Sorry! I'd Like to Help You but I Can't

When I post tutorial videos, I get a lot of requests for personalized help. I want to help! Your project might even sound really cool to me. But here I'm going to explain why I probably cannot help you today.

Unfortunately, It's Inefficient
One of the exciting things about the internet is that I can make a video and help tens of thousands of people. Even when I'm sleeping or busy, I feel like my videos are working for me and teaching people.

Unfortunately, responding to one person's personal problem doesn't have this advantage. If I help you, I only help you (generally). I could spend an hour helping just ten people with their personal projects by responding to comments. Or I could use that hour to make a new video that may help ten thousand people - and then maybe another ten thousand people next year.

This is the number one reason why I don't respond to a lot of replies to my videos!

Ambiguous Question
I'd also have to spend a lot of time to understand what your problem even is. Often people ask vague questions. Sometimes I basically have no idea what the problem even is. People may say "I added the thing like in the video but my thing isn't moving like yours". There is no way for me to help, aside from struggling to get you to describe your problem better to me.

How to Ask a Question
There are ways to make it more likely that I'll answer your question, or someone else will.

• Include lots of information, like the versions of software you're using.
• Include a link to your project, or a link to your code.
• Only show us the code that is causing you trouble - delete all the code that is personal and irrelevant to the problem you're having.
• Prove that you've tried to solve this yourself already, and that you're not just looking to be spoon fed the answer.

Whenever I do answer personal questions, it's because I know exactly what your problem is and I know how to help very quickly.

Comments I Do Respond To
I need your feedback! If there's an error in my video please tell me so I can put up a warning or fix it. If you have a cool idea for a new video, I'd love to hear it. I also prioritize video suggestions when they come from my supporters on Patreon (this is a website where you can donate 1$, or any amount, every time I post a video).

I want to help people learn to think computationally as a full time job. Until I find a salaried position doing this, I need to volunteer my time, and rely on donations to make things happen.

Thanks for reading, and good luck building your dream project :o

Book Review: The Open Organization

The Open Organization by Jim Whitehurst describes the open source software company Red Hat. It does a great job introducing Red Hat's unusual culture, but it was also written by the CEO so the stories and ideas are mind-numbingly positive. If you can get past its repetitious optimism then it's an interesting and worthwhile read about technology companies.

Who should read this book?

Anyone interested in trust, motivation, culture, communication, and hiring strategies at technology companies, especially Red Hat. No technical background is needed to enjoy this book.

The Good

The most enjoyable and interesting parts of the book were its stories. There's stories on how the author got hired as CEO, how Red Hat hires regular employees, and how Red Hat employees were sceptical of their new CEO and "tested" him. However, Jim Whitehurst is not an expert storyteller. Nevertheless as readers we must take what we can get, as there aren't very many billion dollar software company CEOs willing to write (somewhat) openly about their organization. The stories have a unique enough perspective that they are very worthwhile.

Good points were made on how clothes can reinforce hierarchy or shut down open communication. This can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Including the "Peter Principle" was a nice touch, as well as other business or software concepts. Finally, there's a handful of shout outs to millenials, and what it means that they typically demand more open participation from the companies they work for.

The Bad

The CEO has written a very low risk book, mostly with the goal of promoting his company. There's nothing wrong with that of course - but a book must stand on its own, and it clearly suffers because of the author's priorities.

Where are stories from employees at Red Hat, or ex-employees? Readers aren't given any serious criticisms of Red Hat or the open organization at all. What do traditional business executives think of Red Hat's structure? Do they have intelligent reasons to turn away from it? If the book were serious about open organizations, these perspectives are critical. Instead of being about open organizations, the book is about Red Hat's positive experiences with open organizations. This is a related topic (a subset), but it's just not the whole story.

I also got the distinct impression that the CEO didn't tell as many stories or tell them in as much detail because of business interests. He writes of their "biggest competitor" but leaves them nameless. This seems petty to me. Was it Microsoft, or maybe Salesforce..? Would it really be so harmful to say? Or what about their "long time strategic partner" who turned against them? Again, what's the company name? These are just the straightforward examples - there are more. But as a reader you do feel it when the stories are missing details.

Finally, the repetition. The mind-numbing repetition! Red Hat is different. We do things differently. Differently! Different. It's a meritocracy. Meritocracy. Red Hat is a meritocracy. We do things differently. Yes, please stop, we get it.

Summary

I have a feeling this optimistic storytelling book is a recruitment tool for software developers. Much of the "open organization" seems specifically built to appeal to the disillusioned - such as encouraging "heated debate". In that capacity, maybe this CEO with a computer science background has succeeded, as Red Hat is now on my radar as a future employer.

I suspect the book will not persuade traditional executives to change their ways - I think you already have to be a bit on board with the open ethos to appreciate the read. Nevertheless, if you can get past the positive bias, whitewashed stories, and repetition, then this is a good read on Red Hat's unusual and open culture. It was a nice experience reading about a successful software company that supposedly espouses many of my own values.

Outpost Bureaucracy: The Power of One is Strong

What's the longest journey you've ever taken through university bureaucracy? Mine is probably longer. After five months of appeals, I'm finally able to register at Concordia as a McGill student for an equivalent course. Just like the comic above - I was arbitrarily denied for no good reason after getting approval from six McGill and Concordia administrators. So like before, I employed a tactic to coerce this "outpost bureaucracy" which paid off! More on outpost bureaucracies later. Finally, while this is a story of eventual success, buckle down because I feel the comic above is no exaggeration.

I hope that by telling this embarrassing story university administrators will clear up some of their ludicrous and profoundly convoluted processes. I don't mean to unfairly target school administrators. But lets never forget that some of them are responsible for not fixing this mess. We need to complain more.

The Call to Adventure

In January 2015 I realized that if I schedule my classes right, I might be able to graduate as early as December 2015. Sweet! Lets make that happen! But I needed a diversity themed education course. Unfortunately, the only course overlapped by just 20 minutes and on only one day, with a computer science course I also absolutely needed.

Lets talk to the diversity professor, Donna-Lee Smith. Maybe she'll be understanding?

I spoke to Donna after class. I appealed alongside another student who commiserated with me because she too was experiencing how the education department and science department refused to cooperate with each other. Both me her promised to prioritize attendance in Donna's class. We could make this promise because lectures in science courses are typically optional, or recorded, or just terrible. We just needed some flexibility in case there was a test and we needed to arrive 20 minutes late maybe once a month.

Donna's answer? No. Absolutely no. 100% attendance every single day is non-negotiable. Donna seemed like a good professor from her first class, but this was inexcusably inflexible.

She clearly did not care about our schedules or our lives. If I had a test or exam conflict, she was going to be a problem, not a solution. Donna is not the final gatekeeper in my comic, by the way. We've hardly even gotten started.

Refusal of the Call

So I dropped the course. Next I asked advisers for an exemption or if I could substitute a course. I was denied.

One problem with pursuing a multi-disciplinary program is that no department feels you belong to them. I'm completing an arts degree (arts department) in computer science (science department) and education (education department). This is the only way at McGill to get a degree studying education and technology. Fun side note: my arts degree consists of zero arts credits.

So when I say "next I asked for an exemption and was denied" this wasn't a simple matter of meeting with my adviser. The arts adviser told me to see an education adviser, who told me to see a science adviser, who told me to see an arts adviser. I estimate I sent a dozen emails to a handful of people at this stage. I was eventually denied, since saying no is less work than saying yes. So I thought I'd make an appointment and explain my circumstances, since saying no to someone's face takes more work.

Meeting with the Oracle

In the summer the stakes got high. Some of you may know already that I'm extremely fortunate to teach technology topics in a high school during my studies. Since I want a career in education technology, this is fabulous work experience and it's easily more important than any one course I could take at McGill. Unfortunately, for my final fall semester I was left with just two choices:

Teach or graduate. I had to quit my job or take an extra semester for one course.

So I met with an adviser, Grace Wong-McAllister, again. I tried hard to offer alternatives:

• Could my six extra credits in education technology replace the three diversity credits? No.
• Is there any other course I could take instead of this one diversity course in the fall? No.
• Is there a summer course I could take instead? No.
• Could I get an exemption? No.

The last point is especially fun. She asked if I had previously done relevant course work that could exempt me from this course. I answered: "well, yes. I have a BA in English literature. Maybe half my essays were about race, gender, religion, or cultural diversity." She looked at me like I was a block of mouldy cheese that just spoke to her. "No no no... that won't do."

Crossing the Threshold

Here's some advice: don't give up. Just because nine people say no in twenty different ways doesn't mean it can't be done. I kept pressing Grace for options. Eventually she thought of something.

"It's a long shot, though."

