Evaluation Comments
Course:Object-Oriented Software Development
            (SE-450-903)

Quarter:Spring 03/04
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: Distance Learning
James Riely PhD

Associate Professor
jriely@cs.depaul.edu
Instructor homepage

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What are the major strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?


1.   I think the scope of material in this class was way out of control.
3.   Very well organized, had high expectations of the students, great lecturer.
4.   Weakness: Exams were too difficult and demotivating for this subject. Did not test in the same manner as the homework or previous exams.Strenghts: Excellent teaching, exceptionally organized, very interesting coverage and motivating to watch.
5.   Strong.
8.   Presents well. Good speaking voice - not monotonous.
9.   knowledgeable
10.   Excellent course, very rewarding in terms of knowledge for dollar.

What aspects of this course were most beneficial to you?


1.   Advanced Java programming concepts.
3.   The XP approach, Test-driven development style, and explanation of design patterns were the most beneficial.
4.   Understanding how to design good software.
5.   Patterns.
8.   Learning about patterns.
9.   The final project is a good way to do something creative and to have for a portfolio.
10.   Learning about pattterns and how they relate how I currently program.

What do you suggest to improve this course?


1.   Drop the UML and PSP.
2.   the lecture notes need to improve to be more detailed and match with what the instructor teaches. because for DL students, sometimes they can not hear what the instructor says clearly.the notes is kind of confusing.it would be better if the project requirement is more specific and more clear for us to complete it.
3.   -
4.   Better distance learning equipment.
5.   None.
7.   It seems that this course was taken by students with widely varying levels of experience. Perhaps it would be better to offer it in a couple of different flavors the way JAVA courses are offered, i.e. a single quarter version for experienced programmers and a two quarter version for less experienced programmers. A two quarter version might consist of part I teaching the concepts with homework consisting of small, quick to code assisgnments for each pattern. Part II could then be more of a lab with a large project to expand on and solidify the concepts learned in part I.
8.   Try to narrow the scope a little bit. It seems that we tried to learn about as many patterns as possible in a 10 week period. This would have been fine if we had more homework assignments that followed up with these patterns. However, we only had 3 homework assignments and the rest of the time was spent on the project. It would have been nicer to have more homeowrk assignments that went over the patterns that we learned. I would have rather had one project that the entire class worked on in which we incorporated decided patterns that we learned about in class.
9.   10 weeks is rather absurd
10.   More time spent reviewing the patterns, more individual assignments along the way designing those patterns. I don't think the first three assignments were very helpful because it was easy to complete them without really understanding anything about the patterns. I think I would have learned more from them if we wrote smaller programs from scratch every week making use of patterns we had learned in the lecture.

Comment on the grading procedures and exams


4.   See comments above about exams.
5.   Fair.
6.   Large parts of the exams have no correlation to homework and little correlation to lecture.
8.   Grading was fair. The midterm was rather long, though graded fairly.
9.   The midterm was unnecessarily hard and I don't feel students were provided with adequate forsight as to it's difficulty.

Other comments?


4.   The whiteboard was consistently manlfunctioning so much that sometimes only specs of dots are seen online an ink-covered whiteboard exists in the classroom.
5.   Thank you.
8.   Course was interesting and topics were extremely relevant for work as a java developer. However, scope could have been narrowed a bit. For example, we were asked to track time spent on the project. While this is a valuable tool for work, it was a little bit out of place for this class and wasn't adequately reviewed. we learned about a lot of interesting patterns, but I would have preferred specific homework assignments for these patterns then a project in which we were asked to incorporate any patterns.
9.   I hate the quarter system. I apologize for my strong language but I think semesters would better serve a program such as this.
10.   I feel like I learned a lot from this class, am glad I took it.