Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2014 Winter :: CS 136

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2014 Winter :: CS 136 - 003

Course Description:

CS 136: Elementary Algorithm Design and Data Abstraction

This course builds on the techniques and patterns learned in CS 135 while making the transition to use of an imperative language. It introduces the design and analysis of algorithms, the management of information, and the programming mechanisms and methodologies required in implementations. Topics discussed include iterative and recursive sorting algorithms; lists, stacks, queues, trees, and their application; abstract data types and their implementations.

Dave's Comments:

The room I was in (RCH 307) was terrible. The projector screen completely blocked the whiteboards, which made doing diagrams very awkward. Half-way through the term I switched to using a tablet pc for the diagrams, and by the end of the term, I was reasonably proficient.

Otherwise, see my comments for the other section.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 70 / 110 (64%)

Characteristics of the Instructor:

Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
57	13
81%	19%

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?
Too high	Somewhat too high	Just right	Somewhat too low	Too low	No opinion
	9	57	3	1
	13%	81%	4%	1%

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
47	17	5			1
67%	24%	7%			1%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.).
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
43	21	6
61%	30%	9%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
61	7	2
87%	10%	3%

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
20	12	4	2		32
29%	17%	6%	3%		46%

Did you find the course interesting?
Very Interesting	Interesting	Not interesting	No opinion
31	38	1
44%	54%	1%

Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
63	7
90%	10%

Characteristics of the Course:

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?
90-100%	75-90%	50-75%	25-50%	< 25%
61	6	2	1
87%	9%	3%	1%

Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No work assigned	No opinion
41	27			2
59%	39%			3%

Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No printed course notes	No opinion
41	20	4		5
59%	29%	6%		7%

Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No text required	No opinion
2	6	23	10	28
3%	9%	33%	14%	41%

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
2	12	50	4	1
3%	17%	72%	6%	1%

Was the amount of assigned work required for the course appropriate?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
6	29	35
9%	41%	50%

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
2	20	27	14	7
3%	29%	39%	20%	10%

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.

