Location and participants
A mini course on Algorithms and Data Structures was held at Sacred Hearts College, Tirupattur, Tamil Nadu, during December 11-12, 2003. Tirupattur is a small town about 8 kms from Jolarpettai which is a major junction in the Chennai-Bangalore route, at about three hours train journey from Chennai.
The course was handled by Dr. C. R. Subramanian and Dr. Venkatesh Raman both from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.
The participants of the course were mostly the third year MCA students and some teachers of the computer science department of the college.
Course outline and material
Lecture notes and problem sheets
Some introductory notes on algorithms and problem sheets were distributed to the participants the course are available online.
Feedback
From participants
These were some of the statements made by the students during the feedback session and also during various individual informal meetings. Some of them were motivated enough to attempt on the problems in the problem sheet given and ask questions during breaks.
From the teachers/organizers
Despite their busy schedule due to classes and valuations, some teachers attended some sessions and they were quite happy. They would like to organize a (long one - for about a week) course like this exclusively for teachers including teachers from nearby colleges sometime in April.
From the resource persons
This course was basically organized by the placement division of the college for the third year MCA students who have already done a course on algorithms and were all ready to leave for the project semester in a couple of days. Defintely the students got something out of the course. Some of them were quite impressive in their answers during the course.
The impact of the course will be more if there is such a course for them early on (say at the beginning of their second year) when they do this course as a part of their curriculum. It will be much more if it is organized at a time convenient for most of their teachers to attend.
Arrangements
The college had excellent class rooms and simple and clean guest house rooms where we were housed.
Overall hospitality (under the guidance of Prof John Arockiaraj) was great. We were pampered from the time we arrived at the railway station till we were dropped at the station (we even had room service for breakfast). We only wish that that we had more time to talk to the students informally.