An inter-university cooperation group called CREPUQ might let me take an equivalent course at Concordia while I'm a McGill student. Pretty soon this became my very last option. If I couldn't take this course at Concordia, I'd have to quit my fantastic teaching job or take an extra semester for one course. I'm still baffled by the incredible stupidity of this situation. All because of a 20 minute overlap on one day.

The Trials

Luckily, I had no problems checking Concordia's schedule because I remembered my old login credentials. The course existed! And it fit in my schedule! So I filled out several pages of awkward CREPUQ web forms. My program of study was not an option so I chose a generic option instead and left a note.

A day later: rejected. Invalid program of study.

Okay. I resubmitted. This time I just lied and said I was an education student.

I could see now that my request must pass through a gauntlet of administrators. The next one in line is only notified once the one above them approves my request:

• 1st program adviser - McGill
• 2nd program adviser - McGill
• Registrar - McGill
• Adviser - Concordia
• Approval of Registrar - Concordia
• Confirmation of Registrar - Concordia

That means if one administrator diddles, I'm stuck. Well that's exactly what happened. After McGill adviser #2 stalled for a month, I sent them an email. To their credit, they soon woke up and passed the torch.

Two months later, I got CREPUQ approval to register for the course! Victory..?

The Crisis

After re-activating my old Concordia account (not easy) I found that I could not enrol in any courses. I had to contact "enrolment services". They eventually removed that lock.

Next, I hit a "reserve capacity is met" lock. I contacted enrolment services again. They tell me to ask the department. Okay. Calling the department took a few days of trying because their office was moving during the summer. I spoke to an administrator we'll call "Sarah". Sarah is the mountain gatekeeper from the comic. She asked for details by email, I happily sent them. Her email reply, verbatim:

"i verified but unfortunately there are only spots for Concorida students."

Okay... I asked when the leftover slots would open for independent students. I gave my story and circumstances.

"sorry but the course will not open up,it is only for Concordia students"

I see. So I previously got a BA from Concordia, I'm a re-activated "independent" Concordia student, I'm probably doing a master's at Concordia soon, but I'm not enough of a Concordia student for Sarah?

Outpost Bureaucracies
I'd like to take a moment to explain my term "outpost bureaucracy". This is where a lower employee is assigned god-like responsibility over some very obscure task in a bureaucracy. The catch is that it's so obscure that nobody cares about it. For example, approving inter-university independent student requests in one department. It's an outpost, so it's very lonely and there's no prestige. But it's an outpost! So there's nobody around to criticize any decisions. When that lone adventurer comes to the mountain summit, what is the outpost sentry tempted to do? Justify their self-importance by harshly exercising their power with impunity.

The Ordeal

So I phone someone else in the department of education. I give my best performance explaining my circumstances and try to elicit sympathy. She sounds optimistic and suggests I send her an email with all the details. Thank you! I send the email. Nothing. Two weeks later I follow up: "Hey? Any news?" No response. It's been months now, still nothing. I phoned and left a message, nothing.

I called the graduate department to see if they can pull some strings for a future student. I spoke to a nice guy, but nope.

I called the Concordia CREPUQ coordinator. Also a nice guy, but nope.

Slaying the Dragon

What finally worked was a carefully crafted email. I employed several tactics:

• I sent it to the Concordia registrar from my CREPUQ request instead of the advisers. I reasoned that registrars had more power because the advisers were serving as a spam filter. My first invalid request was denied by an adviser and never saw a registrar's inbox. People who are difficult to reach tend to have more power.
• I quoted Sarah verbatim, including her tragic misspelling of "Concorida".
• I mentioned that someone in the registrar's own department was not responding to phone calls.
• I wasn't whining about my situation. Instead, my main request was for CREPUQ to remove this course from their list since Concordia is obviously not cooperating.
• I said I wanted to help future students going through the system.
• Finally, I requested that only available courses be listed on CREPUQ.

That last point is vital. I was asking the registrar to get involved in a long process and do a lot of work. Nobody wants to do work. Several days later I got a phone call... from Sarah! Sarah who previously denied me entry unconditionally. She was now remarkably kind and helpful. I'm thinking... maybe someone important came to the outpost?

For the sake of completeness, this wasn't the end, just nearly. Sarah said she unlocked the course. It didn't work. I call, no answer. I get an email saying she registered me herself! I check... oops! I'm registered in the wrong course. 445 instead of 454. Chronic dyslexia! Apparently her "director" gave her the wrong course number. Maybe we've identified my saviour.

