Summary of 2002 January Conference CS Major discussion

• Strengths of the program
  • Dr. Beck -- especially his hands-on approach to teaching, his emphasis on Unix and his demonstration of real-world experience.
  • Unix emphasis -- starting to use Unix in CS 185 is a good thing. More opportunities should exist for using Unix as part of classes.
  • Ada as base language (!) -- Looking back, upper level students are happy that we taught them Ada initially, so that they can better grasp the "right" way to do things in other languages.
• Areas for improvement
  • Inconsistancy of courses -- not everyone covers the same thing, especially in CS 285, so upper level courses can't rely on students knowing the material from lower level courses. Also there should be more cohesion across courses, perhaps including textbooks.
  • Too much math -- we should drop Calc III (this seemed to just be the sentiment of one student). [Interestingly, when I mentioned that we might drop Calc II as a requirement, the students universally thought that was a bad idea. They pointed out that they might have agreed with that when they were in the Calc classes, but now they definitely see their value.]
  • not up-to-date enough -- Professors should have professional development opportunities to allow them to keep up with changes in the field. A few specific examples of out-of-date material were mentioned. File Structures was mentioned as a course that perhaps isn't as necessary as it used to be.
  • We need more CS professors so that more high-level courses can be offered, more topics courses can be offered, additional languages (including perhaps COBOL) can be taught.
  • Not enough research opportunities for students. We need classes that support student research (as some other disciplines provide) and more professorial support of student research interests.
• Strategies to make improvements
  • Make CS 285 a prerequisite for upper level courses such as Compilers and Programming Languages. [I pointed out the problem with minors in those courses who don't have to take CS 285.]
  • Give students opportunities to learn other languages for credit. Perhaps just a 1 credit course. It would motivate them to learn and it would give them something substantive for their resumes.
  • More team projects in high level courses besides Software Engineering and Systems Analysis. Teams are important and are what they have to do in the real world.
  • Hire tutors for low level courses as a discipline, rather than individually. Go through some application/training process, because some tutors are apparently not very good. One problem is sometimes that tutors might know the material themselves, but they don't have a good idea what other students find difficult and they don't know how to teach.
  • Free up professors to teach more upper level courses by having tutors/TAs teach CS 180. Give them significant training, perhaps over the summer. Have them under the supervision of a professor who organizes the class, decides what to teach when, . . . The professor makes up the exams and (perhaps) all sections take the same (or similar) exams. The students in the room would like the opportunity to do this kind of teaching and would be willing to do it for scholarship hours or perhaps a small amount of pay.
  • Freshman seminar is underutilized. Discussions of the IT industry and resumes would perhaps better serve students later in their academic careers. More introduction to areas of computer science and how they relate to Truman CS courses would be helpful. The class seems to lack a sense of direction.
  • Push Unix more. Make students aware of LaTex, pdf files, etc. . . Resources that are already available should be promoted more.
  • Add opportunities to study robotics. Even just Lego Mindstorm robots would give students a chance to do cool hands-on stuff.