My report on semester teaching at the university

What is this article about

Hello! Happy New Year! :)

Personally, I never thought that one day I would be in the role of a teacher. But we live in such a dynamic world that you cannot always say with certainty what will happen in a year, a month, or even tomorrow. And so, as a 4th year student, I could not help but meet the leadership of the department in introducing young freshmen to the basics of C programming.
What came of it - read under the cut.

A little background

On the first of September last year, I was a little shocked when I found out that the Department of Computer Systems of Odessa National Polytechnic University was left without several very good and experienced teachers. Someone went abroad for an internship, someone just decided to change their profession. Thus, a small “hole” was formed when some teachers have to teach a substantial list of disciplines in all courses. The load is incredible, you know.
I remember exactly that the idea of ​​helping my native department arose spontaneously when we with ASteksigned a summer practice. Accordingly, the idea was stated, followed by something like an interview with the head of the department. Having proved the purity of his thoughts and the ability to work on a volunteer basis, it was decided that we could very well teach the first course.

So what's next?

It took literally a couple of days to agree on all the formalities. It just so happened that our schedule and the schedule of the first course intersected with important pairs. Thus, we did not have the opportunity to give lectures. But it was quite possible to attend laboratory work. Since we were on a “trial period”, everything was completely fine with everyone. “Tuesday, the third couple” - eloquently recorded on his phone :)
So, we are on the first couple in our lives in the role of “teachers”. This was already the second laboratory work of the first year, and it was devoted to the syntax of the C language.

Here it is worth making a small digression and tell a little about the educational process.
The educational process consists of 16 lectures, 16 practices and 16 laboratory works on the basics of C programming. Accordingly, in one subject of the above per week. I won’t talk much about lectures and practices, I’ll just say that everything is obvious here - the basic principles of the language are taught from syntax to manipulation of strings, memory and file input / output streams. As for the laboratories, then everything is similar. A small addition was the use of "graphical" programming. Firstly, it’s easier literally at a glance to determine whether the program is working correctly. Secondly, this approach somehow brightens up the routine. Thirdly, beginners get the feeling that they can really write something more or less serious with their brains. Since we worked under Ubuntu,
By the way, a light version of the library was used, written about three or four years ago by the staff of the department. There were several errors in the library that AStek took up and successfully overcame :). The default development environment was CodeBlocks.

Let's get back to the lab. Twenty-one people, in a sexual ratio of 17: 4. For most of the school, programming was very mediocre. Honestly, I already vaguely remember my first course, but it seemed that no problems should arise. Was wrong. The very first problem was to find a common language. Personally, I don’t really like jargon, but still much more often I say the word “debugger” than “debugger”. Literally from the first questions, bone-speaking began to grab me. And not because I did not know discipline, but because I did not know how to formulate correctly, so that everyone could understand. But the adaptation did not take much time, so by the second half-pair everything fell into place.
That day I asked a questionon Habré. Taking this opportunity, I would like to thank the people who gave invaluable advice: korvindest , vadiml , Kroz and of course png .

These 16 weeks passed almost imperceptibly. It didn’t work right away, but somewhere in the middle the guys realized what was required of them. Immediately after the laboratory, as a report for the entire semester, it was necessary to provide the calculation and graphic work. Preferably using the above graphic libraries. What came of all this - the screens will tell me better.







As for me, very good for a first year.

What next?

The semester is over, and the guys started the session. Let's all mentally wish them good luck and balls :)
But seriously, this semester was the most unusual in my life. I really tried to do my best in the best possible way. AStek , as well as all other teachers, laboratory assistants and graduate students, tried as much as I did.
It remains to wait for the end of the session and the decision of the department leadership whether we are worthy to teach not only laboratory, but also lectures. And in the next semester, the first course is already waiting for such disciplines as “programming in the Java language” , “algorithms and data structures” , and also “web design”. As you see, everything is more than serious - after all, these disciplines will most likely feed about 60-70% of all graduates who have settled in their specialty. But behind the scenes, things will not get up. Immediately after us, a queue literally formed.

Post scriptum

I want to express my deep gratitude to all-all-all who helped with advice or just a kind word. Who in one way or another participated in this entire event - not only graduate students, teachers and laboratory assistants, but also those about whom I am writing this article :)

Happy New Year to all! :)