It’s taken me a while to do the data analysis for the mid-semester feedback, but I thought you all would appreciate seeing the results. (Most of the delay was due to me sending the same survey link to multiple classes, and I needed to analyze the results by class.) In my defense, I did review the responses several weeks ago, but I’m just now sharing them with everyone.

Summary of Close-Ended Responses

Feedback on reading material Feedback on class meetings Feedback on assignments Feedback on course workload Course workload comparison Feedback on out-of-class communication Communication preferences Feedback on EI meetings

Free Response

The verbatim comments to the free response questions follows. In some cases, I’ve provided a response to the original comment although please don’t interpret my responses as dismissive of those comments or the ones that I didn’t explicitly address. I value all the feedback and will reflect on what changes I can make to improve the course.

What is the best aspect of this course?

Giving bonus extra credit opportunities.

Dr. Coffman allows us to actively participate in the class rather than just sit in front of us and lecture the whole period. Getting hands on experience/feedback on our work helps me learn a lot, and I enjoy his style of teaching.

Practical application examples

Board work

The homeworks have helped me learn the most

practicums! its very helpful to draw the diagrams in class and immediately get feedback from you on how to be more correct for the homeworks.

What is the worst aspect of this course?

Nothing much.

I really enjoy the class and believe it to be a very important class however it seems awkward as a stand alone class. After talking with a few other Comp Sci majors (not my idea but I liked it), we suggested maybe incorporating this class with a Capstone would be more beneficial, so we can truly get a hands on experience rather than just talking about it and mini examples.

Ah, this comment is one that I’ve seen previously. From what I understand, this material used to be covered as part of the capstone sequence, but many students felt like it made the capstone two courses in one (i.e., capstone project + software engineering). Hence the decision to create a separate course a couple of years ago. This comment is outside my power to change at the moment, but I will certainly raise this question in the appropriate venues (e.g., the department’s curriculum meetings).

Sometimes the slides, book, and assignments seem to all use slightly different terms for course concepts. More continuity across resources would be great. Additionally, the homework and GR questions sometimes seem to be way more complex than anything we go over in class. If we could spend more time in class working through example problems as a class (not loosely monitored small groups) to learn the workflow of different problem sets, I think the students would benefit.

I hope that the peer review activity was a step in this direction. When possible, I will try to include solutions to the in-class problems so that you can review them after class.

Provide more examples/ pictures for models. If the picture doesn’t describe the model do an example like with Spotify and the Layered Architecture.

in class lectures are not the most effective

the project and GR were/are very verbose and it feels like the expectation for time weren’t considered. the project I am supposed to be implementing is very complex, and feels more like a capstone than a class project. as for the GR, I felt that I could correctly answer every single question in depthly, but I was so desperately pressed for time that I was forced to rush and not answer the questions to my utmost knowledge.

The complexity of the project is by design. Software engineering typically focuses on “software in-the-large” and decomposing a large problem and building functionality incrementally is a skill that I think is important to practice.

doing the reading makes the in-class material very redundant

Dr. Coffman Continually compares us, Juniors in introductory Comp Sci courses, to Doctorate program students. His expectation is that we will perform at their level, and invest the same amount of time they do. We are not at their level, this is our first course in software engineering EVER for most of us, and 9/10 of us have many other activities we are committed to (IC sports, Cyberwarfare Competitions, Airmanship, ETC..).

I did not realize this is how some of my comments were being perceived. I’ll do my best to avoid making such comparisons – implicitly or explicitly – going forward.

What would most improve course?

More explicit and specific objectives. The objectives are kind of like “know everything.”

Dr. Coffman has already started to do this recently, but more comments on graded assignments would be more beneficial for us so we don’t perform lower than your expectations. I feel like a few times our work has been unsatisfactory to Dr. Coffman forcing him to regrade/make adjustments so the grading is fair (which I really enjoy he does this). Another solution could be to make his expectations more clear on the assignment so that we can give an appropriate response.

Provide clear, testable lesson objectives for each lesson on one slide, then link each of the following slides back to an objective so if the students do not understand a slide, they can go back to the exact material in the book/other resources to review

Show the trailer for Captain Marvel

Okay, okay. For anyone who missed it because of my insistence that we stay on track, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/Z1BCujX3pw8.

More applicable examples in class

actually take our feedback, instead of just saying that we should have managed our time better. as cadets, we literally do not have enough hours in the day to get our responsibilities completed and still sleep. it’s honestly very off-putting when we are told we are “expected act like adults and manage our time” when we have two formations, mandatory lunch, an evening briefing, and mandatory intramurals, all of which we have no control over.

Make the slides more concise. Their are too many slides to efficiently review the information.

When I taught for longer blocks of time (e.g., 2.5-hour classes), I often included a review of the prior week’s material at the beginning of each class. That’s something that I dropped this semester, but I’ll definitely consider going back to it.