CCU - A collaboratively written open letter to anyone who wants to start an educational server

Lupus590 #1

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2427 posts

Location UK

Posted 14 May 2015 - 01:22 PM

So we have seen four ComputerCraft Universities (or similar attempts) rise and fall, with number 5 on the way I would like to take this opportunity to start a thread where we can reflect and to find out why an online school does not work.
Edit: In writing this post, 5 died and 6 spawned.

There has been a thread like this one before: http://www.computerc...final-comments/
It's a very good thread, lots to learn from on why CCU doesn't work.

The OP from the above link

Tripy998, on 27 December 2014 - 07:17 PM said:
Ok. Let me make this clear and to the point. I've been getting PM after PM after PM asking if CCU2/3 is dead. Yes, in fact CCU, the idea, is almost impossible in the first place. The Idea of a School on the internet, where people living in different timezones can join and attend LIVE classes with teachers who are also in different timezones, is a very cool idea, but, it's not possible. To be able to cover every timezone so that anyone could attend a class at a decent time, would require have a teacher for every class, in every time zone.
FAQ

Q: CCU2 lasted longer than CCU3.
A: Wrong, CCU2 lasted for 3-4 weeks after opening.
CCU3 on the other hand lasted for 10-12 weeks after opening it's doors to students.
Q: You don't have the right to name it CCU2! You don't own CCU!
A: You are correct, Cranium owns it. But, I did get permission to call it CCU2.
Q: Can I start my own CCU?
A: My personal answer would be "Go right ahead! :D/>" But, I would also advice reading the comments in our CCU/2/3 Topics so that you can learn from out mistakes and develop a better CC Education system! :D/>
Q: Why did you just make a post about this in General? Why?
A: Because I don't appreciate getting spammed with these questions.
Q: Will CCU ever come back?
A: Probably not. But I did hear a few rumors that someone is working on a system that does not require teachers and is completely autonomous.
Q: What are you planning to do next?
A: I was thinking of starting a server dedicated to being my MC Company's HQ and I was also thinking of getting few workers and making a few cool new products. But then again, just an Idea.

Thank you for reading this, If I did not already answer any of your questions, please feel free to PM me, and Ill answer them!
Now I want to list all of CCU2/3 veteran teachers and staff.
Big Thanks to all of you for making my dream of resurrecting CCU Come true!
Hikkler
Willwac
eliasrg
mklegoman
Zambonie (PAT)
MK234? (I can't remeber)
Mackan
Keehl
imgoodisher
Assossa
Walia
Coolguy6099 (Original Host of CCU2)
Adam (Founder of CCU3)
Turtle
HuskyMudkip (He applied for teacher)
Blackben (also applied)
Dano
Carrots
Cookie
43 Bottles of MTN Dew
10 Cans of Monster Energy
And 5 Months of construction
If I missed anyone PM me. I love all of you guys! You helped me and pulled all nighters to make CCU2 and CCU3 a reality!
This is Captain Tripy, Captain of the USS CCU2 and Crew Member of USS CCU3, Signing off.

I would like to encourage those who were involved in these fallen projects to explain what worked and what did not.

My goal in this post is for future CCU's to realise that the conventional method doesn't work, and to be an exchange of experience and ideas related to CCU.

I am in no way looking for making a new CCU but trying to stop the repeated spam-like failure of CCU servers/forum posts. CCU almost means "doomed to fail" now.

On a brighter note: we have the ask a pro and tutorial sub-forums and a wiki. We probably don't need a teaching server too.
Having mentioned ask a pro, there is a thread with common errors, it will help you to be more independent and make it easier for the pros to reply to problems.

Edited on 19 May 2015 - 05:46 AM

valithor #2

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1023 posts

Posted 14 May 2015 - 02:04 PM

Here is the main reason they died…

A server where all you do is come on to learn, and has no other functionality is bluntly boring. The "teachers" get bored and as a result when someone who needs help comes on there is never anyone there. The idea is neat but never had a chance to succeed.

Now maybe a server could be survival based and have a area set aside for automated to tutorials, but one based solely on it never has a chance to build a community, which is the only thing that keeps servers alive.

