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Official Student Survey (CATEI) 2007
The following are the numeric results from the official CATEI survey
for COMP9242 in Session 2 of 2007. There were a total of 10 replies (of 13 students
enrolled). Each question allowed one of four answers: ”strongly agree“ (4), ”agree“ (3), ”disagree“ (2), ”strongly disagree“ (1). Results are summarised in an average score in the range 1–4.
| Question | Resp |
|---|
| The aim of this course were clear to me |
3.5 |
| I was given helpful feedback on how I was going in the course |
3.7 |
| The course was challenging and interesting |
3.9 |
| The course provided effective opportunities for active student participation in learning activities. |
4.0 |
| The course was effective for developing my thinking skills (e.g. critical analysis, problem solving). |
3.9 |
| I was provided with clear information about the assessment requirements for this course |
3.6 |
| The assessment methods and tasks in this course were appropriate given the course goal |
3.7 |
| Overall, I was satisfied with the quality of this course. |
3.9 |
Below is a verbatim transcript of the free-form feedback from studens
doing the survey. Student input is in blue, my
comments are in red.
The best features of this course were:
- The freedom for expansion of ideas and the ability to implement ideas.
- Very interesting, well taught, great project. Best course I have
done at uni.
- great lab work and the lecture's teaching style
- Assignment that you felt may actually be useful and
interesting. Stopped trying to teach at lowest common denominator and
simply told us of interesting and new information, as well as current
developments
- Extremely challenging and interesting. Taking this course was the
best decision I've made.
- The eventual result of the assignments
- Being able to develop the sub systems of an operating system
and understanding in detail the concepts in OS.
- Not necessarily the heavy workload, but more like the goal of
implementing a full system gave a real sense of accomplishment while
requiring us to get a lot of hands-on experience with working with a
large body of code.
This course could be improved by:
-
perhaps a bit more help on the simple things, while encouraging said
expansion
We had almost daily lab presence times and an
active forum, so not sure what you think was missing. And we
definitely don't want to be hand-holding. Nevertheless, docs are
a sore point.
-
Being 12uoc, or somehow getting exemptions from other courses,
because it is so time consuming.
See my general
comments.
-
if adding some contrast between different groups after
demonstration, then we can find out other's methods, what are the
pros and cons of different ways?
See my general
comments.
-
While it was a good idea not to tell us how to do things in the
milestones, slightly more detail about features we were expected to
implement would have been nice. eg, we didn't do dirty/clean
checking, it didn't say it was required and it all worked and it was
a choice not to do it - we were still penalised for it
Specs asked for demand paging. Of course you
don't write back a clean page!!!
-
After the hard slog through the project having to do an exam that is
worth 35% was rather annoying, devalue the amount the exam is worth
if it has to be kept.
Hmm, I think weighting project:exam as 2:1 should
be good enough. I don't think a lower weight for the exam would
do it justice and I don't think it would improve the course. The
point of the course isn't just designing and implementing a
(non-trivial) system, it's also learning to think like a
systems person. And this is what the exam tests. The course
assessment should be a good predictor of performance in a systems
PhD. It's been very good at that in the past.
-
I found that sometimes we would get a deliverable marked off and be
told that we had missed something and get marked down for it even
though it wasnt in the spec. Kinda frustrating sometimes
See my general
comments. I believe I fixed that by adjusting demo marks.
-
Better documentation of the system we were dealing with would've
made it easier to deal with L4, but I guess it's not so bad since we
ought to be ready for this sort of situation (bad or incomplete
documentation) in the future.
Well put ;-) Nevertheless, docs will be better
next time round.
End of verbatim transcript. If you have more comments to make, please
do. Also, please look at
the results of our own on-line
survey and my comments.
Final word
It is always great fun teaching this course, with all students being
highly motivated and eager to learn. And believe me, you aren't the only
ones working hard in this course ;-)
Many thanks for participating, and also thanks for your feedback.
Last modified:
03 Aug 2008.
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