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Online or offline: how to teach university programming after a pandemic

Now there are quite a few articles with stories about who, how and with what degree of success translates the educational process online. It seems to us that our transition has occurred more than successfully. Actually, here we want to talk about the main positive and negative aspects of such a transition, as well as whether it makes sense to extend the experience now gained to the future.



Part one. Prelude


The fact that sooner or later we would have to go online, it became clear to us by the beginning of March: looking at how the epidemic spreads across Europe, it was easy to assume that it would reach us soon. Moreover, by the beginning of March, many of our partners from IT companies had gone to self-isolation and to work remotely, so our transition to online was only a matter of time. The hour "Ch" came on March 15, along with the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation on the transition of universities to online education.

I note that the HSE was “lucky” in a certain sense - we had accreditation and the commission of Rosobrnadzor just in the week from March 16 to 20. Despite this, an official order was issued on March 16th: from Tuesday, March 17th, we are switching to online training. Another feature of HSE is that our classes are not held in semesters, but in modules that are similar in some sense to the quarters in a regular school. Accordingly, the third module just ended on March 20, so only four days had to be unlearned online, until Friday, March 20. This was easily dealt with: each of these four days, our teachers and students perceived as a kind of training before the next long marathon - the fourth module.

The most disturbing moment for both us and students was the question of what to do with the session, which was supposed to begin on March 23. It is one thing to conduct classes online, and the second is to take tests and exams online. We had no experience in this matter. Fortunately for us, the HSE management did quite reasonable - the session was postponed to the end of the spring semester and declared non-academic week from March 23 to 29. Given the vacation week from March 30 to April 4, we received, firstly, two weeks to prepare for classes online in the fourth module, and secondly, two months to discuss the organizational and technical aspects of holding the summer session online.

Of course, the transition to online concerned not only us, but also students. Our main task on March 16 was to reassure students as much as possible, explain to them the new rules of the game and give recommendations on what to do in this situation. We did it this way: over the next three days, we organized and held online meetings with the students of the faculty on the Zoom platform. At them, we explained to students the new rules of the game, talked about plans for moving to online, and also gave some practical recommendations on what to do in this situation. The latter concerned primarily those students who lived in the hostel. We offered them the following option: to finish their studies in St. Petersburg before Friday, and starting from March 20, to go home urgently and to isolate themselves. In order to monitor this process,we created online tablets for each course, in which we asked students to describe their current status: “I am in St. Petersburg”, “I took tickets and then left there for a while”, “I arrived and I insulate myself on the spot”. As a result, by the beginning of next week, almost all of our students had gone home, which, as further developments showed, turned out to be the most correct solution.

Part two. Preparation and first week of classes


As we noted above, the first four days of online classes - from March 16 to 20 - were training for us and for students in a certain sense. We did not have time either to choose a single platform, or to discuss the technology of lectures and practical classes, or to develop common recommendations and requirements for conducting these classes. The next two weeks were very relevant to us: we were completely calm and leisurely able to resolve all these issues.

I must say right away that we were extremely lucky with the teachers. Half of our colleagues are professional programmers, half are very professional teachers with excellent experience in writing online courses and conducting online classes. So practically for none of them there were any difficulties in switching to online classes.

Almost immediately, we decided that the classes would be held on the Zoom platform. This was caused primarily by two points:

  • among all the services we reviewed (and we looked at Google Meet, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Webinar.ru, etc.) Zoom showed the best quality with an unstable Internet connection;
  • Zoom has a fairly convenient and wide API that allows you to not only automatically schedule conferences, but also download videos, keep statistics of attendance at classes, etc.

Further, it was only necessary to understand the specifics of conducting lectures and practices online. At the same time, there were no special problems with lectures; some difficulties arose only when organizing practical classes.

As a result, on mathematical subjects we came to the following pattern: students receive a task, each solves it on their own sheet, then the student photographs the solution and sends it to the teacher. The latter in a private room discusses with each student his decision. Finally, in the final, the teacher parses the solution to the problem and moves on to the next. In programmer practices, students and the teacher analyze in detail how the theory is applied in real code, what are the pitfalls and how not to step on them. As a training, students can write a code on their computer, check it using the issued automatic tests of varying degrees of difficulty, and, showing the screen to the teacher, discuss.