I wasn't here for the first one, but all of the ones I have seen have been miserable failures. I really don't understand why people keep on trying to redo this idea. A sign of insanity - trying something over and over expecting a different result.

Edited on 13 September 2015 - 08:56 PM

theoriginalbit #3

7508 posts

Location Australia

Posted 14 May 2015 - 02:07 PM

A big issue was a lack of quality teachers. With the owners accepting anyone, with a judge of whether they knew anything about programming based off how they ranked themselves out of 10 with knowing Lua; here's a surprise, most newbies either think they suck, or that they know absolutely anything, either way if they want to teach they can easily lie and state they know Lua 10/10.

CCU1 was the best it is ever going to get. The server was administered by people who knew what they were doing (well… ish…), with a quality server, and staff that created an interesting campus with computers that had amazing features. Though they still suffered from the lack of teacher quality, with the exception of a few outliers like Nitrogenfingers the teaching staff was definitely sub-par. There were too many simple advanced lectures and not enough "this is a variable" lectures, a programming course should begin at the very start not the very end. I vaguely remember something about one of the teachers who was saying that they were going to teach a class on polymorphism, but they were actually teaching functional decomposition, two very different concepts.

Bomb Bloke #4

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7083 posts

Location Tasmania (AU)

Posted 14 May 2015 - 03:11 PM

Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm. Projects tend to need people taking an interest on a regular basis (preferably new people), or the interest of those already involved will dwindle.

Therefore, a project leader needs to constantly check up on what their teachers and students are up to, and encourage others to do the same, or everyone will give up in very short order. The project leader needs to maintain their own enthusiasm when no one else will. People who can do that are rare, but there's no shortage of people out there who think they can be leaders…

Good teachers are also rare. Even those who know their subject matter tend to lack the ability to take on the state of mind of someone who does not; this is essential when it comes to determining what to actually teach! It certainly doesn't help that someone who lacks knowledge of a subject tends not to know what they don't know; the person in charge therefore needs to be capable of testing new staff members properly - they need to understand coding and teaching in order to do this.

Put that together, and mix in real-world responsibilities + time zones and whatnot (plus the availability of AaP and the IRC channel making the whole thing mostly redundant), and you'll find it exceptionally difficult to build a team who could run something like this long term without getting payed.

So a better question might be, "why do people keep trying?". Well, the answer to that is because they don't think things through to the point where they realise the full extent of what they'd need to pull it off, and their short-term enthusiasm leads them to overestimate what their long-term enthusiasm will amount to. "Youthful inexperience", I guess.

I'm not really suggesting that people shouldn't try; if they find it fun, then why not? Besides, trying things and failing is an excellent way to learn and mature; there are worse ways to become aware of your limits than running a MineCraft server. I really don't think the continuous "rise and fall" of the CCU servers is a bad thing. Heck, just having somewhere people can go to play with a few ready-made interactive scripts can help to teach that first, most important lesson - why you'd want to program.

Ironically, ComputerCraft is a teaching aid in real schools - so I guess you could call that setup a CCU, of sorts.

DannySMc #5

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1847 posts

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Posted 18 May 2015 - 06:41 PM

I don't mean to sound rude.
Theoriginalbit has a point, the quality of "staff" is not exactly at a standard to teach others, you can say that you are good at ComputerCraft when you have the knowledge to use Lua in the most powerful ways and using all it's functions and features, teachers on the CCU series only really knew basic syntax and well barely anything to do with the most advanced states of Lua. I could never say I know everything because there is so much to learn, it is a very big and useful language. I must admit I have been using it for years now as it is a key element in my C programs.

I would suggest that we do not bother with this. I said to some of the players on my server to possibly have a help building where new players can go to the hub and with no mods and actually just test around, where my server community can offer help. But we know we can only offer help with what we know. I have seen the CCU try and try again, but I think it is dead. We have the CCU here on the forums, you come here to learn that.

Also Bomb Bloke also has a point, I taught some kids in my Dad's school who use Minecraft and ComputerCraft to teach kids the concept of programming and with CC's ease of use, it is a good learning tool. Still the teachers I saw still weren't very good because teachers (other than ones for programming) especially primary schools, do not know enough of this type of style. Programming is common, someone wishing to learn is better of using these forums and using the online docs.

