CSCI 4061 Midterm Survey Results

• Labs are going well. They help me understand material. Great system for learning.
• The labs are the right balance of difficulty, allowing me to work through problems at a reasonable pace, get my check-off, and carry on with my week.

Glad to hear that lab content has proven useful to most folks.

• I find it REALLY hard to get my labs checked off. The Sunday midnight due date makes it even more difficult.
• Lab checkoffs are still sluggish.
• I wish there were an option to check off labs over email, or by appointment.
• I never have struggles going to office hours for my checkoff and I can typically get my questions answered quickly and without feeling like I'm eating up other students time by talking to the TA.
• I have the 8AM lab on Monday, so check offs are not an issue because attendance is generally low

An appreciable fraction of folks still report trouble getting checkoffs due to logistic issues. I will attempt to sort out why this is happening and correct it. We may move away from a check-off type system future offerings of 4061.

• I'm a bit worried I'll have to switch away from Cygwin at some point
• Using Linux subsystem on Windows and Visual Studio… was tough when I had run the test program

For purposes of this class we try not to force installation of an OS and lab machines provide the native experience. However, there is unfortunately no substitute for a natively installed Unix running on actual hardware. While somewhat hair-raising, doing such an install and living in Unix land will up your game considerably in the long run.

• Lectures are great, class is great and interesting! Keep it up
• Lectures always seem productive to attend

Glad to hear that content and pacing are keeping folks engaged.

• I do not like too much Q&A in course since it really disturbs me.
• The in class questions from students can be distracting and makes it easy to lose focus.
• It might help to have a weekly or daily card quota.
• However, some of the questions asked seem unnecessary or just for the card.

The card/participation system has some drawbacks but I am perfectly willing to tolerate these as they generate discussion which is important to keep us all on track. The most cards I have handed out in a day has been 3 which I am fine with.

• I feel shy about answering questions in the class because I'm afraid of being wrong and because the same few people who answer seem much more confident about their answers.

I have met many folks who are confident who shouldn't be and many who are not confident that should be. Participation is optional and has low stakes: hazard a guess some time and you might surprise yourself by being right. Just know that down the road, your opinion may matter very much so it is good to get some practice in expressing it even when you are not entirely certain.

• The textbook is awful, seriously terrible, like straight wack, what are you doing my man.

About 85% of folks reading the textbook indicate that it is average or better. Unfortunately, only about 50% of the class is reading the textbook at all. I am always open to better suggestions on textbooks but Stevens&Rago is superior to other alternatives that I have seen so far.

• I really enjoyed the first assignment and felt like I learned a lot while doing it.
• I struggled with the last programming assignment, but that may have been due to my lack of understanding in C.
• The project went pretty well. Had a few parts which were strange and then realized that C involves a bit of nit picky elements and then it went fine from there.

Glad to hear that Commando either went well or was at least instructive for folks.

• I think the course pace is going very well, but I feel like everything we have learned so far has just been a repeat of 2021.
• Overall, the class has been ran rather efficiently without many revisions needed to it.
• The content of the course could be more logically structured. I sometimes feel like I'm receiving fragmented knowledge from everywhere.

Generally folks are happy overall so we will carry on with the corrections indicated above.