Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2017 Fall :: CS 135

Dave Tompkins :: Teaching :: 2017 Fall :: CS 135 - 006

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:

I was really looking forward to this term, and it did not disappoint me. In my very first term at Waterloo (fall 2011) I taught with Byron, Ian, Troy and Craig and it was an incredible experience. At the time, I didn't realize just how special it was that a first year course was being taught by such extraordinary faculty members. We would often reminisce about that term, referring to ourselves as the "Dream Team". In 2015, Ian proposed that we "get the band back together" and so we all agreed to teach CS 135 again in the fall 6 years later. We were joined by Paul who was an incredibly hard worker as well.

In short, the term went very well. However, it was a tremendous amount of work. The assignments were ambitious, and because everyone was so experienced, we had many thorough discussions relating to the course content. Personally, I had a lot of other responsibilities (home life, teaching another course, advising and committee work) that I often found myself overwhelmed during the term, but it was very worthwhile.

As per my ongoing tradition, I showed 5 minutes of a movie before each lecture. This term the students voted for The Lego Batman Movie (Sec 006) and Kubo and the Two Strings (Sec 003).

Correction: one student accidentally entered an evaluation for a different course. The student emailed me, but their evaluation could not be changed. I removed that evaluation from these results, so the data on this website differs from the "official" results posted elsewhere.

Teaching Evaluations:

Number of Respondents: 62 / 82 (76%)

Characteristics of the Instructor:

Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
46	14	2
74%	23%	3%

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?
Too high	Somewhat too high	Just right	Somewhat too low	Too low	No opinion
1	9	51	1
2%	15%	82%	2%

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
45	13	4
73%	21%	6%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.).
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
51	9	2
82%	15%	3%

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
54	8
87%	13%

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
30	11	1			20
48%	18%	2%			32%

Did you find the course interesting?
Very Interesting	Interesting	Not interesting	No opinion
38	23	1
61%	37%	2%

Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher.
Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory	Very poor	No opinion
50	11	1
81%	18%	2%

Characteristics of the Course:

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?
90-100%	75-90%	50-75%	25-50%	< 25%
55	7
89%	11%

Was the assigned work (assignments, projects, etc.) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No work assigned	No opinion
41	21
66%	34%

Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No printed course notes	No opinion
22	14	2	20
38%	24%	3%	34%

Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content?
Very helpful	Helpful	Not helpful	No text required	No opinion
9	12	16	19
16%	21%	29%	34%

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?
Too much	Somewhat too much	Okay	Somewhat too little	Too little	No opinion
1	16	41	3	1
2%	26%	66%	5%	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
5	30	27
8%	48%	44%

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
	8	32	12	10
	13%	52%	19%	16%

Question-Specific Comments:

Evaluate the organization and coherence of the lectures.

[Excellent] Lectures were hella coherent and organized.
[Good] The pace went a bit too fast during lists and accumulative recursion but eventually became more clear as the course progressed.

At what level were the instructor's explanations aimed?

[Just right] Although sometimes there was some material not explained because there was the assumption that each student was either in Math or CS, some people in the class, including myself, were from other faculties which don't take the Math courses necessary to know these facts.
[Just right] Explanations were hella tight.
[Just right] If it's possible give a brief description of things that are related to MATH 135, not everyone in CS 135 is taking it
[Just right] Obviously less difficult than the assignments but it could sometimes help if they could be a bit more helpful with assignments

Evaluate the instructor's treatment of students' questions.

[Excellent] Responds to all questions with a good answer
[Excellent] Your answers to the students' questions were some of the highlights of class (to represent that an x in lambda wasn't being used you labelled it ignore-me-im-useless and I have never related to anything more in my life).
[Satisfactory] Sometimes was inconsistent with time allotted towards questions. Would spend too much time on some questions, and would not have time to answer others. (For example, a clicker question towards the beginning of the course of translating an expression into racket had a discussion that lasted way too long)

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's visual presentation (blackboard, overheads, etc.).

[Excellent] As previously mentioned in an example: excellent content used to remember concepts and make learning more clear and understandable. Won't ever forget that writing recursive code is like jumping off a cliff and hoping you don't die.
[Excellent] Good diagrams(clones)
[Excellent] Lego Batman gave me more motivation in life than it probably should have.
[Excellent] Really liked the examples of DrRacket not shown on the course notes, proved to be helpful in understanding.

Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructor's oral presentation.

[Excellent] Low voice high voice functions. That's all.
[Excellent] Super loud and engaging
[Excellent] Thank you for the added humour, that actually helped me to stay focused.
[Excellent] Too funny

Did you find the course interesting?

