Evaluation Comments

Term:	Fall 2017-2018
Course:	CSC 301 401
Course Name:	Data Structures II
Return to List

Pages:

Summary

Summary View

What are the major strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?

There are no strengths. Professor Riley simply cannot teach his own course. He can only tell us how things work but never show us how they work. When his students struggle, he laughs it off and says it's supposed to be easy, even when he has only explained the concepts vaguely and expects us to almost entirely rely on the book and other materials. When he makes mistakes, he makes it as if they were our mistakes. I could have not gone to class at all and learned more from the Internet than his class. We all could have. He refuses to treat his students with any amount of respect, personally or academically.
the use of google as a discussion board, it is a major drawback when you do not use gmail, i would suggest piazza because it allows students to get notifications when there is a new post, thus encouraging the student to check on the post, and that may lead to the student posting a response, thus increasing the amount of out of class participation
He does an excellent job of explaining the algorithms, but when it comes to the coding, there wasn't enough explanations or examples.
Definitely a good professor, but his command of the classroom was questionable at times. There was a special needs student, who often interrupted class with comments, numerous questions, etc. It was evident the professor would be frustrated by this, and asked the student to raise his hand instead etc. but I felt we fell behind because of these interactions. I understand the desire to be considerate of the student's needs, but I feel more could have been done to alleviate these issues. Simply asking the student to ask his questions after class would have been sufficient, or taking a more strict stance with the student would have been preferable than the passive stance the professor often displayed.
Not that responsive with emails.
Class has plenty of resources for students, however the professor was incredibly condescending and treated the material and the students as if it was more of a waste of his time than anything else.
A major strength of the instructor would be that he will explain a concept until every gets it.
Assignments helped to understand material and the professor was helpful when I had questions.
The major strength of the instructor is that he is very knowledgeable about the material. The major weakness of the instructor is that he doesn't know how to present the course material effectively. Also, he is very vague.
The homework assignments were good
Very knowledgeable on the material but at times he goes too fast and overestimates his students abilities.
strength = knows his materialweakness = very unforgiving

What aspects of this course were most beneficial to you?

The Internet.
Learning new data structures that will be beneficial to solving types of problems.
the way that he presented somewhat real circumstances in which the course material could be used
The book was really useful alongside the lectures, and it has helped me learn to be a more efficient coder, use more methods, be more organized, and think creatively because he didn't set out a preset pattern for every assignment.
The lectures helped me understand and visualize how these algorithms were meant to work, which was extremely helpful.
Watching back the lessons
The material
The homework, quizzes, and notes were the most beneficial to me.
The homework assignments, although challenging, helped me understand performance, data structures, and Java more effectively.
The homework and sometimes the lectures was most beneficial to me.
The study sessions helped a lot
the homework

What suggestions do you have that could help improve the course?

Never let Riley touch a Java class again.Or, he needs to get off his high horse and understand that his students are here to learn, not be forced to do all the work while he teaches the bare minimum. He needs to go over examples, actually show us how to program the things he wants us to program. Teach us the concepts and show us how they corrilate to programming instead of reading off slides and calling it a day.
week 7 and onward homework assignments: It would be nice to go over the api of the classes we're going to use.
as a gameplay programming major, i fail to see the uses of certain data structures. However, he did provide some examples for use in the real world ( as this course is not only for gameplay programming majors), but it would be nice to see some more examples, not to be done as homework, but just as examples
More code examples would be nice, especially when a lot of us have never seen or heard of the later topics in the course such as hashmaps and graphs in programming.
Being a little more helpful/direct with advice on hw would be nice.
No
The professor could treat the material as if it is new to the students. An hourly reminder in class that this material is ?SOOO EASY? for him is awesome, but the rest of us do not have a PhD.
None
Having the homework graded sooner would help me better understand where I stand before the final.
I think the course could be improved by the instructor presenting the course material in a manner in which students could clearly understand it.
Not sure
Don't assume that course material is easy for someone who has barely seen it before.
the quizzes are very unforgiving

Do you have comments on the grading procedures and exams?

They were unfair considering how he taught. He expected perfection or no credit, despite his claim of partial credit given. Quizzes were given too little time to complete with accuracy.
No...paper....exams....please.
grading was somewhat slower, towards the 8th week, he still has not posted the grades of assignments from before the midterm, the reason for this is not known to me, i think that homework should be worth the most, simply because people code (writing code) at different speeds, thus a test with a time limit can hinder some people who might take a little longer thinking, but in the end their code is just as good.
N/A
Really really slow
No
See above.
No comment

Other comments?

good teacher, good balance of material, and good teaching speed, the only problem was the use of google groups.
Good class
Nope
No
Good class, great teacher