An important positive point was the fact that we began to record allour lessons, both lectures and practices. Lectures and practices at the end of each school day were automatically processed and posted on Youtube. We also collected links to records of all classes on a special page in Google Dock. As it turned out later, such a scheme was very positively received by students, because now they had the opportunity, after the end of classes, to calmly review certain pieces of lectures / practical classes and deal with material that they did not immediately understand.

This scheme of lectures and practical exercises was launched from April 6 and is still ongoing. A week after the start of these classes, on April 12, we conducted an operational survey in order to understand how we are doing with the transition to online.
The main question is: did we lose quality when we switched to online education? In addition, we were interested in a number of organizational and technical issues related to such a transition.

Part three. Interim survey results




On the whole, we were quite pleased with the results. Only in two subjects (algebra and matlogics) in the first week did our students have some complaints about conducting classes, in algebra - to the quality of the lecture, and in mathematics - to the quality of practice. Next week, our colleagues quickly corrected the format of the classes, so that the sample survey did not reveal any significant comments by the end of the second week.

In parallel with standard questions about the quality of classes, we asked several questions related to the organizational aspects of conducting classes: “ How to better ask questions in pairs ”, etc. In particular, our assumption was confirmed that during the classes live communication by voice is much more preferable than others possible forms (write in a chat, “virtually raise your hand”, etc.).



Also in the survey, we clarified the technical capabilities of students, asking the questions “How much do you have enough Internet at home for couples? ”,“ Describe your webcam . ”




As a result, we were convinced that, in general, students have no technical problems with conducting classes online.

Finally, realizing how difficult it is for students to sit alone in self-isolation at home, we asked a number of questions about informal communication between students: “ Do you want a constantly accessible virtual Zoom room? ”,“ Do you want a constantly available virtual zoom bot? ”And others. The



principal questions for us were also the questions“ How well do you manage to concentrate on the lecture / practice? ”“We understood and understand how hard it is to sit at monitors all day.





As expected, on the whole, it is possible to concentrate on online lectures somewhat better than on practical exercises. However, everything here is highly dependent on a specific subject, which we will separately discuss in the last part of our article.



Just in case, we also asked the question “ How is the mood in general? ”, With the option below to explain your assessment. As it turned out from the text comments, students are more concerned not with the transition to online, but with the upcoming summer session with the results of the 3rd and 4th modules.

In the comments below, we asked students to give some general assessment of the transition to online, highlighting the positive and negative points. The only drawback for our students was the lack of lively communication with classmates, the answer “There is very little live communication, it is difficult to force yourself to concentrate at home” was quite typical.

Quite obvious pluses are staying at home, which is especially true for nonresident students. “No need to spend 50 minutes on the road <=> I began to sleep more”, “You can wake up 5 minutes before the couple”, “Extra time appeared, freed from trips to the university. You can lie on the couch during the lectures (very convenient) ” - also fairly typical answers.

As noted above, the emergence of recorded lectures and practices was a positive development. And the most important thing for us was the fact that not one of our students noted a drop in the quality of classes during the transition to online.

Part Four A month and a half has passed. Going online: an emergency or a new way to organize classes?


Somewhere from April 13, online learning has become a chore for us and our students, students and teachers gradually calmed down and went to a stationary mode. At the same time, a funny thing began to emerge from conversations with students - many said: “It would be nice to extend the experience gained for the next academic year, that is, not to completely abandon the form of classes that is going on now.”

In a sense, such a student reaction was unexpected for us. And among ourselves, and with students, we slowly began to discuss whether it really makes sense to maintain the current form of conducting classes, and, if so, to what extent and how. In order to obtain a more objective picture, we decided to conduct an express survey of our first-year undergraduate students studying under the program “Applied Mathematics and Computer Science . ” We asked them to fill out a short questionnaire, preceding it with the following text:

“Dear colleagues,

According to the results of the last two months of training, we realized that for some subjects, the transition to online training can be not just a temporary way to survive the epidemic and quarantine, but some convenient form of holding classes on an ongoing basis.

