- 201801-CMSC435-0101-SOFTWARE ENGINEERING - James Purtilo - Instructor Report

Grade A	Grade B	Grade C	Grade D	Grade F	Grade PS	Grade W
19	20	8	0	0	0	1

By Score

Scale is Strongly Disagree (0) to Strongly Agree (4) with a Neutral mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
The course was intellectually challenging.	3.07	3.39	3.28	3.39
I learned a lot from this course.	3.07	3.21	3.16	3.23
Overall	3.07	3.30	3.22	3.31

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By Frequency

1. The course was intellectually challenging.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0.0%
Disagree	1	4	14.8%
Neutral	2	1	3.7%
Agree	3	11	40.7%
Strongly Agree	4	11	40.7%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	3.07
Standard Deviation	1.04

2. I learned a lot from this course.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	1	3.7%
Disagree	1	3	11.1%
Neutral	2	3	11.1%
Agree	3	6	22.2%
Strongly Agree	4	14	51.9%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	3.07
Standard Deviation	1.21

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How does this course fit into your academic plan or course of study?

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
General Education or CORE Requirement	0	3	11.1%
Major/Certificate/Minor/Program Requirement	1	20	74.1%
Elective	2	4	14.8%

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Additional comments (e.g. about course content/materials, teaching style, etc.):

