Report Comments
This report presents feedback received from students for the course SOFTWARE ENGINEERING and for the Instructor James Purtilo in that course. Course means are calculated from all responses by all students in the unit (i.e., course section/lecture) on that item and exclude N/A (not applicable) responses.
Indication is provided below for the Report Group if there is one affiliated with this course section, otherwise it is blank. The Report Group will be the lead section of a grouped course (i.e. multi-section lecture) and/or the primary of cross-listed courses. Subsections are found in the Instructor Subgroup Report.
Semester: Fall 2022
College: College of Computer, Math & Natural Sciences
Department: CMNS-Computer Science
Course #: CMSC435
Section #: 0101
Course Title: SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Report Group:
Instructor: James Purtilo
Indication is provided below for the Report Group if there is one affiliated with this course section, otherwise it is blank. The Report Group will be the lead section of a grouped course (i.e. multi-section lecture) and/or the primary of cross-listed courses. Subsections are found in the Instructor Subgroup Report.
Semester: Fall 2022
College: College of Computer, Math & Natural Sciences
Department: CMNS-Computer Science
Course #: CMSC435
Section #: 0101
Course Title: SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Report Group:
Instructor: James Purtilo
- Creation Date
- Tuesday, January 03, 2023
University-Wide Course Items Applied to All Section Instructors
N/A responses have been excluded from the following calculations.
N/A responses have been excluded from the following calculations.
Campus Wide Course Questions
1. The content covered in the course was directly related to the course goals and objectives.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 1 | 7% |
| Disagree | 2 | 2 | 14% |
| Neutral | 3 | 1 | 7% |
| Agree | 4 | 4 | 29% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 6 | 43% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 3.9 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.4 |
2. The assessments (e.g., tests, quizzes, papers) were directly related to what was covered/practiced in the course.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 1 | 7% |
| Disagree | 2 | 1 | 7% |
| Neutral | 3 | 2 | 14% |
| Agree | 4 | 4 | 29% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 6 | 43% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 3.9 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.3 |
3. The required texts (e.g., books, course packs, online resources) helped me learn course material.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 3 | 27% |
| Disagree | 2 | 2 | 18% |
| Neutral | 3 | 4 | 36% |
| Agree | 4 | 2 | 18% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 0 | 0% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 11 |
| Mean | 2.5 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.1 |
4. This course pushed and expanded my ability to think deeply about the subject.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| Disagree | 2 | 3 | 21% |
| Neutral | 3 | 0 | 0% |
| Agree | 4 | 4 | 29% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 7 | 50% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 4.1 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.2 |
5. I believe the content of this course was a valuable part of my education.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| Disagree | 2 | 1 | 7% |
| Neutral | 3 | 1 | 7% |
| Agree | 4 | 3 | 21% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 9 | 64% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 4.4 |
| Standard Deviation | 0.9 |
6. I believe I learned a lot from this course.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 1 | 7% |
| Disagree | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| Neutral | 3 | 0 | 0% |
| Agree | 4 | 3 | 21% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 10 | 71% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 4.5 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.1 |
On average, how many hours each week did you spend on this course (e.g., attending class, doing homework, studying, completing assignments)?
On average, how many hours each week did you spend on this course (e.g., attending class, doing homework, studying, completing assignments)?
| Options | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Less than 3 hours | 0 | 0% |
| 3 up to 6 hours | 0 | 0% |
| 6 up to 9 hours | 3 | 21% |
| 9 up to 12 hours | 4 | 29% |
| 12 up to 15 hours | 5 | 36% |
| 15 hours or more | 2 | 14% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
How did this course fit into your academic plan and/or educational goals?
Reponses for this item are "select all that apply."
| Frequency | |
|---|---|
| Required for program/major/minor/certificate, or as a prerequisite | 12 |
| Elective for program/major/minor/certificate | 3 |
| To satisfy an undergraduate General Education requirement | 0 |
| In preparation for research, employment, or future program/degree | 4 |
| Personal interest in content | 7 |
| Other/It doesn't | 0 |
Comment Items Applied to All Section Instructors
What about the course and/or instruction most enhanced your learning?
