Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2012 Fall :: CS 350

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2012 Fall :: 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:

This was the second time teaching CS 350, and my first alongside another instructor (Ashraf). I will confess that teaching OS in the 8:30 section was a little rough. This term I focused on improving the testing framework and making it easier for students to develop their own test cases. We even had assigned some bonus questions for students to develop their own tests, which was a good success. This term I also really focused on improving my boardwork (diagrams) in class.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 47 / 60 (78%)

Characteristics of the Instructor:

Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
33	11	3
70%	23%	6%

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?
Too high	Somewhat too high	Just right	Somewhat too low	Too low	No opinion
1	8	37	1
2%	17%	79%	2%

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
37	8	1			1
79%	17%	2%			2%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.).
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
27	20
57%	43%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
42	5
89%	11%

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
18	6	3			20
38%	13%	6%			43%

Did you find the course interesting?
Very Interesting	Interesting	Not interesting	No opinion
22	18	4	3
47%	38%	9%	6%

Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
38	8
83%	17%

Characteristics of the Course:

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?
90-100%	75-90%	50-75%	25-50%	< 25%
40	6			1
85%	13%			2%

Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No work assigned	No opinion
23	22	1		1
49%	47%	2%		2%

Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No printed course notes	No opinion
19	23	3	1	1
40%	49%	6%	2%	2%

Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No text required	No opinion
3	3	8	14	19
6%	6%	17%	30%	40%

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
4	9	33	1
9%	19%	70%	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
10	25	12
21%	53%	26%

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
1	6	12	14	13
2%	13%	26%	30%	28%

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 kept lectures interesting and funny.
Analogies were helpful in understanding the concepts.
Dave is great at explaining, is not intimidating, and genuinely cares for students both in office hours, lectures, and life.
Dave is super interesting and really enthusiastic. An 8:30 class depends on a good prof and Dave did not disappoint.
Entertaining, made class enjoyable while learning. Diagrams were a great push to understanding course material. Always approachable and helpful.
Enthusiastic about course material and teaching. Very knowledgeable. Well-prepared for class. Approachable. Nice when I asked 'dumb' questions in office hours.
Enthusiastic, knowledgeable
Everything!
Excellent communicator. Good presentation.
Explains concepts well with examples.
Funny, easy to approach and speaks clearly.
Good analogies and explanations.
Good at projecting voice, easy to understand descriptions and explanations.
Good explanations and examples.
Good explanations, generally helpful analogies for the more difficult concepts.
Good explanations. Cares about what he's teaching. Answers questions well.
Good lectures.
Good use of metaphors and similes (i.e., relating complex course topics to real life situations and examples). Speaks very loud and clear: uplifting tone.
Good, memorable communicator
Great analogies to make understanding hard concepts easier. Reviewing last lecture's ideas for the first 5 minutes helped.
Great oral explanations, good respect for the students, good enthusiasm for an 8:30 class.
He explained things clearly, took time to carefully address student questions, and took our feedback seriously. He presented the otherwise dry material in an upbeat and entertaining way, which is the only thing that enabled me to attend the lectures so early in the morning.
He takes jokes well.
It was a pleasure to attend the lectures. The material seems less complicated if you have an optimistic professor.
Keep Dave in this course!
Kept things interesting. Made it relevant.
Lots of real life analogies students can relate to.
Really good at explaining. His examples make it easier to grasp concepts.
Specific examples make definitions impressive and easy to be understood and remembered.
This is the only class that I go to and I've had a great time during the lectures.
Very good analogies. They really helped me in understanding concepts (i.e., locks, synchronization, thrashing).
Very good oral presentations.
Very good presenter, gives entertaining but relevant examples. Very approachable, and treats students questions well. Available outside of class almost all of the time.
Very well taught, great explanations, went over dry material sometimes while still keeping interest. YouTube videos!
YouTube videos before class. Made lectures engaging.