Able to make course content interesting and fun.
Dave does an excellent job of connecting with students and explaining concepts in a thorough and captivating way.
Dave has demonstrated a passion for both the subject matter being taught, and the instruction of the material. His oversight has helped make this course my favourite from the term.
Dave has done a great job in every aspect as a professor. He is very enthusiastic and passionate about the course and that comes across in his lectures.
Dave is by far the best professor I have been taught by. He makes CS so fun and enjoyable. I never miss classes because it so fun. Assignments don't feel like work. I can go on and on on how awesome a prof Dave is.
Dave made good use of the limited board space by drawing on the slides to add to explanations. Dave's examples were very relavent and enhanced understanding.
Dave understands the things so deep an can explain them so well
Dave was able to present the material in a coherent and logical fashion, and did so in a manner that it was nearly impossible to not understand the course material. On top of that, he always tried to make each class entertaining, or at least engaging (the source material can be quite dull and dry if taught improperly).
Dave's lectures are fantastic. I'm not a CS major, but after 136, I hope to take a CS minor. I hope my future instructors will lecture as clearly.
Diagrams helped to clarify ideas. Explanations were aimed at an appropriate level. Spoke clearly.
Did well explaining concepts and course material.
engaged the students, presented the material very well
Engaging lectures
He didn't just read off the slides, making it a lot easier to pay attention
entertaining teacher. tries to make course interesting
Everything
Everything was so perfect.
Excellent job teaching this course Dave, it was a pleasure to be here and by far my favorite course/teacher of year one
Excellent use of visuals, in class examples and good help on piazza.
- Excellent speaker
- Knowledgeable
- Dave made the lectures interesting
Explanations and supporting diagrams were clear and helped greatly with understanding concepts.
Found Closest way from DC to RCH:)
Funny and kept me interested in the course.
Very goo explanations of the more confusing content like pointer arithmetic.
(good (bad jokes))
Good all around. Always exciting.
good explanation during the lecture
good explanation on concepts
humor
Good Expression and Jokes
Relate some relevant information in lectures
Great jokes and presentation of material. Your analogies are also amazing dude. I know sometimes you make a joke and it seems like no one laughs, but actually (at least for me and many people around me) we're just smiling and saying in our heads "damn that was a good joke, this guy's crazy (in a good way)". Also love your references and occasional meta-comments. Makes paying attention worth not just the course topics presented but the small 'treats' that keep people engaged. Learned a crapton of things in this course. Even those times where I felt like I knew the material and could skip class, I'd go just to see you lecture and then end up learning details that I would've missed. 10/10 would attend again.
Great Oral presentation, communicated effectively, and introduced new topics in a very well timed manner. He was always welcome to answer any questions and was very approachable. He made lectures very fun and interesting with in-class demonstrations and funny jokes and references that made him very lovable.
He has tried to make this course as enjoyable as possible.
He is exceptional at explaining computer science concepts in an engaging way. His analogies have made the algorithms much easier to understand.
His analogies were really helpful, especially the one explaining the difference between functional and imperative programming.
I felt that the instructor really cared about his students. He really tried to meet our needs and expectations.
I love bad jokes :) especially the coke machine example between scheme and C.
I think Dave is a phenomenal professor - one of the best I've had at the University of Waterloo thus far. For me, Dave has been a large reason why I have enjoyed the course to the extent that I have.
Increased my interest in the course and made it fun to learn.
Kept a good atmosphere and really respected the students of the class. Not many professors do this.
Kept the lectures incredibly interesting and interactive. Was probably the most human feeling course I've taken so far at Waterloo. I can tell Dave truly likes to teach and wants to be here.
Lectures are fantastic. The examples that go along the material, however crazy, are also memorable.
Made the course interesting, even the somewhat dull parts.
oral explanation is awesooooome
Pointer diagrams were effective
Professor Dave makes difficult concepts very clear and approachable. The somewhat comedic approach he takes to lectures allows my engagement in the content to be very high throughout the lecture.
Professor Tompkins explains knowledge clearly and vividly. He helps students outside the class patiently.
Real life examples are pretty helpful.
Interesting class.
Really funny, clear explanations and diagrams.
Speaks with enthusiasm, which keeps the class engaged. Less-than-desired amount of profs do this :(
Teach.
Telling some joke, good at adjust the atmosphere of class.
The language is funny and the slides are useful
The most engaging lectures that I have attended. Very interesting, great speaker, awesome connection! It is truly evident how much you care about the students and want to see them succeed. Made the content very applicable and very interesting!
Very effective, and engaging teaching style. Good mix of explanations, examples, visuals, and clicker questions. Very knowledgeable and passionate about the course with good sense of humour. Dedication towards excellence is clearly evident, and is what separates the good instructors from the great.
Very entertaining lectures, kept everyone engaged.
Very enthusiastic in the lectures and explains everything pretty well. Always has good visual aid too!
Very good explanations of topics and drawing out the examples with pointers really helped. Made the course very interesting.
Watches Game of Thrones. Awesome professor.
You make the best analogies for understanding the material. Your course notes were much better to read and understand than CS 135 ones. I laughed in my head every single time you said POPPPP POPPPPPPP!!!! Loved the Harry Potter references. Even loved the GoT and TWD references even though I don't watch them. The assignments were fun, especially creating the multiplication table and RPSLS. Your public service announcements and "things you don't need to know" actually taught me a lot. Like the thing about KB and KiB, I knew that you didn't get the full amount but I never knew why until your public service announcement! Your website is really inspiring. It shows me that this guy who's teaching me can actually do this stuff. Your stories about what you've worked on in the past are inspiring too. I've had teachers who are either really awesome as a person or really good at teaching, but you are both.
You taught the course very passionately making it more interesting to the students.
You were very entertaining. You provided very thorough explanations. The writing thing on slides looked very cool.
You're very enthusiastic and we appreciate that. Your efforts to break down complicated code really helps.
Your low-level explanations and analogies are helpful.