[Very Interesting] All the concepts learned could be tied back to lambda and very basic things learned in the last bit of the course. Also good intro to later years
[Very Interesting] I drew a meme in racket. Pepe to be exact. So yeah, the course was pretty interesting.
[Very Interesting] The course started off somewhat dry and too easy, but picked up in a nice way when the unique features of functional languages were brought up. Dave did a really good job at keeping even the boring content interesting.

Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instructor as a teacher.

[Excellent] 13/10 best prof I've ever and probably will ever have. You set the standards way too high Dave I'm only in first year.
[Excellent] Love Dave

What proportion of lectures did you attend in this course?

[90-100%] clickers........ but also lego batman..... and Dave's jokes
[90-100%] Dave's classes are the only classes whose lectures I've never skipped.

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

[Helpful] The first few assignments felt too easy, but the assignments reached a nice level of difficulty (especially with trie.rkt).
[Helpful] We could have been better prepared for assignment 7, as the process of doing it was extremely frustrating
[Very helpful] Assignments are sometimes very tricky but they definitely help me become much better at CS.
[Very helpful] I drew a meme.
[Very helpful] The assignments are good practice for learning the language and sometimes are a preview for what you learn later on

Were the printed notes (if any) helpful in learning the course content?

[Very helpful] shouldn't have bought the course notes since I only every looked at the slides I downloaded on the computer but the content itself was useful overall. Next time maybe mention that the physical course notes are exactly what's on the slides and maybe students can save like $30 (do you know how many chicken nuggets I can buy with $30?!!?!)

Was the required textbook (if any) helpful in learning the course content?

[Helpful] I only read the textbook for the first two assignments. With the workload it gets a bit difficult to also read it before doing the assignments. If possible I recommend trying to read it before doing assignments
[Not helpful] Since the textbook has different rules for style guide, it was barely used and often caused confusion due to the difference in style.
[Not helpful] Textbook looked to complicated and so I focused on lecture slides instead
[Not helpful] Textbook only useful for practice problems.
[Very helpful] I used the racket help thing a lot, not really the actual textbook though (lol what's a reading).

Did the course introduce an appropriate amount of new material?

[Okay] A good amount of material was introduced, just a little bit confusing at times
[Okay] racket is pretty cool I must say, A9 and tries were rough but otherwise I guess it was fine.
[Somewhat too much] Near the end it got really difficult to keep up because the level of difficulty of the content went up and it felt little rushed.

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

[Somewhat too much] Felt like the work became hard after A8, A7 was the breakeven point
[Somewhat too much] I felt as if more time should be permitted to the later assignments, as it is clear that the difficulty has ramped immensely in comparison the earlier assignments. I'd recommend maybe giving more time towards the last few assignments maybe starting from trees.
[Somewhat too much] It could be me but i spent a lot of time on the assignments and it made the term very stressful for me, leaving me to not even completing a few. Is possible if you dedicate the right amount of time but if you have other things going on is difficult.
[Somewhat too much] Some of the assignments were really hard and time consuming, but was a fair amount overall.
[Somewhat too much] The weekly assignments were too much because there were often interference with other courses. Additionally if you didn't get to complete one you didn't really have time to go back and learn the material because you had to start the next one and since each assignment builds on the previous, it became harder to do them.
[Somewhat too much] tries.......

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

[> 15 hours] Assignments can get hard (assignment 7 *cough cough)
[> 15 hours] New to programming

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.

A very funny and friendly guy, gave me a really good idea about the difference between high school and university in terms of teachers.
Ability to make lectures both entertaining and educational
Dave does a tremendous job of explaining concepts, and is also hilarious as he does so.
Dave has an amazing teaching personality that keeps you interested in what he's teaching. I never noticed how good he was at keeping my attention until we had a guest lecturer who was good, but could not keep my attention.
Dave is a really engaging professor. He explains the knowledge vividly and clearly while making the difficult stuff easier. He also creates a light-hearted atmosphere which is suitable for study.
Dave is extremely organised but doesn't seem like it so work is done properly and systematically without the feeling of robotic-ness. He's pretty great at everything, really. Also, his cousin is cool.
Dave is very energetic about this course and the materials covered which makes the students to pay attention. Dave's lectures are the least boring among others.
Dave maintained a high level of energy in the class, which made it very interesting to sit in that lecture. Also, his idea of playing Lego Batman encouraged me to come to class five minutes before time to avoid entering the class while people were so absorbed in the movie.

Also, I can never forget his high voice and low voice for mutual recursion. That was one of the funniest moments in class.
Dave was a baller. Went out of his way to keep the mood lightened up, and to keep the class engaged. He constantly finds new ways to help us ingest the information with little things. And it's the little things that I really enjoyed in this course in general.
design recipe
Dr. Tompkins was an excellent instructor who always made a genuine effort to help students understand and was very clear with his work
Efficient and precise teaching style, ensures we all understand the content and fixes lecture material if we don't.
Entertain the classroom while teaching material.
Enthusiasm
Everything, he made the course very interesting
Everything. He was very interesting and explained everything well. Went at a good speed.
Excellent oral communication skills and explanation! Loved the examples (recursion, etc)
Explaining things in a very easy to follow and sometimes funny manner.
funny, excellent illustrations and clear explanations
Good at explaining topics and programming ideas (giving metaphors/similes for what a program will do). Walked us through racket solutions and code. Also adding a movie at the beginning of class was also interesting too.
Good explanation of recursion in general
Good metaphors for visualising concepts (clones) and good advice (leap of faith)
He is well organized and expalins the course material very well
He was very enthusiastic when teaching. He also always wanted feedback on how he was doing, and was quite transparent about how the course was being run.
He was very good at explaining difficult concepts and keeping lectures interesting.
His class is interesting, and he talks lot of jokes.
His examples are the best. Just amazing.
I really liked the live-coding style of teaching. It was easier to follow along with than the slides and made it easier to understand the logic.
Interesting examples and slower paces at tricky concepts
Kept audience engaged throughout all lectures. Really liked the in class coding, makes concepts more clear.
Kept the content interesting and explained the content with good analogies.
Lecture style is very natural and creative examples made it accessible for newbies
Lots of energy. Never boring.
Loved it! great teaching! And very funny :)
Making the course interesting.
Pretty much everything :)
Really cares about his students and encourages them to ask questions.
I'm glad he took in feedback and slowed down after accumulative recursion
He's really enthusiastic which makes me feel motivated to come to class
Super funny, good visuals, good explanations
The action and voice demonstration of recursion and lambda.
The instructor was very engaging, had a lot of examples and taught us how to think. Example, high voice, love voice for mutual recursion and the leap of faith.
The lectures are engaging.
The live coding examples were very helpful.
The movie clips shown at the beginning of class were enjoyable, and I especially appreciated Dave's humour and storytelling. The live-coding was also very helpful.
Very energetic and passionate about teaching his students and helping them. The little stories in between helped so much, thank you for your effort.
Very friendly, loved the movies (made the classes more fun), implementation and examples given were VERY helpful. Just a very funny, cheerful, and relatable teacher in general (GO DAVE, favourite uni teacher)
Very fun, I think a lot of students appreciated that. There are a select few that are not too fond of the humor but I say firmly that this should not be reduced, it was one of the most effective learning methods that I've witnessed for myself. Thank you very kindly.
Very thorough with explanations and pointing out key facts.
We love you dave
write the code to us, which clearly demonstrates every code

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

All pretty good!
Already good enough
Be there every lecture (amazing when present). Spend a little extra time on trees and graphs if possible
Do more examples that are not in the slides so we have a better idea of how we can apply fundamental concepts.
Fine
He made the course very engaging.
I believe that it would really be helpful if Dave could share his clicker questions with the class or provide us with practice multiple choice questions like those to make us confident of our understanding of the material.
I feel as if, more detail can be explained before the live code is written in the example. A further depth into the thought process that goes into the code, I feel would go a long way to helping students process the information that is going on. Especially when dealing with the more complicated things.
I really cant think about it.
I think Dave's teaching style suits me perfectly. Perhaps he could do live coding a little slower since I like to code along and I have a bit of trouble catching up.
I would appreciate the in-class examples that aren't in the course notes being posted somewhere online.
I would not suggest changing any of the fundamental strategies, it's probably hard to give individual attention to students so even though I wish that was a thing that you could do I completely understand.
listen better to students' questions
Live coding makes lectures more interesting and engaging so more of that maybe
Make sure the slides that get skipped over still get explained briefly, skipping slides makes studying from them more difficult.
Maybe do more traces
Maybe slow down the pace a bit and force more on the process about how did we get the result.
More examples would be awesome (this was improved near the end of the course).
no comment, you rock.
No need to improve. Keep it up!
None.
None. But for next term, wait till the 2nd or 3rd class to do the vote for the movie.
Not much...
Nothing
Nothing. Already good enough.
perhaps upload the racket code written in class
sometimes I think more notes on blackboard would help
Sometimes the examples in class would go over my head because the instructor went too fast.
Sometimes we stumble onto lecture material that we get confused on, maybe approach this problem by simplifying them during lectures
Sometimes, examples may be overly complicated or harder to follow, and once you get lost you can basically never follow the rest of it
Talk about the contents slower and clearer.
Timing can be improved. Some materials were not covered in class because too much time was spent on other stuff.
When teaching the more complicated sections near the end of the course such as lambda expressions, foldr, and foldl it would have been appreciated if you talked us through the process so that we understand how we should be thinking when we have to write down functions like those on our own.
Also, backtracking algorithms could have been covered in more depth as it would have helped for the assignment.