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

Almost nothing, perhaps not let students go on tangents for so long. It's not fair to dedicate class time on a bug maybe on 10% of students experience.
Better notes on chalkboard: sometimes messy and confusing
Can't think of anything!
Don't change.
Don't show videos before class. I didn't like most of them (music). Hard disk seek video was good. I don't like analogies.
Don't spend too much time telling us what we are going to do later in the course.
Focus on course material, don't go off on tangents. It helps us get better marks.
I sometimes got a little confused about the stack diagrams (does it start at the top and grow down, or vice-versa?)
I would say to spend more time explaining critical stuff but we didn't have much time in this course.
Jumps around the slides a lot.
Less of "It's a trap" its early in the morning and makes my head hurt.
Make examples more concrete and related to the actual OS161.
Metaphorical type explanations were good, but would prefer more solid examples.
Minor complaint: Diagrams would be better with descriptions. Where 'should' you be in assignment was something other prof did.
More examples?
More music before class.
Nothing :)
Nothing really. Could try and add more supplementary material to compliment slides.
Nothing.
Rather than saying 'I think some people are lost', just assume it and do more examples.
Recommend a more interesting textbook?
Sometimes talks a little fast, didn't have time to take notes down, but it's good that concepts are often repeated.
Sometimes the analogies don't work as well and a direct explanation would be preferable.

What were the strong points of the course?

A lot of new material, a lot of things to learn. Offers new perspective to CS.
All of it.
Content was useful for understanding
Crazy assignments, sense of accomplishment. Good midterm. I now know the power of the kernel!
Dave is always available for help.
Deeper understanding of the complexities of an operating system.
First assignment was good, content was ok.
Fun to see how everything works :)
Good assignments
Good variety of topics covered.
I learned a lot. I know how a computer works so that's cool.
Interesting material and assignments. Material during lectures were directly related to assignments (in the first half). Large assignments with group work and many design considerations.
Interesting material.
Interesting, assignments explain material.
Interesting, challenging assignments.
Interesting. Learn a lot.
It's interesting. Learned a lot of stuff that was important.
Last assignment is too close to the end of lectures.
Material was interesting and fresh.
Removed the final remaining questions about computer systems.
See the connection of different aspects and how they are connected to build the operating system. A lot of new material.
Useful for real life.
Well structural and designed and assignment really helpful.

What were the weak points of the course?

8:30 in the morning, and fairly dry material. Difficult assignments.
A lot of work. Hard to figure out where to start. Group assignments make work more difficult to work out the understanding.
Assignment given too much time causes high risk for procrastination.
Assignments (esp. 3) focused too much on a specific part of the course. Would prefer smaller assns. on a wider variety of topics.
Assignments a bit long.
Assignments are very time consuming with a full course load. Hard to organize other courses with OS always being there.
Bad slides. Add Dave's annotations to the actual slides!
Crazy assignments
Huge learning curve for the 2nd and 3rd assignments. Need to go over them more in class. Give more instructions on how to do it in the assignment (more hints). Apparently some differences in info from different profs.
I do not find operating systems interesting.
I'm a math/algorithms guy, I like computers but not the kind of coding done in this course. I wish it wasn't required but it was a great learning experience. Quiz on day 1 killed my confidence.
Lots of new material, may be challenging for some students.
Lots of work :(
Nothing, really.
On the midterm, there should be more space for coding questions.
The assignments are daunting at times. In assignments, a small part of the assignment can break everything and cause correct things to fail (a trivial example would be off by one errors).
The assignments are very large and it is very easy to get overwhelmed by them. I found it very difficult to even determine where to start in assignment 2.
The OS161 documentation. In previous CS courses looking at your notes helped finish assignments but for both A2 and A3, the notes were virtually useless. You have to trudge through a mountain of mediocrely commented code and you have no aim or purpose other than 'Oh, this might be useful'. I want to learn about how an OS works, not how to frustrate myself trudging through code.
Too much material covered. Assignments are too hard.
Too much material. We didn't cover some sections properly, not enough time. Hard assignments.
Too much work, assignments are too long.
Tutorials may have assisted with the assignments.
Way too much work.
Wish there were a programming component for the last part of the lecture material.

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.

Everything was good.
Fun and enjoyable
It was cool. 8:30 classes are almost always calm. YouTube videos was a nice touch.
Piazza environment is horrible. You feel judged answering questions. Alex in particular essentially says 'you made a mistake' and instructors should collectively answer questions. My follow-ups tend to also not be answered.
Very good.
Yes, the atmosphere was wildly improved by some jokes and the good mood of the professor.

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

8:30 is really early, otherwise good.
All fine.
Choose partners wisely. They will determine 90% of your happiness or 90% of your misery. For me, unfortunately, the latter occurred.
Class size is ok.
Good classroom.
Room has bad seats and desks.
Sorry I was late so often :(

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