CSCI 151 - Lab Review - Spring 2009

11:59.59pm, Friday, May 8

For your final lab time, I'd like you to take a look back over all the work you've done for the semester. The information you provide will help me further develop both the course and improve the experience for future students. This information is only for my personal use and not used as part of the faculty evaluation process.

In order to anonymize these results, please type them up in a text file (e.g, README.txt) with something like CS151 Evaluation at the top. (Not an open office or RTF format, just plain text.) Once you are done with them, just enter the following command: 

lpr -Plp0 README.txt

I'll have the Jackie (the CS admin asst.) gather them up and hold onto them until after I've submitted my final grades.

Lab Assignments

Look back over the 10 lab assignments for the semester:

  1. lab1.html - MyArrayList
  2. lab2.html - Algorithm Timing
  3. lab3.html - Maze Solver
  4. lab4.html - Email Directory
  5. lab5.html - Binary Tree Methods
  6. lab6.html - Word Frequency Tree
  7. lab7.html - Process Queries
  8. lab8.html - Hashtable/GUI
  9. lab9.html - Boggle Solver
  10. lab10.html - Kevin Bacon Game

For each of the assignments, let me know the following information:

  1. Did you like or dislike the assignment?
  2. Did you find the assignment useful? (either for learning the concepts or otherwise) Feel free to elaborate.
  3. Did you find the description of what needed to be done clear? If not, what can be improved?
  4. Any other comments on the lab? (Too long/short, easy/hard, etc.)

Also, I'm curious to get more feedback on the search engine labs (6, 7, 8) relating to having 3 labs that work with each other.

Pair Programming

I'd like some feedback on pair programming. Those of you that did work in groups, how did it go? Those that didn't, why not?

Eclipse

The first week of lab I showed you how to use eclipse (see Part 2 of lab 0) and briefly introduced a number of features. Since then, many of you have been using it extensively and exploring its features. Answer the following:

  1. If you don't use eclipse, let me know why and what your preferred alternative is.
  2. If you do use eclipse, tell me which features have been the most useful for you.
  3. What eclipse features that you know about now would have been useful to learn earlier?
  4. What advice can I give future classes of CSCI 151 about how to use eclipse?

Course material

Looking back over the course material we've covered, is there anything you wish we'd spent more time on or didn't cover? Anything we spent too much time on or shouldn't have covered?

How would you describe the pace of the course?

In this class, I generally focus on conveying the conceptual steps of the various algorithms instead of walking through specific code examples (which are in the book). Would you rather we spent more time looking at specific code examples and interacting with Java programs?

Lab helpers

We've been employing students to help out in the lab during the weekend. Did you make use of them? Were they useful to you? Should we continue them? How can we make them better/more useful?

Additional feedback

Please add any additional comments about the course, both labs and lecture that you wish to share. Any feedback, both positive or negative, is greatly appreciated.

Last Modified: May 04, 2009 - Benjamin A. KupermanVI Powered