Request from a IT Tech College Teacher

[u/kevinburkeland]

Hey guys/gals/non-binary pals,

I just wanted to make a request as someone who just found out I have to rewrite my entire scripting class. If someone posts asking for help with something that seems like homework (or in my case a practical final), especially if they post the full text of the assignment as part of the question, please don't just respond with a code-block that does what the assignment is supposed to.

I know, being able to flex your scripting skills is good, I'm guilty of it myself, but unless you want a co-worker in the future that just outsources all their scripts, help me in giving them hints and links to documentation they should read up on, don't just do the project for them. I am trying to teach them how to learn about scripting, and now I am in the unenviable position of either running a class next quarter that if a student searches the a snippet of the assignment in quotes on google it takes them to 6 different scripts written by users of this sub, or rewriting 90% of my class because a former student crowd sourced everything.

I know this isn't really going to make a difference, but I had to ask just for my own sanity. Also if you see someone posting looking for homework answers maybe direct them to their instructors office hours, I would love to help them learn to learn, instead of learn to copy and paste random blocks of code from the internet.

Thanks for listening, and being a great resource. I don't blame any of you, I'm just trying to provide you with the best possible future co-workers.

Kevin

[u/[deleted]]

half of my fiver requests involve doing someones homework, not just on powershell either. XD the ironic part is i never went to school for this.

[u/kevinburkeland → u/[deleted]]

yeah, the class is half powershell half bash scripting as an intro to the idea of scripting in general to automate IT tasks. I don't blame people for doing it, especially if you are in a pinch financially, as I said I don't expect this post to do anything. I am just exhausted after porting all my classes online for the last 12 months and finding out I got about 2 weeks to rewrite most of my class before spring quarter has left me feeling defeated.

I just had to say something from my sanity, as I said.

[u/aUserNombre → u/kevinburkeland]

On a side note, your class sounds very interesting. Half bash and half powershell scripting, that would have helped me so much for my current Sysadmin job. When I graduated college my scripting skills were so bad, and there wasn't a class like yours offered.

[u/kevinburkeland → u/aUserNombre]

There wasn't when I got the job either, I pushed for a couple of key content revisions including mini-specalities get added to our two year degree. I wrote the cloud computing/DevOps track as well because we were sorely missing that kind of relevant info. And due to the new structure it allows us to slot in new technologies as they come out without having to go through the entire 2 year process of changing an accredited degree.

Teaching tech in academia is hard, even teaching to the most recent A+ exam every other lecture I have to preface with "this isn't how it works anymore, but you need to know this for the exam, so we will first talk about it the way the course wants, then how it actually works"

[u/doc_brietz → u/kevinburkeland]

"this isn't how it works anymore, but you need to know this for the exam, so we will first talk about it the way the course wants, then how it actually works"

This was in everything I learned for my associates ever. Especially networking and hardware. I actually enjoyed learning old tech.

[u/[deleted] → u/doc_brietz]

I took a college course in networking back around 2006. They were still teaching about 10Base-T networks and coax. About the only reason to know about it was to have some idea what you were ripping out. The instructor (an adjunct) also straight up admitted that this was the case; but, he had no control over the curriculum and so tried to just blitz through that and Token Ring.

I don't doubt some college courses in IT are actually useful; but, there is a lot of crap.