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

Aim explanations lower to people with less experience.
Amazing professor, hoping to take more courses with him in the future.
Animations for pointers are REALLY REALLY good. Go for it!
Bashed on macs too much!! He could have gone a little slower at some points to explain the tricky concepts.
Be more strict about the 4 rows rule and tell people who have their own conversations to be quiet. They don't even whisper and it's really rude to you and to everyone trying to listen to you.
Bring cookies for real next time.
Bring up more diverse examples in class, ones that are different from the ones in the lecture notes.
Can't complain.
Could treat questions a little nicer.
Dave needs to watch more movies, his IMDB collection isn't big enough (yet).
Dr. Dave sometimes has diagrams that can get a little confusing. I think more live demos would make most concepts even clearer.
drink less coke
Everything's great!
He could try to provide more after class exercises in addition to the assignments, and that would help us to further enhance our understanding of course concepts.
Hints on assignments would be nice
I can't think of a single improvement. Dave has a solid teaching style that I wouldn't want to see changed in any way. However, there were certain times that Dave wanted to go through a lecture at a brisker pace, but was slowed down by incoming classes. Perhaps one minor change would be to leave questions until the end of lecture, or take some time (say 5-10 minutes), at the beginning of each lecture to allow students to ask questions about previous material.
I honestly don't think there is that much to improve with the instructor, it's mainly just some of the course material. The instructor was perfect.
I think explanations could have been a bit more succinct.
I think it night help if the slides went a little more detail than the course notes. While you explained everything very well, having a bit more of your depth added into your slides could help rather than only using the course notes.
In my opinion, try not to change the way you teach.
As already mentioned by so many others, animated pointer example would be amazing.
it would be better if the instructor could give the lectures in a slower pace
Make exams easier.
Make him teach CS135 in fall too. I was going to drop out of CS because CS135 is so horrible
More "outside-text" example in class
More drawings/visual displays to aid in understanding the topics.
More songs before the class
more visuals on course notes
N/A
no
no comments
No complaints
No improvements needed!
None
None
None !
Not particularly.
Nothing
nothing comes to mind
Nothing, very good teacher.
Nothing... DAVE IS THE MAN
On occasion the timing of the lectures seemed misplaced. Some lectures seemed to be covered very quickly, playing catch-up for others which were covered more slowly. Vary the speed more based on difficult as opposed to tangents!
Perfect.
Possibly avoid sarcastic responses to certain questions which a student might legitimately have.
Possibly go more in detail regarding the more confusing topics. Also, perhaps try to include basic details that may be second nature to experienced programmers, but are not obvious to non-experienced students.
Professor Tompkins sometimes rush through the course notes.
Share some more real-life/workplace stories; it's nice to hear what happens out of the classroom.
Sometimes he was sarcastic and that made it hard to understand what he was trying to convey.
Stay funny.
Teach a little faster
The instructor is so well liked that I believe students will benefit from extra office hours or aside practice questions from him.
Try to stay on track with the course and not spend too much time answering detailed questions.
When talking some hard points of this course, could you give more examples.
When you got the pdf annotator you stood by the stand for most of the lecture. This has gotten better towards the end of the semester but be careful about that going forward.
you're doing great, keep it up!

What were the strong points of the course?

