top | item 25273103

(no title)

CinchWrench | 5 years ago

I've dropped out. It's a lot of work, but the hardest part for me was staying engaged with the process without in person interaction.

Pandemic has been hell for me, too.

discuss

order

abdullahkhalids|5 years ago

How did the program try to get students to interact with each other and with faculty?

CinchWrench|5 years ago

Piazza (forums) and office hours (bluejeans--think youtube livestreams but on a proprietary platform.

For me, this semester, I finished a group project where we coordinated over slack/google hangouts. After that project, I didn't have anything left to finish the semester. I felt like I was done because the reinforcement loops I get from work (virtual back-clapping) were done and I had a hard time separating that from the "here's the next task. Also no one is talking to you about what needs to be done."

indigochill|5 years ago

I'm another dropout (loved some of the courses, especially the OS ones, have close-to-zero interest in machine learning, though, and that's maybe half of the class offerings), but to answer your question, all the courses I was in had a "participation" component to the grade where you were expected to ask/answer questions on the online forum thing for your class. There were also optional office hours, as I recall.

It was certainly nothing like just hanging out with colleagues in the cafe between classes, but for those (like me) who just can't go to a school like GT in-person, I'm glad the opportunity is available even though I'd say it's probably the hard-mode version of the program given the limited course catalog (not all courses are integrated into the program yet) and lack of in-person interaction.