| Comments |
|---|
| The semester–long project was a big learning experience. It allowed us to learn new skills on our own and do the technological research to complete the task. Unlike other classes, I've taken I really learned stuff that would be valuable to my future. Additionally, it was interesting to work in a team environment without a central manager to assign tasks. |
| The project was definitely the best part about the course, and everything that we learned in the class could easily be applied to the project. |
| My collaboration with my teammates taught me a huge amount. Both in learning the knowledge they have, but also how to work in a team. |
| The entire course being the practical application of the principles (a software project). Bringing in former students to consult also helped a lot. |
| The "do the right thing" mindset. It was difficult, but resulted in a lot of learning. Looking back at the first document submitted vs the last shows incredible improvement. Additionally there is not enough time to teach how to use the tools and proper devops. Forcing students to figure it out I think will be useful later. We'll either have our own opinions on how to do it, or we'll just have experience on how to self teach. |
| I think bringing in guest speakers to see perspectives not too far removed from ours was very helpful. |
| This class was nothing like I had ever taken before. It's hard to say what about it enhanced my learning because it was so different and it was so helpful. Having the class centered around this large project where we have to actually think, pursue things without instructions, and decide what is the right thing to do, not just do that thing, was so helpful. I feel like I learned a lot and, more importantly, developed a lot of skills. There should be more classes like this and I think some of these principles should be incorporated earlier into the cs curriculum. |
| My group members. |
| Nothing, I barely learned anything from this course. |
| I could tell that Professor Purtilo really cared about us as students. He had our best interests in mind and loves teaching this class. His lectures were engaging and he provided ample feedback if you asked for it. He cared about his students as individuals and taught us what we would need for the real world not just in a learning environment. |
| The semester–long project enhanced my learning the most. It gave me an opportunity to refine my software engineering and communication skills, while also making a real tool. |
| I think the long form group projects are really important and we dont have enough of them in the curriculum. |
| Prof. Purtilo can be an a–hole. He is extremely strict about deadlines, and ruthless in grading students who don't contribute actual effort to the course. However, this strictness is an extremely effective wake–up call to students that expected to get past this class easily. It effectively filters students who don't legitimately want to succeed in the class, and those who remain are mostly prepared to give whatever is necessary to perform. In addition, it's become clear that behind his cold facade, Prof. Purtilo legitimately cares about how well his students learn. He's more immediately and consistently responsive than any other professor I've had in my 5 years at this university. Anyone who puts their 100% into this class will learn immensely, no matter what level of professional experience they have coming in. He makes sure of that. The class projects are intense, but offer experiential learning that's entirely unparalleled at this university. While many hate this class with a burning passion, they almost universally agree that they're better engineers for having gone through it. I've been frequently recommending this class to any students that want to graduate from this university and go into the professional world of software, while warning away students who want to get out of UMD with as little effort as possible. |
What about the course and/or instruction can be improved the next time it is offered?
| Comments |
|---|
| Everything went well despite the little tricks thrown at us at the start of the semester. The only improvement I could suggest would be to have a more organized way for the written assignments that is due. For example, in the delivery assignment, it was difficult to parse through three paragraphs to understand what is desired for the report. I think just having the rubric on the class page would be much more helpful so that we can think ahead starting from the proposal. |
| I think this course is definitely easier if you have taken certain courses such as CMSC335, CMSC420, CMSC424. I feel like making something like 335 required would make it easier for those who are taking this course like a capstone or don't have too much of a CS background. |
| I understand that giving low grades early in the semester and putting pressure on students prevents complacency and pushes students. And to a certain degree, that is appreciated. However, my semester was miserable, in no small part due to this class. Building motivation less so from fear and anxiety would go a long way for that. A stick can keep someone going, but a little sugar can make the experience substantially less arduous. I'm unsure of how to exactly implement that, there are already some two–foot putts throughout the semester. Maybe express more value in phony–bologna points, rewarding engagement or initiative. Random percentage bumps to the student grades for repeated positive actions reinforce those actions (unexpected bumps encourage further work, as its not guaranteed, but still breed hope). A positive implementation of the Skinner box. I would like to be stressed but not anxious. On a more technical note. Please make peer mentoring due later on Fridays and make inputs possible afterwards as soon as possible. Student Fridays are already a mess without a deadline in the middle of the evening. Inputs after the scraping should be recorded for the next scraping, or the fact that it won't should be made clear to the user on the website. It would be nice if links to the course site were available on ELMs. The blog is a fine way to communicate with the students. Some sort of tag or note pointing to assignments/deliverables would be helpful to students. I don't want ambiguity on what to do, where, and when. |
| I understand the reasoning behind not touching on some of the topics until after the assignment related to them is turned in, but it would be really cool to have a little more direction for the proposal so that we have a better foundation for the project. |
| I think the proposal deadline had issues. Teams are deadline oriented and the proposal had a soft deadline which resulted in it dragging on. I thought taking our time on the project and waiting to learn more in class would help, but I think frontloading the project as much as possible would've made us more successful. |
| I wish we had examples of good citations of evidence, like a previous final exam question and sample answer. |
| It's hard to strike the balance between letting us figure things out and keeping us from getting totally lost, but I think there should be more in–class reminders about due dates and deadlines in advance + a bit more grading/requirement clarity. Also some more depth on how to do things like risk assessment and measuring progress. It also might be worthwhile to add some small meaningless points to tickets because it's so easy to just ignore them throughout the semester because the final feels so far away. |
