Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2016 Fall :: CS 100

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2016 Fall :: 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:

This term was originally suppsed to be a leisurely term where I was solely teaching CS 100 and I could focus on completing the videos for the course.

Instead, I took on three additional sections of CS 136, which significantly increased my workload. While I continued to produce a few new videos for the course, I did not complete all of the videos I had planned.

Unfortunately, they continued to use the same Math Faculty evaluations that they use for in-class courses.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 117 / 358 (33%)

Characteristics of the Instructor:

Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
51	49	11	1		4
44%	42%	9%	1%		3%

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?
Too high	Somewhat too high	Just right	Somewhat too low	Too low	No opinion
4	16	87	4	2	3
3%	14%	75%	3%	2%	3%

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
24	40	17	2	1	26
22%	36%	15%	2%	1%	24%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.).
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
38	48	17	3	1	8
33%	42%	15%	3%	1%	7%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
46	46	10	2		7
41%	41%	9%	2%		6%

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
17	11	16	4	2	61
15%	10%	14%	4%	2%	55%

Did you find the course interesting?
Very Interesting	Interesting	Not interesting	No opinion
38	68	8	2
33%	59%	7%	2%

Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
42	55	9	2	2	4
37%	48%	8%	2%	2%	4%

Characteristics of the Course:

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?
90-100%	75-90%	50-75%	25-50%	< 25%
90	4	2		2
92%	4%	2%		2%

Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No work assigned	No opinion
55	55	3	1	2
47%	47%	3%	1%	2%

Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No printed course notes	No opinion
28	24	3	33	19
26%	22%	3%	31%	18%

Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No text required	No opinion
8	6	2	68	23
7%	6%	2%	64%	21%

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
4	13	94	1	3	2
3%	11%	80%	1%	3%	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
6	18	89	2		1
5%	16%	77%	2%		1%

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
17	82	18
15%	70%	15%

Question-Specific Comments:

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?

[Just right] Everything was good until we go to style sheets. I had a lot of practical trouble with them I had not had previously and had not budgeted the extra time to deal with them I needed.
[Just right] some of the topics I wish were explained more, although I feel that the majority of the topics were aimed at a level that was just right.
[Somewhat too high] Some of the HTML content seemed over our heads, especially for students that had never been exposed to CS at all. I found that the modules weren't overly helpful in applying these topics either. Maybe you could scale it back a little, seeing as this is an introductory course.
[Too high] the later module we're hard to understand. Module 8 and so on. Complex material needs to be broken down more. Youtube videos with more complicated examples for those modules would be helpful.

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.

[Satisfactory] No answers were correct for one question on a quiz. I brought it to the attention of the TA's and I was penalized for not picking the most correct answer... most correct is fairly subjective, in my opinion I had picked the most correct. Was told I still had a good score on the quiz so it wouldn't matter. But it does matter to students.
[Unsatisfactory] Instructor didn't really answer questions. It was TA's mainly, and sometimes they were very slow in replying.

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.

[Excellent] His videos were funny and he had very good analogies
[Excellent] The videos are amazing. Some of the humour thrown in makes it more interesting when watching and taking notes.

Was the instructor available for help outside of class?

[Never] The TAs were available, but the professor was not.

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?

[90-100%] No lectures; online
[90-100%] Online class
[90-100%] Online course
[90-100%] This was an online course, but I have watched all the videos if that counts as attending the lectures.
[No Answer] There were no lectures
[No Answer] this was a online

Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content?

[Helpful] I would have liked more practice though.
[Helpful] If anything the assignments taught us more than the videos. I found that a lot of the time what is required in the assignments wasn't even taught properly and you have to figure it out on your own.
[Helpful] some of the assignments were more difficult than the modules. The modules didn't explain thoroughly to do a great job on the assignments, a lot of extra researching went into some assignments
[Helpful] the quizzes were not very helpful but by completing assignments I gained a greater understanding of the course material.

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?

[Okay] the topic of excel was not very much new material, much was covered in grade 9 business that I took, but the website and survey making was a lot of new material, overall I think the material balanced out to just the right amount of new material to be learned.

Was the amount of assigned work required for the course appropriate?

[Somewhat too much] Some weeks the quizzes involving coding were a higher difficulty than expected. I enjoyed it, but it did take up more time than I had expected.

On average, how many hours per week did you spend on this course outside of lectures?

[3-6 hours] I spent time reviewing the notes and videos and working on assignments. The quizzes were quite short and did not require much time.

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.

All the videos were very descriptive, and helpful when it came to doing the assignments.
Came across very passionate about research
Lectures were easy to follow
Did a great job explaining concepts and using metaphors for examples.
engaging instructor!
Engaging.
Explained concepts well in the videos and readings.
Fast with email replies.
Funny and engaging (ex. rickrolling)
Give details about the assignment. Sometimes, it was hard to understand the assignment.
Good analogies
good explanation of the content
Good explanations of course content via videos.
Good video tutorials
Great and interesting lectures!
Great at explaining complex CS concepts with examples
Great energy and really cares about the success of the students
Great explanation
Great online videos and explanations are at a perfect level. For the most part, very engaging.
Great presentation of course materials
Great presentations, easy to understand lectures, made course content easy enough for beginners to understand
Great sense of humour
I love the video tutorials on YouTube, I found those very engaging in terms of the oral presentation and the graphics (with funny jokes sometimes, too!) and they were helpful in understanding the course content
I really liked the lecture videos and the mood they gave off.
I really loved the videos he posted because they were funny and entertaining while getting points across related to the course.
Instructor has structured the course in a very logical way. Progression from one module to the next is very good.
Modules were made really well
Nice videos.
Online video lessons were usually pretty well done
Quite clear in his videos.
Real world examples helped me understand content (ex: post card example)
Straight forward modules and assignments.
The ability to engage the student in his video lectures and to bring engaging facts and memes into relevant content.
The course itself was very interesting and a great beginner course to learn about computer science.
The humour in your videos made it a lot more relatable/easier to learn.
The instructions, notes, and videos were very informative and easy to follow.
The instructor is very engaging.
The instructor was very engaging, and he was enthusiastic when explaining the material. He also plugged in funny jokes here and there which helped me stay interested in the course content.
The online presentation was entertaining and kept me focused. I would have liked a transcript of the video presentations.
The predone lectures were good but the TAs were very useless.
The structure of this course is excellent. Assignments are always related to course modules and easy to complete with the provided guidelines.
The video lectures were very good. I enjoyed my time observing them.
The video lectures were well presented; both fluent and clear.
The videos are really great. They're very informative and the examples given are very helpful. The enthusiasm in the videos is transferred into my learning
The videos are very easy to understand
The videos were nicely done. The explanations were very clear which was really helpful.
Use of videos to explain concepts.
Very clear. Makes the examples funny and interesting.
Videos were done well and felt very personal.
videos were entertaining to watch if played in 1.5x speed
Well organized!
Written modules and YouTube videos were helpful for the quizzes, but sometimes were not helpful for actually applying the theory in the practical assignments.

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

A little more clear on some of the grammar rules and more practice with them in class
all is good
Being consistent to presenting information, such as video or website or do both.
Break up longer videos into shorter ones if possible
Do more examples that are similar to assigment questions please
Do YouTube videos for coding
For some of the videos, it would have been easier to read text because it was a hassle to replay a part over and over again.
For the last few units the lessons did not explain how to do the assignments
His teaching was really interesting and informative at the same time. It was a helpful experience in understanding the basic ideas about basic ideas of computer science.
HTML documents to present the information are a little boring.
I don't know who's fault it was when deadlines for assignments coming out or being graded weren't met but that was annoying as a student.
I feel maybe perhaps when notes were given for a specific assignment, maybe more picture could have been added.
I found no issue with any of it.
I honestly do not think that he could improve anything. He enunciated everything clearly and explained course material well. The only thing is that he sometimes spoke too slow but I found that this was a good thing because I could play it at 1.25x speed if I needed to.
I liked the videos and the humour of the instructor
I think there could be more direct relation between the module content and the assignments.
I would have liked course notes and youtube videos for everything, but mainly course notes.
If you could include videos as well as text explanations on a seperate page, it would be really beneficial.
It would be more beneficial to have side notes for video lectures to ensure that no important details are missed.
It would be nice to get some additional feedback on submitted assignments. I would like to know where I lost marks
Maybe giving notes along with the videos
n/a
N/A
N/A
N/a
NA
None
Nothing really.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Please have a transcript or actual written instructions along with the youtube videos. Sometimes it was really difficult to understand the concept without actually seeing it writing.
Possibly have text version of lectures as well? In case videos aren't accesible
some of the videos can be explained better the quiz questions asked for definitions and such so i had to google some of them because the explanation was clear
Sometimes, the videos or the lecture notes were not quite enough to fully interpret what the assignment required.
The HTML module was not explained as well as it could have been especially to students who are new to learning it. I had to google/youtube alot if it to understand
The instructor could sow down his pace of covering the material .
The latter parts of modules became more difficult from lack of clarity and examples.
Transcript the videos so you can read instead of watching
Using seperate videos are easier for review. Some modules was not separatef into a lot of videos.
When we received our marks back, i just wish we had a way of knowing where we went wrong and what we did that led us to get that mark. We did get some feedback but it was very vague. Other than that everything was fine!

What were the strong points of the course?

Applicable assignments, interesting content
Assignments reinforced learning.
- Course structure
- Variety of assignments
- Relatability of assignments to course content
- Reasonable assignment length for time given to complete
flexible for the students
Fun topics and interesting lecture by the instructor
Getting students to translate the knowledge based content into real products.
Good course organization for each module
Good pace for students who doesnt have experience in cs.
Great course for beginners in CS and useful material.
I learned a lot of computer skills that can be useful for a science student like myself.
I loved the 50 minute class time
Professor was great
It was interesting! I learned many new things!
It was on the computer.
Learned a lot about HTML, and excel
Learned a lot of basic computer skills
Learned useful functions of excel and programming in HTML
Learned useful skills for excel, html and css.
learning excel skills
Lectures and interesting material
Made topics that were taught very easy to understand by using relatable examples.
Material and presentation.
Module content was broken down in ways that were easy to digest
Organized
Relevant and practical information and presentation of the information
Short and straight to the point lectures.
Textbook was great
That it was online. Very clear information.
That there were a variety of types of notes and that ISAs answered quickly.
The application assignments were good.
The assignments were all very useful in learning the concepts discussed in the modules.
the assignments were very useful for learning the material.
The content.
The course is a very helpful one, and I learned a lot from it. The professor was engaging.
The excel module was really good in teaching the important things you can do with excel. Probably the most beneficial module/
The excel portion was useful as I see myself using the knowledge I have gained through that in the real world.
The material taught was a good foundation for basic computing.
The videos and assignments to understand the questions
The written modules made it easy to understand the code and could focus on learning instead of taking notes on the videos.
the youtube video format was much better than the reading
The YouTube videos
Tough course made simple for beginners
Useful
variety of content
Very informative and a lot of new content to be learned for someone who never took CS in high school. Very helpful and taught many things.
Very interesting, engaging and helpful
Very useful material, very practical
Videos added value to the content.
Weekly assignments, ensured I was on track and kept up with the course.

What were the weak points of the course?

Content could get dull at times
Don't think there were any
Exam on paper rather than computers, review session felt rushed
Excel portion doesn't feel useful.
Explanations were weak in HTML module
How to make the quiz could have had a little more instruction.
HTML coding... absolutely horrible for me to understand
I don't really like the Assignments where we simply answer long/short-answer questions. It would be nice to have content being tested in more practical applications rather than just replaying the video to find answers to write.
Lacked conceptual notes and rather there were a lot of examples.
Marking.
n/a
n/a
Need to wait a while for feedback.
No human interactions
No practice
No transcript or written lectures? Powerpoint or PDF would be very helpful along with videos.
None.
nothing
Nothing.
Online, so individual assignment feedback wasn't provided.
Please provide feedback to the students of what answers were wrong for quizzes. Knowing you didn't get questions correct, but not knowing which is difficult to learn from.
Some assignments could be a little tedious but I still enjoyed them.
Some of the assignments were time consuming that I had to spend too much time on doing one assignment.
Some of the breakdowns for assignments were vague [ SOME most were fine]
Some of the content may still seem a bit foreign to students and additional explanation could be provided.
Some portions of the course content were somewhat difficult to understand without a video, such as the HTML modules.
Sometimes I could have used more time to complete assignments.
Sometimes the ISA's would reply later than expected but they were still very helpful
Sometimes there would be too many topics introduced in one week.
TA's never answered questions in a timely fashion, not open to appointments
The final is worth way too much for a course based on a computer. I would rather have a large project with the same weighting.
The lack of clearness in some of the assignments created a vague feeling when attempting them.
The material sometimes was too complicated.
The website building just as it is not something that I will need, not that it was boring or anything.
too many assignments
too much focus on excel.
Tutorials were redundant and could use better excerses
Very dense information to learn in a short period of time
We didn't receive any feedback on our assignments! A rubric would be posted, but it would be a lot more helpful for the TA's to fill out rubrics for each students assignments so we could see where we went wrong.
Weak points would be having to teach assignment tasks to myself.
Workload is somewhat much
Youtube videos are a drag to watch. I much prefer notes.

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.

10/10
Affected positively because of instructor's uplifting attitude.
Although online course was fun, but could have been better if it was a regular lecture.
Can't tell. This was an online course
Enthusiasm in instructor videos made learning positive.
I thought the class atmosphere was positively affected as the instructor seemed very passionate about research
If anything the affect was positive with the lecture videos having an upbeat tone and the sample quizzes and HTML pages being fun.
It was an online class.
It was an online course but my TA was great so overall was a positive experience.
It was online, we did not know each other.
N'a
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
No
No class atmosphere
No class.
No class.
No opinion. There wasn't any class interaction as this was an online course.
none
not to sure. took it online
Online course
Online course so not much
online course, no opinion
Online course.
Online.
Postiive
Since this was an online class, the class atmosphere were only present during videos which was always positive.
The general atmosphere of the class was very positive.
this was an online class.
Was online.

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

Again, this was an online course.
Great course, really enjoyed it!
I loved this course.
ISA didn't help much in chat rooms; most didn't answer at all when i asked questions
It was an online class.
It was online, this is not applicable.
Love the room
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/S
NA
No
No
no opinion
No opinion. There wasn't any class interaction as this was an online course.
none
none
None.
Nothing.
Online course
Online course
online course so n/a
Online course.
Online.
please and kindly stop letting random people in the room so that the people that are supposed to be there can have seat. This can be done by making sure that reef points go to people at their assigned class time.
super noisy in the classroom
The professor was very nice and funny in his videos, therefore it didn't make them boring but fun to watch.

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