Knowledge Beyond Language

发布时间：2020-03-27浏览次数：324


“翻转课堂”已经上线三周，经过前期不断地沟通、调整和磨合，使得我们的线上教学工作有条不紊地推进。学生们也逐渐适应了这一种“自学-反思-互动-反馈”联动的教学模式。在线授课的顺利开展离不开教师们前期的辛苦筹备，是他们不畏困难，精益求精的态度保障了此次在线授课的质量和效果。今天我们邀请到了几位教授来和我们分享一下他们的课程以及授课心得，一起来看看吧。


课程信息一览

今天的主角是来自我院自动化及机器人中心的四位教师：Laurent Kneip, Sören Schwertfeger, Manolis Tsakiris & Andre Rosendo。他们所在的中心致力于自动化与机器人领域的高级研究与应用智能算法，软件与系统开发。研究方向涉及计算机科学与人工智能，控制与优化，计算机视觉等各个方面。让我们来一起看看他们所教授的课程都有哪些。


即时定位与地图构建---By Laurent Kneip


The course CS284 introduces the techniques and algorithms that are needed in order to enable an intelligent mobile device to track its own position within a given environment, a problem called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. The students are being taught important aspects such as the history of SLAM, the relevance of the problem, and important solutions such as 2D or 3D Lidar based SLAM, monocular or stereo visual SLAM, or SLAM with consumer depth cameras such as Microsoft's Kinect. The course concludes with an exposition of more recent topics such as dense SLAM, SLAM in non-rigid environments, and semantic SLAM. Although CS284 has many undergraduate students, it is a challenging Master level course that expects certain programming and math skills, and it requires the students to solve homeworks that resemble mini-projects and thus asks them to really be creative. It is my hope that this course teaches the students the essentials of an important technology that is believed to play a crucial role in many of tomorrow's new, intelligent devices on the market.

计算机体系结构I---By Sören Schwertfeger


Computer Architecture (CA) is a mandatory 6-credit point course for all undergraduate Computer Science students. It has 206 students this year. Prof. Schwertfeger says:


I really like teaching CA, even though my research is on Artificial Intelligence for Mobile Robots. I think it is important for CS students to really understand how a computer is executing a program, from the transistors, integrated circuits, over CPU design to assembly and high-level programming languages. I have been teaching CA since 2016. This year I wanted to give the course together with a new faculty at SIST, Prof. Chundong Wang, but due to the virus situation, he couldn’t start teaching, as he is still stuck in Singapore. Making a good online course is a new challenge for everybody involved: students, administration and Professors. I spend much more time on preparing the lectures, compared to classroom teaching. On the one hand I plan to re-use the recorded videos in the future, so they better be good. This is why I am also providing English subtitles for my video lectures, such that students who are still improving their English can follow the content better. But on the other hand, I also need to prepare at least two quizzes for each lecture, that should teach the students something, have the right difficulty and also, quite important, be correct. One quiz is used for the live teaching with zoom, while the other is given with the videos, to encourage active learning of the students. 

线性代数在信息科学中的应用---By Manolis Tsakiris


Linear Algebra for Information Science is an upper level undergraduate class on linear algebra and its applications in data science and machine learning, computer vision, signal processing, and control systems.

机械设计导论---By Andre Rosendo


The Mechanical Design and Mechatronics course teaches our students on how to be engineers, calculate and create things that will help China develop and become a richer country. The students from these courses will be better prepared to join the current job market, with a good combination of Artificial Intelligence and mechanical construction, bringing Information Science to the world we live in.


教授有话说


Just like any other course this semester, CS284 is being taught online. There is no way to hide the fact that the personal interaction in a classroom is irreplacable. Neither can we ignore the fact that the sudden change of the teaching mode puts an extra time burden onto the teachers and demands extra efforts from the students. However, I sincerely believe that everything comes with its very own advantages as well. The fact that the lectures are all recorded gives students a unique advantage: They can rewind us and pause us. They can put themselves into command and adjust the pace of the lectures to their own speed. For myself, while I always strive to deliver high-quality lectures, I have the chance to take back words, and think for as long as I wish before each sentence, another advantage we are not given in class. Looking for a strong replacement for the whiteboard, I discovered the strength of a sketchpad. I am using it quite exhaustively now, not just for my lectures, but also for my research meetings with students. All in all, I feel that the current situation is just another challenge, and-just like the Chinese government-we set ourselves on a remarkably fast track to overcome it. I firmly believe that, in the end, the efforts spent over the course of this semester will let all of us emerge stronger and more united than ever.


---Laurent

Luckily, as a CS course, students can work with the computer, including doing labs. I couldn’t teach the course without the great help of my 17 Teaching Assistants (TAs). They hold the online labs with zoom, offer office hours, prepare homework and projects and write subtitles. We have a long meeting every week to discuss and prepare the course. We use lots of nice tools for online teaching: We have gitlab to let the students work in small groups on projects, autolab for auto-grading homework and projects, gradescope for grading written homework, quizzes and exams, piazza for discussions and multiple-choice quizzes, as well as online and offline software packages for teaching the course contents. Online teaching also has advantages: I really like, that students can write questions live in the chat – then I can answer them during the live lecture. Maybe it’s a good idea to have that for classroom teaching as well!


