Computational Thinking Video Production
Production of videos for the “Computational Thinking” course. The video set will cover all course topics and complement the existing script. As the course features very relevant topics that are not only popular among our students but also worldwide, we expect the videos to beneficial for a wider audience.
The project
In this lecture we will discuss the power and limitations of computation. Computational thinking is about understanding machine intelligence: What is computable, and how efficiently?
Understanding computation lies at the heart of many exciting scientific, social and even philosophical developments. Computational thinking is more than programming a computer, it means thinking in abstractions. Consequently, computational thinking has become a fundamental skill for everyone, not just computer scientists. For example, functions which can easily be computed but not inverted are at the heart of understanding data security and privacy. The design of efficient electronic circuits is related to computational complexity. Machine learning on the other hand has given us fascinating new tools to teach machines how to estimate functions. Thanks to clever heuristics, machines now appear to be capable of solving complex cognitive tasks. In this class, we study various problems together with the fundamental theory of computation.
The course uses Python as a programming language. Python is popular and intuitive, a programming language that looks and feels a bit like human instructions.
This is the course web page if you want to have a look: https://disco.ethz.ch/courses/coti/
Implementation into teaching practice
We have two main innovations:
First, all the lecture content is now available on video. We produced more than 50 fully animated videos, most of the videos are between 5 and 10 minutes. We used a language synthesis tool for the voice in the videos. The students watch the videos, read the script, attend the exercises (well, some do).
At the end of each topic, every two weeks, the students meet the professor in class for a live session. The main ingredient of each live session is an interactive quiz. There are 15 questions, most of them (but not all) multiple choice. The professor displays the quiz question with the projector, and the students answer with their phone, tablet, or laptop. After most students have answered, the correct answer is displayed, along with a statistic of how the students answered. The professor then discusses the questions, the wrong answers, and the correct answer with the students. The student who answers most questions correctly wins a little prize. If multiple students answered the same number of questions correctly, the last question (which is timed and not multiple choice) breaks the ties. Almost all students cam to these live meetings.
This is our second innovation: We programmed our own software for the quiz, because all existing programs are not useful. We want to discuss the question right after the question is answered, and not at the end of the quiz. And we for instance introduced animal names («Friendly Zebra» or «Curious Elephant») to keep the student’s identities private but still let them cheer for their friends (if they know their animal name).
All other elements of a course have been kept (script, Q&A, exercises, etc.)
Lessons learned and further impacts
• This is now a modern class. Not every class at ETH should follow this model, but many probably would benefit. We believe that students write better exams thanks to the new flipped format.
• The videos are reasonably successful. Some videos have more than 30,000 views on Youtube, which is quite remarkable for technical content.
• Some things did not work at all. Mostly, Innovedum gave us money for producing the videos. But we could basically not find any students who were willing to do that. At the end, the best videos were produced by the professor in collaboration with (some, not all) PhD students. So most of the Innovedum money will be returned.