Evaluations CS4310 Spring 2002

• Dr. Roach even though the class is extremely demanding. I felt I learned a lot. I did feel that I did a lot of work on the diagrams in vain. When you met with us I understood what I was doing wrong. My only suggestion is for you to meet with us a little more often or earlier in time this way it is done right the first few times and there is not time wasted.
• On class description, there must be a warning of all work that has to be done during the semester.
• Inform the students of who little time they have to complete the assignments. Also, that eating and sleeping became expendable when the deadline is almost up.
• The class is nice. But is really hard it is too much time consuming, it is hard to work with teams. I learned a lot but really this class should be either for a semester itself or not that absorbing because it doesn’t let you do anything else, the instructor is a great instructor but sometimes he over exceeds with the class. In general it is a good class and a great instructor.
• It is difficult to work on teams. But the recruiters, our industrial partners, and our government partners all want for you to have this ability. If you can suggest how to make it easier to learn how to be on a project team, I’d like to hear from you.
• I would like to have seen more examples of the various techniques that we studied. For example, the use cases. Perhaps the professor getting use cases for some project while the students offer input etc. Then move onto group exercises as we did. Examples were given, but I think they should be a little more in-depth. Overall, a good course.
• Believed or not but you are a great instructor because you put a lot, lot, lot, lot pressure on use and that way we have to move our self to understand this course. For sure other classes compare to this will gonna be more easy. Now I’m learning how to handler a difficult situation.
• Was there a typo in the course catalog?! It read 3.0 credits but I believe a ‘1’ was left out in front of the ‘3’! It should be worth more credits for the amount of work we did! I bet my team averaged about 50 hours per week together. I say more of my team members than my girlfriend and family?! Be ready to call the CS building your first home….
• Overall I think the class was very well organized. And I think I learned more here than in any other class. However, I think this class should be worth more than 3 credit hours. The amount of work given (although intimidating) is needed to learn the concepts of software engineering. I just think it should be worth more in terms of GPA considering how much effort we put into it.
• The deadlines for the major deliverables should be spaced out more to allow for an easier transition from one document to the other. We understand that this course is to stimulate the real world to the best of its abilities, however work flow would increase if the professor would communicate all newly received information, from the clients, to the students (without stimulated delays). Otherwise it would be beautiful if the students could communicate with the clients directly.
• I know it is difficult to believe, but the Guidance Team has spent a great deal of time arranging the schedule so that the major deliverables are spread out. This is why the interview is scheduled for the second week of class immediately after the lecture on requirements elicitation. I agree that the deliverables are too close together at the end of the semester, and we will continue to try to arrange things to alleviate this problem.
• The delays in information were not simulated. I typically turned information around from the clients on the day I received it. The reason that I act as the conduit through which information passes is to limit the amount of mail that the clients receive and must respond to. It allows me to monitor the consistency of the information being sent to the class, and it allows me to monitor the level of professionalism on the part of the students. These clients are not UTEP faculty, and the correspondences between the students and the clients reflect on this institution. While the level of professionalism is generally quite high, it is not universally so.
• It felt this semester like more important constituent is not the student. Perhaps the cs dept is gaining recognition or prestige by being involved in this type of project but at an unreasonable cost of negatively affecting the student. Arbitrarily making up teams is not necessarily a real world situation and arbitrarily assigning roles is definitely not a real-world situation (only one person in my team got their desired position). Deadlines were very unreasonable and they appear to assume that students are ONLY taking this class, with no other responsibilities in other classes, work, home, etc. It was emphasized that this “agenda” is like the real world but many times, information about the project was not divulged to the students so as to not lead us to “thinking in the wrong mind set” on basing our work on specific information. This is not real world.
• If this department gains prestige from this course, it is only because the students passing the course have gone on to succeed after graduation. I’m disappointed that you feel less important than any other constituent; however, I can understand how you might come to that conclusion. I believe that the current state-of-practice in software production combined with the use of software control in a wide variety of applications is a recipe for disaster. I believe that the key element that has prevented disaster thus far (and may continue to do so in the future)  is the skill, diligence, and care exerted by professionals in the field. Because I am concerned, and because I want my students to have a high level of skill, diligence, and care for the work they do, I try very hard to get you to care about the quality of the work you do for the project in this course.  This project is important. It is important because it provides you with an opportunity to learn things that can only be fully learned by practice. I passionately believe you need to know these things. I can’t say that every decision at this institution or even in this class appears to reflect the attitude that the student is the most important constituent. But I can say that the Guidance Team strives to hold the student first.
• The team assignments are not arbitrary. The Guidance Team spends a great deal of time combining skills and capabilities so that teams can be successful, yet have diversity of experience and capability. The positions you request at the start of the semester are only one in a list of factors that we use to make team and position assignments.
• I think this course is large on content. It should not be so detailed on requirements and should be more specific on learning techniques to design the p The level of this course to write documents is too high. I thing we should focus more on the overall project, or at least do not pass too much time doing secretaries work. Writing, editing, and formatting documents take much more time that can be used to do other stuff. In addition, exams should be more general and not based on specific questions such as give me an example of subsection 3.1 on the section 3 on the srs.
• This course, CS4310,  is devoted to software requirements. The second course in the sequence, 4311, is devoted to design and implementation. It is a fact that writing and editing correct, informative, and a concise document is difficult. It is also a fact that few students who come in to this course can do these things adequately. This is precisely the reason that we ask you to practice. In industry we have found these skills to be highly valued. The ability to communicate effectively is not “secretary’s work.”
• This is a senior-level course. I do not think it is unreasonable to ask you detailed, in-depth questions about subject matter. Superficial understanding of the subject matter is neither adequate for the work you will do in the future, nor in the best interest of the student or his/her future employer.
• Dr. Roach really knows his stuff, I consider him one of this departments greatest assets. He is not afraid to tell it like it is, but he is still easy to talk to and with. He is also reasonable, in that if you can convince him of your position, he might change his mind about the issue. Roach is straightforward and passionate about software engineering. He is very demanding, but I feel that I benefit from that most. Thanks Dr. Roach.
• There is a lot of information in this class, that becomes very useful in the real world. All the information given in class is given as hints on how to do our project. There should be more detailed information on how this relates to the project.
• The first comment is the quick quizzes you do when you see that the classroom is missing people. What I have to say about that is that it doesn’t help those who work or have to cross the bridge to come to school. I know that it is a way for you to reward those who are on time an affect those who are late because of tardiness, but I think it is not fair because these are people that have other responsibilities. The second comment is more like a question. Do you really know how much work, effort, and the quality of the work each member of a team really puts in? I surely think it is very hard to know this but I hope you have noticed something for when you are grading. Thank you for your time.
• I try very hard to understand how much work each student contributes toward the completion of the project. I read the emails, I look through the team notebook, and I observe students in class and out of class. But the process is not free from error. I do take the level of contribution to the team into account when assigning team grades.
• This course is intense. As a result, I’ve learned how software engineering process goes by actually doing it. This “actually doing it” part is what makes this course so intense and what I appreciate most along with help and availability of the guidance team.
• I guess the schedule on the assignments has to be revised.