Best equipment distribution for teaching CAT tools Thread poster: Clarisa Moraña
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Clarisa Moraña 
United States
Local time: 10:59
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Dear Colleagues
I'm studing the best option for teaching CAT tools to my future students. I will be adquiring the license of certain CAT tools for pedagogic purpose and I've some doubts regarding the layout.
Is it better to have al the PC's with one CAT software networked or to assign a single-user licence for each PC?
Regards
Clarisa
| | | | | My experience | Jan 11, 2013 |
Dear Clarisa,
I've delivered courses on CAT at two universities since 2006 and I've tried both setups. Based on my experience, the more reliable one is when each PC has its own license. The problem is that it sometimes takes the workstations some time to recover a server license.
As a consequence of this, we experienced frequent crashes, as well as all too many "No license available" and "All licenses are already in use" messages when working with a central license pool. The ... See more Dear Clarisa,
I've delivered courses on CAT at two universities since 2006 and I've tried both setups. Based on my experience, the more reliable one is when each PC has its own license. The problem is that it sometimes takes the workstations some time to recover a server license.
As a consequence of this, we experienced frequent crashes, as well as all too many "No license available" and "All licenses are already in use" messages when working with a central license pool. The result of that is that you spend more time on debugging and troubleshooting than on teaching.
So while it may seem more elegant to have a central license storage location, it's not in practice.
One more hint: if your students work on PCs with restricted access (for example, my university has a university-wide network and assings restricted user profiles to students which they can use on any computer connected to the university network), make sure with the IT Dept. that all student profiles receive sufficient permissions for the CAT tools installation folders, as well as to folders that are used by those tools to store both temporary and permanent files. Insufficient permissions are real pain in the a**e too... ▲ Collapse
| | | | | In reply to Clarisa's PM | Jan 12, 2013 |
I know this isn't easy, Clarisa, especially since you actually don't know what to expect: I mean from the equipment, rather than from students.
At least the first semester I was teaching this course wasn't easy at all. We would experience a lot of difficulties that occur in network setups combined with permission-restricted user profiles. At first, I tried to do everyth... See more I know this isn't easy, Clarisa, especially since you actually don't know what to expect: I mean from the equipment, rather than from students.
At least the first semester I was teaching this course wasn't easy at all. We would experience a lot of difficulties that occur in network setups combined with permission-restricted user profiles. At first, I tried to do everything myself, but ended up 50 minutes troubleshooting and 40 minutes teaching, plus I couldn't resolve some issues anyway because: a) I didn't have administrator permissions myself; b) I didn't have sufficient knowledge of that particular network structure(s). You can imagine how exhausted I was after each seminar. This was anything but the sort of fun I had thought it would be.
What worked best in the end was having somebody from the IT Dept. in-class who could resolve any problems on the fly, so this would be my next suggestion (if feasible, of course).
Another problem, particularly in the first course runs, was – mind you – computer (il)literacy of the students. Although my course pre-requisites were very specific and absolutely clear about what students should be able to do with a computer, a good half of them didn't know how to zip and unzip a bunch of files, to give an example. The biggest surprise for me, really! I don't know what the situation is like in Argentina, but I was pretty disappointed at first. This has greatly improved over time, but my next suggestion would perhaps be: be ready to answer questions like "I downloaded the files but I don't know where they went".
It's also advisable to use some online storage space that your students can access. This is important for sharing course files. We've been successfully using Moodle, a well-known e-learning platform (a bit modified to accommodate the university's needs and to interact with the university's own information system; in fact, both universities where I teach use Moodle).
All in all, I strongly suggest that you inform your first group(s) of students that they are going to be your guinea pigs and that you will be probably learning some lessons together.
OTOH, when everything is working as it should be, it really makes fun and I thoroughly enjoy every single minute in front of the whiteboard.