Finally, I'm now registered for the right course and everything is dandy!

Return with the Elixir

So what did we learn on this hero's journey?

• When you make offerings to many gods and your life takes a positive spin, it's hard to say who helped. I think it was the registrar email but really, who knows? Like the gods, the registrar never answered.
• Emails tend to produce "no"s. Phone calls are more like long drawn out "no"s. But meet the Oracles in person and don't leave until your path is before you.
• This journey had many characters. Mentors, shadows, tricksters, heralds, and shapeshifters. I estimate this whole process directly involved fourteen administrators (I left out details). FOURTEEN. Does that seem right to you?

Alternate Ending

Here's how we used to do course registrations:

Dear reader from 2015, does this look ridiculous to you? Well registering through CREPUQ (while it worked in the end) seems far more ridiculous to me than the picture above. Solving my scheduling problem required an estimated forty emails, one external organization, six phone calls, and three meetings in person. All spread out over five months and fourteen administrators.

So how should this have worked? How many people should have been involved in fixing my scheduling issue? How about zero.

Don't be a pessimist now! Do you think you could have told these registration administrators from the 1960s that they'd be replaced by a computer? The only difference between then and now, is they didn't have the technology we do.

Course Registrations Should be Provincial

Why the hell do different universities manage their own course registration platforms? It's like schools are paying software companies to make Microsoft Word two hundred times separately. It's like they're saying "but my documents are special because my university is special". Your university is not a special snowflake. Students register for courses in all universities in a fundamentally similar way.

This could be managed centrally by the highest branch of government in charge of education: the provinces. We can pay to get it right, make it flexible, and remove no autonomy from universities. Meanwhile there could be one way to register for university courses for each province. Every university can chip in and they'd save a ton of money by eventually cutting support staff. Here's what I want to see:

• When I search for a course on McGill and it's not there, I'm shown a list of equivalent courses offered at other schools. I just click a "register" button, agree to some terms, and I'm done.
• Schools can set their own limits on how many courses can be taken externally.
• Schools choose which of their courses participate - just like now.
• Schools set their own limits on how many external students are allowed in each course.

One day I might write a post on how to avoid blowing ludicrous sums of money on public software projects. But this post is already epic. Instead, I'll leave you with a comic that perfectly details why course registrations for universities are such a mess - why bureaucracies expand and don't contract. The problem is not technology or funding. We have the technology and working together saves money. The problem is politics:

Guess Who's Still Teaching at McGill?

That's right, this guy:

A year ago I wrote a post called Nomination for Worst Professor. I highly recommend it if you're interested in how bad professors can possibly be. Here's a reminder if you need it though. First, the usual "merely bad professor" stuff:

• His lectures were usually not specifically about the course.
• He kept telling the class that the course is "boring" and "dry".
• He liked to end class 30% early.

But here's the stuff that really makes him shine like a hunk of coal in a jewelry store:

• When it was discovered that many of his students couldn't calculate an average, his reaction was "oh well!" and he never tested us on it (or really anything) even though he said he would.
• He just about never referenced any research, ever, throughout the entire course.
• He lied about who our TA was, then started ignoring my emails altogether. He gave me several bogus email addresses for our TA and I never found out who it was, or if they even existed.
• I persisted, but it proved impossible to get any feedback on an essay worth 25% of our grade. I am nearly certain nobody read any of our essays and we all just got As.

He's Back: Proof the Department Doesn't Care

My comic above is not a joke. In some rare cases, I really do think offering a lecturer position to a randomly chosen graduate student would be a huge improvement for the course. Imagine how seriously a graduate student might take that opportunity? Clearly, improving this course is not McGill's priority.

Maybe hiring a replacement was too much work.

Privacy

In my original post I did not identify the course, professor, or the department chair. I wanted to give the department a fair chance to do something about this. Now that he's teaching again there's no reason to maintain privacy. Gus Appignanesi is the professor and Jeff Derevensky is the department chair I complained to. I'm hoping Jeff was powerless here but it could have been a conflict of interest. Their research interests are conspicuously identical. They likely work together and know each other outside McGill. More on this in my original post.

By the way, I've still gotten zero feedback on my A grade essay. Or proof that anyone even read it. Why doesn't the department care about this, at all?

But Everyone Loves Gus!

That's right, Gus currently has a smooth 4.6 out of 5 rating on RateMyProfessors.

