Visa resultat

Algorithms, Lp 1 Ht11, TIN092/DIT600

Your own effort

1. How many hours per week did you spend on this course?

60 svarande

At most 15 hours/week»		12		20%
Around 20 hours/week»		25		41%
Around 25 hours/week»		11		18%
Around 30 hours/week»		10		16%
At least 35 hours/week»		2		3%

Genomsnitt: 2.41

- Only labs» (At most 15 hours/week)
- My other course took up to much time. I wanted to spend more time on this course, but wasn"t able to.» (At most 15 hours/week)
- I realized that I would fail this course quite early on. Therefore I just studied because it was fun.» (Around 20 hours/week)
- the exercises and labs are time-consuming.» (Around 25 hours/week)
- Spent all my time on this course even though I had another one at the same time. (I considered the other course to be easier and this one really did require all the time I could put into it)» (Around 30 hours/week)
- I only studied at 50% this part term and I still had to almost put in as much work as I would have if I had studied at 100%.» (Around 30 hours/week)
- Very much effort in the labs.» (At least 35 hours/week)

2. How large part of the teaching offered did you attend?

60 svarande

0%»		3		5%
25%»		7		11%
50%»		10		16%
75%»		14		23%
100%»		26		43%

Genomsnitt: 3.88

- Only labs» (0%)
- I am working full-time so I studied with the book» (0%)
- I prefer books to lectures, so my attendence% is low.» (25%)
- I was at all lectures. No exercises however.» (25%)
- Didn"t attend the last lectures.» (75%)
- Missed one week due to illness.» (75%)
- I was not able to attend 50% of the lessons because of a compulsary class which was placed at the same time - even though this was a recommended course for my class.» (75%)
- Skipped two lecture in the beginning of the course due to lack of seats.» (75%)
- One » (100%)
- I missed only one lecture.I think this doesn"t mean %75.» (100%)

Goals and goal fulfilment

3. How understandable are the course goals?

I have not seen/read the goals»		19		31%
The goals are difficult to understand»		3		5%
The goals give some guidance, but could be clearer»		13		21%
The goals clearly describe what I am supposed to learn»		25		41%

Genomsnitt: 2.73

4. Are the goals reasonable considering your background and the number of credits?

47 svarande

No, the goals are set too low»		0		0%
Yes, the goals seem reasonable»		41		87%
No, the goals are set too high»		6		12%

Genomsnitt: 2.12

- The tempo regarding excersises and labs are a bit high. You really need all weekend to think about problems (that is if you won"t already know what you"re supposed to be taught,) and though this is really educating it"s sometimes enough with either the excersises _or_ the labs» (Yes, the goals seem reasonable)
- Not the goals that are to high more the implementation on some parts» (Yes, the goals seem reasonable)
- haven"t seen them» (Yes, the goals seem reasonable)
- Willard Rafnsson (course admin) once even implied himself that the course is for Master"s students. I"m a 2nd year Computer Science Bachelor"s student.» (No, the goals are set too high)

5. Did the examination assess whether you have reached the goals?

No, not at all»		2		3%
To some extent»		12		22%
Yes, definitely»		21		38%
I don"t know/have not been examined yet»		19		35%

Genomsnitt: 3.05

- I think that the exam was far to extensive. When one needs to figure out solutions, it is very hard with an exam where one have to write constantly to answer all questions. I wrote constantly and hadn"t time to answer everything. This said, I don"t think it was too hard and I think that the difficulty was on a good level. Next time I take this exam, however, I"d like to be able to think through the questions before answering.» (To some extent)
- I felt that the exam was more a test on how fast you could solve the problems given then a test on how well you can solve them.» (To some extent)
- the exam has too many questions, impossible to answer them all in given time, not possible to assess properly whether we have reached the goals» (To some extent)
- Too many problems/ too little time» (To some extent)
- big lack of time at the exam, it feels like the exam is design in a way that assume you have bonus points» (To some extent)
- But with 7 instead of 6 questions there wasn"t really enough for them all.» (Yes, definitely)
- But the exam was way to hard. Impossible to answer all questions in time.» (Yes, definitely)
- Not nice changing the exam compare to earlier example exams without notifications.» (Yes, definitely)
- Haven"t taken the exam yet, but from the available previous year papers it seems that the exam exactly covers the course.» (I don"t know/have not been examined yet)
- Exam is next week.» (I don"t know/have not been examined yet)

