Work proposal for the Thu 20.9.2012 workshop.

Survival Skills: Explaining concepts in writing.

The goal of this session is to get a check and a bit of practice on writing skills for both the homework assignments that are returned by email, and for exam answers later on.

Form groups of 2-4. First write down your answer, then compare the results in the group by reading each other's answers either in pairs
or in a "chain" where A reads B's answer, B reads C's etc. For each task, answer the following questions:

i) What did you learn from the answer, was there something unclear?
ii) Would you have something to add or other ideas for improvement?

Afterwards if you choose to, you can pick a specific answer that you want lecturer feedback on. (Again, remember that the point here is to train and get an idea of how well you can communicate conceptual things concisely in writing, so explain things in your own words - do not copy them from memory or screen.)

Note: An exam, homework, seminar papers and also your thesis should be written in a form that can be understood by other students not specializing on your specific topic. You are not learning to write text that only the lecturer can understand, because that skill will not be very useful in the real world.

Apply the above instruction to the following tasks:

1) Explain* the concepts of persistence (/transience) and synchronicity (/asynchronity) in communication.

2) Explain* the basic idea of RPC.

3) Explain* the different possible RPC delivery semantics and what kinds of mechanisms must be applied to provide such guarantees.

*) As you would to another student taking this course, one who desperately wants to understand these concepts but has trouble following a (purely theoretical) hyperactive lecturer, and does not have the course book handy.

Commentary:

(1) can be seen as an example of a bullet in an a/b/c multipart exam question, while (2) as its simplest would be another, but with a slightly more general task description it could be a middle-sized exam question of its own. The answer gets longer especially if it is instructed that the "what can go wrong" side should be explored as
well - I am trying not to imply that it would be needed here. (3) is middle-sized again.

All three are of the "approaches the learning objectives" level - they allow you to demonstrate your capacity of reproducing something you have learned, but do not ask you to apply it for anything or to otherwise produce new knowledge out of them.

It can be unclear in a situation like this if an examiner is looking for a demonstration that you understand different failure classes of RPC as well, but we usually try to be literal in the questions so that you do not need to branch out "just in case".

(Looking for the "beef" mixed inside a lot of just-in-case anecdotes that are loosely connected to the original questions means more work for the exam checker too, and that does not really serve any purpose. Staying to the point is generally a good idea especially when you have a pretty good feeling that you understand the question.)

Since this is a workshop to practice, you can safely adjust the time you take to write the answer by making assumptions about how detailed an answer is expected - based on how much time you have for allocating to the task.

Survival skills learned:

- Writing explanations of concepts: this is very important not just in exams, but also whenever you produce scientific / technical text which uses concepts not all readers are familiar with. Always explain your concepts as soon as you introduce them in your text. If you can come up with examples for the more difficult bits, all the   better!

- Producing quick English text: if you have trouble with this, I recommend  more practice - try writing your homework answers in English if you are  making the notes in your native language currently. For the homework assignments, use a spellchecker if you have trouble with word spelling. Typos and strange grammar make it harder for your message to go through to the reader. (I hope none of you have to write reports just for the sake of writing them - there is generally at least someone to read them too, whatever the reason.)

  Homework, exams etc can be written in Finnish, Swedish or English.

- Localized skill for this department: a glance into the mind of an examiner. Note that examination cultures can vary greatly, for example a less natural science/mathematically oriented subject may expect more reflection of concepts against personal experiences / knowledge, or a demostration of critical thinking and skill to formulate counterarguments. We generally practice so much technical content that we may completely forget these things in the average course curriculum, but in the real world they are highly valued as well - and you are likely to run into them in thesis-writing, at least.