Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2017 Spring :: CS 100

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2017 Spring :: CS 100 - 081

Course Description:

CS 100: Introduction to Computing through Applications

Using personal computers as effective problem solving tools for the present and the future. Effective use of spreadsheets to process, manipulate, and visualize numeric and textual information. Introduction to the Internet, World Wide Web, HTML, and XML. Algorithms underlying the functional components of web search engines and their influence on data access. Using wikis to publish, reshape, and organize data collaboratively.

Dave's Comments:

In Spring 2017, I started planning out "Phase III" of the CS 100 course development project.

My intention was to complete some new scripts, but I did not accomplish as much as I had planned.

We spent some time coordinating with CEL to collect some feedback and user data on possible designs and prototypes, but to be honest, the data wasn't very helpful and CEL's focus wasn't completely aligned with what we were interested in.

Apparently, they once again changed the course evaluation format for this online course. At least some of these new questions are more meaningful for an online course. However, because our ISAs do the vast majority of the interaction with the students, most of this feedback is more relevant for them than for myself.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 71 / 215 (33%)

Characteristics of the Instructor:

The instructor related to students in way that promoted mutual respect.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
		24	28	13
		37%	43%	20%

The instructor's explanations were clear and understandable.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
1	1	16	36	13
1%	1%	24%	54%	19%

The instructor was helpful to students seeking assistance.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	2	20	27	15
	3%	31%	42%	23%

Overall, I learned a great deal from the instructor.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	8	18	24	16
	12%	27%	36%	24%

Characteristics of the Course:

Course materials were presented in an organised manner.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
1	2	10	35	23
1%	3%	14%	49%	32%

Expectations for learning were clearly communicated.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	3	19	33	16
	4%	27%	46%	23%

The assignments, activities, and content helped me achieve the stated learning objectives.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	2	11	34	24
	3%	15%	48%	34%

The assignments contributed to my learning.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	2	6	35	28
	3%	8%	49%	39%

Feedback on course assignments contributed to my learning.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
8	14	33	10	5
11%	20%	47%	14%	7%

Technology was used effectively for learning in the course.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	2	13	29	27
	3%	18%	41%	38%

The general climate in the course was good for learning.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	5	16	35	15
	7%	23%	49%	21%

Overall, I learned a great deal from this course.
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
	5	13	32	21
	7%	18%	45%	30%

What grade do you expect in this course?
Below 50	50-60	60-70	70-80	80-90	Above 90
		1	12	41	16
		1%	17%	59%	23%

Is this course required, or an elective?
Required	Elective
10	61
14%	86%

On average, I spent X hours per week working on this course:
Much less than 10 hours	Less than 10 hours	Around 10 hours	More than 10 hours	Much more than 10 hours
23	33	9	4	2
32%	46%	13%	6%	3%

Question-Specific Comments:

The instructor related to students in way that promoted mutual respect.

[Neutral] It would be helpful if IT instructors would speak and explain things in a simplified version. This course is an introduction to computing not an introduction to IT.

The instructor was helpful to students seeking assistance.

[Neutral] They are helpful if you could make the limited office hours. Two sets of middle of the day office hours are great for the everyday student, but not helpful at all for people who are on Co-op placements, or working full-time, and taking courses.

Course materials were presented in an organised manner.

[Disagree] Course information was fragmented and was far too advanced for an introductory course.
[Strongly Agree] The modules where clearly shown and the subsections where titled well as well as displayed well

Expectations for learning were clearly communicated.

[Neutral] While expectations were clear, level of familiarity felt a bit less so; a lot of the time I was stressing because I was not sure just how well I should understand particular things in a given module.

The assignments, activities, and content helped me achieve the stated learning objectives.

[Disagree] Course Materials were very general based and didn't always cover material that was asked on quizzes and assignments. A lot of extra research had to be done to find answers and complete the assignments.
[Disagree] I found the assessments VERY out of touch with the content of the course. While the material felt easy to understand and applicable the quizzes and especially the short answer questions felt far too in depth on things which hadn't been explained in the depth in which we were queried. Especially since this is an online course asking students to state answers in their own words when there is little other to say apart from what is explicitly stated in the modules felt badly constructed and often resulted in frustrating results.
[Strongly Agree] I do prefer reading text instead of listening to videos and it makes learning much easier

The assignments contributed to my learning.

[Agree] It was nice to see how what we where learning was practical as well as enforcing that we where able to do it
[Agree] The assignments were good in that you had to do extra research from course materials to do them.
[Disagree] See the above comment on assignment contributions to my learning. That said, the practical components as website construction and excel formatting were very helpful and were a fun exercise, unfortunately they made up far too little of the course.

Feedback on course assignments contributed to my learning.