Algorithms and Efficiency.
Assignment questions helped in understanding course material, though they were often very long and required a lot of work (much more than my other math courses)
assignments were helpfull to understand content
clear and concise, with funny comments to make class interesting
Clicker questions and the resulting mark was done much better than CS135. Combined with the bonus from tutorials, they were much less stressful.
Course arrangement (including CS135) is excellent. We always use something we just learnt to solve new problems. In addition, we are avoided to deal with advanced features (vectors, foldl before section 9; heap before section 10) so that we can always explain why we do so.
covers most of the material students want to know and learn
Dave Tompkins.
Definitely learning to think properly about how to solve problems.
Dr. Tompkins' lectures. I thoroughly enjoyed his teaching style, his examples, explanations, drawings and dare I say it? His jokes!
He was very relatable, something I haven't experiences with any of my instructors before.
Drawing the diagrams that steps through the code.
Everything
Everything. Intro to C, extremely well thought of. Everything is linked in a coordinated manner. The slides make sense and everything just works in a good flow.
Fun, interesting, and new material.
Functional/imperative concepts and pointers
Good lecture notes, lots of support.
Good pacing and easy to understand material.
Great explanations of topics.
Humour
I enjoyed the fact we finally got into C, stuff like big O, data storage structures, and the like. Overall, it felt like a more serious and more genuine CS course than 135. Waaaay better than 135.
Imperative programming rules. Way better than functional programming. I didn't cry while doing assignments.
interesting course content
Interesting material, very useful
Interesting materials with a strong focus on theory which is very applicable outside of the language covered.
Interesting topics, pretty good detail on each concept.
Intro to the C programming , easy to catch up if you dont have any prior experience in programming
It taught very useful concepts for computer science. It was very structured and everything a meaning to it.
Iterative programming.
learn not only from instructors but also by myself
Learned a lot of important CS concepts.
Learning a language that's actually useful in the real world
Learning and working with the C programming language, from basic to advanced concepts.
Learning arrays was very useful.
modularization
New content, learning C, having Dave as a professor
Organization of modules
Pretty interesting material
taught lots of core material and practical techniques
The amount of topics covered was just right and I feel adaquetly ready for the real world.
The assignments helped to solidify understanding.
The clicker questions, assignments, and course notes are well designed.
The content was relatable to the real world.
The course covers the important concepts in computer science.
The course is much more closely related to the real world, which was very nice. The concepts were, in general, interesting.
The course went beyond the code and showed how everything worked. I especially enjoyed learning about memory models.
The entire team (instructors, ISAs, etc.) was committed to help the students learn by having lots of office hours and being available on Piazza for a large portion of each day.
The idea of functional programming in an imperative environment.
The lectures were very engaging.
The material challenged me to combine elements learned in different courses and in the previous term.
The material was for the most part understandable and manageable.
The prof is too good.
The professor tried to make us enjoy this course.
Thorough introduction to C
Useful course.
Well structured, great course notes.
wide range of material presented, ties together pretty well

What were the weak points of the course?

