Horrible College Class....

[Gamingphreek]

This is an extension of this thread

So recently-- the class brought the issues before him. He was requiring 30 classes for our final project (First CS Class in College-- Freshman level (I'm a Sophomore)).

Additionally we brought some issues before him concerning Yahoo! blocking our servers IP: To witch we got the response "I have a bunch of other classes to deal with, I don't have time to work with this class". My friend and I stayed after and helped those who were having trouble and set up times for people to submit when we thought the IP Block would be down.

Furthermore he got into a students face and yelled at him for asking a question the other day. Our TA's just told us they can't do anything and that our best bet is to come to them with any problems and they will handle it.

Furthermore, in our ENTRY LEVEL PROGRAMMING CLASS, we are now learning MULTI-THREADED PROGRAMMING. This is the FIRST CS class you take in college and he is trying to teach us how to write multi-threaded code.

He refuses to E-Mail us back about any questions....

(Oh also found out he isn't a tenured professor, nor does he have his doctorate)

What would you guys do? because I am seriously considering going to the Dean of Students about this!

-Kevin

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I would first go to the department head. Then, if the response is inadequate, go to the Dean of students.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Honestly.....drop the class (if you still can) and hope you can take it over in either the summer or next semester with someone else. It is VERY hard as a student to get any sort of changes made, but the course evaluations this guy is going to receive from the kids who stick around will be more than enough to put him on probation. If you feel you want to go to student affairs, or whatever your uni calls this sort of program, by all means do it, but for this semester anyone in there is effectively screwed. Sorry, but I was in this situation once before and it didn't end well.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Do you have teacher evaluations at the end of the semester? If so, blast the guy. And going to the Dean of Students is probably a good idea. If you can convince other people to go as well, it makes your case stronger; one student complaining carries some weight, but it could just be a grudge; several students complaining is indicative of a legitimate problem.

I had a professor my freshman year who was just awful. We didn't say anything to anyone about her, just floated through the class and ended up with low grades. She didn't return the next semester, and I'm guessing it was because she got terrible marks on the teacher evaluations from her students. In retrospect, I should have gone to the Dean of Students, but she probably wouldn't have been removed mid-semester anyway.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well outside of the sheer amount of work-- he is just not nice at all (To put that plainly).

I cannot drop the course without a penalty without using my last 3 withdraw credits. I, because I have had extensive previous programming experience, have been able to get by with all the stuff that is being shoved down our throats. I have been helping others as much as humanly possible too.

There are end of course evaluations-- and I will tell them all of my feelings. I just don't want to before hand because he IS the kind of Instructor (Not professor) that will kill your grade if he doesn't like you or if you make an argument against what he is saying.

Ugh-- I want to get through this class with an A, but we are all getting absolutely destroyed-- EVERYONE in the class.

-Kevin

 

[mundane]

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy
Do you have teacher evaluations at the end of the semester? If so, blast the guy. And going to the Dean of Students is probably a good idea. If you can convince other people to go as well, it makes your case stronger; one student complaining carries some weight, but it could just be a grudge; several students complaining is indicative of a legitimate problem.

I had a professor my freshman year who was just awful. We didn't say anything to anyone about her, just floated through the class and ended up with low grades. She didn't return the next semester, and I'm guessing it was because she got terrible marks on the teacher evaluations from her students. In retrospect, I should have gone to the Dean of Students, but she probably wouldn't have been removed mid-semester anyway.

I had an adjunct prof. who was absolutely terrible (just because someone is great in a profession, doesn't mean they can teach it worth shit). The entire quarter was a mess, it was obvious when he read out of the class text for lectures it was the first time he had laid eyes on the material, he insulted some of the students, no communication with the TAs (who were doing the actual grading), etc. End of the quarter rolls around, and the final project, and instead of grading it cherry picks a couple of his favorite students and has them go around and give everyone As, and for the pièce de résistance conveniently 'forgets' multiple times to supply the end-of-quarter review sheets.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I had a miserable prof in a business class who used students to do work for his outside business. All the students got was class credit but, he made money on the students work without acknowledging their authorship. Unfortunately, he was the head of the department so, my telling him I didn't want to be his kind of businessman didn't go over too well. I transferred to another school with a better program so it ended well.

