Welcome to the Fall 2013 session of Grinnell College's CSC 295, a
special topics course entitled Thinking Beyond Grinnell -
Learning from Alumni. In this course, we will meet (often
virtually) with alumni with careers related to computer science who
will talk about their life and career paths, and will provide advice
for students on things to learn and things to do. You can read the
offical blurb for more details.
The focus of the class is the visits by alumni. While some of these
visits will involve alumni coming directly to campus, the majority of
the visits will be “virtual”, via Skype or some other
teleconferencing system.
The Web site for the course is
http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CSC295/2013F/
You can find all sorts of interesting things on the course web, and I'd
encourage you to look there.
This is an experimental course. Among other
things, this means that I expect to be updating the syllabus as the
semester goes on.
Meets:
Thursdays, 2:15-4:05 p.m., Science 3821.
Instructor:
Samuel
A. Rebelsky, Science 3824. 269-4410 (office). 236-7445 (home).
Office hours: Monday, 2:15-4:05; Tuesday, 2:15-2:45; Wednesday:
2:15-2:45; Friday, 3:15-4:05. I tend to follow an open door policy:
Feel free to stop by when my door is open or to make an appointment
for another time. Please do not call my house before 7 a.m. or after
10 p.m.
This course is offered for one credit and is graded as
S/D/F. All students who take the course are expected to
-
attend at least eleven of the thirteen class meetings;
-
do all assigned readings;
-
facilitiate (or co-facilitate) approximately three physical or
virtual alumni visits (the precise number depends on the number of
students enrolled);
-
write a short reflective piece on each alumni visit; and
-
write a short reflective piece at the end of the semester.
The students in this course are responsible for hosting and facilitating
the visits of the alumni. (Practice with organizing visits is one
of the learning goals of the course.) At the start of the semester,
students will sign up in groups to facilitate alumni visits (see the schedule for details of
particular visits).
As the facilitator for a visit, you are expected to work with the alumnus
or alumna on the following in advance of the visit.
-
Develop a structure for their visit. While most visits will involve
a moderate-length lecture (say 45 minutes) and a follow-up question
and answer (or discussion) session, some alumni might want to consider
other approaches.
-
Identify any resources that they would like students to read or
explore before their talk.
-
Write a short biographical sketch that can be distributed to the
class before the class meeting.
-
Write a short abstract for the lecture that can be distributed to
the class before the class meeting.
-
Work out any technological issues for their visit. For in-class
visits, that means making sure that we have the resources (Internet,
projection, etc.) that they need for the visit. For remote visits,
that means making sure that Skype (or whatever communication system
they suggest) works appropriately.
Your work also continues into the class session. During the class session
you facilitate, you should do the following:
-
Arrive early to set up technologies.
-
Introduce the alumna or alumnus.
-
Continue to monitor technologies during class.
-
Facilitate discussion.
-
Be ready to ask a wide variety of questions.
Textbooks and Other Readings