"Gus is a rare gem at McGill."

"Best professor at McGill"

Well, what did we expect? A professor ends class early, expects nothing, doesn't test you, doesn't challenge you with research, talks about irrelevant fun random topics, and hands out As without reading your paper. Of course students love him - especially those who write glowing reviews without punctuation on RateMyProfessors.

I can't think of a more perfect example of why you must use caution interpreting ratings on RateMyProfessors. It's up to the department to evaluate professors more objectively, and ignore high praise from student reviews in cases where a professor is seriously undermining the legitimacy of a department.

What Now?
Thank you for reading and sharing my posts. I've gotten far more readers than I ever imagined by talking about McGill. I really feel like together we're exposing how some McGill courses are the pinnacle of grade-inflated shams. Like "security theater" too many university courses are "education theater".

If you want a profoundly easy course that does not challenge you, taught by a professor who says and proves he does not care, then take Measurement and Evaluation with Gus this coming semester.

Finally, awhile ago I found a website called Degrading McGill written by a McGill professor. If you're interested in what value McGill is giving you in exchange for your time and money, I highly recommend it.

If you care, complain.

Don't Ban Killer Robot Research. Just Ban Killer Robots.

There's a lot of serious and legitimate concern lately about the development of autonomous weapons.
 

The Basic Idea
Humanity nearly has the technology to mass produce machines which can target and choose to kill humans, all without human intervention. So a factory worker turns on a machine, and then it goes out into the world and finds terrorists or protesters and kills them. The machine does this all by itself without any human controller actually making that final decision. In case you haven't been following the latest advances in robots and machine learning, we are nearly there.

I agree with the campaign to stop killer robots that we need to ban killer robots. But they also advocate banning research. Instead, we must only ban their manufacturing and activation, because banning research on killer robots is not only totally ineffective, but unwise.

This is Scarier than Nuclear Weapons
Nations have some control over nuclear weapons. The recent deal with Iran for example greatly restricts their ability to make nuclear weapons in exchange for improving their economy. That's because obtaining nuclear materials, refining them, and building facilities to make nuclear weapons requires a major industrial effort. Furthermore, nations that do so have trouble hiding it.

Automated weapons are especially frightening because none of these restrictions apply. In the video above, a mere hobbyist strapped a handgun to a quadcopter. All it's missing is a camera and the right software to be an automated weapon.

Why Ban Any Research?
We must ban some research - like trying to clone a half-human half-animal. A pig-man is unethical to create, even if it only happens in a lab. Does a pig-man have human rights? Did we force them to suffer pain their whole life with their hybrid physiology? Answering these questions reveals that the process itself and the product of the experiments are unethical.

However the process and results of researching automated weapons in a lab are not so clearly unethical. No one is being harmed by the research directly and it could have many benevolent uses - like non-lethal law enforcement, or wild animal control, or domestic robots, or even robots that disable other automated weapons. Similarly there's a reason organizations like the Centre for Disease Control hold on to the worst strands of Ebola and Anthrax. It's because there is, or there may be, some benevolent use of that type of research.

Criminalizing Science
We should never criminalize knowledge or the people seeking knowledge. In the past, subjects that were taboo were the ones we most desperately needed to research! Sex, astronomy, and human biology were all forbidden research in the past.

The only reasonable times to criminalize science are from science fiction with world ending inventions like Ice-nine. With Ice-nine a crazy person with no resources could end the world. But even with technology as frightening as automated killing machines, we are not nearly there yet.

Banning Research Won't Work Anyway
We can't ban general research into robotics, computer vision, robot tool manipulation, etc, because this field involves far more than just killer robots. But breakthroughs in all these fields combined will eventually give us the ability to make killer robots whether we research it specifically or not. The designers of handguns and quadcopters probably didn't have this combination in mind, but once both were invented a hobbyist easily combined them. So if there's some magical ban on research, any interested nation will just direct their military to research each field individually.

Let's Ban The Manufacturing and Activation of Automated Weapons
This all comes down to human responsibility. Let's consider an example where a machine is designed, built, and activated. Then it decides by itself to go to some location and then decides to kill. Who is responsible for the murder?

1. The researcher who designed the robot hand.
2. The factory worker who builds generic robot parts like servo motors.
3. The factory worker who can clearly see that the final product is an automated weapon.
4. The software engineer who copies the killer robot software onto the robot.
5. The factory manager who delivers the machine to customers.
6. The owner or politician who activates the machine.

