Thoughts on Distance Learning

As an employer, I've always had a tendency to view non-traditional education as "Not ready for prime-time".  How could an education that didn't involve sitting in a classroom measure up to the "real thing"?  My thinking on this was probably colored by my experience in the Army with their correspondence courses.  I would read the book and take a test in the back and send it in.  It didn't take long before I figured out to forget about reading the book and go straight to the test.  Because of this, I've always thought that "distance learning" was "easier learning".  I've been to "real" schools.  I've attended  the University of Maryland in Europe, Central Texas College, and Savannah State University.  Those were "real" schools.  "On-line" schools were just modern-day, mail order degrees.  After two semesters in Georgia Southern's on-line Master's Program, I've learned how wrong I was!

On-line programs share a lot of things with their traditional brethren.  You still have reading, homework, midterms, projects/papers, and finals.  There are some major differences though.  While there is a schedule to keep and certain deadlines, there are no set class times.  An on-line student has to be disciplined in keeping to his own - self-imposed - schedule.  In essence, he is a class of one.  Also, we lose the benefit of having class lectures.  I know most people would say, "What benefit?  Loss of snooze time?  Most lectures are just boooorrring!"  Until now, I didn't realize how much I got out of being in a classroom.  I don't get to have a lecture and try to glean what I need to get from how a professor communicates.  Things like what is really important to know and what is just nice to know.  I also don't get to learn from other students questions.  We have discussion areas, but I've found that people will ask a "stupid" question in person but will never ask that question in writing.  Missing those questions and answers has given me a new perspective on the phrase, "There are no stupid questions."  Imagine your boss assigning you a task that you've never done (and never seen done) before.  You're able to read about it and Google it, but you don't get to talk face to face with anyone about it.  If you can get enough of an understanding about the task to formulate a question, you can always ask your boss, but you aren't able to see him/her or your other co-workers.  In a nutshell, that's what on-line learning is about.  If you're very self-disciplined and motivated, it can be a great way to learn.  If not, don't even attempt it!

All of this has had one important point.  If you're an employer that is looking for a disciplined, self-motivating employee, one that has survived an on-line program is right up your alley.

A Parallel Ending

I've come to the end of my Summer semester and "Parallel Algorithm Design".  All of my assignments have been turned in and graded.  I have turned in my semester project (a parallel web crawler that crawls the web for links).  All that is left is my final exam.  If I haven't got it now, I'll never have it.

You might wonder, what in the heck is "Parallel Algorithm Design".  If you really want to know, wikipedia's article gives a fairly good, concise explanation.  There are also articles about OpenMP, POSIX Threads, MPI, Hadoop and BOINC.  These are some of the "fascinating" topics I've been learning about.  If you want it in my layman's terms, imagine a home builder.  A sequential program is like a builder that builds one house at a time.  While you need some skill to do this, its a fairly simple concept.  A parallel program is like a construction company with superintendents.  The superintendents operate on their own, building homes, and have to figure out how to share subs and other resources.  Because of this "parallel building", a company with superintendents can build more homes.  In short, parallel programming is harder to do but gets more done.

That's about as short a description of this semester as I can get.  Its been an interesting and challenging semester.  All I have left is the final exam this week.  I'm ready to get it over with and face the fall head on!!!

How This All Got Started

About Me
Almost six years ago my most common thought was, "I don't have time!".  I was just finishing a three year tour as the Finance Chairman at my church, working hard to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and starting a four year tour as an officer with the Home Builders Association of Greater Savannah. On top of this, my business (The Lindadan Corporation) was going so well that I had to act as referee in meetings between my sales people and my production people.  Our major problem was that we couldn't produce enough homes fast enough to keep up with sales!!!

Fast forward five years and to say that things have changed would be the understatement of all time.  The "Housing Crisis" (really the Housing-Finance Crisis) has plunged our national economy into a recession and my industry into a depression.  My company now has three employees (one being part-time).  We used to have 15-18.  I'm still struggling with production not keeping up with sales, but now it's because there are no sales!  My year as President of Home Builders is over.  That position kept me busy dealing with an organization of over 600 members, politicians, bureaucrats, the media, public speaking, and meetings, meetings, and more meetings.  My time is now spent managing the real estate we still own, dealing with bankers and doing things I used to pay people to do.  I'm suffering from massive "I don't have time!" withdrawal.

About the time my tour with Home Builders ended, I saw a story about Georgia Southern University starting a Master of Computer Science online program.  Over the years, I've gained an interest in "computers" mainly because I never could find anything that would really work.  I always had the impression that programmers created software without ever really meeting an end user.  First, I learned to write macros in Visual Basic to make my spreadsheets more usable.  Then, I had to learn a new form of Basic when I switched to OpenOffice after having to upgrade to a newer version of Excel when a computer fatally crashed.  This led to teaching myself Java so I didn't have to use a spreadsheet.  I then had to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and SQL when I wasn't satisfied with what was out there for getting our company on the internet.  I guess you could say it's the builder in me.  I seem to have this need to understand how things are put together and how to make them better.

I contacted the program director, Professor Li, to find out if I might be able to take a few courses simply because I had grown to like "computers" and now had some spare time on my hands.  She first tried to point me to the MBA program.  That made sense because it was more in line with my undergraduate degree and my experience.  Unfortunately, I had no interest in an MBA program.  In fact, I really wasn't interested in any "program".  I just wanted to learn some more about computers and validate what I had taught myself.  I was a little adamant in explaining this and the next thing I know, I'm taking the GRE and have received provisional admission.  To this day, I think the thought was that maybe I'd realize the error of my ways and drop the whole matter.

It was a disaster at the start.  I signed up for two classes about a week late, and then it took about a week to get in the online system.  Thanks to some good tech support and an understanding professor, I did finally get to start my courses, Data Structures and Systems Software.  Data Structures dealt with Java so I was able to jump in and catch up fairly quickly.  Systems Software was another story.  We used C and C++ for that course.  The problem was that I had NEVER even seen C or C++.  I took the nickname "Ol Dawg" back when I was a Motor Dawg in the Army.  One of the things I learned in the Army was that if I put my mind to something, anything is possible!  So, I buckled down and started learning.  Whining wouldn't have helped anyway.  After a lot of hard work I not only caught up, I aced both courses.

I gained regular admission and am currently taking Parallel Algorithm Design this summer and will be on program starting this fall.  I plan to use this blog to chronicle my trip through the program.  Hopefully, this will be the longest post of the blog.

Why?
The most common question I get now is, "Why are you doing this?  Are you getting out of home building?"  My answer is "Hopefully not!"  I hope to look back and call this my "mid-life crisis".  I want the home finance market to come back and I want to help people buy their first homes.  If this happens, I'll have learned a lot about something I like.  I might even be able to create software that will help people in my business be more productive.  I'll have a Masters Degree that I could use in retirement to teach.

But if the market doesn't come back or someone looking for an Accountant-Home Building-Computer Programmer were to come along and make me an offer I couldn't refuse, who knows?