In this regard, we want to know your opinion about the possible advantages and disadvantages of transferring training to online mode. ”

Then we listed all the objects that they had in their 1st year, with the question: “ In what form is it better to carry out what subjects?”And with the answer options“ Better offline in the audience ”,“ Better live online (like Zoom) ”,“ Better pre-recorded online course ”,“ Anyway ”. We also asked to decipher our answers, explaining why they chose one or another option.

Some results were expected for us, some of them became quite unexpected for us.

1. Mathematical subjects (hereinafter: blue is better offline, red is better online in real time, for example, through Zoom, yellow is a better pre-recorded online course, green is all the same to me)



Students expected to practice mathematics still want to conduct offline:
-“Practices: I visited two practitioners this year for the mat. analysis and I can absolutely say that the practice must be left full-time. “Watching a person’s eyes burn when he talks about what he likes is simply an indescribable pleasure.”

With lectures, however, everything is not so clear. Unexpectedly for us in those subjects for which online courses had already been pre-recorded (for example, on the Stepik platform), students preferred this particular form of classes. Typical answers:
- “I tried all three options, and the online course seemed to be the best option for obtaining theoretical knowledge”;
-“Lectures: in my opinion, it is better to conduct in the format of an online course on Stepik. Or in person + Stepik. Why: firstly, not many people attend full-time lectures, so there is, to put it mildly, a dreary atmosphere. Secondly, the material on the mat. the analysis is almost more than in other subjects, so having video recordings of lectures is always at hand - it helps a lot, especially when preparing for the session. ”

2. Programmer's subjects



With programmer's subjects the situation as a whole turned out to be different. Most of the students spoke in favor of an online format for conducting such classes not only now, but also in the future. And this concerned not only lectures, but also practical exercises. Typical answers:
- “It really doesn’t matter here, live or online”;
-“On all subjects about programming, the online format is suitable and enjoyable”;
- “Lectures: the remote format with close and visible text is very pleasant, practice: I like the deleted one”;
- “It’s better to look at the code on the screen than on the slider (good vision wuhu). Plus it’s more convenient to test the code yourself during the lecture, as you can, for example, split the screen in half ”;
- “A computer-oriented subject, therefore, it is better to practice online”;
- “Lectures that so, that kind of norms; "I liked the online practices more, more functionality, again we solve some problems, and we don’t sit blunt on the board."

3. Other items

It is very important that in relation to all other subjects that are non-core for our student-programmers, all students spoke almost unanimously for online. This applied to items such as the Belarusian Railways, history, economics, and minors. At the same time, many noted that the transfer of minors online will allow students of the St. Petersburg campus to choose not only their minors, but also the minors of the Moscow campus. And since there are incomparably more of them, this is a huge plus.

Part Five Conclusion


Recently, a fairly large number of publications have been published that emphasize that for the best universities in Russia and the world, the situation with the epidemic has turned into a huge breakthrough in the field of online education. It’s already obvious - releasing this genie from a bottle, you won’t drive it back there. Students and teachers, having sensed new opportunities, are unlikely to abandon them now. Our task is not just to save these options, but also to significantly expand and improve them.

At the same time, for HSE, in this regard, there are a lot of additional opportunities associated, in particular, with the presence of several campuses: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Perm. Online education offers us completely unexpected additional benefits.

Right now, we, together with our colleagues from the Faculty of Computer Science in Moscow, are starting to create a unified database of special courses taught at different sites, and are discussing the possibility of offering students to include unique courses taught on other campuses in their individual curricula. There are ideas about conducting online internships of students in companies represented in different cities. The discussion of holding general research seminars begins, an invitation to reading online courses of our colleagues who have gone abroad with Google or Facebook, etc.

Summing up, we can say that for us the last months of online training have really opened up new ones, Until recently, quite unexpected opportunities. It is very important not to miss them.

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