What do you think? I think people 1 and 2 are totally excused from the murder. As we progress into 3, 4, 5 and 6, the people become more and more responsible. Let's not ban research or the generic construction of robots (1 and 2). Instead let's ban the production and activation of automated weapons.

If you're interested in reading more, Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla), Stephen Hawking, and thousands of AI researchers recently signed this open letter on the subject.

These McGill Survey Results Will Make You Giggle

Prepare to be amused and blown away. If you're a university student you may think your department is bad, but McGill's education department is worse. For several years now McGill education students report having the most boring, most random, most tuition-wasting, and most impossible-to-fail courses. This makes me really sad because I care about education a lot. I hope this post helps make things better.

To be clear: this isn't just a bunch of students complaining. This is an entire department of students consistently ranking their courses as the worst. I will present the data, then some solutions. Lets begin!

The Source
A previous post of mine got a shocking amount of traffic and generated a lot of discussion. One benefit of all this exposure is that Mike Shortt, who used to work for the undergraduate society (SSMU), reached out to me and gave me a bunch of documents:

An Evaluation of Undergraduate Education Quality at McGill University 2006-2007.pdf
An Evaluation of Undergraduate Education Quality at McGill University 2007-2008.pdf
An Evaluation of Undergraduate Education Quality at McGill University 2008-2009.pdf
An Evaluation of Undergraduate Education Quality at McGill University 2009-2010.pdf
An Evaluation of Undergraduate Education Quality at McGill University 2010-2011.pdf

If you plan on criticizing the data, I've written a boring methodology summary here.

Results
Boring
“There are a variety of interesting courses available in my major.”
McGill students consistently agreed to this statement about 75% of the time. But education students agreed the least at 54%. Education courses are the most boring.

Random
“As I progress through my major, I feel that courses are related and build upon each other in a logical manner.”
Education students scored lowest at 10%, compared to McGill's average of 18%. Education courses are the most random and jumbled.

Guesswork
"Is it possible to get a decent mark in your major through guessing or inventing answers to questions?"

Education students rated by far the worst here. Only 12% disagreed. This was followed by Management at 31% and Arts at 33%. Predictably, science scored high at 56% and so did Engineering at 58%.

Even if I spent the rest of this post trying, I couldn't even begin to convince you how easy it is to guess answers to some education assignments and tests.

Impossible to Fail
“It is very difficult to fail some courses in my major.”
Education students consistently scored by far the lowest here. From 2008 to 2011, only 7%, 5%, 3%, and 8% disagreed with this statement. That is compared to 25% to 68% in other majors.

Education courses are not only difficult to fail, they are by far the most difficult to fail.

Professors
"Professors are easily accessible outside of class time”
Education scored the lowest here, at 10% in agreement. This one surprised me at first, but then I thought back to this story where the professor ignored me repeatedly and still refuses to give me feedback on my essay (note: getting some feedback is supposed to be a student's right).

"Professors usually understand student questions and their replies provide the needed clarification”
Again, education scored lowest at 17% in agreement.

Tuition Satisfaction
 “Overall, I am receiving good value for my tuition fees.”

Education students are wise to score poorly on this metric. Only 14% strongly agreed, compared to 31% to 38% in other faculties. The next year only 10% strongly agreed.

Why This Matters
So what if education courses are boring, jumbled, pointless, and damn easy? Well, I've known some students who would have made fantastic high school teachers but they were disgusted with the program and left.

Imagine this scenario. In order to become a certified teacher, one must sit in an empty room five hours a day. And You can't do anything at all: you just have to sit there. For four years. What kind of people would we expect to become certified teachers? Would ambitious, exciting, intelligent people tend to go through that process? No (generally). Obviously, the bachelor of education program at McGill is not nearly that bad. But it is bad, and in much the same way.

And certainly some students in the education program are ambitious, exciting, and intelligent. But I believe these bad courses hurt them the most.

Education Theatre
Much like security theatre, education theatre is when schools provide the feeling that students are getting educated, but without actually educating them. Everyone can be tricked: students, professors, tax payers, even nations. But when 95% of students say their courses are "very difficult to fail" and only 12% disagree that you can easily guess correct answers on tests... it means McGill is generally failing to educate its future teachers. It's providing education theatre.

Again - I am generalizing. Some education courses at McGill have truly been worthwhile. But not nearly enough of them. Education students agree here.

Solutions

As always, it's important to offer solutions to this ludicrous situation.

