Evaluation Comments
| Term: | Spring 2017-2018 |
| Course: | CSC 447 910 |
| Course Name: | Concepts of Programming Languages |
| Return to List |
Pages:
| Summary | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Summary View
What are the major strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?
- The instructor clearly has a strong handle on the history/reasoning behind many of the topics presented in class. Further, his knowledge of the topics presented seemed to be what I would expect of someone in his position. This instructor's downfall is his ability to bring these topics, for which he has mastery of, down to an attainable level.
- Good
- Slides were great, easy to follow, organized. Lecture content was also well organized and easy to follow. He had great examples to support the conceptual learning.
- Strengths: general enthusiasm about the subject, clearly articulated topics, chose meaningful examples to illustrate concepts, assignments matched notes and tests;Weaknesses: 60% of the grade were multiple choice questions so there is a higher margin of error on the grade reflecting what I know.
- Prof. Riely is very thorough with explaining concepts and answering questions.
- The instructor did a wonderful job of explaining the concepts during each lecture.Also loved the fact that you were very knowledgable of the material.
- Very nice slides and presentations for topics.
What aspects of this course were most beneficial to you?
- Learning a little about functional programming. Learning a little about Scala. Learning a bit on the history of certain programming languages.
- All
- The conceptual learning of programming languages made my understanding of current programming constructs stronger. I feel a lot more prepared for a career in computer science after this class
- It was a great survey of how programming languages choose to highlight or downplay particular programming paradigms; and how this affects the code we need to write to complete a task.
- The practice work and supplemental readings to the lectures helped solidify the concepts discussed in class.
- I really liked the homework because being able to apply and solve tiny problems helps me understand the material and language
What suggestions do you have that could help improve the course?
- If the goal of this course is to teach a set of given programming concepts so that the student walks away with a firm understanding of the concepts, the number of programming languages utilized needs to be minimized. While I fully understand the bringing up several languages for the point of illustrating how their designers handled certain problems, making students be responsible for being functional in C, Java, Scala, Scheme, and JavaScript is a detriment to the overall goal of understanding the topics. Pick two languages and stick to those for the purposes of testing, quizzes, and homework.Additionally, if a book is to be called out as required material, it should be addressed during class in some way. I spent a significant portion of my time (pre-midterm) reading the "Concepts in Programming Languages" book, taking notes, and diving deeper into topics only to discover that this book was provided to us as, "entertainment" if I recall his word correctly during a midterm preparation portion of the course. Having spent around 50% of my time on material that was not germane to the test was a huge setback for me.
- no
- Keep it the way it is, the worksheets, homeworks and quizzes do a great job of making sure students review the material and stay on top of the varied material.
- N/A
- None. It's a pretty straight forward class that was taught well.
- Being an online student:Repeat questions that other students ask during class before answering.Check the whiteboard helper more often for stray marks or other errors.Point with the mouse more. However, I understand it is easier to talk to class while standing in the front.
- mid-term is not returnable, so didn't get chance to go through all failed questions. It will be super helpful to go through some diffcult questions in similar format(e.g. traits) in class.
Do you have comments on the grading procedures and exams?
- The exams need to be re-worked to introduce more granularity into the coverage. By this, I mean that the tests should have more questions and perhaps attempt smaller chunks of coverage per question. Having 20 questions to assess the knowledge of a students grasp on the material is optimistic.
- no
- All good
- Have some non-multiple choice options on mid-terms or finals.
- None.
- Tough exams
Other comments?
- A small aside, the instructor does a fair amount of pointing to the projector screen during class for the purpose of highlighting specific details of the presentation. For students in person, I'm sure this is not a problem, but for those online, the projector screen looks just like a giant white sheet. Most of the time I needed to guess what he was pointing at based on the general location of his hands in relation to material on the computer screen.
- no
- This was an enjoyable class that helped cement in various ideas for me that have come up in other courses. Glad to have taken it when I did.