- 201501-CMSC435-0201-SOFTWARE ENGINEERING - James Purtilo - Instructor Report

201501-CMSC435-0201-SOFTWARE ENGINEERING - James Purtilo - Instructor Report - (Instructor View) Spring 2015

University of Maryland Course Evaluation Spring 2015

Number of Students Enrolled: 43

Number of Evaluations Submitted: 32

Response Rate: 74.4%

Subject Details
DIVISION_SD	CMNS
DEPARTMENT	CMNS-Computer Science
INSTR_CT	1
TA_CT	0
TEACHING_ROLE	INSTRUCTOR

Report Comments

This report presents feedback received from students for the course 201501-CMSC435-0201-SOFTWARE ENGINEERING and for the Instructor James Purtilo in that course. Course means are provided as well as department, college, and college course-level means (e.g., all 200-level courses in a college). Means are calculated from all responses by all students in the unit (i.e., course section, department, college, course-level in a college) on that item and exclude N/A (not applicable) responses. A grade table is included on the next page.

Indication is provided below for the Large Lecture Group if there is one affiliated with this course section.

Semester: 201501
Course #: CMSC435
Section #: 0201
Course Name: 201501-CMSC435-0201-SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Large Lecture Group: No Large Lecture Designation

Instructor: James Purtilo

Creation Date Thu, Jun 04, 2015

Question	Course	Department	College	Course Level
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
The course was intellectually challenging.	3.16	3.37	3.35	3.37
I learned a lot from this course.	3.25	3.23	3.04	3.18
Overall	3.20	3.30	3.20	3.27

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	1	3.1%
Disagree	1	1	3.1%
Neutral	2	4	12.5%
Agree	3	12	37.5%
Strongly Agree	4	14	43.8%

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
General Education or CORE Requirement	0	0	0.0%
Major/Certificate/Minor/Program Requirement	1	32	100.0%
Elective	2	0	0.0%

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	2	6.3%
Disagree	1	1	3.1%
Neutral	2	6	18.8%
Agree	3	11	34.4%
Strongly Agree	4	12	37.5%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	32
Mean	3.16
Standard Deviation	+/-0.99