Teaching and course administration

6. To what extent has the teaching been of help for your learning?

Small extent»		11		18%
Some extent»		19		32%
Large extent»		21		35%
Great extent»		8		13%

Genomsnitt: 2.44

- The teaching can be characterized as inadequate. The only thing that was done in the class was present in the same way the concepts of the book without further explanation. It seemed that if I hadn"t attend the lectures I wouldn"t have missed anything» (Small extent)
- Only some feedback from laborations.» (Small extent)
- Didn"t attend the lectures» (Small extent)
- As I said, I prefer books. » (Some extent)
- The lectures have been very good, but in the beginning the lecture rooms were to small. The exercises on the other hand have mostly been really bad, or the teachers haven"t been in time/there at all. This is manly regarding the extra weekly exercise session on mondays. Since the group were too big, there was this extra slot but considering the performance of the teaching in these sessions it"s almost laughable that I spent time being there at all. » (Some extent)
- Exercise sessions with Willard and Leonoid were good. Lectures were alright.» (Some extent)
- The exercise classes were very messy.» (Some extent)
- Lectures were good. Exercise sessions were fine the first weeks but in the end it felt like the "teacher" did not know what he was talking about. He was mumbling and copying from a paper to the black board.» (Some extent)
- Great lectures, a bit messy notes from excersise sessions. Some things could be cleared up. But if you think about it hard enough you"ll understand... eventually» (Large extent)
- The lecturse did alot for helping me understand the subject but I feel that the exercise sessions was a bit waste of time. Not all of them felt like someone had prepaired them properly but it was made up on the spot.» (Large extent)
- discussion/exercise session is good to have a better understanding of what is taught in class.» (Large extent)
- Really good lectures» (Great extent)
- I didn"t buy the textbook. Without the teaching I would have failed spectacularly. » (Great extent)
- The amount of material and the way it was presented was outstanding.» (Great extent)

7. To what extent has the course literature and other material been of help for your learning?

Small extent»		8		13%
Some extent»		12		20%
Large extent»		27		46%
Great extent»		11		18%

Genomsnitt: 2.7

- The topics were well covered in the lectures so it was no need to read the course literature» (Some extent)
- Too much text before they got to the point. The book could have been 0.25 times the size it has if they skipped all the pointless babble and focused on nothing but the topic.» (Some extent)
- The parts of the course literature I read was good. The book is very talkative.» (Some extent)
- Great course book!» (Large extent)
- The course literature has really been a great complement to lectures/exercises.» (Large extent)
- I have read all of the material provided and read the entire course book. Without which I would have had a hard time keeping up.» (Large extent)
- recommended course book is good.» (Large extent)
- Since lectures in my other course this period collided with the lectures of this course I read a lot in the book and I think it is one of the more understandable and interesting course books I have read» (Great extent)

8. How well did the course administration, web page, handouts etc work?

Very badly»		8		13%
Rather badly»		11		18%
Rather well»		32		54%
Very well»		8		13%

