Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2015 Spring :: CS 100

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2015 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:

Similar to Winter 2015, no changes were made to the course as I was researching and developing new material.

These evaluations are really more of an evaluation of the course, and not me.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 42 / 225 (19%)

Responses:

Course materials were presented in an organised manner.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
14	13	10	2	3
33%	31%	24%	5%	7%

Expectations for learning were clearly communicated.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
9	18	8	4	3
21%	43%	19%	10%	7%

The assignments, activities, and content helped me achieve the stated learning objectives.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
11	19	7	1	4
26%	45%	17%	2%	10%

The assignments contributed to my learning.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
18	16	7	1
43%	38%	17%	2%

Feedback on course assignments contributed to my learning.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
5	12	12	6	6
12%	29%	29%	15%	15%

Technology was used effectively for learning in the course.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
11	20	4	4	2
27%	49%	10%	10%	5%

The general climate in the course was good for learning.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
8	17	8	5	3
20%	41%	20%	12%	7%

The instructor related to students in a way that promoted mutual respect.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
8	15	14		4
20%	37%	34%		10%

The instructor's explanations were clear and understandable.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
6	15	12	4	4
15%	37%	29%	10%	10%

The instructor was helpful to students seeking assistance.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
6	17	14	2	2
15%	41%	34%	5%	5%

Overall, I learned a great deal from this course.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
5	23	9	2	3
12%	55%	21%	5%	7%

Overall, I learned a great deal from the instructor.
Strongly agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly disagree
4	9	20	4	4
10%	22%	49%	10%	10%

This course is:
required	elective
7	35
17%	83%

On average, I spent x hours per week working on this course.
Significantly less than 10 hours	Less than 10 hours	Around 10 hours	More than 10 hours	Significantly more than 10 hours
8	18	13	2	1
19%	43%	31%	5%	2%

Comments:

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

What grade do you expect in this course? (percentage 1%...100%)

65%
70
70
75%
75%
78%
78%
80
80
80
80
80
80
80%
80%
80%
80%
80%
80%
80-85%
85
85
85
85
>85%
85%
85%
85%
85% or higher
88%
90
90%
90%
90%
91
92%
About an 80-85%
hopefully I pass. the final is worth too much for a class where we have to teach ourselves
I hope to get a 75%

In your opinion the strengths of this course are:

Able to communicate basic lessons and able to look into the material when I am stumped on a question.
clear instructions on how to complete assignments - assignments contributed towards more in-depth learning ability to access functions in excel
Convenient access of study materials
Course materials are easy to follow.
Covering a wide variety of computational areas of study. The topics being taught in the course are really interesting Microsoft Excel portion of the course
Covers alot of casual level computing assignments applied learning from the modules. How applicable the learning is to real life
Covers alot of different material that would be helpful in real life, especially in a business setting.
Covers many concepts of computers in an intro to cs course.
Flexible time
Good diversity of information ranging from Excel to simple webpages and wikis. Learning basic skills
na
none
Practice questions throughout the modules helped to think about the material being presented but not having answers to them mad it difficult to tell if we were on the right track.
Quick responses from the ISAs and clear communication between us - modules related to excel were extremely helpful for a business student - Covered a broad range of programs
Straight forward.
TA availibilty
Teaching core skills such as excel, basic html, and wikiartiacle design. suitable
The course is elaborate and provides extensive exercises to help students with learning. modules were well organized and ISAs were very helpful
The later course content on HTML, Wiki Text and Web crawling was interesting.
The modules arent that long to read through making it easier to sit down and concentrate. organization
the organization, and the videos

In your opinion the weaknesses of this course are:

