From owner-cse575-fa07-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Thu Oct 11 20:39:56 2007 Received: from ares.cse.buffalo.edu (ares.cse.buffalo.edu [128.205.32.79]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l9C0dt22016964 for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:39:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: from front3.acsu.buffalo.edu (upfront.acsu.buffalo.edu [128.205.4.140]) by ares.cse.buffalo.edu (8.13.8/8.13.6) with SMTP id l9C0dkkU039580 for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:39:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 25092 invoked from network); 12 Oct 2007 00:39:41 -0000 Received: from deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.57) by front3.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 12 Oct 2007 00:39:41 -0000 Received: (qmail 27496 invoked from network); 12 Oct 2007 00:39:38 -0000 Received: from listserv.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.35) by deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 12 Oct 2007 00:39:38 -0000 Received: by LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 14.5) with spool id 3182932 for CSE575-FA07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU; Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:39:37 -0400 Delivered-To: cse575-fa07-list@listserv.buffalo.edu Received: (qmail 25312 invoked from network); 12 Oct 2007 00:36:39 -0000 Received: from mailscan7.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.6.158) by listserv.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 12 Oct 2007 00:36:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 8112 invoked from network); 12 Oct 2007 00:36:39 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.buffalo.edu (128.205.32.14) by smtp1.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 12 Oct 2007 00:36:39 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (rapaport@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l9C0ad11016901 for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:36:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from rapaport@localhost) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.9/Submit) id l9C0advT016900 for cse575-fa07-list@listserv.buffalo.edu; Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:36:39 -0400 (EDT) X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: : 7% Message-ID: <200710120036.l9C0advT016900@castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU> Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:36:39 -0400 Reply-To: "William J. Rapaport" Sender: Introduction to Cognitive Science From: "William J. Rapaport" Subject: Midsemester Course Evaluation comments To: CSE575-FA07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Precedence: list List-Help: , List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Owner: List-Archive: X-DCC-Buffalo.EDU-Metrics: castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU 1029; Body=0 Fuz1=0 Fuz2=0 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.1.8 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.8 (2007-02-13) on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.90.2/4530/Thu Oct 11 16:02:20 2007 on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean Status: R Content-Length: 7902 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Midsemester Course Evaluation comments ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for taking the time to do the midsemester course evaluation. If any of you find yourselves teaching a course in the future, I strongly recommend that you give a survey like this around midsemester. I got the idea from my colleague Stuart C. Shapiro a long time ago, and I've used it in every course since then. I have found it to be very useful (because I can make a midcourse correction if need be) and infinitely more useful than the official course evaluations that we faculty don't get to see till long after the course is over. I received 21 evaluations, out of a possible 22. That's probably not enough for me to base any statistical analyses on, especially because most of the comments were "singletons". The largest number of responses (40%) were to the effect that the course was fine as is, no changes needed. Next (30%) were those who were happy with the wide range of topics and the "big picture" nature of the course. However, a very few of you found that wide range of topics hard to handle, especially topics outside of your own discipline. That's a problem that's endemic to academe: People from one discipline often cannot understand people from another discipline. (I recently attended a Humanities Institute presentation at which one of the presenters was speaking what sounded to me like a foreign language that happened to have the exact same grammar as English but an entirely different vocabulary.) But it's important to try to learn how to read research that's relevant to what you do but that is done by people outside your own area. (My "slow reading" algorithm can be helpful here.) If that's all you get out of this course, I'll be happy. Following that (20% each) were comments to the effect that the lectures and the professor were good (thanks!) and that the listserv, website, and syllabus were useful. (Thanks again.) But 15% of you wanted to see more discussion of computer science. Curiously, all of the students who wanted that were enrolled in **CSE** 575 :-) 10% of the students, neither of whom were enrolled in the CSE section, were either happy that the course was not focused on CS or unhappy with the large amount of CS that I have covered. I detect a pattern here, especially because one of the non-CSE students wanted to see more coverage of that student's home discipline, if not by me, then by a guest lecturer from that discipline. Without singling out that discipline, all I can say in my defense is that (a) you're quite right; I will probably wind up not saying much about certain disciplines because they are very far from my expertise, and (b) I invited guest speakers from all of the cognitive science disciplines at UB, and no one from that particular discipline was able to help out this semester (though they have in the past). I might also add that when this course is taught by a faculty member from the Department of XYZ, the course mysteriously tends to focus on the XYZ discipline to the detriment of other disciplines. A historical aside: When this course was first offered, it was team-taught by faculty from CSE, LIN, PHI, PSY, and CDS, among others. But that proved overwhelmingly difficult to maintain over the long run, and so the course now circulates among (some of) the departments. Closely related to this issue, some of you expressed an interest in finding out more about practical applications of cognitive science. I'm not a very practically-oriented researcher, so I guess I do tend to ignore that aspect. I'll see what I can dig up. But many of the "Cog Sci in the News" items I post to the Listserv are about applications, and there is a regular column in American Educator magazine about applications of cognitive science to education: Link to: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/index.htm and do a search on "ask the cognitive scientist" :-) Also closely related, some of you expressed an interest in learning more about how cognitive science theories are tested computationally or experimentally. I think I *am* covering some of that (e.g., the discussion of GPS and some discussion of some psych experiments), and, indeed, some of you praised me for such discussions. But if you'd like to learn more about specific topics, follow the links on the websites (or investigate some of this as part of your term project!). Another issue on which you disagree is the amount of work I assign (or the lack thereof). Some of you are happy with it; others would like to see more. There are arguments in favor of more work: It keeps you, the student, alert and involved, for one thing. But this is not a "here are the facts; please learn them" kind of course, and I'd rather you investigated a topic of interest to you in depth, hence the term project as the principal assignment. I suppose here's an opportunity for me to begin to give you such small assignments, but I think that would be generally unfair at this point in the semester when most of you will be focusing your efforts on the project. One suggestion that I might be able to act on is more frequent collection of the reading journals. More seriously, some of you are getting a bit frustrated by my continually updating the syllabus. I do apologize. I haven't taught this course in a few years, and I've usually had many more guest lecturers, so organizing the topics involved a bit of guesswork that my subsequent re-arrangments are trying to correct. In one case, I rearranged things slightly because, while I was preparing the lectures, I realized that they made more sense in the re-arranged order. In one or two other cases, the scheduling of the guest lecturers required some adjustments. And I wanted to brief you on some of what I expected they might be saying in case their presentations were, shall we say, less than clear. (That has happened in the past.) Another thing some of you wanted to see was more discussion. Me too. So: Talk more! Ask questions! Make comments! Post to the Listserv! On the positive side, you like: my not using too much Powerpoint (though I may wind up using some later on), the freedom of topics for your project, the freedom you have on the reading assignments, and the guest speakers (but you've only seen one!). Great! I haven't covered every comment you've made, but I think I've covered most. If you want more information on some topic in cognitive science, please ask in class, or stop by my office during office hours (or make an appointment if my hours are inconvenient). I will try to take your ideas into account to improve the second half of the course. If any of you would like to discuss any of these issues further, either privately or via the Listserv, please feel free. -Bill Rapaport ------------------------------------------------------------------------ William J. Rapaport Associate Professor of Computer Science Affiliated Faculty, Philosophy and Linguistics Member, Center for Cognitive Science Associate Director, SNePS Research Group (SNeRG) 201 Bell Hall (office: 214 Bell) | 716-645-3180 x 112 Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering | fax: 716-645-3464 University at Buffalo (SUNY) | rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu Buffalo, NY 14260-2000 | www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Comp. 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