Illinibucks

The use of Illinibucks for the sole purpose of moving to the head of the line would have many uses for many of the issues that I have run into during my time at this University.  Among many of those issues, some of the bigger ones that Illinibucks could be used for are who get's help from the instructors or teacher assistants first and registering to be on a waiting list for courses that are already full.  However, even though Illinibucks could be used in these certain situations, whether the     
pre-specified prices are set too low or too high could have drastically different affects.

The only time I have faced the first issue, which is who gets help from the instructors or teacher assistants faster, is during my coding courses.  For these coding courses, there are a lot of students and that means there are a lot of students with a lot of questions that have to be asked at office hours.  And during each office hours there is only one teacher's assistant on duty or sometimes at most there are two teacher's assistants.  The situation that frustrates me is that there have been several occasions in which I have gone to office hours for help and have had to wait an hour or even close to two hours to get my question answered because there is such a long waiting line to get help.  Admittedly, I do concede that most of the time I go to office hours it is at only a couple of days before the due dates of the coding projects which is probably when most of the other students are also seeking help.  If I had started the project earlier, I may have gone the office hours for help earlier which may have had less students waiting in it.  But nonetheless, if I was able to spend some Illinibucks to skip the line for help I would definitely do it in order to not have to wait an hour or more.  

As for the pre-specified price for the amount of Illinibucks for this issue, if the price is set too low then everyone would just pay the price and this wouldn't fix the problem by much because it would just form another long waiting line for everyone "payed to skip the line."  If the price is too high, then I don't think many students would be able to pay the price too often or maybe they wouldn't even pay the price because many of the times there are a lot problems with your code that you can't figure out and you may have to ask a lot of question about it.  So if you had to pay that high of a price every time, it might be more worth it to wait in the long original line to save your Illinibucks for different situations or even more desperate situations.

For the second situation, which is registering to be on a waiting list for course that is already full, I think that Illinibucks could be really useful for this.  Even though I have higher priority when registering for courses now, there are still some times in which I realized I might want to take a course later on or I didn't even know that a course existed until much later and then I'm interested in taking it, however unfortunately the course is already full.  When situations like this occur, there is a big stressful problem in which all the students who want to register for that course are constantly checking the registration website every couple of minutes, praying that the course will be open one of the times that they are checking the site and that they aren't missing any of the times that the course is actually open.  

I've been in this type of situation several times before. Fortunately in all the times I've been in this situation I have luckily managed to get into the courses eventually, however not without the consequence of a lot of stress build up from constantly checking the website.  But alternatively, if I could just pay some amount of Illinibucks to be put on a waiting list to be automatically registered for a course immediately when the next opening occurs, I would just pay for it because I hate dealing with those types of situations.  

As for the set price of Illinibucks for this issue, if it was set too low then it would cause a huge problem for those courses that many people are interested in because everyone would just pay the price and then there would another huge line for people who payed the Illinibucks as there are only a finite number of available seats.  If the price is set too high, then nobody would be able to pay for it or only the absolute most desperate would pay the price which admittedly, I believe I have had many of those feelings of desperation previously when I was trying to register for full courses.  

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 4, 2019 at 10:24 AM

    Let's focus on the coding courses and the congestion with the TA. I'm not sure whether you would know this or not, but do you think all students in the class use the TA in the same way as how you do it? Let's assume that for the moment. Would making a schedule of assigned times then help solve the problem or not?

    As you suggested, it is human nature to do some of the work closer to the deadline so that is when office hours would be most congested. An efficient solution to this might then have some students do the work earlier, and have the students who are so assigned rotate. Would an assigned schedule of meeting with the TA encourage this efficient solution or not?

    Thinking about it that way, I'd then ask if an Illibucks system might end up being a proxy for such a schedule and, if so how would that work?

    Now let me ask a question about the the technology of office hours. Could you just as well meet the TA in an online video chat? And, if so, would that help so that while you were waiting your turn you could be working on something else?

    I want to try one more suggestion that I offered another student. I'm unclear whether students are doing the same coding assignments or not. Are the students allowed/encourage to work in groups on the coding? And here I don't mean to chunk up the code writing, but rather to have the groups talk through the various stumbling blocks. If that happened, would it then make sense for only one member of the group to go to office hours and do so early. The other members of the group would then learn from that member who did attend office hours.

    I'm not sure Illinibucks would encourage such group formation, but perhaps it might. It is something for you to consider.

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    Replies
    1. WesleyAuOctober 4, 2019 at 11:37 PM

      Yes, I believe that most students if not all the students in the class use the TAs in the same way as I do. As for the assigned times, there are many TA's that rotate shifts which allow for students to go to office hours whenever they need help. Also when students do go to office hours for help, they have to sign up for a wait list. So I don't think making a schedule of assigned times would help solve the problem.

      As for rotating when students do the assignments, I believe they assign the same projects to all the students at the same time with the same due dates in order to limit cheating. They don't really want other students who have done the assignment earlier to tell other students how to complete them because in the advanced CS courses, they emphasize a lot on the concept of self research in order to make student really learn and understand the material. For example, on a project they will give limited instructions and guidance, only providing information such as what your code is supposed to do, what components they expect to be in your code, some advice and websites with information that might be helpful, but for the most part they don't really tell you much about how to complete the assignment. So it's the students job to browse and research the internet in order to learn how to do it and then write a code for the project. Although these types of classes are the most difficult ones I've taken, I believe that I have actually learned and understood more of the material because I had to figure it out by myself with the help of the TA's when I really couldn't figure a problem out.

      As for the technology of office hours, each class is different. Some classes do have online office hours while some don't. In my opinion though, I have found that in-person office hours are more effective for me at least. But no, online office hours wouldn't really help with letting students work on something else while they wait because they can already do that in the in-person office hours while they wait for help. I guess the amount of time a student would save though is the amount of time it would take a student to get to where the office hours are.

      Like I said previously, each coding course is different. Some courses allow you to work with partners while some don't, but most of the more advanced coding courses do allow you to work with partners just because the difficultly and the amount of work would be difficult for only a single student to balance. And yes, we do similar things as you suggested which is if nobody can figure the problem out, then one or two people go to office hours and then we teach each other.

      To be honest, the only way I can think of fixing the problem of long wait times during office hours is for there to be at least two more TA's on duty during each shift. However, I think a potential negative of having more TA's on duty is that since getting help would take a shorter time, students would go to office hours much more frequently whenever they run into a problem whether it be big or small instead of maybe just trying to figure it out by themselves. Solving a problem by yourself through your own research is not only satisfying when you finally figure it out, but it is how you really learn the material for the long run.

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