I think it is time to stop. Honestly, make a server that gets a good community! We have more than 20 players that come on my server and that was after 6 months, because I am not exactly "well-known" so it took time, random users throwing a server in the forums and saying it is the new and improved CCU doesn't fill me with hope.

Face the fact this forum hosts the best help topics and advice for CC and Lua. Even better than stack overflow, where to them a question isn't a question.

Engineer #6

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1522 posts

Location The Netherlands

Posted 18 May 2015 - 10:25 PM

DannySMc, on 18 May 2015 - 06:41 PM said:
Face the fact this forum hosts the best help topics and advice for CC and Lua. Even better than stack overflow, where to them a question isn't a question.

To extend you, what is done a minecraft server is not useful to other people since one can't find it back, unless the lesson has been recorded and put on the web.

Now with StackOverflow, a question is a question but they differ between good and bad. Good questions are asked when someone has put time in it:
- Done research to figure it out (yet it didn't help)
- Make the thread contain all the necessary information, like crash logs and only the relevant code where no undeclared variables are used.
Bad questions are like when someone is basically saying: do my assignment for me or I don't want to understand yet want it to make it work.

StackOverflow is great since tonnes of questions are asked there and with your right research you don't have to ask the same question, because you can look it up. I even have seen threads about cc lua on there!

However, I do agree with you that this forum is better on advice and help, but this works because this forum is sophisticated to cc lua, not all programming languages out there!

nitrogenfingers #7

513 posts

Location Australia

Posted 19 May 2015 - 06:48 AM

I was one of the teaching staff for the first CCU and while I think the reasons were covered very well here I'd like to add my perspective from that of one of the teachers.

Before CCU I ran one-off programming sessions in a similar fashion; I took applications from YouTube and other avenues for people who wanted to take part, organized a time that fit into everyone else's timezones (most of those were, my time, 3-6am), and we ran for 3 hours, about half of that was teaching and the other half was activities or self-guided exercises. Those sessions, including server setup, map building, writing the material and testing, took about 3-5 days. Attendence is that sort of facebook ratio; about half of those that sign up will turn up.

The first thing I'd mention as teaching staff in CCU was the time commitment it required to have a quality server run. The model I went with was a typical 1st year entry-level programming course. I gave weekly lectures, for which I wrote the slides and planned the material, I gave 2 tutorials a week which I made myself available to answer questions and demonstrate code (sometimes I recorded things we'd talked about for youtube later), and made myself available on some days for people to drop in to ask questions. So in raw contact hours I was on the server working for 6-7 hours a week, not including prep time. It was an enormous amount of time out of other aspects of my life.

As others have mentioned attendence, especially for those with strange time zones was another big issue; it was both exhausting for teachers that have to change their sleep patterns to match their students, and for the students themselves; CCU was on top of high school or real university and it was a cut out of their time as well. For students, this meant lowered attendence, and for teachers this meant a degredation in quality. Fewer students meant less effort into teaching, which made turning up less valuable. That's the vicious cycle that seems to have ended our server.

Teaching is difficult, soul-sucking work at times, and poor attendence and half-hearted students are as much a part of my real teaching experience as they are of CCU, but I can't bring myself to wholeheartedly discourage the idea of a teaching server for computercraft. I've long toyed with the idea of creating that sort of server and giving sessions to real primary or secondary schools, where the interactive elements of Minecraft may make engineering and computer science more interesting to students. Or having more of a educationally-themed but unguided server, that may include resources to a bunch of tutorials with some resident pro programmers from the forums available with the understanding they're there to be asked for help with other people's programs, or provide guidance; these may already exist, I don't know.

But as for making a server run like a learning institution… I won't say it's a bad idea or a good idea, but I will say enthusiasm will not be enough to make it successful.

Edited on 19 May 2015 - 04:50 AM

DannySMc #8

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1847 posts

Location /home/dannysmc95

Posted 19 May 2015 - 09:10 AM

nitrogenfingers, on 19 May 2015 - 06:48 AM said:
I was one of the teaching staff for the first CCU and while I think the reasons were covered very well here I'd like to add my perspective from that of one of the teachers.

