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About the Courses
There are several features that are generally shared by all the courses:
Most courses are at a level of difficulty comparable to graduate courses in computer science. However, no specific degree or prior courses are required as a prerequisite. Proficiency in a particular programming language may be required in many courses. Enrollment in any course is by instructor's permission only. Each student must be able to provide evidence of the ability to complete the project work successfully both to the instructor and to fellow project team members.
The ICISLT courses are based on learn-by-doing, rather than lectures. Students learn by completing serious projects with real value, not just homework exercises.
The course projects are generally done by teams of 4-8 students. Each student is responsible for completing his or her fair share of the project and for working as a responsible team member. Each student's performance rating is determined by both individual contribution and total team accomplishment. Each team member is reviewed frequently both by fellow team members and by management.
Each team has a team manager with a role similar a first-level manager in a commercial software development project. The supervising faculty member acts as a senior manager. In larger courses, there may be more management layers.
The members of a team do not necessarily need to meet face-to-face, but rather use web-based collaborative development tools. Reference material and other courseware is also available via the web. Interaction with mentors and faculty is also done by way of web-based tools.
Minimum Class-size Requirements
Generally, each course has a minimum class-size, based on the number of projects which must be done simultaneously and the estimated number of people required to complete each project. For redundancy and other pedagogical reasons, more than one team may be doing the same or similar projects, so the number of teams and hence the minimum class size is determined on a case-by-case basis by the supervising faculty member.
Courses are not tied to a predetermined calendar. A course will not be offered until the minimum class size requirement has been fulfilled. Students interested in taking a particular course may be asked to help recruit additional students to fulfill the requirement.
There is also a minimum team-size requirement. Team members and the team manager must all accept each other. If some individuals do not accept the rest of the team, they must find another team, or create their own team.
These courses are intended to have at least as much content as conventional graduate level courses at any of the universities working with the ICISLT program. In addition, many students may find that projects take a larger time commitment than conventional classroom courses. Some students who have little experience working with a team may initially find that difficult. These are learn-by-doing courses. You can only get out of the course as much as you are prepared to put into it. If you don't have the time or can't make the required commitment, you should not take one of these courses. If you do not do your fair share, you will hurt your fellow team members and you will not be welcome on other teams.
A student taking a ICISLT course in addition to a full-time job should not expect to be able to take more than one course at a time.
Each team is assigned a mentor -- a faculty member, teaching assistant, or a senior software engineer or scientist. The mentors are advisors, not team managers or team members. Team managers are generally fellow students with software management experience.
These courses, or some of the material and projects from these courses, may be offered as courses by one or more universities, with credit toward degrees or certificates. There is no attempt to achieve a consensus on a standard version of each course. Also many university or individual faculty members may choose not to offer a purely project-based course. The content and syllabus of any such associated course shall be the sole responsibility of the local faculty and their university. Any student from such an associated course who is participating in a ICISLT course project shall, however, be fully responsible to meet the standards of their fellow team members, team management and supervising ICISLT faculty, even if those requirements go beyond the minimum requirements of their local university course.
The International Center for Innovations in Speech and Language Technology is not itself an accredited educational institution. It does not grant any degrees. Students who desire credit towards a degree should enroll in an associated university course.
Here's the good news: for students unaffiliated with any university taking a core technology course, there is no tuition. This no-tuition policy can be maintained only as long as there are sufficient mentors and faculty who volunteer or who are paid by their universities or industry employers. These are intensive courses. The cost for paid mentors and faculty would be over $10,000 per student per course. This no-tuition policy does not apply to special courses, which, for example, might include licensing of proprietary material. For such courses, the tuition may be $100,000 or more.
The fees or tuition charged for taking a course through a university are set by and paid to the university. Universities will be supplying faculty and mentors proportional to the number of tuition paying students. Often auditors will still be free, but generally there will be a tuition for taking the course for credit towards a degree or certificate.
The Core Beliefs do not require that courses be offered for no tuition. This choice for the core technology courses is merely an extreme example of the use of the principles of fairness and cooperative behavior. Thus, the situation is somewhat different for sponsored application development projects and for business courses. For these projects and courses, specific business enterprises will be getting a direct economic benefit and they will be expected to pay a fee. Individual cases may differ, but there will generally be a fee of $10,000 per student, but this fee will usually be paid by a company not by an individual student.
Some courses are restricted to faculty and mentors only. Generally these courses are not available for tuition at any price, but may be taken only by accumulating credits from successfully mentoring four teams in other courses. Mentors paid by their university or industry employer do not accumulate mentoring credits. With instructor's permission, a credit may be given for a commitment of future mentoring.
Each student must agree that all software developed by the project teams be placed in open source with a license acceptable to ICISLT. The principle of making all software open source is in keeping with the policy of offering courses for no tuition. These policies are based on our Core Beliefs.
In many courses, students will be asked to make recordings of their own or of other people's voices. This data will be either placed in the public domain or may be donated to ICISLT. ICISLT may pay for certain data in which it has a particular interest.
Performance Measurement and Grading
Each team manager will make frequent, perhaps weekly, assessments of the relative contribution of each team member. Team members will also assess the relative contribution of each other. Senior managers and faculty members will assess the success of each project relative to expectations and relative to other projects in the same course. Team managers will be reviewed both by their team members and by higher management. Each individual's performance in these reviews will be converted to an ordinal or percentile ranking. It is presently not expected that these rankings will be converted to letter grade equivalents because of the difficulty at a common standard across universities. For students receiving a grade in an associated university course, it will be the responsibility of the local faculty at the university to convert the relative performance ratings to grades within that university's system.
The beginning and ending dates and even the duration of each course will not be tied to the academic calendar of any of the participating universities. It will generally be expected that each project team will keep working until the project is completed successfully, even if they have to go back and do work over to get it right. For university courses that must have grades assigned by a particular calendar date, it will be the responsibility of the local faculty at the university to assign a grade based on the quality of the student's work to that date.
Copyright © 2005 James K. Baker