Comments
This course could have benefitted from a better quality of students who understand that collaboration, trust and care are important traits and skills to have. Earlier courses in the CS and CE curriculum should try to enforce and encourage these traits in learning students.
The project is disconnected from lecture material, which meant lectures felt useless and wasteful.
I think the structure of the class was very different and will help students in the future. I think 420 could be a prereq because of how many different parts you have to manage in these projects
Although the course content is very important, the course lectures were fairly difficult to take notes on. This is true since many of the lectures consisted of anecdotes and a lot of the comments. It would have been useful if there were specific action items that would be useful for new professionals.
Its a semester long group project so naturally things end up getting done at the last minute. There are a lot of best practices that are suggested but not taught and most of the lessons learned come at the end....
I have not had a teacher at any level of education who puts more time and effort into making sure that students learn and apply practical knowledge for their field.
The breadth of coverage in this class is amazing. The depth of coverage in this class is too shallow. The instructor and course are not given enough time to cover in great depth all of the concepts introduced and needed. It would be beneficial to break this class into multiple classes and add a software engineering specialization.
Posting materials on the class page without any notifications (through email, etc) made me hard to keep track of progress.
I felt like the lecture material and the class work were completely unrelated most of the time. Sure, the subject was the same, but it felt like I could have skipped every lecture and gotten the same grade in the course. There was no reinforcement of the lecture materials. Purtilo just said the material in lecture, and if you didn't get it there was no way to review or reinforce the material. The slides were not even posted online, and there was no assigned course book. This is a shame, because the lecture material is important and relevant to any software developer.
I learned so much about software design and development in the actual business environment from this class. The practice in communication with both team members and the client (the professor) was very valuable in showing me how capable I am in that regard, and how much better I need to become. The way the lecture material was organized to coincide with our project–related activities made it very easy to quickly understand the real world implications of those issues, as we could immediately apply them. The Gallup activities were also very useful. I learned a lot about myself and my strengths, and I believe that focusing on those instead of my weaknesses as I normally would allowed me to contribute significantly more than I otherwise would have. Having a team conversation with Jim Collison really helped us get working well together, I think that added a lot to the experience. If there were one suggestion I would make, it would be to have some if not all the slides available to access. The reason for this isn't to make reading those slides a substitute for coming to class, as there is so much more to come to class for. It is just to be able to have a reference to things that were talked about earlier. Not everything that is important seems important at the time they are discussed, and as it is difficult to take notes on everything, being able to go back for a refresher would be really useful.
Professor Purtilo makes himself available as much as possible to his students. The amount of extra optional time we can get with him signifies the large value he dedicates to his students. Class resources: I think it would have been beneficial to have gone over the hardware used on the VMs. Particularly, the amount of disk space is a bit of a constraint depending on the amount of libraries a project needs. Mentoring site is always a bit strange. Needing to press the increase button several times is a bit of a hassle. Pre–reqs: This class requires passing a 400–level CMSC course as a prerequisite. I don't think any of the listed pre–req courses are particularly needed for this course. Lecture material: Much of the material taught in this class is very useful and not taught in any other class (AGILE development, process). However, there is also a good amount that we don't actually use in practice which makes it difficult to remember if it was only talked about in lecture.
Not sure what my grade will be yet but doing well on the semester project while losing small points all over the place to peer reviews and log checks and random quizzes and personality tests. So much stuff to do and so much information scattered across pages with walls of text to read. The workload for the project was very large. Lot of research and you're basically on your own depending on the project you get assigned. Would like maybe some reorganization of assignment information and more clear expectations from students.
The grading format is atrocious. It is incredibly unfair that everyone on the team receives the same grade when some people clearly put in much more effort than others. The lectures were widely a waste of my time and probably could have been better spent by teaching about more technical aspects of software engineering like design patterns, etc. The project was a great learning experience though and for that reason the class wasn't a complete waste – though students will still learn twice as much in a good internship than they will here, but the effort is there.
It was a highly engaging class with a very enthusiastic teacher, and it offered a unique experience compared to my past engineering classes, offering valuable team and professional experience
This course should definitely be a 4 credit course given the amount of time that successful students must put in. I also think the concepts that are taught in this course should be taught earlier in the CS/CE course curriculum. I found myself having to fight old habits that were drilled into me from intro level courses because they would be intolerable in the industry. It would also be advantageous to have a software engineering specialization, for we did not have nearly enough time in one semester to thoroughly explore all the topics encompassed and related to software engineering.
Personally didn't appreciate the teaching style, lectures weren't very concise and I felt like weren't effective in captivating student's attention. I wish there were more real world examples of software engineering in a non contracting context. A lot of what we learned was useful if I wanted to be a software consultant. It would have been nice to have more lectures focused on technical concepts.
Providing lecture slides would have been really helpful for reviewing the course material. Doing in–class exercises rather than just lecture and "team time" would have also made some of the material more concrete.
– Although I understand why the professor preferred to use his own website format and website in general, but it just added to the list of items students need to check for updates or know how to use. – I truly appreciated the Q12 even though it was hard to apply in such a small setting in a small amount of time, but it gave us a better idea of how to get engaged heading into the workforce. – There is probably a reason behind not having many deadlines early on in the project, but if there were earlier and more frequent deadlines it may increase student engagement earlier in the semester. Or it's not strict deadlines, reward those that do work early on somehow. – I think it would be beneficial to have more classes or class material that includes these topics and software engineering itself, because without taking this class I wouldn't know much about the field heading into my career.
There are two parts to this review, both constructive criticism and constructive praise. Like a tearing off a bandaid, I think we should get the bad part done first. I believe that the practice of having assignments due before the first class or on the first class is a poor policy, particularly when the consequences of missing them are so high, i.e. using them for the basis of group formation. If you want to teach a different type of class, you have to first acclimate the students to the differences. Sink or Swim is effective for instinctual learning, but punishing students for actions that occur before the course even starts can undermine trust. Peer evaluations should play a bigger role in group formation as well. The evaluations are not very anonymous in practice, so if a student knows one of their group members got poor reviews and s/he is on a team with them, it can seem like they're being set up for failure. Additionally rational students will place a higher priority on scrimmages because they are worth more credit. You said yourself that the first goal of ours should be to pass the class. Group formation should reflect that and place a higher priority on scrimmage performance. After all, arent the scrimmages the first true metric of team commitment? Trust is key in forming working relationships, so it may be helpful to assure the poor performing students that you are teaching them by throwing them in the deep end and will take that into account. Approach them privately through email and honestly tell them which group theyre in, why theyre in it, and what is expected of them to succeed. On the otherhand, I did find your method of teaching to be effective. By placing poor performing students together, the learning outcomes become more clear for that group. But more than just accountability goes into being a good team member, team commitment, ownership, responsibility, communication, activity, contribution, the list goes on. I certainly learned the value of accountability through this project, but if you took these other factors into account more learning outcomes would be presented. What I liked about this class is that it gave me the tools to succeed as a professional software engineer. The importance of accountability, documentation, measurements, research, prototyping, and testing were made clear to me. So was the workings of the client employee relationship. I think this course did a great job of teaching me to be an engineer but it is hard to comment on the fairness of the grading as we do not know the cut offs yet. Youre a good teacher, but its a little natural for seniors to get nervous about passing when theyre making graduation plans.

