Evaluation Comments
Course:Computer Systems I
            (CSC-373-601)

Quarter:Spring 08/09
Time: W 13:30 - 16:45
Location: Loop Campus
James Riely PhD

Associate Professor
jriely@cs.depaul.edu
Instructor homepage

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What are the major strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?


1.   Very Knowledgeable, sometimes moved too quickly through certain topics but still incredibly enlightening.
2.   very knowledgeable, able to make the topic more interesting
3.   He's pretty exciting teacher, made the class really good. But three hours of class is really tiring, even if it is exciting.
4.   The instructor was available to students outside of class more than other professors I have had in the past. Very knowledgeable about subject.The in-class demonstrations of the lab assignments were sometimes unorganized and confusing.
5.   Effective and interesting lectures
6.   knows the material like the back of his hand!easy to get a hold of!
7.   He was able to explain the material pretty well. Has a good sense of humor.
8.   Professor Riely is among the most knowledgable instructors at DePaul. He is an excellent speaker and his courses are highly organized.

What aspects of this course were most beneficial to you?


1.   All.
2.   the labs were difficult but really shown you learned something when you completed them.
3.   The material.
4.   I hated taking the quizzes each week but they did contribute to my overall learning.
5.   Homework
7.   Learning assembly language seemed useful. Understanding how the stack works in microprocessors helped make me a better programmer.
8.   Virtual memory, and cache management was relatively beneficial.

What do you suggest to improve this course?


1.   Slow down at certain points
2.   Not try to cram so much material in this one course.
3.   The first lab, many of the puzzles were not really beneficial to understanding bits or their manipulation.
4.   Some in-class lab time
5.   Reduce the pace, make expectations about what needs to be learned a little clearer.
6.   different text?
7.   Having more explanation of how to use the gdb debugger would be helpful.
8.   The book is dry and does not effectively explain the concepts well.

Comment on the grading procedures and exams


1.   Fair
2.   The midterm was extremely hard, it covered a lot of tricky material which we never focused much on during class. Some of the quizzes were hard to do well on, either you get it correct or completely wrong.
3.   The automatic grading is cool.
4.   Midterm was difficult and too long. A review sheet would have been helpful.Extremely fair in grading procedures.
5.   fair
7.   Fair and impartial.

Other comments?


2.   -
3.   // This is a comment
6.   should take discrete math as a prereq for this class!!
7.   I thought the labs were challenging, but interesting.
8.   The assignments were unbearably long. This coupled with the reading caused me to have to spend an unreasonably large amount of time on the subject. The labs and the quizzes were probably enough work for the whole course. The mid term was too difficult and somewhat deceptive. The level of difficulty in the mid term took a large leap from that of the quizzes. There were some weeks where I spent nearly 20 hours on this class and I believe that many other students also did the same. It seems like we attempted to cover too much material in too short of a period of time.