- 202301-CMSC435-0101-SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (James Purtilo) - Instructor Report

202301-CMSC435-0101-SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (James Purtilo) - Instructor Report - Spring 2023

Project Title: University of Maryland Course Experiences Spring 2023

Number of Students Invited: 38
Number of Evaluations Submitted: 17
Response Rate: 45%

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: Spring 2023
College: College of Computer, Math & Natural Sciences
Department: CMNS-Computer Science
Course #: CMSC435
Section #: 0101
Course Title: SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Report Group:

Instructor: James Purtilo

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University-Wide Course Items Applied to All Section Instructors
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.

Graphs illustrating the information in the accessible table that should immediately follow it.

Table for [QTitle]-1. The content covered in the course was directly related to the course goals and objectives..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	1	6%
Neutral	2	2	12%
Agree	3	6	35%
Strongly Agree	4	8	47%

Table for [QTitle]-1. The content covered in the course was directly related to the course goals and objectives.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.2
Standard Deviation	0.9

2. The assessments (e.g., tests, quizzes, papers) were directly related to what was covered/practiced in the course.

Table for [QTitle]-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	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	2	15%
Neutral	2	2	15%
Agree	3	4	31%
Strongly Agree	4	5	38%

Table for [QTitle]-2. The assessments (e.g., tests, quizzes, papers) were directly related to what was covered/practiced in the course.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	13
Mean	2.9
Standard Deviation	1.1

3. The required texts (e.g., books, course packs, online resources) helped me learn course material.

Table for [QTitle]-3. The required texts (e.g., books, course packs, online resources) helped me learn course material..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	4	40%
Disagree	1	3	30%
Neutral	2	2	20%
Agree	3	0	0%
Strongly Agree	4	1	10%

Table for [QTitle]-3. The required texts (e.g., books, course packs, online resources) helped me learn course material.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	10
Mean	1.1
Standard Deviation	1.3

4. This course pushed and expanded my ability to think deeply about the subject.

Table for [QTitle]-4. This course pushed and expanded my ability to think deeply about the subject..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	0	0%
Neutral	2	4	24%
Agree	3	3	18%
Strongly Agree	4	10	59%

Table for [QTitle]-4. This course pushed and expanded my ability to think deeply about the subject.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.4
Standard Deviation	0.9

5. I believe the content of this course was a valuable part of my education.

Table for [QTitle]-5. I believe the content of this course was a valuable part of my education..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	0	0%
Neutral	2	3	18%
Agree	3	3	18%
Strongly Agree	4	11	65%

Table for [QTitle]-5. I believe the content of this course was a valuable part of my education.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.5
Standard Deviation	0.8

6. I believe I learned a lot from this course.

Table for [QTitle]-6. I believe I learned a lot from this course..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	1	6%
Neutral	2	3	18%
Agree	3	2	12%
Strongly Agree	4	11	65%

Table for [QTitle]-6. I believe I learned a lot from this course.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.4
Standard Deviation	1.0

On average, how many hours each week did you spend on this course (e.g., attending class, doing homework, studying, completing assignments)?

Table for [QTitle]-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	3	18%
6 up to 9 hours	8	47%
9 up to 12 hours	1	6%
12 up to 15 hours	2	12%
15 hours or more	3	18%

Table for [QTitle]-On average, how many hours each week did you spend on this course (e.g., attending class, doing homework, studying, completing assignments)?-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17

How did this course fit into your academic plan and/or educational goals?

Table for [QTitle].
Options	Count
Required for program/major/minor/certificate, or as a prerequisite	8
Elective for program/major/minor/certificate	10
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

The counts above are based on a total of 17 responses to the survey.

Comment Items Applied to All Section Instructors

What about the course and/or instruction most enhanced your learning?

Table for [QTitle].

Comments

Given 435 is a capstone course, the main feature was the semester long project. This project taught me lessons in project planning, team collaboration, client relationships, and effective software development. Although the lessons were covered in ambiguity, the professor has a method that works and challenged students to begin thinking for themselves rather than following a guided path a lot of other courses train us on. Throughout the course you develop a sense of responsibility to your client, team, and product to be something great.

