Evaluation Comments

Summary View

What are the major strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?

• The Professor clearly is an expert in his field. However, I felt a strong disconnect between what his expectations were for a student such as myself and what I was actually capable of at this point in my CS development without more detailed and skill-level fitting guidance. Overall, his style of teaching and structuring the course was very...rigid and traditional. Having just come from CSC 243 taught by another Professor who in contrast was very down to earth, pragmatic, and practical, and who had designed a course that was the polar opposite in tone - flexible, adaptable, more akin to real world processes and expectations, allowing more chances for the students to succeed and feel successful - this course and this Professor's style was a shock.
• Quick to get in touch with.
• The professor was always willing answer any questions.
• It's apparent thatProf. Riley has a passion for teaching and programming - the good kind. It's not overwhelming or leaves you scratching your head. It's the kind that gets you excited at times, especially for a class that's been known to be difficult. Topics are introduced well and fundamentals are constantly being reinforced throughout the course.
• The professor responds in a timely fashion. He lets us know what his expectations for us are.

What aspects of this course were most beneficial to you?

• I will need it for my future.
• The aspects of this course that actually had relevance to me were the knowledge of how to code in Java. However, I wish I had been given better information by DePaul and my advising support team as to what the overarching intent and goal of this course really was and what I needed to be prepared for it. In the end, I did not feel as prepared as I should have been because the theme of the course was very different from what I had originally presumed it to be.
• I really loved how the course was organized where the main and important points were videotaped and edited. Then, class time was a good opportunity to ask questions about assignments and brush up on more complex issues that may help us.
• Riely provides a great ground floor to Data Structures. Definitely a very articulate instructor and when he gets going on a topic, he's hilarious! The course is well organized, Riely's auto grader is quick and nice. His early material was exceptionally documented, and while the later became more "on your own", I did understand the reason for it.
• Course is very structured and organized. I've taken a data structures/algos class at another school, and we did not cover as much/go in as deep as this course. Topics were introduced very concisely. My favorite part of the course/Prof Riley, is that he's always stressing the importance of thinking/being purposeful with our solutions. Sounds like an "obvious" thing to do, but it really helps with thinking about things beyond what we see on the screen. Apart from course material, I've picked up a lot of small things from Prof Riley through his lectures/meetings that have shaped the way I approach programming!
• The most beneficial part of this course was knowing that the homework was scored by an automatic grader and that there are skeleton files that allow us to see if all tests were passed.

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

• Spend a little more time helping us write the actual code. Conceptually got a lot of help and could understand what to do. But when it came to writing the code it was more difficult.
• The mid-term exam was too complex and challenging for the short time allotment given. Moreover, the Professor did not as accurately prepare us for the exact nature of the exam as I had hoped. I was focusing on writing out homework code and being able to do so quicker for the exam as repeatedly reinforced by the Professor, when in fact this only prepared me for a fraction of the exam. As to the homework, the assignments in the latter half felt far beyond my realm of understanding and the jump in complexity and level of knowledge required from the first half to the second half was alarmingly great. I felt lost and I was not happy with the smoothness and pacing at which topics were taught as a whole.
• If there are written problems are suggested, and writing on the midterm is mandatory, I'd recommend being a little more complementary.
• On paper coding did not exemplify my ability to code and understand code.
• If the professor designated class time to giving lectures, like he should, it would definitely be respectful of the students' time. He does not go over homework problems in class either, so class time is essentially wasted. He has pre-recorded youtube videos which are not beneficial unless you have the extra time OUTSIDE OF CLASS to designate. The most students should be expected to do outside of class is study the homework, previous quizzes and tests, and the textbook.

Do you have comments on the grading procedures and exams?

• I feel making the exams handwritten was an unnecessary complication that hampered performance, at least for this level of Undergraduate course wherein we are only just being introduced to these concepts for this first time. Again, this is not a Graduate course, nor an advanced course in the topic, even though I continually felt the Professor was treating it as such.
• I do not mind exams on paper, but I do not think they reflect the difficulty and concepts applied in the homework. I do not understand the reasoning for this; if you want to assess students, why can't the exams be the same as the homework or vice versa? There are students in class who have taken AP computer science or have tutors for subjects they struggle with, not everyone else in the class has had the same knowledge and understanding of these difficult subjects.

Other comments?

• Overall, this was the first class in my time at DePaul in which I have been quite disappointed. For being an Undergraduate level introduction course to the topic, I felt the Professor was treating this and interacting with students rather as if it was a Graduate level course. That is not what I signed up for. The pacing was too fast with virtually no opportunity for structured, scaffolded practice and confidence building and because the Professor relegated all the actual topic teaching to cursory pre-recorded lecture videos, I felt confused or lagging behind often. The textbooks were not designed for beginners to the topic, rather they were written clearly with advanced Computer Scientists in mind, which we are nowhere near being in this course, as yet. So, the sense of accomplishment I got from this class compared to say CSC 243 was night and day. In 243, we were able to complete work at our own pace, had clear tutorials and explanations on topics, textbooks that were appropriate to our knowledge level, assignments and practice aides designed to help students learn and succeed not feel inadequate, and a course style that did not assume more of the students' confidence and skill level than was warranted. In short, this particular iteration of CSC 300 felt designed, in contrast, to be frustrating and unnecessarily difficult in a way that was not edifying.
• I highly recommend you add a seizure warning to the sorting video section. Many sorting algorithm videos warn about it for flashing lights. I'm not prone to them, however I'd air on the side of safety for accommodation.
• On paper testing for how functions work was an effective way of determining whether an individual understood the material.
• The professor makes it very clear which students he likes and dislikes. He also makes it clear what he thinks of students who are struggling and has definitely implied that students struggling are intellectually inferior.