Thanks Tyler.  Your article stimulated an interest in intelligence control for me.

Tyler, great article. Very well written. Thanks.

Thanks, Tim, I might do that. Noise was already being smoothed with a rolling average (100-point), but it wasn't enough and averaging so many points was causing problems of its own. My next step would be circuit isolation from heater and some RC filter.

Filtering only helps for noise that's well outside of the desired bandwidth of the control loop -- if the noise is within five to ten times the desired bandwidth, then you need to get rid of it at the source.

That means figuring out if the problem is the sensor choice, it's location, the cabling, or the signal conditioning electronics.  You mentioned separating grounds -- that's a Really Good place to start, but it may not be the end.

(It may be that you'll get too deep into this than is reasonable for a class project, too -- getting the utmost out of a control loop is like peeling an onion -- you take a layer off, the problems get a bit smaller, you cry, and then you have to do it all over again.)

- Tim Wescott

Universities do two things. Help learn about knowledge and help create new knowledge. One can drive students to the leading edge and expose opportunities for them to be creative, the conventional learning pathway. The more successful a university is in this, the more prominent they become, which leads to more students believing in this traditional way of learning and knowledge creation and flocking to such conventional universities.

Unconventional learning pathways are themselves fine as far as helping to learn about knowledge, and the help is non-traditional, mostly self-help. But, how successul is this pathway about creating knowledge? I doubt that the creation of new knowledge naturally follows in unconventional pathways. It could be done, no doubt, but it is not geared for it yet. 

The very word "University", an insitution about learning at the highest level, demands that new knowledge be created through a follow up research. If universities don't see themselves as beacons of rigorous knowledge creation and confine themselves to 'just learning', then they should rename themselves to some sort of higher (not the highest) learning institutes and give up the identity of being a University.  

@Vive - yes, I agree, that does accord with my idea of a university too, at least when combined with the practical application of that knowledge to help the community. 

Technically, the word 'university' derives from "universitas magistrorum et scholarium" which means 'community/society of teachers and scholars' and says little about the level or expectations of what that community actually does apart from to learn and to teach. But I agree that, at least since von Humboldt (notwithstanding the awkward and counter-productive Canadian distinction between comprehensive and other universities), an acknowledged role of that community is the generation of new knowledge.

But I don't think there is any contradiction at all between performing that role and accepting, supporting, or actually providing unconventional pathways to get there. Quite the opposite, in fact: we should positively encourage it, if for no other reason than that it drives innovation and creativity. I'm pretty sure that most of us professional academics use self-teaching (or non-formal methods like attending conferences) most of the time when we need to learn stuff that moves our research forward. I don't see why we shouldn't encourage students to do the same.

For instance, if they want to do a project that demands Ruby on Rails (which we don't teach), I reckon it's a perfectly legitimate path for a student to take a bootcamp. Similarly, if our courses bore or intimidate them, or don't use the tools they wish to use, I think it should be absolutely acceptable for them to achieve the same outcomes in different ways, without penalty. It would be great if we could participate and help out ourselves. It would be good if we were not so deeply bound to providing a standardized teaching curriculum that, by its very nature (professional societies are about setting norms, not reaching heights), cannot be on the leading edge of the field, and that admits little variation and creativity.  It would be brilliant if our students were more engaged in solving real problems rather than implementing (and for the most part copying and pasting from the web) yet another solution in Java to the Towers of Hanoi. 

I'm not suggesting that we should scrap everything we do now and make it a complete free-for-all: it doesn't have to signal a drop in standards at all. But, if we were to provide bit of structure, a bit of support, maybe a few basic foundation topics (optionally replaceable with equivalents), some rigorous criteria of the right kind, and some means of assessing achievement, we could make a more open, embracing, problem-oriented and competence-based approach work far better than what we do now, with far greater student satisfaction and engagement, and far more relevant, useful skills for all concerned.

Jon,

Thanks for sharing this article, as well as the commentary about the gaps and assumptions in the reporting.

This is how I frequently feel when I read a great deal of educational research.

And I look forward to reading Todd Rose's book. Thanks for the recommendation.

Thanks Gerald - it's a book that keeps on giving! I think you'll like it. Spells things out very clearly with some wonderful examples. I may be a little biased in its favour: though he takes a different (and I think more rigorously grounded) path to get there, Rose's thoughts on educational reform are remarkably like my own.

I will let  you knowwhat I think.

In the meantime, I also shared your post (and the article) with the Educational Psychology class I am currently teaching. As you can probably imagine, I have had them spending a lot of time with Self Determination Theory.