A few times, the ISAs made significant errors in marking my assignments/short answers - roughly 20-30% mark difference. Also, I experienced an input mark error where my mark shown in my gradesbook deviated from the dropbox mark. These experiences were extremely frustrating as I got confused with why my submitted answers were wrong and the errors had a great effect on my mark. Modules like 6, 7 and 10 were over cluttered with text and it was quite confusing to follow along sometimes.
access to help is weak answering questions via emails is slow marking is flawed (several mistakes made with solutions) unreasonable marking in cases where there was disagreements in terms of clarity of instructions Countless. I'm in my final year of undergrad, taking my last required course for my degree, and I learned more from my multiple co-op terms at a tech company than I did taking this course. The course material was poorly written and hard to understand just by reading. The instructions for practice exercises weren't thorough and made completing the PRACTICE exercises impossible. What instructor? I experienced no interaction with the course instructor, so I had to fill out my answers above as needed. I do congratulate the TAs, as they were speedy with replies to questions and marking. But as far as online learning goes, this was the most difficult course for me to navigate through and actually comprehend. I know it must be difficult to conduct a lecture for this course, but I found myself often wishing for an on-campus alternative where I can interact with the material (and the instructor) more directly.
any math explanations whatsoever
Difficult to learn the material by heart due to lack of practice.
During the last few weeks of the course, the material was a bit more ambiguous and the grammar of some questions of the quizzes were not easy to understand.
everything
I felt the wiki portion didn't have enough depth.
Is that the course is only in a reading fromat with 1-5, mostly on excel and ven diagram. In addition we have to read an entire book about search engines, which is kind of an over kill on he reading side.
Lack of direct/forced interaction. n/a
Lecture content very dull and boring to read. Had to google how to do a lot of things. Did not explain several things clearly. Should had a video explaning how to create a wiki page. No idea how to create one.
Many of the questions were such fine points that it was difficult to answer the question even if I did the reading. Doing the reading was marginally beneficial.
na
Part a of the assignments were ofter very confusing due to the way they were asked too much work
Readings are largely unimportant
Sometimes it gets hard when there are question arised, requires more time to solve.
Sometimes the material was hard to understand and not clear. There are some errors within the module notes
The assignments for the online course were presented in a manner that was unacceptable. Particularly the Excel part of the course. Why would you take a screen shot of an excel page rather than just provide me with the excel page? It made no sense made the questions undoable for me. If you notice my mark distribution, I lost most of my marks on Part B of the Excel weeks. Another point about the excel section of the course is that the functions that we were trying to solve in much of Part C for those weeks were super unnecessary and I will never use. Why are you wasting my time on super difficult to code functions that I will never use when I can 100000000 times easier use a calculator or mental math? My time spent on the one assignment I did horrible on probably exceeds the time spent on all of the other assignments combined. The questions were screenshots of the excel page and made me write an unusually hard code for something that I could calculate in my head within 15 seconds. Some of the multiple choice questions were worded extremely poorly. This resulted in myself selecting the wrong answer for a few of them. Additionally, it the multiple choice was usually littered with spelling mistakes. The rest of the course other than the excel section was put together appropriately. Although it does take an extremely long time to get marks back.
The length of the assignments and how critically theyre marked
The material is hard to understand by just reading, I feel as though this course should be more "doing" than "reading" (ie. practive problems)
The material presented in the modules were very different fromt the quizzes and assignments - A lot of the learning was to be done on our own using alternative websites and searching through Google - Excel was an extremely difficult unit, especially for
The practise examples are not complex enough to assist with learning. more feedback on the assignments would have been nice
The presentation of course materials are weak. A lot of the material is badly worded. The multiple choice answers to several of the questions are very subjective. When provided proof that was stated in the course material to the ISAs was still considered wrong. The answers to the multiple choice were wrong multiple times and had to ask the ISAa why answers were wrong when clearly right. Stated it was a mistake and be changed later.
The readings- all of them seem lifeless and almost painful to read. Hardly anything is taught through them, we are just instructed to read and figure it out ourselves.
very dry material. too many assignments.
(WikiText). Some of the information provided isn't consistent.
would of much rather had an on campus lecture than online

The instructor would like to know what specific things you believe might be done to improve the teaching of this course:

all other online classes I have taken have had online lectures to listen to. just giving us the information and having to teach ourselves the information is lazy
definitly make it an on campus course
Double check the content provided, and make some of the files user-friendly for Mac users.
Ease students into the Excel module. I found it went from Level 1 Excel functions and then accelerated to Level 99
Ensure correct marking scheme are used when marking assignments/short answers - Train ISAs to Ensure minimal marking errors occur to students (to minimize confusion as well) - more concise text/information for the modules rather than a long clump of text
Excel expectations. I have worked with Excel before, but still found it difficult to follow along in these modules. Offer more transparent and accessible on-campus alternatives. I know this might not be an option for some students, but I often wished that there was a weekly tutorial of some sort so I could practice some of the functions taught in this course in a collaborative learning environment with the help of TAs. I feel like many students (especially those students who are local or on-campus) might benefit from this. Offering a resubmit for some assignments. Providing the opportunity for students to resubmit their assignments with corrections might aid in the learning process - especially after a particularly difficult module.
For weeks 10-11, some more examples and thorough teachings of the intracacy matrix and such should be explained more in depth. This is because usually I refer to google to answer some questions but even the results from google did not help me understand some concepts.
futher explain any math formulas used, found it was extremely difficult when basic math question were used in examples and then assignments required more advanced thinking without explanations.
Give more practice problems, its hard to learn something when you are only given one problem to practice with. less assignments
Have more detailed instructions for learning the content.
have office hours that are on campus and not just based on request. regular office hours just like every other course at waterloo. It is even more essential seeing as this course is online. Having the lecture content be videos with audio and explained examples instead of just written words titling the modules.
I thoroughly enjoyed your course. Your TAs reply significantly better than my other course. Please keep the format.
If an assignment require to create a web page, there should be a video that helps the student to start the basics. Was really lost and frustrated trying to figure it out.
Incorporate some video content in the course material.
Instructions to certain assignments were unclear that allowed for mistakes made by students.
Keep the modules consistent. Outline major terms that students should keep in mind, instead of trying to hide them within the text. Students will most likely use the Search function anyways.
Make a video as if you are lecturing us about the material in class. Split the readings over the course and don over kill it by assigning the course of 50 pages for one week, and be realistic in your expectations of what students should read. By that I mean that don't make the lecture redicously boring and add to that more boredom by reading books
More communication between students, TAs and instructors?
More optional practise questions would be handy. no suggestions
more videos
na
Redesign and rethink the entire way you teach excel for the online course
reorganize the order of the modules. the excel weeks were by far the most difficult part of this course, and was introduced very early on in the course.
Should review the material and reread questions and course material for clarity, grammar, sentence flow, and wording. Remove options of all of the above/none of the above options as they do nothing to provide students with effective answers.
Show detailed videos on how to do nested functions in Excel (to the degree of difficulty we have to show in our assignments and quizzes) Have the modules show the same difficulty as the assignments. Students often had to ask one another and use YouTube videos to explain the material even after spedning a few hours re-reading the modules.
Suggest having a case study for some of the topics. N/A
Teach it - have recordings of the instructor going through each module and explaining the point of it and what keys to focus on. We should not have to teach ourselves a course we paided this much for.

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