What were the strong points of the course?

A perfect introductory CS course. Though some assignment questions are challenging, they are useful and captivating.
assignments are interesting and great for understanding the content
Course notes were concise and helpful.
Dave and the ISA's and TA's were an extremely supportive group of people who are super engaging to listen to. As a first time programmer, the intimidation I had felt previously coming in slowly became minimal thanks to these guys.
design recipe
Engaging lectures
Every concept we learned was supported with lots of examples, both in the slides and in the assignments, so I feel like all the concepts are very cemented in my head.
Everything! I was a big fan of the lecture slides and the annotations. Live code is super helpful!! Please keep that up, even if the examples are explicitly stated in the slide, following along and forcing myself to type them out is somehow useful. I don't know why.
Examples and live coding helped a lot for understanding concepts taught in lectures. Use of analogies helped as well.
Excellent course notes, engaging lectures and interesting/challenging assignments were the strong points of the course.
First step to code. Help us understand many helpful ideas in coding
Gave a good amount of examples to work with for assignments
How much the instructors helped us, example making official post for each assignment on Piazza.
I think the way the assignments were handled was well done. I felt the Piazza forum was a good way for students and instructors to interact.
I'd say the strong points of this course would be when figuring things out and having things 'click' were the highlights.
Interesting
Introducing topics that were new to me made that course very interesting.
Introduction to Racket, recursion
It was a really good introduction to functional programming (I lowkey thought design recipe was helpful)
It was very helpful in developing a foundation in programming and allowing you to understand how a computer would process given code.
Lambdas and functional programming are awesome
Learned Racket, and how to think in programming.
Lecture slides
Loved Assignments, Challenging
n/a
New concepts
Not mutual recursion, not tries
Points are explained in easy-to-understand ways.
Really interesting course.
Really well-made assignment problems, good course notes
Some of the content was interesting.
Strong focus on recursion, specifically structural
Teaching recursion.
The assignments were actually helpful to understanding the material.
The Basic Functions
The course is comprehensive and meets its goals. It's definitely increased my knowledge and thought-approach towards CS.
The funny moments and Indiana Jones metaphors
The jokes and references (refer to above comments)
The second half was very informative
The way Dave went through examples, his analogy of having your clone do the rest of the work made recursion a lot easier to understand.
Trees, Recursion
Understanding functional programming.
Very good beginner course (for those who took Grade 11 computer science)
Watching live coding was very helpful.

What were the weak points of the course?

A lot of assignment questions were too difficult
Abstract list function and their applications were more difficult to understand and I felt that more time could have been spent on it. Some questions in Assignments 7 and 8 were very long and hard to understand.
Abstract list functions should have been covered in a little more detail and a little slower
After the second midterm, assignments were unreasonably long in terms of the amount of time required to complete all questions on the assignment.
Assignment 7
Assignment complexity
Assignments 5 and 7
Assignments were sometimes muuuuch harder than what was done in class
Assignments 7 and 8 were nothing like the lectures
assignments are very long... especially for someone who had no CS background. perhaps there could be more easy problems take lead up to a difficult assignment question
Assignments took a while (why racket...)
Brand new concepts to fresh people with no experience in programming
Clicker questions put some on the spot especially those who need to take time to process information
contract
Could have gone at a quicker pace, but for other students it was likely the right pace.
Could use a little more assistance with assignments but that's probably my own fault haha.
Each class is a little too long
High voice, low voice for mutual recursion wasn't necessary, don't strain your voice!
I think we should spend more time on graphs.
I'd say when trying to figure out the logic, and it doesn't 'click' is the most frustrating feeling ever. (see the strong points for the aftermath of this)
If you got behind its very difficult to catch up.
Importance of tutorials wasn't emphasized.
Lack of collaboration.
Lack of opportunities to practice the material apart from the homework assignments: we did not have any additional material to practice for exams since there were no practice questions nor any past papers made available to us.
Mutual recursion, not tries
n/a
None.
Nothing.
Personally, I felt the pace was a little slow, but I had previous experience coming in so I imagine it was paced well for those new to CS.
Recursion
Some assignment questions were challenging, meaning that more time was needed for them but we did not have that time. Also, some exam questions were much harder than what was covered and with the time pressure and stress, the situation got even worse. So, I think either the questions should be easier or the number of questions should be reduced to match with the time available.
Some assignment questions were unnecessarily hard, did not assist with learning material and were too time consuming
Some assignments were a too difficult. The tutorials weren't very helpful. I wish the tutoring was more like MATH 135, 137.
Sometimes pretty fast-paced (trees, graphs, lambda)
Sometimes, when some people in the class did not understand a topic, too many examples would be done, leading to class time running out.
Somewhere the pace is too fast for beginner and there are lots of materials need to learn.
the assginemnts are long, especially the last few assginemnts
The beginning was boring (spent too long on basic concepts and shorter on hard concepts)
The course assignments were slightly demanding sometimes, especially compared to the level shown in class.
The course progression felt very slow.
The exam cares less about programing, more about basic knowledge.
Too hard for not CS student
Too much focus on style / design recipe in my opinion. I understand that it's important and applicable to our careers, but I feel like it got in the way of more interesting computer science concepts.
Tries and all the assignments Dave didn't make
When Dave was away

