Ethics for Nerds

Our Lecture Mode

Written on 04.04.2020 12:45 by Sarah Sterz

Things change fast, and some of the below only holds for the main course that starts on May 4. Before this, we are in Optional Preparation.

Dear everyone,

What would have been the start of the semester is approaching very fast. So, we want to update you on what will for now be our mode of operation.

Basically, you will get access to some videos which are lecture-like and additional exercises that accompany the video to practice what you learned. Each week, you will get new videos and exercises. You will have different formats of getting feedback. In detail, all the building blocks of the lecture are:

Videos. Those videos are basically what a lecture would be like, but oftentimes we split the videos up into multiple parts for your convenience. New videos are released on Wednesdays (when our lecture would have been).

Exercise Sheets. Exercise sheets contain, you guessed it, exercises.  Most of them are voluntary training exercises. For many of those you will get a sample solution. Some exercises from the exercise sheet are marked as feedback exercises. Those you can hand in via the dcms and receive feedback on them. There are no deadlines for these exercises. You can hand them in whenever you want to and we will give you feedback on your work within the next week (given at least that all of us are available, i.e. not ill).

Forum. The dcms forum is a place where you can ask questions, discuss with your fellow students as well as with us. It will be moderated, and we try to answer any questions within at most 24 hours. We will also occasionally open threads with additional exercises or discussion questions that you can discuss as a group. Discussing with others, be via text or via voice or video chat, is very crucial to succeeding in this course. So please try to actively participate in forum discussions.

Q&A Sessions. Starting with the second week, we will have virtual Office Hours in BigBlueButton, a conference platform. We will tell you in time when those will be and how you can access the platform. There, you can discuss with your fellow students in small groups or work on the exercises and it also is your opportunity to ask us questions. You can especially discuss solutions on training exercises with us, that are not feedback exercises. Besides this, you basically can ask us anything on the content of the course you want to know. Because the course is asynchronous and you can work on whatever topic interests you most right now, there is no fixed topic for any of the Q&A sessions. There will be a thread in the forum where we kindly ask you to post any questions at least a day earlier such that we can cluster the questions and answer them in a more efficient manner.

ATTENTION: the following information on admission and grading is preliminary and will be fixed only when the semester officially starts. It also is subject to change depending on incoming university or state regulations. However, we will try everything such that it will not get more demanding than the following (e.g. we will not suddenly announce additional admission criteria).

Admission. For admission, you have to hand in a single assignment mid June. You will have the opportunity to re-submit two weeks later if it turns out that you failed the first time.

Grading. You will be graded on two things: an exam (or re-exam, depending on where you performed better) and an essay. You will have the opportunity to hand in a mock essay for prior training and feedback. The essay deadline as well as the exam will be in late July or in August.

If it becomes justifiable again to meet in person, we will transform this lecture mode into a regular lecture mode with presence time. We will, of course, notify you of any operational changes.

Even though we have plenty of teaching experience, nobody from the team has ever given a remote course before. So, this is as new to us as it is to you. We try our best in making the new situation work. If it turns out not to work the way we wanted to, the above is subject to change. In the case of any alterations to the course format, you will of course be notified. We also very much encourage you to give us feedback – both positive and negative. Write us, what you like about the course, what you do not like, what you struggle with and what you think we could do better. We can improve only if we know what you like and what you do not like. To give us feedback, you can write us an email, talk to us in the Q&A, or use the anonymous feedback function in the dcms. (And yes, the feedback function really is anonymous. So, if you have any request of which you want an answer form us, please choose some other way of communication.)

And last but not least: Welcome to Ethics for Nerds! :)

Stay healthy,
The Ethics for Nerds Team