On Friday, it was reported that due to the vast number of students in attendance at its CS61a lectures, UC Berkeley’s CS department announced that it would be moving the location of its lectures to Memorial Stadium.
Though UC Berkeley has more than 276 degree programs, by far one of its most popular and notoriously difficult introduction courses is CS61A or Introduction to Computer Science. On any given day, more than 700 students can be found in Wheeler auditorium (over half of which can be found on Facebook or sleeping at any given time, only to wake up and panic over their problem sets later).
However, because there are often more students than Wheeler auditorium can accommodate, CS lectures are also webcast and made available to students smart enough to stay home to watch the lectures.
Due to UC Berkeley wanting to create a more interactive and optimal learning experience, the Computer Science department has decided to move its CS61a lectures to Memorial Stadium, so that everyone will finally have enough room to watch the lectures in person. Under new stadium policy, students caught sleeping in the stands will be taken and forced into an internship with Yahoo or Bing.
In the event that the stadium becomes too full, students will also have the option of watching CS61 lectures at various local sports bars, including Kip’s and Pappy’s and the very overpriced and barely adequate bar inside the student union Bear’s Lair.
[pullquote] In the event that the stadium becomes too full, students will also have the option of watching CS61 lectures at various local sports bars, including Kip’s and Pappy’s and the very overpriced and barely adequate bar inside the student union Bear’s Lair.[/pullquote]
When one student was asked what she thought about the issue, freshmen Lucinda Gomez responded that she was concerned about the “possibility of glare affecting the student’s ability to look at their laptops”, but considering the fact that students had a hard time following the lectures anyway, it probably “wouldn’t matter that much in the long run”.
Another option would be to limit CS class sizes like University of Washington, which graduates about 1/4 of the number of Computer Science bachelors degrees as UC Berkeley despite having a larger CS faculty.
Surely, no one would saterize the small classes that would come as a byproduct of such a decision.
Much Love