Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2011 Fall :: CS 135

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2011 Fall :: CS 135 - 007

Course Description:

CS 135: Designing Functional Programs

An introduction to the fundamentals of computer science through the application of elementary programming patterns in the functional style of programming. Syntax and semantics of a functional programming language. Tracing via substitution. Design, testing, and documentation. Linear and nonlinear data structures. Recursive data definitions. Abstraction and encapsulation. Generative and structural recursion. Historical context.

Dave's Comments:

This course was an amazing introduction to Waterloo. I was teaching alongside an instructor "dream team": Ian, Byron, Craig and Troy. I was not expecting to be the weakest instructor. They really helped me "up my game" and rise to their level of excellence.

It was the first time teaching a functional language course, and I struggled with the pacing and assignment difficulty a bit, but overall it was a very positive experience.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 51 / 73 (70%)

Characteristics of the Instructor:

Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
20	31
39%	61%

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?
Too high	Somewhat too high	Just right	Somewhat too low	Too low	No opinion
	6	44	1
	12%	86%	2%

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
28	20	3
55%	39%	6%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.).
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
26	24	1
51%	47%	2%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
29	19	2
58%	38%	4%

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
11	9	6			25
22%	18%	12%			49%

Did you find the course interesting?
Very Interesting	Interesting	Not interesting	No opinion
24	26
48%	52%

Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
30	21
59%	41%

Characteristics of the Course:

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?
90-100%	75-90%	50-75%	25-50%	< 25%
45	6
88%	12%

Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No work assigned	No opinion
29	22
57%	43%

Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No printed course notes	No opinion
16	21		9	5
31%	41%		18%	10%

Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No text required	No opinion
1	13	13	11	13
2%	25%	25%	22%	25%

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
3	8	37	1	1	1
6%	16%	73%	2%	2%	2%

Was the amount of assigned work required for the course appropriate?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
2	22	27
4%	43%	53%

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
	22	19	9
	44%	38%	18%

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 upbeat. Understands what he's talking about. Always happy to take questions. He is funny - it doesn't matter what the haters out there say.
Awesome teacher. Much funnier than he thinks he is.
Dave always makes sure his students understand everything before continuing on with the material. He is also a good person to talk to about problems outside of the course.
Dave's presentation of the course is excellent. Importantly, he interacted with students and presented many examples.
Engaging, very funny, makes the lectures so much fun. Knows the content well and very helpful at making the students understand the concepts.
Funny
Funny, made the class more fun to come.
Good explanation, confident of what he is doing.
Good explanations, teaching methods, fun class :)
Good sense of humour, detailed explanation of concepts.
Great examples and enthusiasm.
He does an amazing job explaining concepts. He makes great analogies and made the course enjoyable.
He does many examples that he made himself in scheme which help in understanding the concepts.
He has made the classes interesting by doing funny voices (playing the part of mutual recursion functions), sharing personal stories.
he is pretty funny and keeps class engaged.
He is really good at using interesting examples to explain complicated topics.
He teaches the course well, as he gives a lot of examples.
He tells jokes and personal stories to keep the class atmosphere high and make the students more engaged in learning.
His great sense of humour and jokes bright up the class of CS. Snaps you out of your sleep.
I liked how the instructor combined oral presentations with hands-on demonstration. It was a good asset to learning material.
It has all been done well except for that one assignment (A6 I think). I actually like recursion now. Explanations were very helpful - mutual recursion. The somewhat silly ways to remember concepts were good.
Jokes, making things interesting.
Kept the course interesting - humour helped. Interesting tangents/links to real-world stuff.
Kept the course interesting with appropriately timed (albeit bad) jokes and pleasant sarcasm. Office hours were helpful.
Light-hearted joker.
Making the course interesting. Introduce new stuff.
Materials were clearly and well explained.
Switches between using the slides and examples on the board or Dr. Racket. Lectures are easy to understand, even if the content is somewhat complicated.
The instructor effectively engaged the class in learning by teaching in a professional and appropriate manner, while also maintaining a calm, comfortable class atmosphere.
The material was well explained & we were kept engaged and entertained whilst in class. Very approachable & helpful.
Tried to make class interesting. Provided ample examples.
Very enthusiastic and breaks down code explanation well when it's a lot to process. Good cheesy humour, engages class well.
Very helpful explanations. Organized lectures.
Very interesting person. Loud and funny. Does a lot of great examples with Dr. Racket during lectures.
Very interesting!!!