Experimental Student Courses

I'm not a qualified university lecturer, but I could design an awesome course on using 3D game programming to teach math and science. I'm sure there are more people like me and people pursuing higher degrees who also have great ideas. Why not allow anyone to propose experimental courses or workshops? These could be supervised and approved by a professor and worth a credit or two. Aren't we all supposed to be educators in the education department?

I've noticed that education students are at their best when they're giving a presentation they really believe in. Send me a message if you have an idea you'd like to teach.

The Should-Fail Test

Consider again how easy it can be to guess or invent "correct" answers on tests. We can see from the survey data that education students believe their department is the worst here. But what about measuring more than just opinion? I've thought of a new way to objectively measure this: the Should-Fail Test.

Lets have students take the final exams of random courses:

• Students have no idea which exam they'll get. They just have to take it and try their best.
• The graders won't know which students are real and which "should fail".
• Offer some incentive if students perform above average compared to other should-fail students.

I can say from experience that the results would be damning for some education courses I've taken.

I believe that students should usually fail final exams on university material they've never learned. There will be some exceptions, but they should fail on average. If should-fail students do well, then the test is broken or the course is "education theatre".

This test may be a great way for McGill or the ministry to audit courses and programs. And now I'm dreaming, but maybe schools and programs all across Canada could have a "should-fail" rating associated with them?

Revive this Survey

“Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”

- Anton Chekhov

Unfortunately, the documents I reference are hard to find and according to Mike Shortt the project was discontinued: "Due to the terrible continuity problems that afflicts all student organizations, SSMU stopped doing these [reports] once I graduated."

I think this project is one of the most important services SSMU can possibly offer. The undergraduate society should endeavor to do a survey of this scale every year.

I think these numbers really give a lot of legitimacy to student complaints - maybe that's why it lost support. I've already written about how McGill's administrators ignore feedback. This survey must have made that harder to do. We need a strong student government to bring it back.

The Future
Mike: "The main thing that [the reports] show is (1) most stereotypes about the various faculties are true; (2) things don't really change much at McGill."

Many of my stereotypes were confirmed. And yes, there is little sign of change. But reversals are possible. Take this for example: “I am proud of my accomplishments at this university.”

While McGill students on average agreed only 25% of the time, education students agreed 40%! But this wasn't always the case. Before 2011, education students actually scored the worst here, not the best. So what happened? I don't know, but reversals are possible. 40% is still a long ways off from good, but it's a huge improvement.

Thanks for reading. And as always: if you care, complain.

Concordia Graduate Symposium
On Saturday I'm presenting at Concordia's Graduate Symposium on Education! Whoa! I'll be talking about my experiences teaching high school math and science through 3D game design this past year. Just for 15 minutes though. But still!

It's a free event at Concordia in Montreal. It's all day Saturday and I'm presenting from 3-320. If you're interested you should probably register:

http://doe.concordia.ca/symposium/files/schedule.pdf
http://doe.concordia.ca/symposium/registration/

Cheers!

Mike Shortt Reports: Methodology

This post gives more details on the surveys and methodology, if you're interested. I decided it was too boring for a general audience so I cut it out of my original post. But you are an eager beaver! So here you go. And feel free to send me a message if you want your own copies of the pdfs. You can find my contact info at my website.

Methodology

Sample
Mike tells me they got "between 700 and 1300 students over the years". The results were from all faculties, and efforts were made to select a representative sample. They claim they succeeded in this.

Results
Often there were five possible responses to the questions. It's the standard strongly agree/disagree, somewhat agree/disagree, and neutral.

Depending on the question, when the study reports "only 10% agreed" this could mean only 10% strongly agreed, or only 10% strongly/somewhat agreed. They make it clear which they chose, and the strategy depends on the question. This doesn't matter to us though because usually I just compare the scores between departments.

Changes Over Time
Even though the reports cover various years, usually each new report references the same two surveys done once each. However I make it clear when this is not the case, and when we can talk about trends.

Cherry Picking
These surveys measured a lot of metrics, and I am of course cherry picking bad results to support my previous criticisms of McGill's education department. So where did education score best?

Compared to other departments the language skills among TAs is great, our library space and study spaces are great, and library staff are especially helpful. But of course, those are not the things I've been criticizing! In addition to scanning the 100+ pages of reports, I searched for "education". I can say that most of the times education was mentioned in a paragraph or table, it scored the worst.