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Do university courses teach the right things for life at work later on?
I'm so glad I'm not a teacher - or at least a school teacher or University lecturer. For in these jobs, I feel that I would be spending far more of my time preparing my students to pass exams than I would spend preparing them for what life was going to bring them beyond the educational establishment. Bruce came around on Friday night. He's headed for a degree in robotics / artificial intelligence, but has to pass his exams in C programming before he can move on to the next stage. Now - to me - C programming is all about working out how an application will work, and coding it to run robustly, and have a good user interface. It's also about making reuse of existing code for efficiency's sake - at writing and maintainance time - and about well commented and structured code to help the maintainance programmer later in the code's lifecycle. To Bruce, at the moment it's all about passing his exam. About going through past papers which regurgitate the same sort of question (or even exactly the same question) from one year to another. It's about knowing how many bytes of memory are occupied by a pointer [why on earth does he need to know that?] and recognising obsure keywords in a list of potential variable names [again - why? - the compiler will indicate an error quickly enough if you use a word like volatile as a variable name, and you cab change it; no need to remember every obscure possibility parrot fashion]. I wish Bruce well; he concentrated well during the evening, he was prepared and is clearly bright, and in there are some strong areas of overlap between the things he's learning and the things he'll need, so the course isn't headed totally into academia. Perhaps he wants to teach the course himself, in which case it would be totally relevant! But I would dearly love to have seen him studying and understanding pointers, structures, arrays, and how and when they should be used, and I think he would be better served by his University if such topics were given much more prevelance ... at the expense of him having to know exactly what erroneous value you would be left with if you overflow a char variable. This week, I'm teaching our own C Courses. They would not have been right for Bruce swotting for his exams, which is why I invited him along at a different time. But I feel that they're so much more targetted to the practical. Yes - of course I appreciate the University's mandate to produce a product (trained people) that's measured against a particular set of criteria, and the choice of exams as a way to set those criteria - but I'm so glad it' not my mandate. My mandate is to train people to do their job better. (written 2011-08-10) 2a23 Associated topics are indexed under Z301 - Current Affairs[3720] Melksham ATC - freedom of the town - (2012-05-05) [3646] Exploring Melksham with a film maker - (2012-03-09) [3467] Charities v Charitable. The cost of collecting your donation. - (2011-10-06) [3357] Business, priorities, and volunteering - (2011-07-14) [3347] The Anthony trial - Orange County, Florida. Thoughts on conclusion - (2011-07-06) [3282] The future of canal management and charities - Kennet and Avon Canal bias - (2011-05-08) [3265] Alternative Vote (AV) - cutting the crap - (2011-04-25) [3231] Footpath, Bridleway, Byway, Road used as Public Path - (2011-04-04) [3228] What can you take on a public footpath? Pram? Wheelbarrow? Dog? Shopping Trolley? Horse? Cycle? - (2011-04-03) [3183] Redevelopment on the banks of the Avon in Melksham - (2011-02-25) [3126] Car Parking in Melksham - thoughts on the proposed scheme, and wider thoughts too - (2011-01-09) [3030] Liquorice allsorts and Dolly Mixtures - (2010-11-05) [3028] VAT rise in January - it is really up 14% not just 2.5% - (2010-11-03) [2995] A river in Melksham is not just for boaters. - (2010-10-11) [2982] Travel, Transport and Tourism - A vision for Melksham, 2026 - (2010-10-03) [2904] Melksham Area Board meeting of last week - (2010-08-04) [2852] Atworth Village Fete - on the Melksham Community Area Partnership stand - (2010-07-04) [2776] Regional Spatial Strategy and the next 20 years - Whence Wiltshire under the new government? - (2010-05-22) [2666] Random thoughts on Melksham Town Planning and development - (2010-03-08) [2602] East of Melksham - Building Work Starts - (2010-01-28) [2574] Summary of Wiltshire Core Strategy responses - (2010-01-13) [2514] The road show has been - where now? - (2009-11-27) [2508] Community Area Partnership - inaugural AGM - (2009-11-20) [2289] pre-Inaugural briefing - Melksham Community Area Partnership - (2009-07-15) [2128] Wiltshire - where everybody matters - (2009-04-13) [2112] Whatever next ... the joys of being an employer - (2009-04-01) [1987] One Cheer for Local Democracy - Asda in Melksham - (2009-01-11) [1960] Christmas Survivors - (2008-12-25) [1275] Incident in Melksham - (2007-07-24) [1214] New Serieses for the summer on TV - (2007-06-02) [614] News in Ireland - (2006-02-20) [377] A Strengthened City - (2005-07-14) [33] 10 Years of experience - (2004-08-30) G310 - Well House Consultants - A better class of course [3587] C++ Courses - do I get official certification at the end of my Well House course? - (2012-01-20) [3419] Data that we use during our training courses, and other training resources - (2011-09-04) [3271] The importance of feedback - (2011-04-30) [3001] How will we present courses over the coming years? - (2010-10-17) [2762] Well House - Mission and Policy summaries - (2010-05-13) [2633] Why do I teach niche skills rather than mainstream? - (2010-02-13) [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17) [2109] Why most training fails ... - (2009-03-30) [2084] Books and distance learning from Well House Consultants? - (2009-03-15) [2074] Weekday or Weekend PHP, Python and Perl classes? - (2009-03-10) [2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20) [2010] How long should a training module be? - (2009-01-27) [1933] Learning to Program in C - (2008-12-10) [1645] Seeing how others do it - PHP training - (2008-05-17) [1576] Making PHP and MySQL training relevant to the course delegates - (2008-03-15) [1488] New trainee laptop fleet for our Open Source courses - (2007-12-30) [1453] What makes our courses special? - (2007-12-02) [1035] Longer hours and better value courses - (2007-01-15) [726] In praise of training course delegates. - (2006-05-20) [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14) [579] Short Linux and Perl courses for small groups - (2006-01-27) [577] Learning to program in Perl or PHP - (2006-01-26) [559] ''I don't know'' is sometimes a good answer - (2006-01-09) [554] What backup is adequate? - (2006-01-04) [497] I have a river to cross - (2005-11-16) [394] A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses - (2005-07-28) [371] The training team that's looking out for you - (2005-07-07) [350] Want to be one better - (2005-06-17) [292] Elegant languages - Perl, PHP, Python - (2005-04-26) [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27) [224] YOUR application and YOUR data - (2005-02-22) [219] Some unusual features - (2005-02-18) [215] Open Source becomes mainstream - (2005-02-14) [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12) 5412
Some other Articles
Plenty to do in MelkshamTemplates in C++ - defining a family pattern of methods / functions Eating out in Melksham - where we like for lunch. Adding the pieces together to make a complete language - C Do university courses teach the right things for life at work later on? Loops - a comparison of goto, while and for Are people who walk into Melksham being asked to subsidise parking? What is the picture? Report - day trip from Swindon / Chippenham / Melksham to Weymouth Melksham Jelly - An Occasional Office for Home Workers |
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Link to page ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82 at 50 posts per pageThis is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.
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