Teaching Assistant, 1995-6,
CSc280 Software Engineering,
Computing Department
Our experience of Axis is based on its use for managing a second year undergraduate course. The course, CSc280 aims to give students practical exposure to development of a large and complex software system. During the 1995-96 course, students experienced requirements gathering, group management, software design and new techniques and tools. Course assessment is based entirely on coursework.
Heavy use of Axis was made to run the course. The intention was to use Axis to drive course organization. Students were expected to look at Axis on a regular basis (at least once a week) to see details of what lectures or tutorials were to be held, coursework problems and their deadlines, and any other useful information. In particular, Axis was used to:
Present and maintain the course agenda
Axis was used to describe the principle objectives of the course, and identify more short term goals and objectives. The course was different to previous years, and thus required periodic revision. Axis was used to inform students of such changes.
Manage coursework
During the first term, several supplementary problems were set which were intended for students to gain a core set of skills to tackle the pending group problem. Coursework problems were put on Axis. It was intended that students would print out the problems if necessary to save us generating and distributing paper copies. Students generally preferred paper copies, and the lack of an accessible laser caused a problem. As a result, we had to give out paper copies. Occasionally, coursework deadlines conflicted with other courses - Axis was used to advise students of coursework extensions. For several coursework exercises, selected solutions were made available on Axis. This enabled weaker students to benefit from seeing those solutions which obtained high marks.
Manage course material
Lecture and tutorial slides were made available on Axis, but similarly to coursework exercises, students preferred paper copies. Although we continued to hand out paper copies, providing students with access to a laser printer would have removed the need for us to organize photocopying. We continued to make lecture material available, so that students could access particular lectures when necessary (and when they did not have the paper copies on them). Publicizing lectures also allows others to see what the course involves. In addition to lectures and tutorials being presented on Axis, links to other URLs with information of interest to the course were included in Axis.
Manage groups
Students worked in teams of up to 4 people. Axis was used to show details of all students (names, email addresses etc.) and the group to which a particular student belonged. Students were required to register with Axis. Students were able to find out email addresses of others who they wanted to contact. Periodically, group meetings were held with us. Dates, times and locations of such meetings were advertised on Axis.
Provide a forum for course discussion
Axis provides a bulletin board facility which was used to give students the opportunity to raise questions, provide help to others, and generally to discuss elements of the course. When questions were posted on Axis, we did not answer them quickly, but waited for students to help each other. However, students seemed to prefer approaching us, or waited to raise any questions they had in group meetings. The reason for this was not clear - Axis does provide a facility for questions to be posted anonymously for students who may not feel comfortable about posting a question to everyone associated with the course. To gain more from this facility, perhaps part of student assessment should be on the amount of use they make of a bulletin board.
We found Axis to be a useful tool to manage an undergraduate course. Axis provided a base for disseminating information accurately, rapidly, and reliably. Informing students of course activities did not rely on all students being present at a lecture for example, or relying on word of mouth to absent students. Simply informing students of course activities could be managed with email, but email lacks the power of Axis. Axis' ability to provide a persistent knowledge base for course material, coupled with its bulletin board facility makes it powerful tool. Maintaining the data on Axis was relatively straightforward.