| The professor doesn't actually teach technical concepts or give assistance on the assignments. He also demands a lot of work in the form of writing. |
| The instructor should teach the course not talk about obvious staff for the entire semester. |
| Fix the wall of text to make it more legible. |
| Give students some freedom for project choice so interest in work can be sustained throughout the semester. |
| (Directed towards Purtilo) I have two primary problems with this class. One is quite simple, that the website is terrible. The blog is messy, makes it hard to find what you're looking for (largely due to a lack of consistent formatting of assignments, and no separation between assignments, due dates, and announcements), and importantly is entirely separate from any of the other websites we use for our classes which makes it significantly harder to keep track of. I think at the very least publishing assignments on ELMS even if you still use the current website for other things would be extremely helpful for keeping track of things The second is more complicated. I think this class would benefit overall from more structure. The class models itself in many ways off of a professional environment, but at times seems like it feels like this is at its own detriment. We are told what good practices are outright, but there is very little enforcement of these things over the course of the semester (ticketing, weekly reviews, frequent meetings with each other and yourself) and so students are forced to either build these habits on their own time (and that's what they are, habits that need to be built through repetition) or fail. I think this approach can be unproductive for a subset of students including myself. If the goal of the class is primarily to teach these habits, I think it would be better to assign many of them throughout the semester and actually force us to do them in the moment. For example, I would have greatly appreciated if there was more time in class dedicated to group work, possibly a whole extra 2–3hr block twice a week for groups to meet and work on things, additionally, more frequent checkpoints and check ins from you would have also helped keep people on the right track. Further, making tickets a weekly/monthly grade on ELMs, posting the team weekly reviews as weekly assignments, and more frequent *mandatory* checkpoints and check–ins from you would also be helpful. You describe yourself as a spirit guide, here to help us find the right path and form good habits, and if this were the second or third course in a series, I think that would be just fine. However, since this is many of our first times with these things, I think I at least need a firmer hand, someone to drag me down the right path kicking and screaming whether I want to or not. |
| Why is it necessary to loop politics into a software engineering class? Linking Prager U on the class webpage is embarrassing. It is a blatantly biased and politicized cite? Why do this? The blog is a horribly painful way to do deadlines and assignment announcements |
| A lot of people hate a lot of things about this class. That said, it's a surprisingly well–optimized machine towards achieving his singular goal: make better engineers. In that regard, I'd trust him to continue optimizing the system semester after semester towards this goal. I have no particular criticism. |
University-Wide Instructor James Purtilo Items
N/A responses have been excluded from the following calculations.
N/A responses have been excluded from the following calculations.
Campus Wide Instructor Questions
1. The instructor provided constructive feedback on my work that helped me to learn.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| Disagree | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| Neutral | 3 | 1 | 7% |
| Agree | 4 | 9 | 64% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 4 | 29% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 4.2 |
| Standard Deviation | 0.6 |
2. The instructor provided feedback in the course in time to apply it.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| Disagree | 2 | 1 | 7% |
| Neutral | 3 | 2 | 14% |
| Agree | 4 | 7 | 50% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 4 | 29% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 4.0 |
| Standard Deviation | 0.9 |
3. The instructor clearly communicated grading criteria for my work throughout the course.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| Disagree | 2 | 5 | 36% |
| Neutral | 3 | 3 | 21% |
| Agree | 4 | 5 | 36% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 1 | 7% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 3.1 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.0 |
4. The instructor clearly communicated the purpose, instructions, and deadlines for my graded work throughout the course.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 1 | 7% |
| Disagree | 2 | 2 | 14% |
| Neutral | 3 | 2 | 14% |
| Agree | 4 | 6 | 43% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 3 | 21% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 3.6 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.2 |
5. The instructor helped me understand new content by connecting it to things I already knew.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 2 | 14% |
| Disagree | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| Neutral | 3 | 2 | 14% |
| Agree | 4 | 7 | 50% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 3 | 21% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 3.6 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.3 |
6. The instructor created an inclusive environment where everyone belonged.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| Disagree | 2 | 1 | 7% |
| Neutral | 3 | 5 | 36% |
| Agree | 4 | 4 | 29% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 4 | 29% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 3.8 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.0 |
7. The instructor demonstrated confidence in everyone's potential to succeed in the course.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 1 | 7% |
| Disagree | 2 | 3 | 21% |
| Neutral | 3 | 1 | 7% |
| Agree | 4 | 6 | 43% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 3 | 21% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 3.5 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.3 |
8. I felt like the instructor cared about my learning in the course.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 1 | 7% |
| Disagree | 2 | 1 | 7% |
| Neutral | 3 | 0 | 0% |
| Agree | 4 | 4 | 29% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 8 | 57% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 14 |
| Mean | 4.2 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.3 |
Campus Wide Instructor Questions (continued)
9. I would recommend this instructor to other students for this course.
| Options | Score | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strongly Disagree | 1 | 2 | 15% |
| Disagree | 2 | 1 | 8% |
| Neutral | 3 | 4 | 31% |
| Agree | 4 | 3 | 23% |
| Strongly Agree | 5 | 3 | 23% |
| Statistics | Value |
|---|---|
| Response Count | 13 |
| Mean | 3.3 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.4 |
End of Report