CSCI 151 - Lab Review - Spring 2012

11:59.59pm, Tuesday, May 15

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.

You can submit the answers via this anonymous Google form: Lab Evaluation Form.

Lab Assignments

Look back over the 10 lab assignments for the semester:

  1. lab0.html - Intro Lab
  2. lab1.html - MyArrayList
  3. lab2.html - Algorithm Timing
  4. lab3.html - Maze Solver
  5. lab4.html - DNA Manipulation
  6. lab5.html - Binary Tree Methods
  7. lab6.html - Web Page Index
  8. lab7.html - Process Queries
  9. lab8.html - Million Monkeys
  10. lab9.html - Boggle
  11. lab10.html - Kevin Bacon Game

For each of the assignments, I am interested in 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 having 2 labs build on each other (6 & 7) as well as the ones with GUIs provided.

Feel free to just focus on the labs that stood out (both liked or disliked) or to summarize general information (e.g., "Liked all but lab 4. I thought that one...").

Prelabs

This semester was the third time I've made use of prelabs in 151. Did you find them to be useful when working on the actual lab assignment? How much time did you find you spent working on them? What could I do to encourage folks to work on prelabs before midnight on Sunday?

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. And if you are willing to share, why you prefer it.
  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 and walk through just a few code examples on the board. Would you rather we spent more time looking at specific code examples and interacting with Java programs? (i.e., I bring a laptop in and we try out code examples)

GUI programming

You've done lab assignments both with command line interfaces and GUI interfaces that were provided for you. However, we didn't spend any class time teaching you how to make GUI interfaces yourself. Would you have wanted me to include lecture and labs about GUI programming? If so, what would you suggest removing to make room for this? (See schedule of topics for dates/times)

Problem Sets

Currently I structure the course as lecture with large lab assignments. Would you have preferred having weekly problem sets and shorter lab assignments?

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 07, 2012 - Benjamin A. KupermanVI Powered