Just the course itself? I mean there just isn't anything like this at UMD. It just gives you a job and tells you "work". Purtilo mentioned something about internships on the last day – something along the lines of whether internships prepared you for this course or this course prepared you for internships – and I didn't get the chance to chime in but I realized what critical point separates this course from internships. In an internship, you get a lot of valuable experience about what working in the industry is actually like, and learn a lot of soft skills like communication. CMSC435 is pretty much the same except for two things. One, your industry practices might fall apart a bit depending on how organized you are – which demonstrates the importance of planning and discipline and two, you are not an essential part of a company in an internship. In an internship, you are treated as a junior, and (best case scenario) you are given a somewhat complex but ultimately not critically important task. In CMSC435 you are treated as one–sixth of an entire project and you are forced to step up to the plate.

This class does not allow you to hide behind more important people and coast, you have to do your work and make sure it works. This is exactly what I was looking for when I signed up – I wanted a class that would actually have an interesting project I could get invested in because I wanted an interesting class that would actually have group work instead of just lectures and individual work. This class really is insane when you think about it, and I'm not sure how it hasn't been shut down for basically just being free labor, but I'm glad I took it. This is definitely the class I've learned the most from.

Thanks for a great class, Dr P.

The way the class was essentially a giant team project was really useful. It was completely different from any other class I've taken but it had a lot of valuable knowledge and experience packed into it. I think that this class should remain like this.

Nothing more effective than learning by doing. Being affected by our own failures as a team was an excellent tool to solidify lessons.

I think the meetings with Purtilo and the in–class discussion are what most enhanced my learning.

The fact that this course revolves around the group project with "loose" deadlines required students to take responsibility and leadership within their teams to get work done. In this class, we were reminded throughout the entire semester that the work we were actively putting in were directly correlated to our performance in the class as a whole and the final exam. My team applied real world practices in software engineering to develop a really awesome product with amazing documentation. I feel like we learned a lot about best practices for our future work environment and the role that we are able to play when we give our best effort and collaborate.

Making tickets

Availability of the instructor and willingness to engage with just about anything.

Warm, understanding e–mail responses.

It helped me realize how important a good team is and how to talk to a client for a specific software project. It's like an internship without the experience to put on my resume or pay.

I have never worked on a software engineering project, so I learned a lot about the whole process and how to prototype projects in this area.

I think the group environment and having to figure out some stuff independently enhanced my learning the most. I think Purtillo being available to us really helped us initially with constructing what we wanted to do. I do feel that the expectations for our work were not as well communicated as we got feedback that we were doing well but then for some submissions we eventually found out that we were not at the level he wanted when we said we wanted it graded. I like his feedback when he talks about the industry and stuff broadly but would appreciate some concrete this is good or not good answers as well.

What about the course and/or instruction can be improved the next time it is offered?

Table for [QTitle].

Comments

There is a method behind how teams are created and I think that is something that deserves more attention. Perhaps near the end teams could see a breakdown as to why they were grouped.

Only thing I would suggest is to ditch or overhaul the website. It's just ridiculously clunky and hard to identify anything you need that isn't in the dashboard or wasn't recently posted in the blog section. You mentioned something about if someone had asked you would have told them about the RSS feed, and that's just too much. I understand that's trying to reward people who openly interact with their professors and stuff (same idea behind the "early professor chat"), and I agree with that sentiment, but only giving the RSS feed (that would've been a massive quality–of–life improvement) to the extremely rare students who will go to you and say "your website sucks" is ridiculous.

I would say either overhaul the website or just give out the RSS feed (also I don't think most people know what RSS feeds are anymore).

The professor almost brags about trying to fail students. The assignments are vague and never explained clearly and the professor usually says something like "just do what's right".

Not much to be honest. I believe I had a great experience, maybe even compared to other people in the class, but the course if fine on its own. More budget and more intra–team interaction would be in order to make this class better.

Instructor refused to use ELMS, which wouldn't have been a big deal if he had any organized way of communicating what/when things were due. Please force him to use ELMS next time. He also refused to make his slides/their information available anywhere, and went through them too quickly to take notes for in class.

The RSS feed thing really would have been nice to know because I would sometimes forget to check the website. Also, I would appreciate if some of the assignment requirements were not hidden within large amounts of other text.

