Dr Panagiotis Kalnis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing. He teaches various Computer Science modules including CS1102 Data Structures and Algorithms and currently, IT2002 Database Technology & Management. Asst Prof Kalnis, who hails from Greece, has been teaching in NUS since 2002.
How did you come to work in Singapore?
I wanted to work on databases. At that time, there happened to be a Greek professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) who was working on the same subject that I was interested in. I was not aware of anything in Asia; my plan was to go to the United States. But he gave me this option and it turned out to be a good option. So, after finishing my PhD in HK, I had already met some people in Singapore we were doing some papers together and then I just applied here and there happened to be an open position.
What are you currently teaching?
IT 2002 Database Technology & Management. This is for non-Computer Science undergraduates, a 2nd year elective module. There are not as many projects, and I am not as stringent as with the Computer Science students for this module. I have only 13 students right now. This course typically has no more than 20 to 30 students. I have taught CS1102 Data Structures and Algorithms previously.
What do you like most about IVLE? Which features do you use?
The thing that I like most about IVLE is the workbin. I put all my slides, my homework and my solutions there. I have several folders and I distribute all the work there. I also send a lot of announcements through IVLE. But I do not trust that the students will go and see the announcements. So, whenever I post an announcement, I also send a mass e-mail to the list of my students.
I also use the gradebook a lot. Its a very nice feature because I can put the comments and the students know why they were given a certain grade. Now Im also going to use the survey feature. Im actually working on a project for the university and I need some feedback from the students. Its the first time that Im using the survey tool. And of course, I use the forum.
Tell us more about your use of the IVLE Forums.
Last semester was a good semester for the forum because I had a lot of students (taking CS1102 Data Structures and Algorithms). There were more than a hundred students. For obvious reasons, there was not enough time to see all of them in my office. They had a lot of similar questions. So, I asked them to send their queries to the forum because I usually get a lot of personal emails. When I received a personal email, of course I replied personally to the student but since I asked them to post the questions on the forum, I was replying, in effect, to everyone.
The other feature of the course that compelled students to be active in the forums was that it had a lot of homework and projects. Effectively, each week we had a small project that the students could finish in two to three hours. But all of the projects counted toward their final grade so the students were very worried if they could not do something. I encouraged them, if they encountered problems, to ask for hints from other students.
Are the students forthcoming with the hints? Do they actually help each other out?
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes they were giving wrong answers, but this was helpful also because I could see what the students could not understand. So, I could give them more exercises or more hints about where they went wrong. In general it was very helpful.
What do you think can be improved with the forums?
One problem I had last semester was that the students did not know or care about topic headings despite a big announcement on the front page. They were posting in the wrong place and I had to search everything to find similar questions. I am not sure how this can be improved but if there is some way to make students to post in the correct topic, that would be good. Maybe the topics can be displayed somewhere in the front page of the module's forum.
