JOEL SCHINDALL: Initially, the course
was taught in a more or less conventional manner where
Blade and I did the teaching, and we
had one teaching assistant who was actually someone
that Blade new from Tufts University who
came in and helped the students with some
of the technical issues in the design problems.
But after the first term, some of the students
volunteered to be teaching assistants the following term.
And they brought a whole new dimension
to the teaching of the course, because the students
were encouraged to--
The students don't do their homework during class,
they do it typically at 10:00 PM or 2:00 AM or 4:00
AM, any time of the day or night.
And it's frustrating to run into an obstacle
and not be able to get an answer to your question.
So we established a website where the students can go to it
and ask their question.
And we have three or four teaching assistants
who are monitoring that website 24/7.
Literally 24/7.
And it's fun to watch the dialogue because you'll
often-- at 2:00 AM a question will come in.
One of the students will say, well, Jim
is best equipped to answer this question,
but he's sleeping now.
I'm going to give you an initial answer.
And about 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, Jim
will get back on and give you the rest of the answer.
We have probably, over the course
of the term, at least 1,000 question-answer exchanges that
take place.
The students who evaluate the course
often give perfect scores of seven
to the teaching assistants.
A little bit humbling for us and the faculty who
are getting good scores-- 6.1, 6.2--
but the teaching assistants get the best scores
because they're actually one-on-one
guiding the students through a problem.
And they're doing it very much from the student's perspective,
because this is the same problem that they
had to deal with the previous year
so they know what questions to ask.
They phrase their answers so eloquently.
You know, today's younger generation
is accustomed to electronic tools, to chatting, you know,
to social media, and they have a very nice deferential and yet
effective style of interacting with this communication.