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

Assignments by this instructor were more difficult than by others.
Doing a bit more review before midterm/final and making sure all aspects are covered in class.
Don't know.
Explain things slower and not skip around the slides.
Go a little bit slower. Felt a little too fast.
Go a little slower.
He goes off topic somewhat too much.
He should make his CS assignments easier since they took a lot more time to do than other assignments.
He was a good instructor.
Keep being awesome yo.
Make the lecture more clean (sometimes the instructor forgets something and comes back to it later).
Maybe he test out a few things before the lecture.
More entertaining anecdotes.
More interaction with students during lectures and slower pace at important concepts.
More notes on blackboard could be a big help to me. Especially those tracing and stepping problems.
Nothing significant!
Organization during demonstrations.
Sometimes pacing of presentation seems rushed - don't fully understand some things before we move on.
Sometimes you move fast, even though we don't exactly understand.
Spend more time on examples.
Stay on topic a little better. Don't go off track too much.

What were the strong points of the course?

A lot of concepts were learned that can be practically applied (like trees).
Always something to do.
BST and recursion.
Built a good CS foundation.
Fun and presented many insights on other real life situations and applications.
Good introduction to CS.
I'm a pro at recursion now. Can see the benefits of the design recipe.
Introduces a brand new way of programming.
it got me thinking in a more formal way of coding, instead of randomly written code that works.
It have lots of useful material.
Learned a lot about cs and feel more comfortable in it as it was my first year taking any cs course.
Learning how to code in scheme and liked different things you could do with scheme.
Learning new concepts / applications of those concepts in the real world.
Lots of information taught.
Many different topics. Good teaching sequence. Doesn't go too fast.
Material is close to reality, very helpful.
Real world applications were great.
Really interesting and fun.
Recursion and BST.
Started slow, so people with no programming knowledge would not be at a disadvantage.
Teaching Scheme! I love it. It is my favourite programming language.
The assignments helped reinforce the material.
The assignments were a joy to do, especially the bonus questions.
The course has a good balance of applied examples and abstract concepts.
This whole course is very helpful in developing logic thinking.
Topics covered.
Very thorough.
We are forced to write almost all of the built-in list functions.

What were the weak points of the course?

A bit complicated.
A bit too much material.
Assignments took too long.
Assignments were a bit too difficult.
Can't wait to learn something I can put on my resume (transfer student who had to find a job for winter co-op).
halfway through the course, all assignments and lectures got much harder to understand.
I found the clicker questions too often seem as if to trick people. Assignments were sometimes vague.
It is too challenging for a person not familiar with functional programming.
It was pretty good.
Lengthy assignments, and assignment 6 was hard.
Little introduction to lang scheme.
Long assignments.
Lots and lots of work - assignments are difficult to do well on even with a big time commitment.
Nothing too significant.
Only functional, could relate to reality and industry closer.
Relate more to the real world.
Scheme
Scheme isn't a very useful language.
Sometimes assignments take too long to complete.
Sometimes the topic can become too confusing and abstract.
Sometimes too much work to do.
The course is kind of quick.
Too much design recipe.
We didn't play much about strings.

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.

Dave's jokes kept the class atmosphere light and enjoyable.
Good attitudes.
Good class atmosphere.
Good class atmosphere.
It was a fun atmosphere, where there was a lot to learn.
It was a very positive environment.
It was generally pretty good.
It was good.
Neutral.
No negative atmosphere.
Positive - everyone willing to learn.
Positively
Positively, with jokes.
Positively.
Positively.
The class had a very very positive atmosphere, very group like.
Very positive and funny instructor.
Very positive and pleasant.

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

Everything fine.
Good class size.
It was okay.
Nice size. Easy to communicate.
The class is pretty spread out, but other than that pretty good.
Very good prof. Let him keep his job :) !

All of the data for this page is available in the github repository: https://github.com/dtompkins/teacheval