Before CCU I ran one-off programming sessions in a similar fashion; I took applications from YouTube and other avenues for people who wanted to take part, organized a time that fit into everyone else's timezones (most of those were, my time, 3-6am), and we ran for 3 hours, about half of that was teaching and the other half was activities or self-guided exercises. Those sessions, including server setup, map building, writing the material and testing, took about 3-5 days. Attendence is that sort of facebook ratio; about half of those that sign up will turn up.

The first thing I'd mention as teaching staff in CCU was the time commitment it required to have a quality server run. The model I went with was a typical 1st year entry-level programming course. I gave weekly lectures, for which I wrote the slides and planned the material, I gave 2 tutorials a week which I made myself available to answer questions and demonstrate code (sometimes I recorded things we'd talked about for youtube later), and made myself available on some days for people to drop in to ask questions. So in raw contact hours I was on the server working for 6-7 hours a week, not including prep time. It was an enormous amount of time out of other aspects of my life.

As others have mentioned attendence, especially for those with strange time zones was another big issue; it was both exhausting for teachers that have to change their sleep patterns to match their students, and for the students themselves; CCU was on top of high school or real university and it was a cut out of their time as well. For students, this meant lowered attendence, and for teachers this meant a degredation in quality. Fewer students meant less effort into teaching, which made turning up less valuable. That's the vicious cycle that seems to have ended our server.

Teaching is difficult, soul-sucking work at times, and poor attendence and half-hearted students are as much a part of my real teaching experience as they are of CCU, but I can't bring myself to wholeheartedly discourage the idea of a teaching server for computercraft. I've long toyed with the idea of creating that sort of server and giving sessions to real primary or secondary schools, where the interactive elements of Minecraft may make engineering and computer science more interesting to students. Or having more of a educationally-themed but unguided server, that may include resources to a bunch of tutorials with some resident pro programmers from the forums available with the understanding they're there to be asked for help with other people's programs, or provide guidance; these may already exist, I don't know.

But as for making a server run like a learning institution… I won't say it's a bad idea or a good idea, but I will say enthusiasm will not be enough to make it successful.

I can agree that teaching is horrible as my parents are both headteachers ;)/>

I agree with what you did, but when we talk about stopping the CCU from carrying on, we mean the new ones that are rubbish, have no teachers just a few kids who know the basics. From what I heard the first one was quite a success. After that it just went downhill.

Tripy998 #9

49 posts

Location In Front of Computer

Posted 27 May 2015 - 04:01 PM

I guess I should also put CCU2's failures here.

One of the Most Known reasons we never took off was staff. But there were many more reasons.
For example, One of the reasons was the build time. All in all, it took approximately 3-4 months of all-nighters and calling friends
who could help build such a massive campus. And then again, we went through design after design after design.
But because it took us so long to build, many of the staff we had already gained, lost interest and since Summer had finished, many had a life to get back to.

Another reasons was the organization and the hosting problems. At first it was my crappy 4GB RAM HP laptop. Then it was my friends 2GB RAM Server, then we had CreeperHost, and etc… We kept moving the server, changing IP's, and no-one knew where to go to be able to join. Then we had no organization. We wanted a server that can teach as long as teachers were on, and we wanted it fast. So, organization fell quickly. Teachers were never trained, some never assigned, and some left without classrooms and/or permissions.

We also had a sporadic and inconsistent amount of players online. And when people see only 2 people online, teacher or not, they won't join since there probably won't be anything to do. We tried adding different mods, to make it fun for the players even if teachers were unavailable, but we gave up pretty soon.

Speaking of, personally, the biggest problem we faced, was giving up hope. Teachers gave up left and right and soon it was down from over 53+ staff to 10 people. Then some of the admins gave up. I remember logging on one morning, only to receive around 16 "I quit" letters. One thing that has to be maintained throught the entire projects length, is moral, hope, and happiness. I remember that at one point I even got 1lann, Gravityscore, and Oeed to come check out CCU2, and that made most of the staff happy, and 2x more productive.