Genomsnitt: 2.67

- The course administration was extremely bad. The labs where delayed and graded slowly. The course website was unacceptably bad, it was a mess. Seriously, spend 2 hours making the website better => save hundreds of students hours. It was not very useful.» (Very badly)
- You sure managed to hide your web page well...» (Very badly)
- Unstrutured webpage. a navbar might help.» (Very badly)
- There appeared to be a non-existing administration hiding behind a strict set of rules, not to be questioned, that was presented on a disorienting web page. For instance, Willard Rafnsson agreed with me and my lab partner that a certain submission rule was unreasonable but he said that he couldn"t do anything about it and that we should go to our grader, Filippo. Filippo implied he was overworked and didn"t have time to help us. About handouts: The students" corrected exercise sheets should have been handed out each week. But most of them were handed out during the very last exercise session, an unacceptable waste of everyones time.» (Very badly)
- This is the worst course ever, i"ve had at chalmers for 5 years, regarding administration. Like 4 different webpages to get all the info. Need of joinging google groups etc.. Not handing out information that was said to be handed out and long time of correcting assignments. The classrooms were too small. In the beginning like 10% of the class had to sit on the floor. It got fixed for the lectures, but not for exercises.» (Very badly)
- The course administration was the worst I have ever experienced. The labs were handed out very late and the lab grading was very very long. I think it took almost 3 weeks to get one of our labs graded. One of the graders had an offensive attitude. They could have made the labs more convenient, neither me or my lab partner learned much from them at all. The web page was poor aswell.» (Very badly)
- Very hard to see what to do and mostly a big mess» (Very badly)
- Was problem and confusion from the beginning. » (Rather badly)
- The rooms in google calendar schedule and the schedule on the course home page did not always match» (Rather badly)
- I don"t like the idea of important news being posted on the google group and not on the webpage. Information about the course should be at one place not several.» (Rather badly)
- Rather unstructured, with information spread out over different parts of the course web site as well as a Google group.» (Rather badly)
- Use standard page layout if you lack web design competence.» (Rather badly)
- The web page is kinda hard to navigate. I could sometimes spend 10min to get to the page I wanted where some part of the lab was. » (Rather badly)
- Badly structured without logic.» (Rather badly)
- The course page and google groups are perfect, Willard deserves a medal for those. The space restriction for the exercises is silly however.» (Rather well)
- The google group-system needs to be reconsidered since there was a whole lot spamming and questions that probably should have been sent in a private email rather than spamed to everyone attending the course.» (Rather well)
- Too many subpages and too much information in one place. I understand this is to make things crystal clear, but at the same time think it disrupts the clarity. Better when most of the original page moved to a subpage. Still hard to navigate to problem description» (Rather well)
- With the exception of the fact that solutions to excersises need to be turned in handwritten. This added much additional workload that appears mostly unrelated to the task itself.» (Rather well)
- I think that much stuff could have been announced earlier.» (Rather well)
- Som» (Rather well)
- The webpage can be much better, the discussion group was a nice touch but all in all just gets confusing. Keep the idea but implement it better.» (Rather well)

Study climate

9. How were the opportunities for asking questions and getting help?

Very poor»		3		5%
Rather poor»		6		10%
Rather good»		22		36%
Very good»		7		11%
I did not seek help»		22		36%

Genomsnitt: 3.65

- Questions could be asked at any time, but most of the time the teachers could not or would not answer them. A lab grader, Filippo Del Tedesco, refused to help me and my lab partner when we confronted him about a misunderstanding related to the confusing rules.» (Very poor)
- I felt that there wasn"t enough scheduled time where you could get help. There should have been one or two sessions where you could work on the labs and get help by teachers or course assistant at the spot.» (Rather poor)
- Too many students i guess...» (Rather poor)
- Heard of bad responses from lab tutours, so didn"t feel I could ask them if needed.» (Rather poor)
- Consultation hour one hour per week is a bit to little I think, but emails were always answered (though it"s preferable to get help in person)» (Rather good)
- I did not seek help with course-work but, as usual, I got a fast reply when trying to get in touch about course-related problems.» (Very good)
- Didn"t join the Google group. Can you send private messages? If you can"t then I wouldn"t have asked for help anyway, which is a shame. Seems off putting when you issue a statement that says we should limit emails to you in private, and seemed like you wouldn"t answer but we should ask Qs on Google group. Maybe I got things wrong. » (I did not seek help)

10. How well has cooperation between you and your fellow students worked?

Very poorly»		1		1%
Rather poorly»		5		8%
Rather well»		20		33%
Very well»		28		47%
I did not seek cooperation»		5		8%

Genomsnitt: 3.52

- I moved to a new apartment at the beginning of the course, so I never got any lab partner. It was too late.» (Very poorly)
- Sadly, I almost always have the problem of getting teamed up with someone with a different bakground than me and we don"t really have the time to get to know each other. With a very small common ground to base the cooperation on, it doesn"t usually work very well. It also takes the joy out of the studying.» (Rather poorly)