A little bit too fast.
Abstract Data Types are kind of boring and syntax is usually not fun to memorize.
Assignment questions are at times fairly ambiguous, and expectations are not always made explicit. Assignments are a bit too long in general.
Assignments took longer than expected to complete.
assignments were too long
Assignments weren't always useful in the way that some questions took too long to get a simple point across. Kind of just seemed like busy work when a simple program could have accomplished the same lesson.
Certain modules seemed out of place, could have been replaced with certain things more important.
For a student who had absolutely no prior coding experience, the course was very difficult to keep up to. Exams seemed timed to students who had prior experience with imperative programming vs those who are new to it.
for the beginner of C, sometimes the course moves too fast that I began to become lost sometime...
I felt like it moved far too slowly for anyone with prior programming experience. The course covered very new content for me. Granted, I can't really think of a way to get around that.
I think that the course would have been more interesting if we did more assignments that were similar to assignments 1 & 10.
I think tutorial should be optional, instead of introducing a bunch of new things and having almost 50% clicker questions.
In general, the assignments seemed slightly misaligned with the lecture material. Often times one or the other sat a far greater or lesser difficulty.
In my opinion when discussing the ASCII system it should have been presented in hexadecimal so there are no magic numbers like 65 and 97 (really 0x41 and 0x61).
lacked conceptually, and as a result, was boring
Learning pointers got confusing at times.
Many of the midterm questions were syntax rather than logic, which doesn't make sense since it is a computer science course and not a C programming course. Since the course was related to algorithms and data structures I feel that C syntax questions did not test what the course was teaching.
maybe homework is too hard
Moved a little fast sometimes.
my tutorial section wasn't very good.
No idea how this could be improved, but pointers in general were a very difficult concept to grasp.
None
None
None I can think of
none i can think of
None!
Nothing
Should've taught more about the approach to solving CS problems rather than the syntax of C.
Some additional materials like section 13 can be uploaded to learn for self-learning as time-consuming but important as they are. Besides, Marmoset only test the final result. For some programs which need several helper functions, these intermediate processes may also should be considered.
Some of the syntax was dull and repetitive.
Some of the topics are explained too briefly, which makes the assignment even more challenging.
sometimes hard to visualize certain concepts (e.g. pointers - animations would help!)
Sometimes moved too slowly, explanation on efficiency was lacking
Sometimes the content is overwhelming
Takes a long time to find out your assignment marks, and with Marmoset it's difficult/inconvenient to check each questions result and handmarking result. With MarkUs it was much better as there was in-line commenting on our code so we could get feedback much more directly, and improve easier.
TAs are not very helpful. They sometimes disappears at the time that they should present in the tutorial centre. Their answers online are not helpful. The assignments require too much work that students have to stay up all night even when they start to work assignment long before the due date. The runC environment is too slow for code editing. The TAs post solutions to assignment and marks very slowly and irresponsibly. They didn't post the marks and solutions the most assignments and clicker questions until midterm finishes. They skip too many problems in the posted solutions.
The course contents are overwhelming.
The course should push students more towards writing (to a higher extent) in 136. complete programs, not simple functions. finish with racket in 135, and do only c
The lack of clarification (and downright confusion) in some of the assignments was definitely a weak point of this course. Some of the wording was unclear, and although it may seem obvious to the instructors what was actually meant, many of us don't have the experience necessary to have this insight. This is a very, very valuable rule I find many instructors don't consider - it's obvious to them because they already know the answer, it isn't nearly as obvious to those without it. They need to put themselves int the mindset of the students to make sure everything is as clear as it should be.
The clicker questions! I understand the use of the clicker questions, however, as a student registered with AccessAbility Services and going into the exam with 95% I often found myself at a loss with so little time to answer the questions. Some hid tricks that were hard to notice and some tested us on material we learned for the first time 10 seconds previously. Not everyone digests new material so quickly and I do not find it fair that even though I attended every class I might not get my full 5% participation mark because of this (the clicker marks aren't updated yet, so I don't know for certain).
The midterm questions was the same difficulty as assignment questions (too difficult).
The notes and Assignment is not that highly related , as some material we have learn by ourselves which the notes don't provide any related example
The text book wasn't very useful.
The transition from Racket to C is a little awkward, especially when you consider the difference in syntax (in-fix vs. prefix). Maybe this is more of a critique of CS135, but I think the transition to C would be easier if the students were introduced to a language that more closely resembles C (i.e., Python).
Too long assingments
Too much assigned work, maybe make some questions optional.
too much material
tutorials did not engage students
Tutorials were painful. The one I attended was led by someone very unfamiliar with the material especially regarding racket. Questions from the class were generally poorly explained. Until around tutorial 9, there was no C coded and run in class. Multiple times we got to clicker questions that he didn't know or understand the answer to. Perhaps reading the slides in advance would be helpful. The only value to them were the bonus to the participation marks. Assignments were much less clear than they should be. Much too often I was asking "What is actually meant by this?" then needing to go to Piazza to find the answer.
Visual aids in certain chapters.
We are not taught how to use libraries, and make anything useful.
We we working in an environment which was slow.
Wish there were more real-world things taught.
Would like do to more involved stuff like File I/O, or maybe use a more applicable language like C++
You're too good.

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.