---Sören

It is new for me to teach online: write the lecture notes and record the videos in advance. I come up with a new Q&A mechanism on Piazza with bonus points to encourage students to genuinely participate in discussions.


---Manolis


学生有话说



黄帅一---2017级研究生

This is the best online course experience that I have ever had. The recorded videos greatly help me to prepare for the SLAM course in advance. During the online course via Zoom, Laurent takes us learn the material in more detail. When Laurent is drawing the figures online, I just feel like sitting in front of the blackboard. The recorded videos, online courses and notes greatly facilitate our review process after class. One more great thing is that I actually have more interactions with Laurent. It is hard for shy students to speak out the questions, especially when sometimes sitting in the back of the classroom. Now, we can communicate conveniently online, and nobody knows what I look like even if I ask stupid questions :) It feels like we have a personal tutor now! We know that it may take several hours for our instructor to record an one-hour video, and online courses add to burdens of TAs. I want to sincerely thank the great efforts from Laurent, TAs, and other stuff to make our online courses so great.


逄白--2018级本科生

Sören教授的CA课程主页内容非常详尽，上面有所有过去课程的课件、录课视频、未来两周的课程大纲以及每项作业的具体内容和截止时间。每节课前，学生被要求自学教材内容以及观看两到三个录课视频，其中第一个是前一节线上授课内容的回顾，其他几个则要求完全自行掌握，未来的线上教学不会重新讲授这些内容，而是视作已掌握知识直接使用。从结果来看，这学期的CA课程和正常学期相比甚至有着更长的课时，对学生的自学能力提出了很高的要求，充满了刺激和挑战。


尤晓雯--2016级本科生

This course helps to strengthen my study in linear algebra. Also, it will favor one’s academic research in the future since it involves many abstract mathematical concepts and notations and teaches you how to prove something.


助教有话说



特殊助教-李敏

我们的SLAM课程是纯英文授课，我的任务是协助Laurent准备，协调课程的教学以及学院、教授与学生之间的交流。我基本每节课都旁听，负责考勤，有时候也提一些建议使教学质量更好。课前学生都会提前自学课程video，教授非常认真，准备一个video要花很长时间。上课时间是用zoom进行讲解与回答问题，课堂互动良好。旁听了两节课之后，我就觉得这么好的课程与讲解只在课堂上听一次太可惜了，就向Laurent建议说，能不能把zoom课堂内容也录下来，与他算是不谋而合吧，他当场就说‘Yes，Let’s do this’。总的来说，online teaching是一个全新的尝试，需要各方努力。教授希望在课堂上与学生有更多互动，学生希望与TA有更多线下的实质性的交流。我希望学生不要太shy, 有问题要积极地和老师以及助教联系，这样我们才能更好的学习这门课。


特殊助教-沈永霞

因为疫情的影响，本来应该在教室上的课程搬到了网络。而今年我也因此多了一个新的身份-特殊助教（计算机体系结构ICS110 和计算机体系结构I实验课程 CS110S.P）。在这次协助教授Sören Schwertfeger的过程中，我深深地被教授认真工作，细致解答问题的态度所感动。教授设计了一系列课前预习、课中随堂问答、课后测试和作业步骤帮助学生学好这门课。而且他还会在Piazza上耐心地回复所有学生提出的问题。这是一个超过200人的大课，回复学生问题就会花费教授大量的时间，但是他都认真阅读学生的提问并一一进行了回复，重点问题会在在线课堂分享。学生都说Sören Schwertfeger是一位非常认真负责的老师，虽然这门课专业性很难但是因为是Sören Schwertfeger教的，他们学的懂。


特殊助教--时倩

疫情防控的特殊时期，学校开启了网络授课，这对于全体师生来说，既是一次特殊的经历，也是一次全新的挑战。作为Andre教授两门课程的特殊助教，我从学院筹备录课开始，就认真完成上级下发的任务，及时解决教授遇到的各种问题。开课期间详细记录授课情况及学生反馈，积极与教授、助教和支撑团队的其他老师沟通、协调，解决相关问题，并协助教授优化网络授课细节，以确保所负责的课程可以更好的开展。经过三周的适应与磨合，学生听课质量较第一周有明显提高，师生互动也更加活跃。


学生助教--姚蕴珍

I’ve learned a lot from these intelligent undergraduate students with enquiring minds. It is challenging, but I love it. Once I checked discussions on Piazza, there was a mathematical term in an answer that I had not even heard. I felt compelled to learn something new so that I could understand the answer. After I realized all of it, I seriously pointed out the issues in it like a learned TA. 


信息学院的教授们为了能给学生提供高质量的课程而不断的努力，为了给学生营造良好的授课体验而不断的精进。你们的用心我们感受到了，让我们一起携手同行，继续为人才的培养，知识的传承贡献力量。