Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Teaching an event processing course again

Yesterday I have started teaching again, this time in the Bloomfield building at the Technion, seen in this picture.   Sometimes people ask me why do I continue teaching,  it is probably not because I am bored, on the contrary,  I am quite busy;  it is probably not because it is a well-paid job,  actually they pay peanuts.  
I think that I continue to do it, since I like the interaction with students, and it is also means to evangelize "event processing" to the younger generation;  it also provides exposure to graduate students to work with, as over the years I have supervised (or co-supervised)  6 PhD dissertations and 21 MSc thesis, if my count is right.   It is also source for recruiting.   Quite a lot of my colleagues in IBM have been my own students (which I supervised), or my teaching assistants, or students that took courses with me.    


The way my courses are designed revolve among the following principles:


For historical reasons the course is called "database engineering" and always there is a student who expects to see classical database course,  for these students I answer that today in any database conference, data stream management is one of the emerging areas, and I am giving a flavor of it (my approach is not database centric,thought), I also show students some analysts testimonies that event processing is an emerging markets in general.   The second principle is deep dive -- the course is going more on depth then on breadth, the students should gain deep understanding in what event processing is. The last principle is retain over time, my own experience is that to retain over time students have to experience themselves, so they'll get implementation project, I have not yet decided what the projects will be, gave myself time until next week.
I am using the EPIA book as a text book,  but this time will not focus on the FFD example.   
I might create teaching materials for this course so that others will be able to reuse it.


  

No comments: