Robots will be assessed based on how well they can react to unexpected changes to circumstances (hence they need sensors), how eloquently they perform their task, and other standards like structural strength.
- The school spirit did not drive any team to success, even though we expected it to. Now, we choose to increase competitiveness in some radical ways:
o We usually bring a box of juice containers for free refreshment. This time, the box would not be distributed evenly but all the juice would go to the winning team.
o MIT will be represented, to showcase some experienced design work. We the teachers will take back one of the sets from the Accra Girls, and build with it. To ensure students take us seriously, we will compete for our own prizes each time a competition is run.
o Competitions will be held daily. This means that there is very little time to build the robots (3 hours), and all team members must work seriously to get the job done on time. There will be no time to play games or do homework.
- Playing games and doing homework is not allowed.
- We will stop assigning homework. The class is taking up 6 hours of students’ time each week, so any kind of extra work is completely optional. We now expect all teams to start and complete their robot during class time. This implies that class time must be well spent.
On Monday, we hadn’t yet received the legos from the Accra Girls (despite promises…) so we didn’t yet get an MIT team to represent. However, the talk accomplished several changes. For example, students were more active in building their robot, and the robots were of higher quality than any previous ones.
The best point in Monday’s class was the competition we held at the end. It was then that the competitive character finally rose among teams, and we felt like it could have a huge effect on their future building. Teams began cheering for their robot as it charged the other one (the theme was “battlebots”, where robots that tried to push each other off the table). The noise picked up after the first few elimination rounds, and the final match had everyone on their toes. The winning team started shouting and parading around with their juice box, while we sat back and laughed at their crazed response to winning something as simple as a box of juice.
We left the class with the feeling that the students were starting to take the class more seriously, while also enjoying their time a bit more. The key was to make them interact with each other more, and what could be better than a competition that requires fighting between the teams? Boys will be boys…
On
Wednesday, we finally got the lego sets back from Accra Girls, so Lauri
(who
was the only teacher around) began building a robot to represent MIT.
The other
lego set was given to
Next week, we expect that robot quality will improve while competitiveness remains high. We will have our final battlebot competition on Monday, after which we’ll start another project. The theme is yet to be decided, but we’re again planning an interactive contest (so at least two teams compete on the playing field at once). What’s more, we’ll go back to autonomous robots, because we feel the students are now ready to give that another try. In case it isn’t clear, the battlebots used touch sensor controls that were extended far from the robot so that a user could control the robot like a small toy with a game pad. This removed the necessity to consider simple AI/algorithms, because robots were controlled in real-time. Now that the students have had more practice with structure building and lego programming, we think they’re just about ready to take the next step to autonomy.
7 Visiting High schools
As
you already know, we successfully had a applying to MIT session for
Presec High
School Due to a busy schedule of extra-curricular events at
8 Publicity (a lil’ mo’ pigeon by Ato)
Eyo, we are gonna be treading on air on air on Radio Universe, Legon’s radio station. The journalist is the host of Legon’s computer link program (IT related stuff). The goal of the interview is to raise awareness of MIT-AITI, its history and vision. We would also touch on African student initiatives as a whole, u know.
We hope to make noise and drum about MIT OCW through the interview as well. Open Course Ware is the next big thing, u know. Another radio interview is scheduled for sometime in August. Sunny FM, the radio station could not fix a July time for us due to a busy schedule. We still haven’t been able to secure a newspaper article yet. The problem with this is the inability to find a journalist who would write an article about AITI. It’s all in the pipeline, u know.
9 Yahoo Groups
We
collected the email addresses of most or all of the students in order
to create
a Yahoo Groups for AITI Ghana 2004. We created the Yahoo group under
Ghana
2004, and sent out invitations to about 50 students. We will gather the
remaining emails this week and add those students to the Ghana 2004
Yahoo
Group.
10 Ghana 2004 Exploring
This
weekend we do not have anything in particular planned. We were invited
by the
professor to go into town and select some traditional Ghanaian garb, as
a gift
to us for our work at Legon. This was a fun experience. The G-unit
girls went
with a female friend of the professor to shop for clothing, while the
G-Unit
men went with the professor to buy Ghanaian clothes. After we went
shopping for
clothes, we did more shopping around town and at the
11 General Thoughts and Suggestions
It would have been beneficial to have a place where we post announcements everyday that the students would be responsible for looking at. We have been making some announcements verbally, some projected, and some on the whiteboard. We give announcements at different times of the day, and sometimes students are out for a moment, or absent, which makes it difficult to guarantee that all students here our announcements. If we could do it over, perhaps we would be consistent and always have an agenda projected on the board at a particular time, or all throughout the day.
12 Conclusions
We are working diligently to make sure that we are able to reach as many students as possible. Since the first exam, there has been a tremendous improvement in most of the students. They are working hard too, to understand the course material. We are starting to feel sad now that the summer is coming to a close. But we are having a great time, so it’s all good! Thanks to AITI for their support and feedback.
Please be aware that the students paid about $30.00 to be in the course. Professor Aryeetey explained to us that this nominal fee was to offset the cost of the university resources, such as priming, running the computer labs, and so forth.
Towards
the middle of the summer we stopped having official group meetings
everyday.
Towards the end of the course, we re-adjusted our schedules so that we
could
start meeting everyday. This allowed us
to improve our communication and to be updated on all the activities
that we
are involved in. Advice we could give to future AITI teams: meeting
everyday is
pretty important, but can get tiring to do at night (we usually come
home after
A couple of USB cards is very helpful. We were able to transfer information between our computers very easily that way. Walkie talkies might be recommended if you do not have phones. Our team is planning to use a different lab (5-10 min away) for the final week to maximize access to computers, and we plan to use the walkie talkies to make sure announcements are made to both classes, and so forth.