I really wouldn't change anything about this course! Even though my team hated svn and spent hours struggling with figuring out how to use it correctly, having to work together to get through it was a great bonding experience. I initially dreaded this class and the thought of having a very involved group project because historically group projects have gone so poorly. Dread turned into excitement for what we were doing.

give us heads up with quiz schedule and its materials

This is already a pretty solid course, I have no notes.

Post slides so that students can review and study them to better learn the content.

University-Wide Instructor James Purtilo Items
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.

Table for [QTitle]-1. The instructor provided constructive feedback on my work that helped me to learn..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	1	6%
Disagree	1	1	6%
Neutral	2	0	0%
Agree	3	6	35%
Strongly Agree	4	9	53%

Table for [QTitle]-1. The instructor provided constructive feedback on my work that helped me to learn.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.2
Standard Deviation	1.1

2. The instructor provided feedback in the course in time to apply it.

Table for [QTitle]-2. The instructor provided feedback in the course in time to apply it..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	0	0%
Neutral	2	0	0%
Agree	3	5	29%
Strongly Agree	4	12	71%

Table for [QTitle]-2. The instructor provided feedback in the course in time to apply it.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.7
Standard Deviation	0.5

3. The instructor clearly communicated grading criteria for my work throughout the course.

Table for [QTitle]-3. The instructor clearly communicated grading criteria for my work throughout the course..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	3	18%
Disagree	1	3	18%
Neutral	2	0	0%
Agree	3	6	35%
Strongly Agree	4	5	29%

Table for [QTitle]-3. The instructor clearly communicated grading criteria for my work throughout the course.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	2.4
Standard Deviation	1.5

4. The instructor clearly communicated the purpose, instructions, and deadlines for my graded work throughout the course.

Table for [QTitle]-4. The instructor clearly communicated the purpose, instructions, and deadlines for my graded work throughout the course..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	2	12%
Disagree	1	2	12%
Neutral	2	2	12%
Agree	3	6	35%
Strongly Agree	4	5	29%

Table for [QTitle]-4. The instructor clearly communicated the purpose, instructions, and deadlines for my graded work throughout the course.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	2.6
Standard Deviation	1.4

5. The instructor helped me understand new content by connecting it to things I already knew.

Table for [QTitle]-5. The instructor helped me understand new content by connecting it to things I already knew..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	1	6%
Neutral	2	6	38%
Agree	3	3	19%
Strongly Agree	4	6	38%

Table for [QTitle]-5. The instructor helped me understand new content by connecting it to things I already knew.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	16
Mean	2.9
Standard Deviation	1.0

6. The instructor created an inclusive environment where everyone belonged.

Table for [QTitle]-6. The instructor created an inclusive environment where everyone belonged..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	1	6%
Neutral	2	2	12%
Agree	3	1	6%
Strongly Agree	4	13	76%

Table for [QTitle]-6. The instructor created an inclusive environment where everyone belonged.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.5
Standard Deviation	0.9

7. The instructor demonstrated confidence in everyone's potential to succeed in the course.

Table for [QTitle]-7. The instructor demonstrated confidence in everyone's potential to succeed in the course..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	1	6%
Disagree	1	3	18%
Neutral	2	0	0%
Agree	3	1	6%
Strongly Agree	4	12	71%

Table for [QTitle]-7. The instructor demonstrated confidence in everyone's potential to succeed in the course.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.2
Standard Deviation	1.4

8. I felt like the instructor cared about my learning in the course.

Table for [QTitle]-8. I felt like the instructor cared about my learning in the course..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	0	0%
Disagree	1	0	0%
Neutral	2	1	6%
Agree	3	3	18%
Strongly Agree	4	13	76%

Table for [QTitle]-8. I felt like the instructor cared about my learning in the course.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	17
Mean	3.7
Standard Deviation	0.6

Campus Wide Instructor Questions (continued)

9. I would recommend this instructor to other students for this course.

Table for [QTitle]-9. I would recommend this instructor to other students for this course..
Options	Score	Count	Percentage
Strongly Disagree	0	1	6%
Disagree	1	3	19%
Neutral	2	1	6%
Agree	3	1	6%
Strongly Agree	4	10	63%

Table for [QTitle]-9. I would recommend this instructor to other students for this course.-Statistics.
Statistics	Value
Response Count	16
Mean	3.0
Standard Deviation	1.5

End of Report