🔴 🙏🏼 👇🏾 How Computer Science Center Translated Learning Online 🤟 🍮 👩🏾‍🔧

When it was necessary to transfer the entire CS center to home schooling in one day , the curators did a great job of replacing live lectures with equivalent alternatives, but everything else already worked. The center has long been using online platforms in full-time education, including its own LMS. We will share the finds and services that we use to organize training, tell you how you can build a process and what other educational projects and students can use.

Lessons

Tools: YouTube broadcasts , Zoom , video lectures, calendar.

Replacing full-time studies is perhaps the most difficult part in translating your studies online. It is important to keep the lecturer in contact with the audience. Students forget to turn on the microphone and write questions in the chat, the teacher does not have time to read them in time - at first it’s unusual for everyone. We spent a week in this format, and here are some convenient options we found.

Advice to teachers. So that students don’t forget about the lecture, and you don’t drown in the links, create a course calendar and add classes there with a topic and a link where you can join a webinar or watch the broadcast.
Advice to students.Even if you are sitting at home, you are in class. The usual rules work here: you need to be open to communication, listening and dressed as if you were sitting in class. Turn the microphone on and off when needed.

Assignment

Tools : LMS CS Center, Yandex.Conest , Stepik , Gerrit , email.

CS Center students do homework online. We use our site for communication between the student and the teacher, for sending solutions to problems, files with code, for statements and accounting for everything that is possible. If you don’t have such a tool at hand, it will be replaced by regular email. Students will send a solution - you will read and answer.

Many programming tasks lend themselves to automatic verification. We use the Yandex.Contest platform for a course on algorithms and online courses on Stepik for some others. Both systems allow you to configure testing solutions and reduce the burden on reviewers. For a clear code review, the teachers of the center use the Gerrit system.

Advice to teachers. Enter a separate address for the course. Tell students about the format in which to send solutions. For example, ask for the student’s homework number and last name in the subject line.
Advice to students.Try to do without photos of handwritten leaflets. If you cannot type, use LaTeX, and send the finished PDF to the teacher. If you don't know how to get started with LaTeX, check out Papeeria .

Vedomosti

Tools: LMS CS Center, Google Sheets .

We also keep records of ratings on our website, but this was not always the case. Usually, teachers give grades, and then someone else looks at them: it can only be a curator, or maybe the whole course. Online tables come to the rescue. You can write down all students in the table, put down grades for tasks, and then apply a clever formula to everyone - and now the grade for the course is ready.

Advice to teachers. Carefully indicate access settings: students are unlikely to need editing rights. You may not want to show them the document, then remove access to it by reference. For convenience, you can use the "Gradebook" template in Google Sheets, look in the "Education" section.
Advice to students.When you have access to the statements, look first at your grades and do not compare yourself with others. Improve your results and go to your own goals.

Communication between teachers and students online

Tools: Slack , YouTrack , Email.

Students have questions not only during lectures. To answer them or not, the teacher decides. We invite all teachers to start a course channel in Slack at the beginning of the semester - here students can answer the questions of their colleagues themselves, and most likely they will ask one question only once. It is also convenient for shy listeners: when there are questions, but they are inconvenient to ask, someone else may ask. In Slack, you can write personally to the teacher.

We use a bug tracker to answer questions in the online program. We try to remove the communication between teachers and students by e-mail from our process, but this may suit someone. The basic version of Slack does not store the entire message history.

Advice to teachers. Announce the “schedule” in advance when you are online. It does not have to be accurate, for example, you can say that you answer on weekdays. And it can be clearly noted that on the last day before the deadline on assignment - on Saturday - you rest and all questions need to be asked before.
Advice to students. Participate: ask and answer. But remember the line between help with the material and homework tips. Leave others the pleasure of coming to an answer on their own.

Students communicate with the organizers

Tools: Google Groups , Email.

In the CS center, each student has a personal approach, so communication with curators and students by e-mail is indispensable. To send important news to all students, we use Google groups. Each set has its own newsletter, but most often we send the same news to everyone. Google groups over the years make managing members easier.

Advice to teachers. For important course messages, you can create a Google group for the course and use it for news. For example, tell about the cancellation of the lesson, send the terms of the assignment or share a new video of the lecture.
Advice to students.When joining a group, specify in the settings that you want to receive all messages as soon as they appear. Otherwise, you will receive a summary once a day, or even less. Believe me, you do not want to miss the news about the postponement of the lesson, and the additional five hours on the task are never superfluous.

Organization of personal educational process

Tools: Calendar, Trello , Email.

Try to structure your process and information. Do not rely on notes during the compendium. Remember the school diary? He was not just like that.

You will definitely need a schedule. It can be configured in any calendar application. Keep a calendar of all classes, add deadlines to a separate calendar. Do not ignore the description field: it is great for links and notes. You can set reminders in the calendar.

If you are communicating about courses in email, organize a tag and folder system. Archive completed correspondence, for example, when the task is completed and no completion is required. Teachers can create folders for students, students for courses. You can use tags to mark what grade the student is going to or at what stage the assignment is tested.

Board with tasks. The calendar shows you the deadline for completing the task, but you can set your own: it is better to hand over earlier and have more time for corrections. Get a board in Trello: this way you can see on one screen which tasks are in progress and which ones you have not yet started. Add to Trello not only the tasks themselves, but also personal tasks. For example, “deal with the topic in more detail”, “ask the teacher about ...” and so on.

Advice to teachers and students.Try different organization systems and applications - find what suits you. We have provided our examples and wish you good luck in online learning!

Students are admitted to the CS center according to the usual schedule: we accept applications online until April 11th.