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.

Always positive.
Dave brought an energetic and welcoming attitude to the class that made a positive impact on the effectiveness of the lectures
Dave is always very energetic and I believe that helps the class focus and learn
Dave's class has the warmest atmosphere with respect to anything. No one ever felt scared to ask questions, and no one was scared of Dave. He has a very welcoming personality and he applies that to the class.
Dr. Tompkins was always entertaining, enthusiastic and positive and that resulted in a positive atmosphere for learning
Everyone was nice, positive and enthusiastic
Good atmosphere, and Dave is really enthusiastic and engaging.
Great atmosphere, everyone was friendly
I didn't notice that
I felt class resembled mostly of experience coders so questions by newbies seemed discouraged and lectures were sometimes more geared toward them
I think so?
I thought everyone was pretty chill. Dave was pretty aware of stuff like this and I think he did a good job keeping the atmosphere positive.
Instructor's attitude positively affected the class atmosphere.
It was comfortable.
it was fine
N/A
Neutral and fair.
No
No
No comment.
No.
No.
Not at all
Positive - very diverse and welcoming
Positively by the instructor
Positively, I do not think the student's traits affected the atmosphere of the lectures but Dave had an enjoyable time with us.
Positively.
Positively.
The atmosphere was fine.
The class atmosphere is good
The class atmosphere was affected positively by Dave's positive attitude towards female students. He occasionally reminded us that women are more detailed-oriented and that they are as successful in computer science as men, regardless of being a minority.
The class atmosphere was positively affected by the attitudes of the instructor! He often talked about how women should be more represented in the Computer Science field, and it made me feel encouraged.
The class is cool.
The instructor viewed the whole class equal. The atmosphere was welcome, mainly do to the humorous side of our instructor
The instructor was very inclusive of all students. If this affected the class at all,it was only positive.
The instructor's positive attitude made the class atmosphere welcoming and enjoyable
The topic never came up.
Very good environment overall.
Very positive, so funny, so respectable and engaging.
yes

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

...
A room with more plugs would be nice.
Can the class sizes be a little bigger (MC 2034 is my current) since sometimes the TA has to give up his chair for the unwanted intruders.
Class size is large, would be great if it was smaller but of course, that is probably not in your control.
Class size was fine.
Drink more water less soda.
Excellent
Great
He drinks so much Coke Zero
I don't think clickers are too helpful. It just creates unnecessary stress to get the answer right than learning.
it was fine
Keep going Dave!
Love Dave, but hate the course
MC 2034 is a good room in general. Good desk size, windows, two screens and good chairs. I recommend using it for future courses.
n/a
No
No.
No.
None.
Nothing, all is well done
Our classroom needs a better sound system. We missed out on some interesting videos on our last lectures because the audio was hardly audible.
Releasing an assignment the Friday the week before doesn't mean it's two weeks
Room was a little congested.
Room was a little too small to fit 60 people
Room was too small. It was crowded and no ports. Class size was good.
Teach more sections so there's a higher chance of getting him as a professor
The class size is too big and the room is too small. Sometimes even the last row is full.
The following are questions that were too difficult to be done in one sitting:
Assignment 7 Q2
Assignment 8 Q3
Assignment 9 Q2
The room can be chosen as STC rather than MC, because laddering classrooms make back seat students harder to see the prof
You tend to veer to the right (our right) slide screen thing and just ignore the one on the left. I sit on the right side so I don't really care about the other side but maybe give them some love too.

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