[Disagree] Feedback was extremely limited.
[Disagree] Feedback was limited and very slow. Having to wait several weeks to see marks made it difficult to determine the style of marking.
[Disagree] It would be beneficial to add feedback on the mistakes we did on the Excel portions. It would be more helpful than the generic mistakes that were on assignments.
[Disagree] There wasn't much feedback, although the marking scheme that was provided did help a lot
[Neutral] It would be appreciated to get feedback sooner in order to learn for future assignments.
[Neutral] The feedback was late in some instances and it was not taken into consideration that the students new nothing about the information they were learning.
[No Answer] I didn't receive any feedback other than grades.
[Strongly Disagree] I almost never got marks back, and while the answers were helpful, I would really have appreciated a more personalized approach. I was flailing blindly and just hoping I was doing things right the entire time, with little to no idea if I was doing it right.
[Strongly Disagree] I recieved no feedback on my assignments
[Strongly Disagree] little to no feedback even when very low mark received
[Strongly Disagree] No verbal feedback was provided. Only a mark was provided.

Technology was used effectively for learning in the course.

[Strongly Agree] The videos were exceedingly helpful.

The general climate in the course was good for learning.

[Disagree] Having to wait a week to access material made it difficult and non-productive to learning. You could not get into a flow and either had to sit around and do nothing for 6 days or rush around to throw stuff together where topics required more attention.
[Neutral] It would be helpful if we could have feedback from the precious module. Example: At this time I am on Module 10 and am just getting feedback from Module 6. Not having feedback from previous modules does not help me to achieve a better mark for the next module. Example: There were 3 Modules devoted to Excel in this course and by the time I got feedback for the first Excel Module, I had already finished the 3rd part and had moved on to a completely different topic.

Overall, I learned a great deal from this course.

[Strongly Agree] Im not in CS or Math and this was probably one of the most important courses I took so far. It taught me everyday skills (especially excel) that I will use in my everyday life no matter what I do.

Is this course required, or an elective?

[Elective] Course modules and lessons need more info! Some lessons ie. HTML and CSS are vague and hard to apply in assignments without individual self-teaching and googling. Lessons need to be more detailed and need to explain concepts more in depth with more examples.
[Elective] Technically it was required for me for a time but I since I transferred programs I didn't need it. I am still glad I took this course

On average, I spent X hours per week working on this course:

[Less than 10 hours] Depended heavily on the assignment. At the beginning (first 3 weeks) I spent maybe 1-3 hours each week on assignments. Near the end however while we where working on HTML I probably spent 5-8 hours on the course.

Comments:

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

Course Strengths:

assignments
communication between student and assistant, clarity, easygoing
Concise units and assignments
course contents are well organized as an online course. I had no problems understanding the concepts
-Course materials are very well organized and easy to find
Excel was very helpful
Good HTML and Excel application
Good instruction in videos
Relavent assignments
Good introduction, good mix of important stuff one might expect to deal with with regards to things in the course
Great application using the various softwares. It was a well-structured course and organized nicely.
Great YouTube videos.
how reflective the assignments are of the content. I really liked the formatting of quiz A being knowledge, quiz B being practical and then an assignment to put your new skills to use
I really liked the videos as a method of teaching. It helped me visualize the steps needed to complete assignments.
I really valued learning the material since it showed how I will use it in everyday life. In my opinion, everyone should learn excel.
It was fun, interesting and the Prof's videos were great
it's useful!
materials were presented in an organized manner
concepts were not too confusing to understand
Modules are straight forward
Multiple examples. Assignments that related well to help build on my learning.
quizzes/assignments matched the weekly learning modules.
Technology used
The assignments allowed us to apply the knowledge learned in the lectures.
The assignments force you to apply what you learned that week.
The broad list of topics covered
The content was easy to follow based on the layout of the course.
The lecture videos were amazing. They were engaging and very helpful. The assignments really helped to show if I understood the content or not and I liked how there were different types of assignments for each module. The ISA's are amazing. They respond to emails fast and did everything they could to help me.
The modules are very informative
The practical assignments as website and quiz construction.
The video tutorials to teach classes.
The weekly assignments.
This course acts as a great introductory courses for someone who has had minimal exposure to computers and computing.
Understanding what goes on in the background when you are using a computer.
Very applicable knowledge being taught. Lecture videos were clear and concise. Assignments were relevant and useful.
Very easy to follow and is organized very well
video lectures were very clear and well done.
Well honed delivery combined with interesting material.
well organized, TAs helpful
- Youtube instructional videos
- Course content overall. Complicated concepts are explained well using metaphors and relatable examples.

Course Weaknesses:

1. Insufficient notes provided
2. Insufficient office hours
3. The weekly release dates for notes/assignments
Assignment feedback wasn't quick enough.
Assignments take a long time to figure out how to do if not taught in modules
Consistent and timely feedback from assignments
expectations not clear, 50% exam seems senseless
Extremely unorganized. Multiple assignments would have errors in them and would not be fixed for days. It was clear that material was being used from previous courses and no one was reviewing them before posting. There were multiple instances where I spent an unnecessary amount of time trying to do something to find out days later that there was an error in the instructions or answers. Overall felt like I was dealing with an incompetent or lazy course staff. Degraded the learning environment because of these mistakes.
For his videos the instructor spoke too slow. This was fine for me because since it was a youtube video, I was able to set the speed a little faster.
Hard to gauge expectations and required concepts for final exam
I didn't really learn anything from the search engines module
I felt the modules, especially for HTML, could have been more helpful and descriptive.
I think less Excel and more web design could be a more useful/applicable/interesting skill
I wish there was more relevant coding instruction.
It's quite boring at times - no fault of the instructors but the content is just dry at times
Lack of feedback from dropbox. Should provide constructive feedback for better learning experience.
-Lack of instructor/TA interaction (which is understandable because it's an online course. When i struggled with concepts, I found it difficult trying to understand ideas through just email interaction. I would've attended in-person office hours if it did not conflict with other appointments in my schedule).
- The speech to text transcript that's uploaded with instruction videos has errors as some words are misinterpreted.
- The rate at which we got assignment marks back. Marks for assignments and test would be given weeks after they were completed.
lack of person to person teaching
Little to no feedback given on submitted work.
materials could be graded a bit faster
Nothing
Question construction was often unclear. In addition the short answer assignments which asked to elaborate on things which would have been better served by better designed multiple choice questions
Results took a long time.
some assignments are significantly harder than others
Some assignments, particularly coding, could have used more instructions for beginner students.
Some modules and lessons are not detailed enough and are merely an overview that teach no real skill when it comes time to do assignment and apply concepts.
Some of the assignments were very easy, some were much more difficult. I would prefer consistency.
Some of the questions in the quizzes were poorly worded
some organization
Some questions on quiz can be misleading/confusing. More transparency with regards to questions.
Still waiting for module 8 and beyond for marks and it is the end of week 12... when our exam is NEXT WEEK.

TA's said that they would give us our marks next week when our exam is next week.

TA's would say they had chat hours and would either be on and ignore for hours or not be on at all.
TAs does not respond to emails sometimes. And there is no feedback from the assignments whatsoever.
The coding stuff could have used more video and visual stuff. Sometimes I got swamped in misc. issues that could have probably been explained a bit more easily.
The dependence on technology is a little frustrating for someone who is awful with computers. For example there could have been a bit more explanation about how to use the SFTP client.
The html format websites as lessons. It was hard to read and makes it very uncomfortable to read.
The short answer questions were not always relevant to the material.
The videos are sometimes not very clear
too much knowledge too little application
write comments with our assignments giving students feedback, and not just a grade (without explaining where we lost the marks)

Improvements to be Made:

1. More in-depth notes or at least links pointing to more information
2. Release all the course notes and assignments at the start. The quizzes/short answer questions can still be released weekly.
a bit more thorough breakdown of the coding - I had to do a bunch of additional research in order to be able to complete the css and the html assignments
Actually review and know the material for the course before giving students false information.
add less knowledge and more application as it is more important in cs to apply then just know (if you apply then you know)
Add more content to lessons.
assignments worth more of our grade because they demonstrate the learning process
Give better feedback than just a grade. Grades don't mean everything. Getting 100% doesn't mean your webpage is 100%. Should provide better feedbacks to students to tell them what they can improve on, or what they did well on.
Give quicker assignment feedback so I can use the feedback for assignments.
I would have liked more instruction on how to start some of the HTML/CSS assignments. I figured it out on my own, but it was stressful not knowing how to start an assignment.
I would like to have the video tutorials for coding as well. I do not have any coding experience, and coding was the biggest challenge for me in this course.
Improve the TAs and the marking times
improve the weakness listed above
Incorporating a greater amount of practical assignments as website construction and working with excel spreadsheets
Make the videos more clear and organized
Making both written and spoken module versions for the assignment. Some of the modules I preferred to see the work being done while others I would of preferred to read it. Otherwise I have no complaints and think this is one of the most practical and useful courses I have taken so far. No matter where I end up I will still use some of these skills.
- Marking assignments sooner. Personally, seeing my progress sooner helps encourage me in the class when completing tests and assignments.
Maybe a tutorial once a week would help because sometimes communication via email can get difficult in terms of timing and articulation difficulties. If there could be a class once a week that went over the material in summary, I think that would be helpful.
Maybe use videos as a method of teaching for the HTML, CSS, and dynamic web pages concepts. It will be better visually to see what each tag does or how it affects the document.
More Excel!
More explicit materials for learning. Videos so that you can see the changes that are happening, rather than text documentation. Transcripts need to be updated to proper sentences and in the first few modules
More help from TAs
More personalized approach would be ideal,
More TA's to aid with feedback process.
N/A
Nothing in the delivery of info. All was very well done
Nothing really. Everything was done well.
Overall,I really liked the course, the excel videos were a bit boring and the website creation assignments a bit challenging. Those would be my only two weak points.
Provide more examples, especially ones that could be applicable to assignments in the modules.
Some of the assignments were very easy, some were much more difficult. I would prefer consistency.
Some questions on quiz can be misleading/confusing. More transparency with regards to questions.
Some type of practice question or sample exam to prepare for the final as it is odd going from everything being online (lectures, assignments, quizzes, etc.) and being about computer programs (ex. Excel) to a fully written exam.
***this could still be on its way so sorry if you did provide this before the final!***

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