1 00:00:00,220 --> 00:00:02,790 Okay, guys. So this is the video about the TA program. 2 00:00:02,790 --> 00:00:04,980 This is something I really think is important. 3 00:00:04,980 --> 00:00:07,360 And we can actually improve dramatically this 4 00:00:07,360 --> 00:00:09,790 class if we get that done successfully. 5 00:00:09,790 --> 00:00:10,720 I'm going to talk about it. 6 00:00:10,720 --> 00:00:14,850 I have been working with TA programs for the last 20, 25 years. 7 00:00:14,850 --> 00:00:17,950 And so I want to give you a, a glimpse of. 8 00:00:17,950 --> 00:00:19,040 Of what can happen. 9 00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:22,590 What, what could happen if we actually had a very successful 10 00:00:22,590 --> 00:00:25,250 TA program and I think it can just take the class 11 00:00:25,250 --> 00:00:28,810 to another level if we have you know, another set of maturated people. 12 00:00:28,810 --> 00:00:31,590 So just thinking about having you know, like, 20 13 00:00:31,590 --> 00:00:31,590 [INAUDIBLE] 14 00:00:31,590 --> 00:00:32,418 . Okay? 15 00:00:32,418 --> 00:00:34,390 So, can you imagine what that would do to the 16 00:00:34,390 --> 00:00:36,660 course and of course to me, but that's another problem. 17 00:00:36,660 --> 00:00:37,910 Right? 18 00:00:37,910 --> 00:00:41,190 but essentially, so what we want is essentially, 19 00:00:41,190 --> 00:00:43,930 is essentially look at the TA and boost it. 20 00:00:43,930 --> 00:00:45,460 Okay, boost it tremendously. 21 00:00:45,460 --> 00:00:48,410 So when you see the, the the to Cousera has this type 22 00:00:48,410 --> 00:00:51,640 of community TA, and the TA would basically help to manage the community. 23 00:00:51,640 --> 00:00:53,040 Answer the questions on. 24 00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:55,970 On the, on the forum, help students in various ways. 25 00:00:55,970 --> 00:00:56,710 And this is great, 26 00:00:56,710 --> 00:01:00,310 okay, so we need to have that. But we can go well beyond this, okay. 27 00:01:00,310 --> 00:01:03,200 So what, what I found the most important when we have a 28 00:01:03,200 --> 00:01:06,380 TA program is that the TAs really become part of the class. 29 00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:09,340 They are part of the team, they, they see every, they talk 30 00:01:09,340 --> 00:01:12,550 to us, they can shape the class, they can shape the content. 31 00:01:12,550 --> 00:01:15,030 They can shape the delivery, they can shape everything. 32 00:01:15,030 --> 00:01:18,580 And the reason this is you know, basically they own the classes 33 00:01:18,580 --> 00:01:21,839 as much as we do, and so essentially they become one of 34 00:01:21,839 --> 00:01:24,360 us, and this, they can make a huge difference. 35 00:01:24,360 --> 00:01:26,090 And this is what we want inside the 36 00:01:26,090 --> 00:01:29,320 TA program, we want you know, community TAs of 37 00:01:29,320 --> 00:01:32,010 course, not everybody wants to invest a substantial 38 00:01:32,010 --> 00:01:35,230 time in this, but some people really want okay? 39 00:01:35,230 --> 00:01:38,345 And I'll tell you a little bit why in the next slide. 40 00:01:38,345 --> 00:01:42,028 Okay, so in a sense, there will be different branches of commitment. 41 00:01:42,028 --> 00:01:44,350 If you want to commit three hours per week to this 42 00:01:44,350 --> 00:01:46,890 class, you know you can be a community TA and what 43 00:01:46,890 --> 00:01:49,530 that means is that you go to the forum you look at, you know 44 00:01:49,530 --> 00:01:53,510 some of the questions that the students have, you answer them on a regular basis. 45 00:01:53,510 --> 00:01:54,990 You give them hints when they are stuck. 46 00:01:54,990 --> 00:01:57,360 Essentially what, you know, Carlton and I have 47 00:01:57,360 --> 00:01:59,035 done, you know, when looking at the forum. 