Evaluation Comments

Summary View

What are the major strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?

• strengths: easily accessible outside of class weaknesses: didn't really go in depth with the content, and expected students to know far more of what was being taught in class
• The instructor is immensely talented and understands his profession with a high degree that is impressive. The material can be broken down in a way that makes it easy to understand for beginners. One big weakness is that there isnt a strong incentive for class participation which left me wanting to learn more
• Riely was always open to answering questions for students who were confused. He also was very enthusiastic on discussing concepts, which made class fly by every session.
• Major strength: extremely knowledgeable in the field of CS major weakness: Not having a set channel of information intake and evaluation

What aspects of this course were most beneficial to you?

• The way in which Professor Riely explains working through coding problems has been the most helpful so far in my experience with coding. Because of him, I have started to physically hand write code that I didn't understand and that has dramatically helped me conceptualize the content better.
• Having the professor work out the solutions to the homework was extremely beneficial and helpful, as we could see his thought process on writing the code, as well as it helped to see how to properly think when writing out code
• There is a level of self learning that I will always appreciate. The course expected a level of independence where it did require me to be actively engaged with the online material to keep up. This made it easy if I understood the topics and the flipped nature was great if I felt comfortable with material.
• I found the in class discussions covering the homework made assignments appear far easier than what I would originally believe them to be.

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

• I would suggest that there possibly be more hands on coding in class, rather than having class time feel entirely like a review session. I understand the class is meant to be a flipped class where we watch lectures before the class, but if there were to be more interactive, hands on coding during class time, I feel that would help students grasp the content more.
• I would recommend having more in-depth material, as the lectures weren't the most informative and I felt as if they lacked a lot of information in being able to successfully complete the assignments. Also, there was a lack of example for programs too. It would be nice to have the professor work on building programs from scratch before assignments. For example, if the topic of disunion is recursion, it would be nice if the professor created a recursive program hands on with the students, instead of just showing us the code for the recursive program that he's already created in the past.
• I think having all course materials on D2L would be beneficial. Sometimes it was difficult finding the class lectures and homework. I was also not the biggest fan of the automatic grading for homework. Sometimes I felt that I was graded wrongly.
• There needs to be a way where as a student I can ask questions on material that we are working on. The flipped classroom made it where I was learning about new material on my own and having to complete assignments with a slight inability to ask questions in the moment. There are emails but I always prefer live demonstration more. Actual class time went over previous material most of the time so I never got the chance to ask as many questions to understand the code as thoroughly as I would liked
• I think some examples going over concepts that we could somehow implement on the homeworks would be great. I found that we really only covered concepts after they were already due, which didn't help all too much as there was then no incentive for me as a student to utilize what I've learned.
• To set a better plan, the course had two classes a week, and even with that, the professor chose to have a flipped modal. This made the amount of work spent on this class crazy. As I had not only readings but video lectures and sync classes. It did not stop for the intake of information. I also had to test myself through quizzes that were challenging and seemed to be tricky anyway. In addition, I had the homework and over all of that, we still had to do a midterm and a final. I think the course needs to focus on at most two resources of intake and no more than two ways of evaluating the student say a quiz and 2 tests.

Do you have comments on the grading procedures and exams?

• For homework, there should be more freely grading scores, the grades for the most part were out of 10's (10, 20, 30 , 40 /100). This didn't truly represent the work of the student if they got small parts correct, and instead the grade was just rounded.
• Exams were difficult but professor conveyed that they would be plenty of times. My only concern is that I didnt feel as prepared as I would of liked to be. Our only resource for practice was to look back at old videos and homework assignments plus quizzes. SI session helped but I think that if there was a single day slotted before midterm exams go over the exact material that would be on the exam such as practice problems or a practice sheet would be an amazing resource.
• I felt as though there should have been a bit more coding examples provided for certain homework topics, as at most times, the coding was the most difficult aspect to comprehend.
• The quizzes are super hard and they make so much of the grade for what their goal is, I believe the quizzes at that rate of competitiveness should make anything less than 15% of the overall grade since they are super challenging and the information they give is only relevant to students reaching for a full mark.

Other comments?

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