If anyone wants to start a CCU/2/3/4/5/6 inspired server, I recommend following these bullet points:

Don't let people tell you it can't be done
Organize. SPREADSHEETS FOR EVERYONE! :D/>
Always make sure the teachers have classrooms, and training.
Get admins, and mods. Might seem unnecessary, but after a certain incident with a PDA and our server's In-Game Cloud Database* getting corrupted, they are pretty necessary. (*We had a database we called the cloud, it allowed backup's of PC's every 5 minutes. It was classified until it got corrupted. I will share more details if asked.)
Make it more than just a campus, add a courtyard, a starbucks! Something! Just make it interesting for everyone! :D/>
Make basic ROM programs to simplify teaching/learning. We had a screenshare program, and a "monitor" program that was an api for monitors
And finally, have fun!

People say the journey, is more important than the finish. And after having gone around making CCU2, and helping CCU3, I believe this 100%.
If you are making a CCU inspired server, and need ANY help, feel free to PM me. Just please don't spam! :)/>

-Tripy

Alice #10

882 posts

Location Behind you.

Posted 22 June 2015 - 03:37 AM

Bringing this up, because it might become more relevant with this (For those who can't view it, ComputerCraftEdu mod or whatsit). Opinions on how we could possibly integrate this?

Lupus590 #11

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2427 posts

Location UK

Posted 22 June 2015 - 10:01 AM

Alice, on 22 June 2015 - 03:37 AM said:
Bringing this up, because it might become more relevant with this (For those who can't view it, ComputerCraftEdu mod or whatsit). Opinions on how we could possibly integrate this?

From what I understand, the MineCraftEdu (and CCEdu) method works, but that is because it is done in real life at a real school with a qualified teacher, so we can't easily replicate the scenario.

However, using CCEdu in a beginner course is a good idea as it allows more accessibility to normal CC and to the CCU, but that doesn't fix the core problem that CCU has.
CCU falls because of a lack of organisation and the impracticality of world wide telelearning (both of which has been explained above, and likely will be below).
Until these two problems are solved (and likely many more are identified and solved), CCU will be kept in it's continuous cycle.

Edit: Mentioning MineCraftEdu, this may be useful

Edited on 22 June 2015 - 05:18 PM

Lupus590 #12

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2427 posts

Location UK

Posted 19 January 2016 - 06:48 PM

3d6, on 19 January 2016 - 05:48 PM said:
The odds of success - with success defined as being as successful as CCU or CCU2 - are minimal, given the historical data:

And those two weren't that amazing anyways. It wasn't helping people very much because the students didn't want it to feel like school, but the teachers wanted to feel like they were real professors. This clash of interest lead to the demise of every CCU server that wasn't killed by lack of interest in general. This is without mentioning that these servers are started by people who want power; they want to be in control of something, and they look at CCU/CCU2 and see how it worked out for their creators, and they want it for themselves. Most of the people starting university servers aren't even Lua proficient. NF himself was probably the only one with the real authority to start his.

It was a cool idea, it didn't work, and it will never work. CC education should be restricted to online tutorials or interactive programs.

Edited on 19 January 2016 - 05:48 PM

3d6 #13

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350 posts

Posted 18 March 2016 - 12:28 AM

http://dayssincesomeonelaunchedaneducationalccserver.ceriat.net/

I like to think that this will get to 1000 eventually. It has over 15 years of hosting time.

manu_03 #14

177 posts

Location Spain

Posted 18 March 2016 - 03:16 PM

I like the Educational Server idea. But there are some problems. For example, teachers must have a constant timetable. So, someone in almost always online. Or if it isn't constant, classes must be announced in a web if someone wants to join them. Another idea is to having "bot teachers". These are computers with command blocks that have a whole class programmed and a few FAQ for the students. So, if someone lives in a remote timezone, it can still join a class.

