dougtygar

lsjaaa -

thanks! You'll hear some very good news on Tuesday morning.

Hi everyone -- Doug Tygar (the instructor) here again. I just wanted to mention that between a number of drops from the class and what looks like some more resources, I think I will be able to run the course without the draconian conditions in the original syllabus. So, we'll have an updated syllabus on Tuesday. Best wishes everyone!

Jacalata -- I did look into dis-enrolling students, and was told it was a non-starter.

And I have to say that it is already a huge problem at Berkeley to simply get enrolled into a CS class. There are simply not enough resources to go around. That's why this class has a huge waitlist.

By the way, this problem is also occurring in other classes, but they are scheduled as Monday-Wednesday classes. My class is Tuesday-Thursday -- the first day of classes at Berkeley was 8/29. Monday is Labor Day holiday at Berkeley, so those other classes will have to deal with their situations on 9/4. (However, their TA deficits are not quite as large as those that we have in CS 161).

Thanks for the kind wishes!

Hi Angry -- Sorry that I came off as cold. At this point, though, I really do need half or two-thirds of the students to drop this course.

You raise an excellent question about why no notification went out before. Indeed, for the last two months I've been asking the department to change its policies so we can get some more TAs in class. These efforts were still going on Wednesday evening -- the night before the first class (and indeed, they are still going on this morning!)

I also tried to stop the process of allowing so many students to register for the course when we didn't have TA support.

If you'd like to talk about this more, please come see me.

anon, sorry I was not completely clear:

I hate to make this request, but I need half to 2/3rds of the students to drop the course. I'm hoping that you will still be able to learn a lot from the class -- but I need to find a mechanism to make the class smaller. Being strict on attendance seemed like the "least bad" of several rather unattractive alternatives.

I'm hoping that someone has a better idea, and I'm completely open. Please come and see me in 739 Soda.

Foobar -- that's a great plan, and let me assure you there is a lot of activity going on in the background.

If you want to talk about this, and you're on the Berkeley campus, I sit in Soda Hall 739. Alternatively, I hike most evenings in Tilden Park for exercise -- if you'd like to join me sometime and talk about your ideas, I'd certainly welcome hearing them.

Foobar -- that's a great question.

It turns out that the university has a lot of rules about how TAs (and how much) TAs are paid, and further TAs are unionized (they are members of the United Auto Workers -- believe it or not!) and that we are bound by contract restrictions.

Another_anon -- that's a great question, but I cannot answer personnel questions in a public forum -- if you want to drop by 739 Soda, I'll be happy to try to answer your question.

Our course has what Berkeley EECS calls "30 hours of TAs." I can assure you that they'll end up doing a lot more than 30 hours worth of work each week.

I'll also remind you that our teaching assistants are unionized, and we are bound by contract rules.

But even if I had the power to change that (and I do not), you can see that it would have to change for every single EECS class -- why would a TA want to teach 4 discussion sections for CS 161 when s/he could get the same pay credit teaching 2 discussions sections for another CS class?

Foobar -- thanks for your suggestions. I've been trying to hire TAs for this course for two months. It is not a money issue.

Hi anonucbstudent -- actually my plan is to personally grade all the quizzes, so that is a burden on me -- not on them.

I completely agree with you that the undergrad students are not at all at fault here. You pay a lot of tuition and deserve better.

Hi xvedejas -- I so wish we had adequate resources so we could consider better formats for the course. I completely agree with you that this is not the optimal format.

John, that syllabus was only intended for internal Berkeley use only -- I posted it on the class blog without any thought that it would be picked up by Ycombinator. (Although, once it appeared, I did link to the topic from the class blog and encouraged the class to chime in: http://cs161.blogspot.com/2013/08/trending-on-ycombinator.ht... )

In case it is not 100% obvious, I'm quite unhappy with the situation (having a TA shortage, and having to run the class this way).

Having said all of this, happy to see a healthy discussion in Ycombinator. I'm a big supporter of free speech, and I think there are a lot of interesting comments here. So more power to you.

Josh, thanks for your input.

I'm afraid that it's a bit hard to answer your question in a public forum. If any Ycombinator readers are on the Berkeley campus and want to chat with me, I'm at 739 Soda Hall.

Hi, this is Doug Tygar here -- I'm in the instructor of the course in question. I appreciate all the comments -- but for various reasons, this course had a breakdown in finding TAs: so we have 170 students and only space for about 60-90 students. I'm sorry to say that the same problem is occurring in a number of other upper division (e.g., junior-senior) level classes this semester in computer science at Berkeley -- although for various reasons, CS 161 is taking it on the nose.

I really wish we had sufficient resources to teach the class properly.