Statistics	Value
Response Count	32
Mean	3.25
Standard Deviation	+/-0.98

Comment
I appreciate the effort to expose students to all that software engineering encompasses. I do however believe the content was a lot to absorb. However, this does not really speak to shortcomings of the class, but perhaps more so to the computer science curriculum. It is a shame to have not experienced/learned this content throughout my time here at UMD but I am grateful that I got at least one class' worth of material.
I like that the class focuses on preparing students for industry instead of being purely theory or coding focused like every other class. The format is rather jarring early in the semester though, since it is so different.
One of the most useful classes that I have taken so far. Professor Purtilo was right "the project is what teaches software engineering." I learned a lot from working in my teams. Additionally, I think that the guest speakers provided great insight about the industry.
The focus the group project and communication was refreshing. The requirement for using source control was great, but forcing SVN was not pleasing. I liked the inclusion of VMs, would of liked to needed to use it more. I think however, the mini-projects should of been finished sooner and the big class project stuff should of been started sooner as well.
Guest speakers are... skewed to the government industry and for lack of better words, white males. The one speaker I was excited for, Gallup, didn't really tell us about his experiences, he just tried to sell his product. Completely unnecessary. One speaker went out of his way to inappropriately remark that he was glad there were more girls in the class. Why was that necessary if you weren't going to speak to the experiences females face in the industry? On that note, where was the diversity in speakers? I want to hear about experiences in the field from all types of people in different industries. Where were the female engineers? The POCs? The people in startups? The people who sold their souls to corporations? Reach out to guest speakers other than your favorite former students. Why not have mock scrums? Teach us about sprints early on and have us actually execute them. You were right about one thing, I did not learn much from you (I mean no offense, keep reading). I learned SO much from my peers though. This was like a hands on learning course, and instead of our professor, you were more like our mentor who just happened to give out grades as well.
Dr. Purtilo was a very frustrating teacher to have. He was often extremely vague on what he wanted for assignments, which I understand was to make us learn in a hands-on way what the real life work experience is like, but although there will be times when requirements are unclear, there will be some guidance. Purtilo's "here, go do this, but I'm not going to tell you that I really also want X, Y, and Z because I want you to figure out that I want you to ask about those things" is particularly frustrating when we are also being graded on including X, Y, and Z. Also, the class web page is a wreck. It is simply a wall of text that is nearly impossible to find what you're looking for, which I find hypocritical because we are graded on making things look nice and having them be legible.
I would like recommend taking web development courses before taking this class.
I wish the website wasn't so messy. The professor claims that he doesnt like the herman-esque style, but his website shows otherwise. I also wish that deadlines were more clear and that there were clear set office hours and TA office hours.
I learned a lot from prof. Purtilo. This was a surprisingly challenging course.
I did not particularly like the way this class was taught. The professor's website was a massive text wall that was hard to parse. It was always a challenge to know what was due and on what date. There were never clearly defined assignments, which made it difficult to know if what I was doing was correct or necessary. All this being said, I learned a lot about Software Engineering through the 12-person class project. The project was a lesson in communication and teamwork, and I will definitely take what I learned into the work environment this summer.
The course is difficult. I regularly put in 4-6 hours a day especially near the end. I learned a lot though. It's a class I can honestly say will help me/has helped me in the real world.
For a course that is supposedly rooted in the idea of effective communication, I found there was a startling communication gap between the students and Dr. Purtilo. The website we used for this class was essentially a wall of black text on a white background, which made finding any sort of information about due dates, assignment requirements, etc. a frustrating endeavor. Half of my problems with keeping track of this information could have been solved by the professor simply having the site generate an email when it was updated. A search bar (besides Ctrl+F) would have also been helpful, or simply a simple table of assignment due dates, required file names, etc. at the top of the page.
I have some feedback regarding the website since you seemed interested in that, I think others probably were thinking the same things. The main issue that I had was that there was no way to get any sort of notification or email upon updates, so I wouldn't know when major things happened on it unless it was mentioned in class and I remembered to check. Also, while the blog style is useful, it would have been nice if there was some sort of navbar that linked to pages separated by topic where information was consolidated. I spent a lot of time searching the page for keywords trying to find where different requirements and such were mentioned. Outside of that, I loved this course. I specifically took this course this semester to get some experience in this area before starting an internship this summer, and I think I really got out of it what I wanted and more. It's not often that I have much positive to say about comp sci courses I've taken, but this experience was really valuable.
Definitely a useful course and gives good insight into what actually goes into software engineering and teaches us just how much goes into SE projects outside of the actual programming. It's just shame that some people in the class aren't too motivated and if they end up being placed in your group then you have to take on a larger workload. I think a mid-semester conversation/meet the professor should be required so students can have an opportunity to express any concerns they have directly to the professor. Although, given that one of the things this course teaches is how to communicate like a professional, if one really wanted to express their concerns directly to the professor they would take the steps to do that anyways. I think having it be required (for maybe 1% of the grade or something) just brings out the shy folks who might have valuable input.
Was incredibly difficult to keep track of dates, assignments, requirements, etc (home page for course is very difficult to navigate as a student, descriptions of assignments were often very, very, very vague).
Get ready Professor Purtilo.. Prof. Purtilo is great. I was told many mixed stories and feelings about him when I entered the class. I actually scheduled for Memon, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw you enter the classroom! Prof. Purtilo is also quite the hardass about deadlines and formats while being quite vague about his grading rubric (proposal needs more cowbell, I am not going to tell you exactly how to do this assignment but I am going to grade somehow too). Still I am glad to take the course with him. He is ALWAYS available. It is actually a little crazy how fast he will respond to email (and I thought I was fast), and I was able to meet him personally quickly and easily throughout the semester. He also genuinely cares about our education. Past the occasional rants and core dumps on the CS dept., he really does try to engage the class (seriously, CS students can be difficult sometimes) and he really wants us to learn the topics that will make sure successful in our careers in the future. My only comment on the actual coursework is that I wish he would make teammates more accountable during the semester. Several times during the semester I was a victim of working my ass off to pick up the slack of other people on my team. This happened both in the elevator simulation and the actual class project. I know the class is about working in a team, but what power do I really have over my peers? The last thing I want to do is come up to you and bitch about team members. To me this is hardly productive. Maybe after the finals are turned in, he can review the peer evaluations and commit logs and scale grades accordingly, but I still do not think this is enough. I don't have a real solution in mind other than having him play some part in the team management. Even if he can read the evals and logs at the end of the semester, the damage is done. Bad teammates lead to bad projects. I am fortunate to have had enough teammates with enough energy and enthusiasm to work long hours to pick up the slack of our teammates.

Statistics	Value
Response Count	32
Mean	3.59
Standard Deviation	+/-0.61