Course evaluation:
Number of registered students: 50
Number of students after the introductory lecture: 38
Number of passed students: 31
Number of students who showed up at the evaluation session: 15
The course evaluation was carried out in the form of a structured dialog. Each student was allowed to write at most five (5) comments about the course, including what was good and what was bad. Thereafter, the comments received were circulated around and each student could tick the comments he or she agreed on. The comments that got most marks were then discussed by the students and the teachers (Kenny and Jyrki) in a dialog. The comments that were discussed are listed below together with the number of marks received.
+ 14: Godt med hands-on opgaver.
+ 13: Sjovt med et praktisk brugbart emne.
+ 13: Det var en god ide med ugentlige opgaver.
+ 13: Undervisere er engagerede.
+ 12: Elevers gennemgang af ugeopgaverne var godt
+ 12: Det har været et superinteressant kursus.
+ 12: At bruge Boost virkede aktuelt og interessant, mht. C++
- 11:
Den udleverede kode til opgaverne er ofte fejlbehæftet, eller virker
kun på Jyrkis maskine.
- 11: Ville gerne have haft flere programmeringsopgaver i stedet for
skriveopgaver.
- 11: Useriøst når lærerene ikke dukker op til de forelæsninger som de skal holde.
+ 10: Lærebøgerne var gode.
- 9: Fordelingen af procenter på opgaveaflevering, aktivitet, mundtlig
eksamen er uforståelig.
- 9: Eksamensform uklar; hvad sker der efter opgaven er gennemgået.
In general, the students liked the structure, form, and content of the course. Based on the comments and the dialog, some minor corrective actions will be made to improve the course even further. More specifically, we have decided to make the following changes to the course (to be offered next time in Quarter 4 in 2007):
* Use only one book (C++ Templates) and let students access the
information about the Boost library via the documentation available at
the Internet.
* Cover some material left to the weekly assignments in the lectures
(e.g. C++ culture, standard compliance, and iterator concepts).
* Release the assignments one week before the deadline for handing in.
(Implemented already in the middle of the course.)
* Keep the one-week deadline for providing feedback to the students
for their answers to the weekly assignments.
* In the code-review assignment, let the students review the code
produced by their piers earlier in the course in the weekly
assignments.
* Combine the last two assignments to only one "formidling" assignment
which covers tools useful for library development.
* Let one or two of the weekly assignments directly support the
mini-project to reduce the workload in the mini-project and to motivate
the students to solve the assignments.
* Move the release and deadline of the mini-project one week earlier
(still spanning a period of four weeks) to make room for exam
preparation (slides, reading, and also reading required for the
parallel course).
We are grateful for the feedback we received, and we want to thank those who provided that for us.
September 22nd, 2006
Jyrki Katajainen