 

[Aikouka]

Should be lucky you have a prof that will teach all those things in such an early class 😛.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Should be lucky you have a prof that will teach all those things in such an early class 😛.

The problem being-- we don't know where to start on the coding. He talks about all the concepts (Stuff I already know but most others don't), but never goes deep into any code. I know the concept-- I can't begin to think about writing multi-threaded code this early in college.

As for the people who were told this class is an entry level class and that they won't learn anything too complex-- sorry-- we blew past that weeks ago.

-Kevin

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
The problem being-- we don't know where to start on the coding. He talks about all the concepts (Stuff I already know but most others don't), but never goes deep into any code. I know the concept-- I can't begin to think about writing multi-threaded code this early in college.

That was more of a joke about the entry level thing 😛. Although, some people do get bored and they might enjoy a challenge, but that's not the point of entry level. Hell, where I went to college, all Math majors had to take the CS intro course... I'd hate to be the tutor if we had the same professor as you. I'd literally be tutoring for hours upon hours each session (I tutored the intro course one of the years). To give you an idea, when I took multi-threaded/processor/machine programming, it was a 300 level course 😛.

Multi-threaded isn't necessarily the hardest thing when it comes to the pure code. It can be pretty simple in languages like C# (I've done it in that language... really easy). But when I did parallel programming (i.e. multiple machines) in college, that was in C with umm I can't remember the API. That was a tad bit more complex 😛. The hardest part of some projects in a multi-threading environment is how you split up the tasks and make sure everything flows properly (preventing deadlocks, etc). Definitely not a 100 level course as I don't think anyone should really try this until after they've taken a data structures course.

I'd say to take the advice of the others and take the issue up with higher administrators. I had a fairly bad professor... well he wasn't really as bad as everyone made him, it's just that no one really "clicked" with his teaching style and literally... I was probably the only person that ever did any of the assignments. But the problem is that no one learned anything! I ended up taking the class again because I had so many extra credits from AP classes. It was kind of funny... because I wasn't just a student in the class... I was also the tutor :laugh:.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Aikouka

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
The problem being-- we don't know where to start on the coding. He talks about all the concepts (Stuff I already know but most others don't), but never goes deep into any code. I know the concept-- I can't begin to think about writing multi-threaded code this early in college.

That was more of a joke about the entry level thing 😛. Although, some people do get bored and they might enjoy a challenge, but that's not the point of entry level. Hell, where I went to college, all Math majors had to take the CS intro course... I'd hate to be the tutor if we had the same professor as you. I'd literally be tutoring for hours upon hours each session (I tutored the intro course one of the years). To give you an idea, when I took multi-threaded/processor/machine programming, it was a 300 level course 😛.

Multi-threaded isn't necessarily the hardest thing when it comes to the pure code. It can be pretty simple in languages like C# (I've done it in that language... really easy). But when I did parallel programming (i.e. multiple machines) in college, that was in C with umm I can't remember the API. That was a tad bit more complex 😛. The hardest part of some projects in a multi-threading environment is how you split up the tasks and make sure everything flows properly (preventing deadlocks, etc). Definitely not a 100 level course as I don't think anyone should really try this until after they've taken a data structures course.

I'd say to take the advice of the others and take the issue up with higher administrators. I had a fairly bad professor... well he wasn't really as bad as everyone made him, it's just that no one really "clicked" with his teaching style and literally... I was probably the only person that ever did any of the assignments. But the problem is that no one learned anything! I ended up taking the class again because I had so many extra credits from AP classes. It was kind of funny... because I wasn't just a student in the class... I was also the tutor :laugh:.

This is Java.

Actually in addition to Java he is force feeding us (and the TA's apparently) ZHTML (Based off of Ajax). Not to mention we are using BlueJ-- quite possibly the WORST programming environment I have ever used. Furthermore he doesn't even grade the assignments-- when it isn't the TA's it is Web-Cat (Automated Grading system).

To top it all off-- we use a custom version of BlueJ that the school only makes for Windows. I therefore had to recompile it all into a Linux format with the files from the BlueJ website for Linux because the Instructor said that he didn't have time to try and figure out Linux -_-.

-Kevin

Edit: This is CS1705-- a 150 level course in other colleges (I switched from CpE and had to start over again). Next semester hopefully I'll get to use Eclipse and do some real programming cause this stuff is utter crap.