48 00:01:59,035 --> 00:02:00,060 Okay. 49 00:02:00,060 --> 00:02:03,610 Now, this is, you know, this is fine but some people actually would come to me. 50 00:02:03,610 --> 00:02:07,770 So I have been basically, you know, working with TA for 20 for 20 years. 51 00:02:07,770 --> 00:02:11,860 it was a really important part at at Brown University and so, 52 00:02:11,860 --> 00:02:14,050 the the key point there is that students would 53 00:02:14,050 --> 00:02:16,500 come to me and say oh we want that material. 54 00:02:16,500 --> 00:02:19,050 You are covering this but you know the students really want that 55 00:02:19,050 --> 00:02:21,716 and of course, you know, you know this is they would tell you 56 00:02:21,716 --> 00:02:24,916 oh, we want to do this, or that assignment you should link, you 57 00:02:24,916 --> 00:02:28,130 should link it with the other ones and make it a integrated assignment. 58 00:02:28,130 --> 00:02:30,190 They would come with all kinds of ideas. 59 00:02:30,190 --> 00:02:33,250 You know and, and many of them actually found their way into 60 00:02:33,250 --> 00:02:37,530 the class, many of them actually didn't but, but in a sense the 61 00:02:37,530 --> 00:02:40,560 class was shaped by you know suggestion by students and 62 00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:43,390 thinking together and trying to brainstorm on how to do that. 63 00:02:43,390 --> 00:02:46,240 And that's what we want to try to achieve in this class as well. 64 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:47,980 We want to say okay, so now let's think 65 00:02:47,980 --> 00:02:50,010 about what we have done, let's think about the new 66 00:02:50,010 --> 00:02:53,500 delivery you know, medium that we have here and how 67 00:02:53,500 --> 00:02:56,200 can we actually improve the experience of the students further? 68 00:02:56,200 --> 00:02:58,935 So we want essentially a set of you know very 69 00:02:58,935 --> 00:03:02,770 motivated TA to join us and let us develop more interesting 70 00:03:02,770 --> 00:03:05,960 material and there is no way we can do everything. 71 00:03:05,960 --> 00:03:08,550 You know, the two of us, we want more people to join us. 72 00:03:08,550 --> 00:03:12,650 One of the very important things to understand here 73 00:03:12,650 --> 00:03:15,220 is that you don't need to be a superstar 74 00:03:15,220 --> 00:03:17,570 in optimization or having you know 20 years of 75 00:03:17,570 --> 00:03:19,675 experience in the field to be a TA okay, so 76 00:03:19,675 --> 00:03:21,720 what you need is a passion you need to 77 00:03:21,720 --> 00:03:23,780 have taken the class and done well in the class, 78 00:03:23,780 --> 00:03:26,163 but you need to be dedicated to actually say, 79 00:03:26,163 --> 00:03:28,390 okay I want to change, I want to shape this class and 80 00:03:28,390 --> 00:03:31,528 make this kinds of of you know, and make this contribution to the class. 81 00:03:31,528 --> 00:03:34,920 And what I'm going to do is to show you some of the things that we can do, okay. 82 00:03:34,920 --> 00:03:36,440 But there are many more, so just to give 83 00:03:36,440 --> 00:03:38,530 you ideas on, on where we want to go, or where 84 00:03:38,530 --> 00:03:40,940 we could go, and what a difference it will 85 00:03:40,940 --> 00:03:43,146 make in the experience of the students taking the class. 86 00:03:43,146 --> 00:03:46,490 Okay, so the benefits, if you want to be invested 87 00:03:46,490 --> 00:03:48,756 in this class, is that you can shape the class, okay. 88 00:03:48,756 --> 00:03:50,655 And this is something that, you know, in 89 00:03:50,655 --> 00:03:53,240 my experience the students were really keen on doing. 90 00:03:53,240 --> 00:03:55,680 Okay, they would come and they would say oh I can be part of the class, 91 00:03:55,680 --> 00:03:59,560 I can give all my ideas and I can try to convince people that they are good. 92 00:03:59,560 --> 00:04:00,960 You can really change the class. 