Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2012 Spring :: CS 350

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2012 Spring :: CS 350 - 001

Course Description:

CS 350: Operating Systems

An introduction to the fundamentals of operating system function, design, and implementation. Topics include concurrency, synchronization, processes, threads, scheduling, memory management, file systems, device management, and security.

Dave's Comments:

When I arrived at Waterloo, we looked at the intersection of courses that frequently needed instructors and courses I was excited to teach, and CS 350 stood out. Fortunately, I was able to attend Tim's lectures and complete the assignments the previous term, which helped me get a sense of the pacing, the depth of examples and the integration of the assignment and lecture content. Overall, it was a great experience and I really enjoyed teaching the harder course material. This was the first term I had a meme contest, which was a great success.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 22 / 56 (39%)

Characteristics of the Instructor:

Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
13	8	1
59%	36%	5%

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?
Too high	Somewhat too high	Just right	Somewhat too low	Too low	No opinion
	7	12	1		1
	33%	57%	5%		5%

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
11	9	1
52%	43%	5%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.).
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
13	8	1
59%	36%	5%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
16	6
73%	27%

Was the instructor available for help outside of class?
Always	Most of the time	Often enough	Not often enough	Never	I did not seek help
6	6	1			9
27%	27%	5%			41%

Did you find the course interesting?
Very Interesting	Interesting	Not interesting	No opinion
7	14	1
32%	64%	5%

Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
15	7
68%	32%

Characteristics of the Course:

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?
90-100%	75-90%	50-75%	25-50%	< 25%
17	5
77%	23%

Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No work assigned	No opinion
10	8	3		1
45%	36%	14%		5%

Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No printed course notes	No opinion
5	13	3		1
23%	59%	14%		5%

Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No text required	No opinion
	1	2	13	6
	5%	9%	59%	27%

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
3	4	12	2		1
14%	18%	55%	9%		5%

Was the amount of assigned work required for the course appropriate?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
8	9	5
36%	41%	23%

On average, how many hours per week did you spend on this course outside of lectures?
0-2 hours	3-6 hours	7-10 hours	11-15 hours	> 15 hours
	4	4	4	10
	18%	18%	18%	45%

Comments:

Note: This is a complete list of comments I received, listed alphabetically to avoid bias.

Please mention anything that you feel the instructor has done well in this course.

Always happy to answer questions. Always gave appropriate and helpful examples by relating concepts to real objects (signals -> answering machine)
CS 350 is such an important course. Overall, really well taught. Good examples from real life and industry & research to illustrate points. Good, animated analogies, explanations. Fun atmosphere.
Dave was very enthusiastic and easy to pay attention to. His use of metaphors to explain content was very helpful in understanding the material. his pre-lecture videos and funny comments ensured I showed up for every class.
Entertaining and engaging. good real world examples.
Excellent presentation of content, great examples for understanding difficult concepts. Very approachable. Hilarious.
Excellent prof.
Explaining the material and making the lecture very interesting.
Explains concepts really well, using personal experiences (Thrashing). Very helpful during office hours, makes sure you understand what you were asking.
Good jokes, very entertaining.
Good presentation of course material. Actually has some charisma. Pretty funny too.
He is humourous, and he explains most of the course material very well.
Keeps the class entertained and interested. Very enthusiastic.
Kept the class entertaining.
Kept the course interesting.
Makes lectures entertaining.
Presented material in a 'light-hearted' manner; kept my interest in the material.
The instructor does an excellent job of relating the course material to real life. He employs good analogies as well. His teaching philosophy is well thought-out.
The most humourous prof I have met in this University, good lecture presentation all the time. Good side notes on the slides.
The professor understood the learning process and was able to structure his lectures so that the instructed content was very clear.
Very humourous and engaging. Makes learning about operating systems more approachable. Isn't afraid to shoot down smart-ass questions -- a required trait in CS profs.
Youtube videos.

Please make constructive comments about anything in the instructor's technique or style that could, in your opinion, be improved.

All good.
Be less handwavy with explanations. Draw more neatly on the board.
Dave's expectations are set a little too high, which can be seen through the challenging midterm. his explanations are sometimes (rarely) set too high, and sometimes moves too fast.
Give more detailed help on Piazza, not one line/word answers.
Honestly, nothing.
Lectures would be more interesting if they were less spoon-fed and more thought provoking, i.e.: more asking questions.
More office hours would be nice.
Nothing really.
Nothing: one of the best profs @ waterloo especially for a summer term.
Some key concepts are just hard to understand. He does a good job explaining but more time could be spent on them.
Sometimes goes through material too fast. Do more examples on important topics. Please provide hints on which material is important and what to avoid. There is a lot of information to go through.
Time permitting, give more specific deeper explanations. Course notes just asserts stuff.
Too fast. Jumps around the slides which I found broke concentration. More concrete examples would be great.

What were the strong points of the course?

Assignments.
Excellent teacher -> material taught very well.
good breadth and depth in operating system concepts.
Good coverage of useful topics.
Good mix of theory and practice.
Interesting/fun assignments.
It is interesting.
It is very informative and useful material.
Lots of hands on coding experience.
Printed course notes were much better than having to write our own.
Really really important material fairly well taught. Assignments were illustrative.
The course was very interesting.
The professor.
Understand, in a basic way, how the OS works.
Very fair overall in terms of workload and exam questions. Course is detailed enough that busy work and tricky exam questions are not needed.

What were the weak points of the course?

Assignments are too long, and only focused on first half of the course.
Assignments were very difficult, there was never enough materials to help with them.
Assignments were way too long.
Course load is a bit high for summer term (I think we had one less week of lecture time).
Difficult to balance workload with full course load.
I felt that wading through the given code was not directly relevant to the concepts taught in class even though it does prepare us for programming in groups. I think that it might be nice to split the course into two with one focusing more on theory and the other on practice and students can pick either to satisfy core requirements.
Lack of proper coherent documentation for assignments, too hard and confusing due to not providing enough details.
Lecture course notes outdated, difficult assignments, would help if course notes had a stronger focus for the content in A2.
Lots of the lecture material were things that could be considered common sense if you thought long enough about it.
Needs better course notes, or more OS/161 relevant notes/documentation. A diagram of OS/161's structure and what is/what isn't implemented would have helped a lot.
No assignments for later sections at all. Perhaps small written assignment? Time permitting, more explanation of OS concepts.
One TA isn't enough, maybe have at least two TAs so we can see a graduate's point of view, other than the professors.
Organization.
The assignments are more abstract (more high-level) than the course note. I got lost sometimes when doing assignments and need to find online resource to make it clear.
The assignments are too long. Fewer, shorter assignments would be much better.
The assignments were too long and without much guidance.
The course has too much work and takes up too much time for doing the assignments. Also, some of the material is outdated.
Too much assignment work that is beyond things taught to lectures. Notes were not applicable.

Was the class atmosphere affected either positively or negatively by attitudes of the instructor or students, e.g., with respect to gender, race, ability, appearance? Please explain.

Class was fine.
Positive class atmosphere, pretty easy going
Positive.
Positive.
Positively.
Such fun atmosphere, at least for morning class.
The assignments should all be shifted one week earlier. The start of the course was slow, the end was rushed.
The instructor has a positive attitude.
Very positive, no problems there.

Any other comments, e.g., class size, suitability of room, noise level, etc.

A better way of finding partners is needing. People lie about their work ethic.
All good.
Bring some coke zero for morning class.
Dumb down the assignments!
Everything is good.
Room was fine.
Wish people wouldn't eat in class, but that's not really Dave's fault at all.

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