affected positively, nothing seemed to be wrong
Atmosphere was all good.
Atmosphere was very positively affected by the energy of the instructor. At times, there were students who kept trying to ask questions about things that were in upcoming slides and it becomes a bit annoying.
Class atmosphere was positive, there were several discussion points throughout the term where students could interact with each other, which is also good.
Class atmosphere was positive.
class atmosphere was positively affected by Dave's energy with regards to teaching the material
Class atmosphere was very positive.
EVeryone was adequately respectful
Felt there was a generally positive atmosphere - probably influenced by the prof's eager and charismatic persona.
Fine.
(foldr (lambda (x y) (cons (add1 x) y)) empty lst)
good atmosphere with respect to everyone
Good questions in class usually.
Great, positive atmosphere. Sometimes it felt 'dead' but it was more we the students than the instructor.
Great.
It is affected positively. I enjoyed a lot of the jokes.
It was affect positively.
It was affected by people who had their own conversations or went to lectures and played baseball on their ipad.
It was always a positive environment.
It was good
It was great.
N/A
No
NO
No
No
no
no opinion
No opinion.
No.
No. He did poke fun at himself saying that a student once called him Professor Fatkins but that's about it. It was light-hearted and it was the first day of class.
Nope.
Positive
Positive environment
Positive. Super inclusive.
Positively
positively
Positively
Positively affected
Positively)
Positively.. The class was well behaved.
Professor Dave never kept the atmosphere to serious.
The atmosphere was affected positively.
The class atmosphere is positive and engaging.
The class atmosphere was affected positively by both instructor and students.
The class atmosphere was very welcoming, with no evident issues with regards to any traits.
The class atmosphere was welcoming and comfortable, it was a very involved class that was equally interested in learning.
the class has positive atmosphere, people never talk about those on lecture.
The environment was fine and didn't really affect my learning.
The instructor has made the environment in this class the best one I have ever had the pleasure to be a student in.
the peers are way too smart, which gives me a lot of pressure
Very positive - Dave kept things quite upbeat.
Very positive environment. Humor really makes classes a lot better.
Very positive, very few of my other lectures had the students smiling and enjoying the class.
was not an issue

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

A bit too loud sometimes.
A larger classroom should be used
A very fun class which made me wish I had more room for CS later (As a Double Degree I become rather restricted.)
Amazing Prof
Best professor I've had so far
Bretty gud, m8.
class could have been a bit smaller but this seemed to work just fine
Class size was good and populated. Chairs and desks were comfortable. RCH is a convenient location for me.
Class size was huge, noise level was more than the desired level.
Class was good.
Classroom needed more whiteboard space
Everything was convenient
Generally good, it's a first year course, it's never great.
Good room, class size was a little full since it was a full lecture.
Great prof!! Definitely cares about teaching properly.
Great.
I think so far, it's ok.
I think the tablet was a good solution to lack of board space in the room (RCH 307). I think Dave's use of analogies to relate to various topics was a large help.
I was one of the 22 that said no. Some of us just do not want to make promises.
It was a good class.
it would be better if there are plug seats in the classroom
It's been a pleasure. Thanks Dave!
Marmoset (or markus) should provide the overall correctness marks of an assignment. Maybe a mail alert whenever a second try is available?
my section was brightly lit, but there was not a lot of whiteboard space, while the first section had whiteboard space but was crowded and the front row seats were too close.
N/A
N/A
N/A.
Need a projector and enough space to draw on a whiteboard!! Instructor made excellent use of drawings without enough space for a whiteboard though. Really loved the class! Thanks for a great term.
Need a whiteboard
NO
no comments, good
No computer plugs in the room :(
no opinion
No reasonable complaints w.r.t. class size. Room was excellent.
No.
None
None
None.
Nope
Not enough white board room when using the projector. More while board room would have made class easier and allowed for better teaching
Outlets accessible anywhere in the class would be nice
RCH is a dungeon. There was no whiteboard space for Dave Tompkins to write on.
Room was way too small, get a bigger class so more people can enjoy Dave's awesome lectures (let him lecture to all students so they have equal opportunity to do well).
Size of class was a bit large, but I was still able to hear Dr. Dave from the back.
Stay awesome Dave. I hope you teach upper year courses.
The class was great.
The classroom did not have adequate space on the board.
The Explainations are aimed too high for the 1st part of the course(the parts before midterm) and aimed too low for the 2nd part.
Course notes should contain more detailed explanations on the functions mentioned, the sample functions, etc.
The noise level can get quite loud at times, but it is nothing that can't be fixed.
The noise level was a little high at the back of the classroom, but the lectures were still audible.
The room assigned to our particular class had a gargantuan projection screen and very little white board to work with. For future courses, I recommend ensuring that the classroom always has enough board space to draw proper diagrams (i.e., linked lists, trees, etc).
We might need more board space
WOULD LIKED TO HAVE MORE WHITE BOARD SPACE (for us and for Dave)!

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