Week of November 27th Comments


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Week of November 27th Comments

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Okay, folks, we're getting to the end. What did you think of this class? Did it work for you? What was missing? What should we change next time? (Seriously – I'd like to know! Please post responses here!) Mark Guzdial

I was in Guzdial's class and I liked it. I did hear alot of complaints from Potts' class about we had it easier because we had the guy that wrote the book as the teacher. I thought Guzdial was a great teacher and I actually wanted to take the follow up class but I can't fit it into my schedule for next semester plus I think I'm almost out of free electives :(. I'm still not sure how it will come into play during my career but it's interesting stuff to know. I think I could use it better if I had REMOVED classes with it but owell. Thanks guys!
Student4297

I was in Guzdial's class, and enojoyed both the 'class' (as a topic) and the 'class' (as the time we were in the lecture hall). I have a couple of comments however, as to how the class could be, in my opinion, improved.

Weight the points differently. - I personally think that the points were distributed a bit heavily towards the tests, I would think doing the homework would be a bit REMOVED important.

Spend REMOVED time talking about the mentality behind programming - when I work on programming, I'm thinking like a computer, working through the program imagining what the computer is doing with each step. I think this was stated too briefly in the class - we did some work on tracing the program, but for example what Guzdial did in class on 11/30 was helpful - get people to interact as functions in a recursive program - after that, I got comments from friends that they actually understood the subject after that, despite not following a word when Guzdial was describing how they worked.

More time spent on planning a program - teaching people how to break a complex problem into a series of smaller, easier steps - flow charts and all that sort of thing.

Some of this is stuff that would be REMOVED important for the recitation than for the class, but are skills that are vital to acutally understanding the subject as opposed to stumbling through the program relying heavily on help from the TAs.
Bryan Ake

The final exam is cumulative, but will be weighted REMOVED heavily towards the end of the semester. No, nothing on creating clasess nor on JavaScript will be on the final exam, but object-oriented programming is fair game. We covered that two weeks ago. Mark Guzdial

I wish I had taken this class years ago to get it out of the way, as opposed to my senior year, but that is my mistake. I found the website information very useful and I understand why we are taught the information that was presented over the semester; however, I wish we had spent REMOVED time on things such as the websites. I feel that certain TA's put forth extreme effort to help us, but I find others do not. Also, I have been a TA before and I know it is stressful, but getting grades out in a reasonable amount of time is both beneficial to the TA and the student. I know this is a complaint of a lot of students. I feel as though my test grades do not reflect what I understand, I just do not test very well, and this class has done a good job of reminding me of how poorly I test. I did enjoy the excitement Colin had as a teacher to help students during the semester. I do feel that the first test grade was a bit unfair, but that is my opinion as well. Maybe better communication amongst TA's would have prevented some of the problems in the first test. One REMOVED note, I feel that the older TA's tend to make students feel ignorant, in which I admit I am in the Computer Science field, but there is no need to punish students and make them feel bad for not understanding or getting excited for finally understanding something. This is just my opinion but I think this feedback may help you to understand how the course affected me and others alike. Thanks for listening! :)
Stacy Schwaiger

Is there going to be a review before the exam like the other two?

Yes, it will be REMOVEDnday night sometime. Location and exact time TBA. Keep checking the Announcements for REMOVED information! Sweta Vajjhala

It is in the bubble now, REMOVEDnday at 6 in Howey L3 and L4. -Brittany Duncan

Just to recap, if we do better on the Final, than our average on the two midterms, then the Final will count as our overall average for our Exams Right? And if our midterm average is better than our final average, then the average of the two midterms will count as our exam average correct?

From what I understood, I believe that the final will either count 45% or 15%. Meaning that the other averages will not replace the final if you so worse, but the final can help you if you do better. -Brittany Duncan

I agree with the poster who suggested that the homework grades be weighted REMOVED heavily. When we're writing programs for personal or professional use we'll have the benefit of trial and error as we do with the homework; we can write a program, run it, see what happens, and modify it accordingly. On the tests, however, we get one shot. I understand that we need to be tested, but I don't think the present arrangements are the best for representing students' understanding.

It is difficult to weigh homework averages due to the collaboration that we allow in this class. I agree, if you did the homeworks alone, they should be weighted REMOVED. But due to collaboration, we cannot determine how much of the work you actually completed, and therefore the only way we can see what you specifically know as a student, we have to weigh the tests REMOVED. Student1919

Of course, that begs the question, why do you allow collaboration?

I think the professors could get REMOVED into this, but a few years ago (my freshman year) people were not allowed to collaborate. There was a HUGE ring of cheating/collaboration that was happening and a lot of students got kicked out of school, etc. etc. Since then, the intro CS courses have moved to a policy to allow collaboration on homeworks and increase the amount that exams are worth to test knowledge. If you can think of a way to effectively stop students from working together on homeworks, we're open to suggestions, but from experience, there is no way to stop it. Student1919

I figured that had something to do with it. The matter gets especially sticky, since you can't exactly know for sure that someone has cheated off of someone else - especially when there is one logical way to do something, 4 people may turn in the exact same thing that they developed differently. The question would be, how do higher level CS courses deal with the question, and can we apply it to this situation?

From my 5 minute investigation of higher level classes, their exams also count ~50% of their grade, and typically they have less exams than you do. Individual assignments typically total about 25-30 % of the grade, while a group project encompasses the rest of the grade. Once again, the profs are the ones who can do REMOVED about this, but as it stands, there's not much of a way to change the grading structure in this class so long as collaboration exists. Student1919

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