| Faculty: | SCHOOL OF COMPUTING | Academic Year: | 2008/2009 |
| Department: | COMPUTER SCIENCE | Semester: | 2 |
| Module: | DATA STRUCTURES AND ALGORITHMS - CS1102X |
| Qn | Items Evaluated | Module Avg Score | Nos Responded |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Overall opinion of the module. | 3.426 | 94 |
| 2 | Grade likely to get for the module. | 3.925 | 93 |
| 3 | Difficulty level of the module. | 4.106 | 94 |
QN\SCORE | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Qn 1: Overall opinion of the module. | Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Poor |
Qn 2: Grade likely to get for the module. | A | B | C | D | F |
Qn 3: Difficulty level of the module. | Very Difficult | Difficult | Average | Easy | Very Easy |
| Nos. of Respondents(% of Respondents) |
| | | ||||||
ITEM\SCORE | | | Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory | Poor |
| | | ||||||
Module | | | 8 (8.51%) | 38 (40.43%) | 36 (38.30%) | 10 (10.64%) | 2 (2.13%) |
Module at Same Level (Dept) | | | 164 (12.12%) | 615 (45.45%) | 459 (33.92%) | 86 (6.36%) | 29 (2.14%) |
Module at Same Level (Fac) | | | 204 (10.16%) | 894 (44.54%) | 746 (37.17%) | 127 (6.33%) | 36 (1.79%) |
| Nos. of Respondents(% of Respondents) |
| | | ||||||
ITEM\SCORE | | | A | B | C | D | F |
| | | ||||||
Module | | | 36 (38.71%) | 29 (31.18%) | 15 (16.13%) | 11 (11.83%) | 2 (2.15%) |
Module at Same Level (Dept) | | | 394 (29.94%) | 591 (44.91%) | 253 (19.22%) | 62 (4.71%) | 16 (1.22%) |
Module at Same Level (Fac) | | | 529 (26.93%) | 1004 (51.12%) | 351 (17.87%) | 63 (3.21%) | 17 (.87%) |
| Nos. of Respondents(% of Respondents) |
| | | ||||||
ITEM\SCORE | | | Very Difficult | Difficult | Average | Easy | Very Easy |
| | | ||||||
Module | | | 26 (27.66%) | 54 (57.45%) | 12 (12.77%) | 2 (2.13%) | 0 (.00%) |
Module at Same Level (Dept) | | | 298 (22.04%) | 603 (44.60%) | 391 (28.92%) | 52 (3.85%) | 8 (.59%) |
Module at Same Level (Fac) | | | 330 (16.45%) | 767 (38.24%) | 815 (40.63%) | 82 (4.09%) | 12 (.60%) |
| Q1. | Please comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the module, and suggest possible improvements. |
| 1. | time consuming!!! worth 8 MCs |
| 2. | PE is easy and not relevant. If the lecturer wants to set something easy, it should be relevant to what we are learning. |
| 3. | Very good module |
| 4. | The workload is too heavy for me to cope. Hope that the take home lab exercise can be graded instead of sit in lab. The time for sit in lab test is simply too short and hard for me to code well as I need more time to think of the algorithms and solutions. |
| 5. | Find that topics like linked list, trees and sorting are pretty confusing,hope that there can be more sample coding that could help us to understand this topics. Example, how can we code using different implemetation. A weak student like me have difficulties designing an algorithms during the sit-in lab. Therefore, wasn't able to score well in PE and sit-in. |
| 6. | more emphasis can be put on topics that will be emphasize on in the exam. |
| 7. | This module is quite difficult to follow or actually relate to cs1101. i feel that most of the things can be explained in a much simpler way but no one has done that. Sit-in lab should be change to take-home labs, because students learn more from take-home labs than sit-in labs. I feel that generally the lectures are kind of dry and can be taught more interestingly. Min: He speaks very clearly but lectures are dry. Prof Ling: He need to speak louder, especially the morning sessions. TA: I feel that there should be some guidelines when chosing lab TA. They are VERY important, sometimes even more important than lecturer. I feel that my TAs do not have the charisma and experience to bring the knowledge across. During the lab, some of the students don't even listen. Please don't choose TA just because they got A for that module before, because he/she may know his stuff but what the point of recuiting him if he can't teach. |
| 8. | should give us a preview of exams/tests by releasing a few past year papaers... |
| 9. | High level of competition..... |
| 10. | This module is fast-paced and the concepts are not easy to grasp. This makes the module difficult. Alot of time (more than the time stated in the module description) is needed to do well in this module. As this module is a second part continuing from CS1101, it should not cover material already covered in CS1101. As it is, the course is so fast paced; covering material from CS1101 gives students less time for understanding new concepts. |
| 11. | There is alot of concepts taught in this module, perhaps it would be better to integrate with CS1101 to enable a smoother transition. Also CS1102 X and Y should be graded together as a whole, like CS1101. Results/code of the practice labs should be released before the sit-in labs or pratical exam to allow students time to review their code. Webcast should be provided also as it helps when tracing/writing the code ourselves and we need to refer to what the lecturer said during the lecture. During lecture, its just too hard to absorb everything as there is just too much code and concepts to understand. |
| 12. | I feel that the focus of this module is wrong. Too much time is spent on less important things like "how to program in java", rather than "data structures". There are many fundamental algorithmic design paradigms which are lacking in this course, even though the title of the module is "Data Structures and Algorithms". These topics are definitely a must to learn for all School of Computing students and it will be sad if students graduate with a Bachelors of Computing and not knowing what is Dynamic Programming. Furthermore, too much time is spent going through codes. |
| 13. | labs weight too much to the final grade.. but the focus of the module is not on lab i think. |
| 14. | It is a good start for students to study algorithms and data structure. however, for people who is already familiar with those algorithms, it is a bit too easy |
| 15. | I am unable to score well for the sit-in labs and i think another sit-in lab must be given to those who have done badly for the previous labs, so that they can improve their grade as well. The tutorials are much better, they help me in understanding the module. the take home sit- in labs gives us a chance to do them at our own pace and that aids our studying as we discover new shorter ways to do them. |
| 16. | need more examples of actual implementation. |
