COP3610 - Suggestions, Midterm, Spring 2001

Students kindly replied to the survey completed in class. Suggestions for improvement, along with instructor's responses, action items, and corrective action taken or planned are listed below. Please feel free to email the instructor if you have further comments.

• 1. Preferred Aspects: Examples in class, lab sessions, Web notes, overviews and tutorials. Comments:
• "Structured format, very organized"
• "The enthusiasim of the professor"
• "The professor is nice"
• "I can understand what the teacher is saying - woohoo!"
• "Class only meets once a week - good for overview"
• "Low stress, lots of information available"
• "Class does not require a large amount of useless work"
• "Great to see Unix commandsin front of you in lab"
• "Web notes act as a nice supplement to class and lecture"
• "It's great using Linux"

• 2. Recommendations for Improvement: Need more detailed lab work. Comments:
• "Need more detailed demos or lab work"
• "One-credit format - not enough time"
• "Need homework, not just tests"
• "Not enough lab demos"
• "Book too detailed"
• "Beginning of class was slow"
• "Need a class mailing list"
• "Test too easy"
• "Don't like it when you defer topics to 'later'"

ACTION ITEMS: 1) Instructor to work up some voluntary homework problems, 2) Instructor will develop more detailed lab demos that students can run while studying, 3) An additional (optional) textbook will be specified that is written at more of an introductory level.

ACTION TAKEN:

1) Since this survey, I have been developing some homework problems and exercises that I will post on the Web page. These will be useful for the remainder of the semester and next year.

2) Instructor is developing PowerPoint demos that students will be able to download to their UF or home computers and print out (or bring to class on a laptop). These will serve as outlines for note-taking in class, and for subsequent study in conjunction with the Web notes. More UNIX demos will be integrated into the classroom presentations, and the initial background material will be decreased significantly.

3) Several textbooks have been obtained from publishers. These are introductory texts that will be referenced on the Web pages and course outline(s) provided to the students. I have put these on reserve in the Science Library.

4) Instructor requested that system staff establish a local UF newsgroup, name = uf.cise.class.cop3610. This should help with information exchange.

Note: I sympathize with students' impatience regarding the introductory (historical material). Some of it is boring, but we need to cover it for two reasons. First, in order to see where we are going, we need to know where we have come from. Second, a knowledge of the past helps us avoid the mistakes of the past when designing or specifying operating systems for future use.

Also, the man pages are hard to read - at times, I have trouble with them. If you have questions concerning a Unix command or command option that is not well-documented in the man page, pls. see me after class or during office hours. We can take some time to read through the man pages and see how they can be improved.

Thank you for responding to the evaulations! You highlighted some deficiencies that I was unaware of, and have provided valuable feedback that will help enhance the course for many students in the future. You have been an excellent class, and I very much enjoyed working with you.

Best wishes for success in your respective careers!