93 00:04:00,960 --> 00:04:05,790 This is the main benefit of being a very heavily involved TA, okay? 94 00:04:05,790 --> 00:04:07,390 Now there are other benefits like, you 95 00:04:07,390 --> 00:04:09,330 know accessing all the version, you will see 96 00:04:09,330 --> 00:04:13,050 how the system really works behind the scene, what we do behind the scenes, okay? 97 00:04:13,050 --> 00:04:14,880 You can access the version before it's there. 98 00:04:14,880 --> 00:04:15,620 You can test it. 99 00:04:15,620 --> 00:04:18,720 You can try to break it. Okay you can do all kinds of things 100 00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:22,390 you see everything behind the scene and how its done, okay that gives you some 101 00:04:22,390 --> 00:04:25,290 really interesting inside and of course you can 102 00:04:25,290 --> 00:04:26,620 talk to Carlton, you can talk to me. 103 00:04:26,620 --> 00:04:29,720 And that gives you also a sense of how we view these things, 104 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:33,490 okay we, we keep discussing these issues all the time and you'd be, you 105 00:04:33,490 --> 00:04:37,120 would be part of this conversion, of course we would recognize you on the 106 00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:41,730 site website you will be part of the team and mentioned as such, okay? 107 00:04:41,730 --> 00:04:43,930 And so people who would, would actually 108 00:04:43,930 --> 00:04:47,430 go and talk to you personally and things like this, okay? 109 00:04:47,430 --> 00:04:48,170 what is possible? 110 00:04:48,170 --> 00:04:49,460 So I'm going to show you one of the some of the 111 00:04:49,460 --> 00:04:52,520 crazy ideas that we have right now, but many more are possible. 112 00:04:52,520 --> 00:04:54,739 We have many more actually, but but we also, 113 00:04:54,739 --> 00:04:58,290 we also would you know, love to get more ideas. 114 00:04:58,290 --> 00:05:02,080 from people having taken the class or you know, even people 115 00:05:02,080 --> 00:05:04,780 outside that have looked at the class at this point, okay? 116 00:05:04,780 --> 00:05:09,040 So this is one of the crazy idea and one that I strongly believe in and obviously 117 00:05:09,040 --> 00:05:11,150 count on also, strongly believe in this. 118 00:05:11,150 --> 00:05:13,090 So, so this is something that I told you 119 00:05:13,090 --> 00:05:15,580 have done in optimization since I was really young 120 00:05:15,580 --> 00:05:18,500 and the idea is that you want to visualize 121 00:05:18,500 --> 00:05:22,050 a solution as quickly as possible, okay so once. 122 00:05:22,050 --> 00:05:24,867 When you are developing an optimization application you know, things that 123 00:05:24,867 --> 00:05:28,210 we've told you, build the visualization so you can see what 124 00:05:28,210 --> 00:05:31,023 is happening, so you see this you know the TSP on 125 00:05:31,023 --> 00:05:34,290 the t-shirt, but essentially what we are thinking of is can 126 00:05:34,290 --> 00:05:39,344 we actually provide the students with a visualizer immediately okay so they would 127 00:05:39,344 --> 00:05:43,660 they could visualize everything that they do immediately, that would come for free. 128 00:05:43,660 --> 00:05:46,500 And of course they could build their own, but they would get a basic stuff 129 00:05:46,500 --> 00:05:50,080 for visualizing for free, so we will have to build all of this for all 130 00:05:50,080 --> 00:05:51,730 of the assignments but that would give 131 00:05:51,730 --> 00:05:55,435 you, the students, really very interesting insight of 132 00:05:55,435 --> 00:05:59,220 of what is going on the program and we would ultimate that part of the class. 