Re: Teachers

["Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh" <ilya@total-knowledge.com>]

sergey@total-knowledge.com wrote:
>> First, I disagree that votes should affect anything in the interface. The
>> objects should be displayed as the author of the course designed.
>>     
>
> I agree with Alexey's disagreement once again. However, I think that votes
> _should_ affect how interface looks, but it's up to Author and (I
> emphasize) Teacher to actually change it.
>   
I am still not sure what we call "Teacher" in our system. From the very
beginning line between teacher and author wasn't very well defined.
My vision of "Teacher" role was pretty much "A person that checks
students' work, gives feedback, and generally interacts with students
in supporting manner" - in other words, support role. Probably "Expert"
role that we mentioned in spec is the same thing. I do not see "Teacher"
as author in any way. It is certainly possible for "Author" to be a
"Teacher"
at the same time, but these are two different roles, and neither implies the
other.
Reasoning:
1. Simplify access checking
2. Teacher doesn't normally need to modify course (in his teacher role).
If at any point he/she does, it's possible to either create own course based
on this one, or to talk to original Author and become a Co-author.
> It's been enough said about Students behavior already.
Eh? What specifically?
>  Authors are usually
> too sensitive about their creations, tend to love them no matter what,
> won't be happy if somebody forses them to change it.
This is absolutely true... when you are talking about work of art. Course is
not a work of art, just like a program is not a work of art. There are
art aspects
to it, but they are secondary. Course/text book/etc. are first of all
functional
objects, and as such, creating them is lot closer to engineering or
science work
then to artistic work. That is why it's very natural (and happens often in
currently standard media like text books) for course material to have
multiple
authors, while this is very rare occurance in an artistic work. This is
why we
are focusing on sharing/derivation capabilities in UU so much. This is
the main
thing that makes us different from others.

Having said all that, you realize that any tools that we may provide to
student
for filtering/sorting/etc. any content based on votes (or any other
data), we
aren't forcing any changes on author, right?

>  I recently watched
> some kid on the beach throwing sand in his mom eyes, then he tried to pee
> on her head. I'm sure she will still vote that he is the best child in the
> world, other people(including me) who sow it would have slightly different
> opinion on this little bastard. That's the main reason I agree with
> Anatoly on importance of community vote. I would just kick his little ass
> and stoped these disgraceful goings-on. Unfortunatly it's not up to me or
> community to change this child, it's up to his mom or his
> teacher/counselor(if he grow ups and continue peeing on other people
> heads, then (hopefully!) a community's vote will be taken into account and
> this recidivist criminal will end up in the prison).
>   
Doesn't this contradict your previous statement a bit? How do we blend
them together?
> As I mentioned in my previous emails, in my opinion a Teacher is the one
> who is the most objective in the evaluation of the quality or difficulty
> level of an UMO. Let him change the Course he teachs.
>   
What happens when there are multiple teachers on one course?
> 1. Teacher has the Author opinion on difficulty level of the UMO(he sees
> how Author structured his Course originally).
> 2. Teacher checks Students votes/rating on the UMO.
> 3. Teacher has his own opinion(based on his overall expirience, based on
> level of the students he teach for this perticular course, his expirience
> with this particular Author, etc..)
> 4. Teacher checks public profile of the Author.
> 5. Teacher checks public profiles of Students that voted, their scores,
> ratings, marital status, whatever...
> 6. Teacher makes _his_ decision on this particular UMO difficulty level
> for the Course _he_ teaches.
> 7.
> 	a) Teacher leaves this UMO DL as it is, no changes at all.
> 	b) Teacher reassigns this UMO to different DL within a Course
> 	c) Teacher deletes(hides) it from his Students.
>
> Now, the question is should we give a Teacher Author's rights, new version
> of the Course will be created and the Teacher will become Co-Author? I
> have no strong opinion on this.
>   
>> Second, eBay voting doesn't work. Every time when you have a good
>> transaction, you vote positive. However, if you have a bad experience, you
>> vote negative, and always receive a negative vote yourself. So, if you
>> buying rarely, not hundreds of items a year, it's easy to have low rating.
>> That's the reason I stopped using eBay.
>>     
> I see. You don't like low ratings. Me neither.
> I'm sure that oversensative author hates them too. Why help an ignorant
> crowd to bash him and change his creation using their negative
> unsophisticated intelligence?
> UU should support geniuses, not bring them down.
> Yeah.
>   
Voting is one of feedback mechanisms. I don't see how low rating of course
that targets low-end audience and fails to deliver easy learning curve
brings
geniuses down...

-- 
Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh
Total Knowledge. CTO
http://www.total-knowledge.com