Re: our Devroom - what do we want to do there - call for papers

[Adam Fedor]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 1:23 AM, Nicola Pero wrote:

> > Sure, we can go and talk to Leslie.  What happened with our  
> > students ?
> >
> > Thanks

We had three.  One dropped out before the start even, I think due to  
family problems.

One basically did not submit code that was anywhere near done.   
Basically just a skeleton.

We did pass the last one.  Although even in that case the amount of  
code was not as much as we had hoped.

Discussions with other mentor organizations showed that many others  
had similar problems. There were a lot of suggestions for how to  
improve the process, i.e. start early, start interaction right away  
and introduce the student to how we do things and communicate. Be  
willing to fail the student at midterm!  The student really should  
have a majority of the work done by the mid term evaluation.  One  
suggestion for google was to allow the student to fail at mid-term but  
be able to make it up and pass the final if they got their act  
together.  There's probably a lot more, but the basic issue is  
communication.

Leslie also suggested we start looking for students now!  I think  
there will be fewer slots available this year than last year.