| 17. | I feel that the practices are difficult when attempted and requires lots of thinking. With the help of teaching assistant giving us guides to solve those questions are useful. However, I feel that some of the teaching assistant don't really know how to explain or to give students a better understanding. |
| 18. | Strength: Alternate take-home labs and sit-in labs. Weakness: The textbook does not provide enough coding examples. Not enough questions to practice on. Though take-home labs are not compulsory, thinking of not able to complete or submit them on time is quite maddening. |
| 19. | NIL |
| 20. | lecture notes are not as clear..the information seems to be not organised properly,thus making it difficult to grasp the concept easily. |
| 21. | -nil- |
| 22. | workload is quite heavy with too much content. |
| 23. | i think labs should be made like 2008 sem1 cs1101 labs, whereby it's a bi-weekly take home graded lab. what you can do and learn for a less-than-2-hours lab is really limited. if it was a take home graded lab, higher possiblity is that the student will learn more, can write better programs, can be graded with a better extent. less than 2 hours lab, students' programs are very limited. |
| 24. | This module is tough, required a lot of time to revise in order to grasp the concept taught |
| 25. | The lectures would be better conducted by one lecturer instead of two persons with different teaching style. |
| 26. | Perhaps there was too much emphasis of going through the code line by line. More emphasis should be placed on how the code can be implemented in a lab/programming setting instead of explaining the codes line by line. The CS1101 way of teaching in labs instead of lectures is better than a lecture because a lecture is not interactive and is monotonous. Webcast for the lecturers would be useful to relook at certain concepts. There should be less writing of code in written exams as it is not very efficient to write out code. Code testing should be focused in labs. |
| 27. | Strength It is good that we learn to look at things from different perspectives to come out with a new implementation of data structure to suit the situation. Weakness It is not easy to understand. Coding in Sunfire is time-consuming. Much time is wasted on learning sunfire then learning the concepts in coding the program. |
| 28. | not enough knowledge and the sit-in lab is too little time |
| 29. | the lab with time consitriant seems the hardest part in this module |
| 30. | please please have webcasting... and i feel that the entire course/lecture slide organisation is very messy, it is very confusing |
| 31. | I feel that this module is very difficult and the concepts are rather difficult to understand. There can be more examples |
| 32. | Focus on problem solving techniques, engage students to think critically on the algorithms and data structures use to solve a problem. It provides the fundamentals of programming. Perhaps the releasing of grades of our assignments like sit-in labs and mid term test can be faster. Maybe can provide us with some sample questions to practice before our mid term and final exam. |
| 33. | strength : NA weakness : Abstract |
| 34. | The module covers the fundamental data structure quite well. |
| 35. | Extremely difficult for me. |
| 36. | The module is taught quite fast. Some past year midterm test papers should be released so that students can have a rough gauge as to how the midterm would be like. |
| 37. | N.A. |
| 38. | The module provide a firm basis of algorithms and help coding faster and more efficient through sit-in labs, PE. However, the module is taught too fast and the in tutorial, some tutors focus too much on hard problems. |
| 39. | it's hard, tough, but compulsory though. |
| 40. | Compared with cs1101, this module is less organized. |
| 41. | time is not enough for PE |
| 42. | The module mainly covers the concepts of different data structures but seldom applications. if it can include some interesting problems based on what we learned, it will be fun. |
| 43. | The teaching is a bit boring. It seems that in the lecture the teacher didn't tell much other than what is in the lecture notes. The labs are helpful to strengthen the knowledge we learnt. |
| 44. | Too abstract and no enought practical exercise. |
| 45. | The module is really a tough one. I think the time of this module should be rearranged, beacuse all the lecture are in the morning. It is a sleepy time for us to learn such a difficult module. And on the forum, the reply from TA or lecturers are not in time, and always not very useful. But lecturer I think are quite good. |
| 46. | N.A. |
| 47. | This module can offer more programming for us to practice. |
| 48. | N.A. |
| 49. | strengths: this modeule enhanced my thinking ability and provoded many methods to handle data weaknesses: what we learned in the first half semester is quite confusing and it makes me lose interest in this module improvements: make some changes of the order of teaching |
| 50. | less time to read books more take home exercises |
| 51. | The module should not have an alternate week practical test. It takes too much time to prepare for it. |
| 52. | this module will benefit me for the higher level modules. |
| 53. | More emphasis should be placed on how the programming code examples in the text/customized code relates back to the topic. The module seems to focus solely on how the topic works in theory. |
| 54. | Could not catch up with the module as there are many concepts that I still do not grasp well. |
| 55. | too difficult |
| 56. | The module is about data abstraction and encapsulation. The syllabus of this module is a little too extensive and lecturers tend to speed while teaching or briefly go through a topic. There are labs every week which makes the pace of this module very fast and makes me difficult to catch up. The workload is very heavy and I suggest that the number of labs should be cut down to reduce stress among students. |
| 57. | the concepts are interesting. however, this module is very content heavy. needs alot of practice. |
| 58. | There are labs for practicing. This alow me to practice at home and keep up with the lessons. |
| 59. | The textbook and lecture notes does not provide enough information for us to do our labs and tutorials as they are mostly just words and not much concrete examples of codes to facilitate us in understanding the chapter better. |
| 60. | Too much content, too little time. For starters like myself, struggle to keep afloat while ah tiong will own us all. |