I like the idea of making it a "campus" and I think it must be more realistic. So people have Cualifications. They can see if they do it well, and if they don't, they can simply repeat "course". A superior grade system would also be great, so we can see who are the best programming in the forum.

gollark8 #15

208 posts

Posted 02 April 2016 - 12:05 PM

I don't see why people can't just add a CC university to an existing server with CC plus other mods to make other play more interesting. Basically, play survival, get a computer, go to the university to learn how CC works, leave with a fancy-looking certificate and get back to survival, and if the server was large and popular be hired in a CC position in someone's CC dev company. Automatic teaching programs could work (thanks @manu_03). With a chatbox mod they could explain concepts on a monitor and through chat and respond to "I don't understand"s. The university concept could probably be extended a little bit to other mods, so students could get qualifications in Popular RF Mods, Computing, Vanilla Minecraft, Automation etc.

Edited on 02 April 2016 - 10:06 AM

Tiin57 #16

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1243 posts

Location Indiana, United States

Posted 04 April 2016 - 10:59 PM

gollark8, on 02 April 2016 - 12:05 PM said:
I don't see why people can't just add a CC university to an existing server with CC plus other mods to make other play more interesting. Basically, play survival, get a computer, go to the university to learn how CC works, leave with a fancy-looking certificate and get back to survival, and if the server was large and popular be hired in a CC position in someone's CC dev company. Automatic teaching programs could work (thanks @manu_03). With a chatbox mod they could explain concepts on a monitor and through chat and respond to "I don't understand"s. The university concept could probably be extended a little bit to other mods, so students could get qualifications in Popular RF Mods, Computing, Vanilla Minecraft, Automation etc.

This is a nice idea, and it'd be great to see it happen (it's been a vision for more than a couple of CC servers over the past few years), but it's fairly unlikely, for two reasons:

The Computercraft community is fairly small in terms of this kind of vision, and the number of programmers with the time, experience and will to teach reliably on a server is very small (I'd be surprised if the count was over ten). Such a vision also requires a lot of students to keep the teachers interested, which are in short supply.
Certifications are cool, we can all agree. But they have very little practical use (the "Metatables Certificate" will do what for me again?) since there are, again, very few people truly interested in Computercraft on the scale of in-game businesses and organizations being made to support and "pay" programmers.

Like I said, it's an awesome idea. I still wish it would happen, but even if you can solve the problem of inexperienced students with little time, you run into the problem of mod popularity - and I don't know anyone with a reliable solution to make a mod popular to the extent required.

DannySMc #17

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1847 posts

Location /home/dannysmc95

Posted 04 April 2016 - 11:18 PM

Tiin57, on 04 April 2016 - 10:59 PM said:
gollark8, on 02 April 2016 - 12:05 PM said:
I don't see why people can't just add a CC university to an existing server with CC plus other mods to make other play more interesting. Basically, play survival, get a computer, go to the university to learn how CC works, leave with a fancy-looking certificate and get back to survival, and if the server was large and popular be hired in a CC position in someone's CC dev company. Automatic teaching programs could work (thanks @manu_03). With a chatbox mod they could explain concepts on a monitor and through chat and respond to "I don't understand"s. The university concept could probably be extended a little bit to other mods, so students could get qualifications in Popular RF Mods, Computing, Vanilla Minecraft, Automation etc.

This is a nice idea, and it'd be great to see it happen (it's been a vision for more than a couple of CC servers over the past few years), but it's fairly unlikely, for two reasons:
The Computercraft community is fairly small in terms of this kind of vision, and the number of programmers with the time, experience and will to teach reliably on a server is very small (I'd be surprised if the count was over ten). Such a vision also requires a lot of students to keep the teachers interested, which are in short supply.
Certifications are cool, we can all agree. But they have very little practical use (the "Metatables Certificate" will do what for me again?) since there are, again, very few people truly interested in Computercraft on the scale of in-game businesses and organizations being made to support and "pay" programmers.
Like I said, it's an awesome idea. I still wish it would happen, but even if you can solve the problem of inexperienced students with little time, you run into the problem of mod popularity - and I don't know anyone with a reliable solution to make a mod popular to the extent required.

This is something I wanted to do, but needed some people on the server to help, I will soon be updating my server to have something like this as just part of the server, but if someone is good with building it and even scripting for the programs, that would be helpful?