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By Score

Scale is Strongly Disagree (0) to Strongly Agree (4) with a Neutral mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
The instructor treated students with respect.	3.37	3.52	3.46	3.50
The instructor was well-prepared for class.	3.56	3.28	3.37	3.36
Overall, this instructor was an effective teacher.	2.93	3.01	3.11	3.06
Overall	3.28	3.27	3.31	3.31

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By Frequency

1. The instructor treated students with respect.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	1	3.7%
Disagree	1	0	0.0%
Neutral	2	3	11.1%
Agree	3	7	25.9%
Strongly Agree	4	16	59.3%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	3.37
Standard Deviation	0.97

2. The instructor was well-prepared for class.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0.0%
Disagree	1	0	0.0%
Neutral	2	1	3.7%
Agree	3	10	37.0%
Strongly Agree	4	16	59.3%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	3.56
Standard Deviation	0.58

3. Overall, this instructor was an effective teacher.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0.0%
Disagree	1	4	14.8%
Neutral	2	4	14.8%
Agree	3	9	33.3%
Strongly Agree	4	10	37.0%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	2.93
Standard Deviation	1.07

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Overall Score

Averaging the following five scaled Administrator items (from above, repeated below) results in the Overall Score.

Scale is Strongly Disagree (0) to Strongly Agree (4) with a Neutral mid-point

Competency	Course
The course was intellectually challenging	3.07
I learned a lot from this course	3.07
The instructor treated students with respect	3.37
The instructor was well-prepared for class	3.56
Overall, this instructor was an effective teacher	2.93
Total Score	3.20

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By Score

Scale is Too Low (0) to Too High (2) with an Appropriate mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
The standards the instructor set for students were...	1.22	1.17	1.12	1.15

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By Frequency

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Too Low	0	0	0.0%
Appropriate	1	21	77.8%
Too High	2	6	22.2%

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By Score

Scale is Strongly Disagree (0) to Strongly Agree (4) with a Neutral mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
Course guidelines were clearly described in the syllabus.	2.63	3.10	3.21	3.21

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By Frequency

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0.0%
Disagree	1	4	14.8%
Neutral	2	6	22.2%
Agree	3	13	48.1%
Strongly Agree	4	4	14.8%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	2.63
Standard Deviation	0.93

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By Score

Scale is Too Low (0) to Too High (2) with an Appropriate mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
Based on the quality of my work in this course, the grades I earned were	1.04	0.82	0.84	0.82

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By Frequency

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Too Low	0	0	0.0%
Appropriate	1	23	95.8%
Too High	2	1	4.2%

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By Score

Scale is Too Low (0) to Too High (2) with an Appropriate mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
Given the course level and number of credits, the workload was	1.67	1.17	1.13	1.12

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By Frequency

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Too Low	0	0	0.0%
Appropriate	1	9	33.3%
Too High	2	18	66.7%

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By Score

Scale is Little (0) to Considerable (2) with a Moderate mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
How much effort did you put into the course?	1.74	1.54	1.48	1.52

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By Frequency

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Little	0	1	3.7%
Moderate	1	5	18.5%
Considerable	2	21	77.8%

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By Score

Scale is Strongly Disagree (0) to Strongly Agree (4) with a Neutral mid-point

Question	Course	Department (CMNS-Computer Science)	College (CMNS)	Course Level (CMNS_400)
Question	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
The instructor was effective in communicating the content of the course.	2.81	3.04	3.12	3.08
The instructor was responsive to student concerns.	3.30	3.30	3.29	3.34
The instructor helped create an atmosphere that kept me engaged in course content.	2.59	2.94	3.05	3.00

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By Frequency

1. The instructor was effective in communicating the content of the course.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0.0%
Disagree	1	4	14.8%
Neutral	2	3	11.1%
Agree	3	14	51.9%
Strongly Agree	4	6	22.2%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	2.81
Standard Deviation	0.96

2. The instructor was responsive to student concerns.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0.0%
Disagree	1	2	7.4%
Neutral	2	3	11.1%
Agree	3	7	25.9%
Strongly Agree	4	15	55.6%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	3.30
Standard Deviation	0.95

3. The instructor helped create an atmosphere that kept me engaged in course content.

Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	5	18.5%
Disagree	1	2	7.4%
Neutral	2	1	3.7%
Agree	3	10	37.0%
Strongly Agree	4	9	33.3%

Statistics	Value
Response Count	27
Mean	2.59
Standard Deviation	1.50

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