Student Focus Group on the Undergraduate Computer Science Program Monday, May 2, 2005 Students participating: Nick Horvath, Albert Wu (sophomore) Nina Zachrenko, Chris Sturges, Jason Dow, Daniel Panzello, Dean, Michael Dejoy, Kim Albrecht (juniors) Alice Streno, Michael Fabri, Sean Breslin, Clayton Swindoll (seniors) Faculty participating Leo Bachmair Steven Skiena (scribe) -------------------------------------------------------------------- These notes were taken at our Spring 2005 student focus group meeting. We feel the exercise was very useful -- many of the concerns were quite new to me and different from last year's focus group. Steve PS: Particularly significant entries are marked with a (*) --------------------------------------------------------------------- What are we doing right in our major and what are we doing wrong? ---------------------------------------------------------------- (*) Several students felt that our course sequence did not provide enough coverage of C/C++. Many felt that they wanted to take CSE 130/230, but did not because the credit would not be applied towards their major. There seems to be increased interest in C/C++ due to the popularity of game programming (more below) Should we figure out how to make it count as some type of elective? (*) Reactions to our new program of offering multiple sections of popular courses was generally positive, but students had certain issues. In particular, sometime one section was much more popular than the other due to offering time, instructor, or class policies (e.g. several students selected a particular section of CSE 308 because it had did not have midterms) (*) None of the students regretted their choice of major; even in the face of the issues raised in the discussion all were glad they are studying computer science at Stony Brook. Course Specific Comments ------------------------ Students were not happy about CSE 310, which is usually a popular course. Several complained that the programming assignments were too much fill-in-the-blanks. Several students did not like the choice of programming language in CSE 336; they would like to see some PHP in addition to JSP. (*) There was some feeling that either CSE 305 or CSE 333 be made a prerequisite for software engineering (CSE 308) because so many of the projects depend upon this. In general, students did really like CSE 308. There was great enthusiasm for CSE 390, the game programming class, and instructor Rich McKenna. There was mixed reaction about CSE 219 -- a general consensus that it was valuable although too much work. Several students urged introducing CVS at the beginning of the course instead of the middle of a project. (*) There was considerable belief that AMS 301 (combinatorics/graph theory) should be made a prerequisite for CSE 373 (algorithms) (*) There was considerable enthusiasm about our plan to remove the ethics assignment from CSE 308 and replace it with a one-credit course (CSE 302). There was concern in CSE 300 that students were not getting prompt enough feedback for their assignments; papers were not being returned before the next assignment was due. Facilities ---------- (*) There was a general interest in learning more about UNIX/Linux; roughly half of the students had installed Linux on their computers (all owned at least one machine). Students wanted Debian instead of BSD. There were some complaints about the speed of the computers in the UG lab as being inadequate for CSE 219 or game programming (an upgrade is planned for this summer). There was some confusion of what the difference between the UG and translabs were, and some complaints about the logistics of getting accounts on all the labs. (*) Students were unanimous that more printers are needed in the labs. (*) Certain software issues came up: (1) Why Sybase instead of MySQL (2) wHY BSD instead of Debian, (3) Why not Visual Studio.net instead of the current version? There were issues about access to the translab remotely through firewalls Minors and Concentrations ------------------------- (*) There would be great interest in a concentration/minor in game programming. I was astonished to see that half of the focus group would do game programming after graduation than work for Google! Several students recommended that CS students consider a minor in linguistics; apparently CSE 303 gives one a good heads up there. Advising -------- (*) Students were surprisingly uninformed about who their official faculty advisor was; several did not know that it was listed on the web. We need to do a better job getting the word out on this. People were quite satisfied with Leo's academic advising, and also enthusiastic about Loretta's help in CEAS. Grading ------- (*) In general, students felt the grading in the department was fair, although some professors were fairer than others. Students liked grading systems where they knew what work they had to do to get a particular grade -- in particular Anita's grading system come in for praise. Students did not like it when assignment extensions were provided without warning, ie. the day the assignment was due. They want to know about it a week in advance so they can schedule their lives