Course Evaluations CS 179 S00

Evaluations Intro to Programming in Java Spring 2000

Needs to make hand out of in class Examples, so students can follow & make notes

Initially, I did pass out hard copies of the programs. But after seeing most of the hard copies in the trash can after class, I made the examples available on my web site. I agree that it is easier to annotate a hard copy, and I will return to the practice of making them available.

In class, I attempted to answer your questions accurately and directly. When I did not know the answer, I simply said so. There were times when a student asked a question, was given a response, and was unable to comprehend the response. In those cases, I had to choose between spending class time explaining a concept or inviting the student to discuss the problem in a one-on-one setting outside of class. When I felt that the question was likely to be of general interest and was related to the topic at hand, I invested class time for the discussion. When I felt that the student was unprepared or the question was not related to the topic at hand, I invited the student to discuss the problem out-of-class.

To many programs (minis) & time for compleation need to be longer Espically when an Exam is the same week

In general, we have tried to assign many short programming assignments to get students in the habit of writing code and dealing with the programming environment. However, this creates a tremendous work load for me to grade these programs.
This semester, I experimented with fewer, but more significant, programming assignments. I realized fairly early in the semester that this was a mistake. Many students in the class were simply unable to generate code that compiled, and were baffled by the compiler errors. This was not the case when many programs were assigned.
The second experiment was the "mini" program, a short program that demonstrated some feature or construct of the language. These programs were similar to programs demonstrated in class (and available on the web), and required only a few minutes for most students to complete. Grading for these programs was fairly easy; the grade encouraged students to complete them, and they succeeded in making students practice getting code to run.
In general, there was a program due every one to two weeks, and mini programs due for every chapter (every 10 days or so). Given the nature of the mini programs, this does not appear to me to be excessive.

I started weekly help sessions because no tutors were available and many students needed extra help. In general, students who attended help sessions were able to complete more of the programming assignments than they would have without the help sessions.
The help sessions were well attended for CSCI 150; however, few students took advantage of the help sessions for CSCI 179.