133 00:05:59,220 --> 00:06:03,740 So this is one of the things that I think that would make a huge difference, okay? 134 00:06:03,740 --> 00:06:07,760 the other things that, that we are thinking of is that we may, may want to 135 00:06:07,760 --> 00:06:10,350 have different kinds of assignments and, of the, 136 00:06:10,350 --> 00:06:12,360 for the class and different kinds of levels. 137 00:06:12,360 --> 00:06:16,020 Of course we have, you know, we have the classes that is organized, no. 138 00:06:16,020 --> 00:06:19,400 And we think that is to stay. This is really very interesting. 139 00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:21,890 But we can also, you know have a 140 00:06:21,890 --> 00:06:24,583 lightweight version of this class, for instance based on 141 00:06:24,583 --> 00:06:27,560 what on quizzes and, and micro-programming assignments. 142 00:06:27,560 --> 00:06:28,670 So we are thinking about that. 143 00:06:28,670 --> 00:06:30,800 We have not made any kind of decisions. 144 00:06:30,800 --> 00:06:33,360 We have, you know, we value your input on this. 145 00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:35,090 the quizzes of course will not be in the 146 00:06:35,090 --> 00:06:37,210 middle of the lecture because that's not my style. 147 00:06:37,210 --> 00:06:39,560 Right, they would be at the end or you know separated. 148 00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:41,440 But, but this is something that we could 149 00:06:41,440 --> 00:06:44,460 do you know, more conceptual questions there and then 150 00:06:44,460 --> 00:06:46,100 we could have, you know assignments which are a 151 00:06:46,100 --> 00:06:49,620 little bit more structured, less open-ended for you know, 152 00:06:49,620 --> 00:06:51,840 for helping people, you know understand the material. 153 00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:53,880 Like, okay so we give you a basic framework, 154 00:06:53,880 --> 00:06:56,760 implement 2-opt on top of that, you know, we have, 155 00:06:56,760 --> 00:06:58,522 you know we have the framework for the branch 156 00:06:58,522 --> 00:07:00,940 in one but you have to do the relaxation yourself. 157 00:07:00,940 --> 00:07:01,930 Okay, things like that. 158 00:07:01,930 --> 00:07:04,420 We all think, these are the kind of things we are thinking of, okay? 159 00:07:04,420 --> 00:07:07,682 No decision made, right, but this is the kind of things we are thinking of. 160 00:07:07,682 --> 00:07:11,440 then obviously usually what we want and this is not so crazy but 161 00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:15,246 we want a lot more tutorial, a lot more support than example and 162 00:07:15,246 --> 00:07:17,280 obviously we want to have. 163 00:07:17,280 --> 00:07:19,540 Introduction to some of the, some of the tools. 164 00:07:19,540 --> 00:07:21,080 You know how do we use a CP solver? 165 00:07:21,080 --> 00:07:24,100 What is, you know giving you some of basic introduction 166 00:07:24,100 --> 00:07:26,820 of a part of CP solver to speed everything up. 167 00:07:26,820 --> 00:07:31,150 When you see example, it's so much easier than just you know going to a reference 168 00:07:31,150 --> 00:07:34,550 manual or to a video explaining everything you 169 00:07:34,550 --> 00:07:37,080 know everything in, in, in a lot of details. 170 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:40,540 So we can show you examples and teach you how to use these things much faster. 171 00:07:40,540 --> 00:07:42,580 And that's what we would like to do, okay? 172 00:07:42,580 --> 00:07:45,850 So we would like to essentially go and give you a, you know, 173 00:07:45,850 --> 00:07:49,230 a fast paced introduction to some of the tools you may be using. 