11. How was the course workload?

Too low»		0		0%
Low»		0		0%
Adequate»		20		33%
High»		32		54%
Too high»		7		11%

Genomsnitt: 3.77

- No exercises or labs were mandatory.» (Adequate)
- As commented above, you really need _a lot_ of time to figure problems out. This is sometimes too much when it"s both lab and excersises.» (High)
- My other course took a lot of time, therefore I was not able to do all excersise sets and attend all lectures but if I had I would have done at least 30 h a week on this course» (High)
- But fun.» (High)
- Which is good!» (High)
- Many of my fellow student didn"t feel they had the time to do all the extra assignments availible to get points for the exam and me only doing this one course still had problems keeping up.» (Too high)
- I was looking forward to completing all the labs and exercises, but ended up dropping most exercises because of the labs. But in hindsight, in order to maximize my points on the exam, my time would have been best spent if I had dropped everything and looked up lectures about the relevant topics on youtube. This is probably also a reason for why the labs and exercises were voluntary, but they still contributed to stress and anxiety which could have been avoided had the course had a more solid and realistic structure and strategy.» (Too high)
- For example lab 3» (Too high)
- I think that the weekly assignments were too much to handle when having the labs to hand in the same week.» (Too high)
- Lectures, hand-in exercises, labs and exam should correspond to more points.» (Too high)

12. How was the total workload this study period?

Too low»		0		0%
Low»		1		1%
Adequate»		16		27%
High»		29		49%
Too high»		13		22%

Genomsnitt: 3.91

- My other course had a low workload...» (Adequate)
- High even though I read the entirety of the other course this last week.» (High)
- Had another course that was rather time consuming, so I rarely had time to do home assignments.» (High)
- Because of my other course.» (Too high)
- 150% takes its toll.» (Too high)

Summarizing questions

13. What is your general impression of the course?

Poor»		8		13%
Fair»		7		11%
Adequate»		8		13%
Good»		26		44%
Excellent»		10		16%

Genomsnitt: 3.38

- The lectures was good, everything else was extremely bad.» (Poor)
- Here, I would like to bring up two additonal problems regarding administration. The first was the course schedule. This course had many hours of lab sessions and exercises on the schedule. I discussed this with the study councellor and we both thought that they would be supervised. This was the main reason I registered for it. It turned out to be some kind of hoax. Of all the 12 scheduled hours (aside from lectures), only two were supervised. Those were two identical exercise sessions, because the room (EB) was so small the class had to be split in two. This leads to the second problem. During the first one or two weeks, we had lecture rooms that didn"t have space for all students.» (Poor)
- Good contents, but bad executed.» (Poor)
- Things could have been managed much better.» (Poor)
- Comments and feedback on exercises and labs were sometimes harsh and condesending. This made me loose much of the interest and enthusiasm i had in the beginning of the course.» (Fair)
- Lectures were kind of slow and hard to relate to the exam. The labs were also kind of unrewarding. Web page gives a very unproffesional impression.» (Fair)
- I want to learn this!» (Adequate)
- The teacher was sometimes a bit unclear in what he tried to teach and the explaination behind.» (Adequate)
- Good content and lectures» (Adequate)
- Lectures were sometimes a bit hard to follow.» (Adequate)
- An interesting subject and pretty good lectures makes my general impression good, I enjoyed the course, but in terms of administrations and course assistants it is one of the worst courses I have taken during my 4+ years at Chalmers.» (Good)
- Fantastic lectures.» (Good)
- I liked the subject alot.» (Good)
- Really good stuff you learn» (Good)
- Good course. A bit problematic when it comes to the exam. In case I need to do it, I would want the re-exams to return to having 24/60 points as grade 3.» (Good)
- It is really hard to have a excellent course in a basic algorithm course since you have so little time to get to all parts. But it contains the most important parts and give at least a little time to the more complex things.» (Good)
- Perfect except those space requirements...» (Excellent)
- Awesome and useful course in general and I recommend it to everyone.» (Excellent)
- the course is very good, but the requirements of the exam sounds unfair, dogmatic.» (Excellent)
- Every computer scientist should take this course» (Excellent)

14. What should definitely be preserved to next year?

15. What should definitely be changed to next year?

16. Additional comments