[Upraveno: 2013-01-12 03:43 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Clarisa Moraña
United States
Local time: 10:59
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | All input is appreciated! | Jan 12, 2013 |
Dear Stanislav
I'm reading everything with absolute pleasure. I'm excited with the project and I find myself all the day thinking which would be the best strategies, which are the best contents to teach, how I should organize them. I've already downloaded tons of papers & discussions from the Internet. I have reviewed my own documentation. I've visited libraries. I have prepared a couple of classes. And yes, I'm sure that many of the situations described by you will appear during t... See more Dear Stanislav
I'm reading everything with absolute pleasure. I'm excited with the project and I find myself all the day thinking which would be the best strategies, which are the best contents to teach, how I should organize them. I've already downloaded tons of papers & discussions from the Internet. I have reviewed my own documentation. I've visited libraries. I have prepared a couple of classes. And yes, I'm sure that many of the situations described by you will appear during the classes.
Regards
Clarisa ▲ Collapse
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| Single user licenses | Jan 12, 2013 |
Clearly the decision about how to manage your licenses will heavily depend on the licensing scheme used by the makers of each CAT tool.
Individual licenses and fully functional workstations (or sufficiently functional for the topics dealt with in the course) are best, since you are bound to have students with different levels of expertise and they should have some room to experiment on their own.
You will often have the student whose attention is harder to grasp and tri... See more Clearly the decision about how to manage your licenses will heavily depend on the licensing scheme used by the makers of each CAT tool.
Individual licenses and fully functional workstations (or sufficiently functional for the topics dealt with in the course) are best, since you are bound to have students with different levels of expertise and they should have some room to experiment on their own.
You will often have the student whose attention is harder to grasp and tries to think and experiment in advance of what you are explaining, and on the other hand you are bound to have students who interiorise things more slowly and need to try more than once.
It is absolutely critical to have it all set up the day before and to arrive early and double-check it all again before the class. Spending more than 3 minutes troubleshooting is a disaster: you lose your students' attention, lose time for your planned topics and, even worse, lose the trust students might have in you as a teacher, since they will feel that the technical troubles are entirely your fault and that you did not work hard enough --or even worse, that you lack the skills-- to troubleshoot them beforehand.
As for the layout in the class, it will also depend on the size of the class and the number of students. If you have 10-12 students and ample space, you might want to build a U so that you can move in and out of the U from your teacher workstation and have a better eye contact to the students. You can also walk around more easily and see how the students are faring during exercises. If space is not that ample, rows of desks seem perhaps inevitable.
Thank you for starting this topic. Most interesting. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | A few comments | Jan 12, 2013 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
You will often have the student whose attention is harder to grasp and tries to think and experiment in advance of what you are explaining, and on the other hand you are bound to have students who interiorise things more slowly and need to try more than once.
This is very true. If you are explaining a new thing, it is vital that you warn your students several times that they shouldn't be clicking anywhere else than you are because that would take them to other screens than needed.
It is absolutely critical to have it all set up the day before and to arrive early and double-check it all again before the class.
This is always a good idea; however, I suspect that no matter how hard you try to prepare everything, computers are still computers and they might do some unexpected things from time to time. One of the situations that are not uncommon is that the computer simply freezes and needs to be restarted. In a network environment, it may take the machine up to five minutes to reboot. Five minutes that you have to wait for a single student...
As for the layout in the class, it will also depend on the size of the class and the number of students. If you have 10-12 students and ample space, you might want to build a U so that you can move in and out of the U from your teacher workstation and have a better eye contact to the students. You can also walk around more easily and see how the students are faring during exercises.
I have 20 students in each run and I use the U classrom layout at one university, and an "I I" layout at the other. Both are working for me pretty nicely.
We also use the Symposium in-class software which allows you to switch easily to one of the student machines and display the content of its screen on the data projector.
| | | | | Some tools can be used for free for teaching purposes | Jan 13, 2013 |
Clarisa Moraña wrote:
I'm studing the best option for teaching CAT tools to my future students. I will be acquiring the license of certain CAT tools for pedagogic purpose and I've some doubts regarding the layout.
Just in case you're not aware of it, you can get some tools for free. For instance, Wordfast has a gratuity program for which your institution would most likely be eligible.
Clarisa Moraña wrote:
Is it better to have al the PC's with one CAT software networked or to assign a single-user licence for each PC?
As Tómas said, it depends on the licensing scheme used by each tool. For instance, in the case of Wordfast, the software needs to be installed and licensed on each PC. Licensing is done automatically with Wordfast Classic and manually with Wordfast Pro.
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