174 00:07:49,230 --> 00:07:50,040 Okay? 175 00:07:50,040 --> 00:07:53,010 I was thinking that would just be, you know, they would be recommended 176 00:07:53,010 --> 00:07:54,620 for some particular app, you know, some 177 00:07:54,620 --> 00:07:57,065 particular assignment, but of usually not meant 178 00:07:57,065 --> 00:07:57,090 [UNKNOWN] 179 00:07:57,090 --> 00:07:59,680 at all, people would still have the freedom to do whatever they want. 180 00:07:59,680 --> 00:08:03,000 Okay, then we want this little board okay, and 181 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:05,630 we want us to tailor it to a particular viewer. 182 00:08:05,630 --> 00:08:09,120 We want to do everything we do but tailor to a particular person. 183 00:08:09,120 --> 00:08:11,300 Make everything much more personalized. 184 00:08:11,300 --> 00:08:14,180 Right? So we are in the age of personalization. 185 00:08:14,180 --> 00:08:16,244 We should do that in this class, okay? 186 00:08:16,244 --> 00:08:18,870 So instead of seeing a little boat like, like you see 187 00:08:18,870 --> 00:08:22,220 here, you, we would also give you, you know, essentially where 188 00:08:22,220 --> 00:08:24,470 you stand at this point, and then you see this curve 189 00:08:24,470 --> 00:08:27,620 and your goal would be to push it once again, you know. 190 00:08:27,620 --> 00:08:29,640 to the right side or to the left side. 191 00:08:31,480 --> 00:08:33,650 so essentially, essentially what we want to do 192 00:08:33,650 --> 00:08:35,580 is everything we are showing you will be 193 00:08:35,580 --> 00:08:38,120 more personalized and you will have an experience 194 00:08:38,120 --> 00:08:40,010 which is really personalized to what you are doing. 195 00:08:40,010 --> 00:08:40,500 Okay? 196 00:08:40,500 --> 00:08:41,910 So another idea. Okay? 197 00:08:41,910 --> 00:08:44,610 So many of these ideas you know, are out there 198 00:08:44,610 --> 00:08:47,330 and so ob, obviously you know, we can't do every, 199 00:08:47,330 --> 00:08:51,320 everything every crazy idea that what I just mentioned, plus others. 200 00:08:51,320 --> 00:08:53,380 Okay, and that's where you know, we would 201 00:08:53,380 --> 00:08:55,870 like to have a really healthy teaching assistant program. 202 00:08:55,870 --> 00:08:57,630 So if you are interested, you know once 203 00:08:57,630 --> 00:09:01,690 again okay, so you know, contact us and, and 204 00:09:01,690 --> 00:09:03,770 this will be, I think this will be 205 00:09:03,770 --> 00:09:05,870 a very rewarding experience for you as well, okay. 206 00:09:05,870 --> 00:09:08,820 So the way to think about this is that it's like open source project, 207 00:09:08,820 --> 00:09:12,250 okay, people contribute for free and this is exactly the same here, you know, 208 00:09:12,250 --> 00:09:16,050 it's strictly voluntary we're not going to pay you actually you know, Carlton and I 209 00:09:16,050 --> 00:09:21,133 are really not payed for this, this is like a second job for us, okay. 210 00:09:21,133 --> 00:09:24,500 But the the the basic the basic advantage here is that you will 211 00:09:24,500 --> 00:09:28,410 be part of this team, and you will choose a level of commitment, okay. 212 00:09:28,410 --> 00:09:31,780 No cash, but you will get the recognition as well, okay. 213 00:09:31,780 --> 00:09:34,670 so if you're interested, e-mail Carlton, you know, what 214 00:09:34,670 --> 00:09:37,530 we want is that Carlton has so many emails 215 00:09:37,530 --> 00:09:40,110 that he can't actually access his mailbox. Okay? 216 00:09:40,110 --> 00:09:41,110 That is the goal. 217 00:09:41,110 --> 00:09:43,475 And we hope to see your application because 218 00:09:43,475 --> 00:09:45,660 we strongly believe that we can put this 219 00:09:45,660 --> 00:09:47,810 class at the next level by having a, 220 00:09:47,810 --> 00:09:50,450 a set of really dedicated people working with us. 221 00:09:50,450 --> 00:09:51,450 Okay? Thank you guys. 222 00:09:51,450 --> 00:09:54,820 Please apply. Thank you.