Meeting Notes (additional CS Undergraduate Studies Committee Discussion via http://iit-cs.pbwiki.com (undergrad))

• 1/23/06 11:30-12:30 - (DG) We had our first meeting of the Spring
• MB is presented our updated evaluation process and it was approved. See http://www.cs.iit.edu/announcements/ugradEval.html
• Assessments have been collected for last Spring and this Fall. We will review them (Step D1) and come up with recommendations for Fall 2006.Evals were assigned by course. Matt has them and we are asking each person who is assigned a set to summarize the key comments. Matt will send out a template that describes in more detail what we are looking for.The courses and their assignments are:
• NG - CS100, CS115, CS116, CS201
• WY - CS330, CS331, CS350, CS351
• SA - CS430, CS440, CS450, CS487
• ZL - CS105, CS425, CS455, CS458
• Please let me know if its at all possible for you to go through these evals in only two weeks as I'll probably be back in town in two weeks and, after that probably won't be here until March. Given that we still have to make recommendations based on these summaries, I am afraid of waiting until March for our next meeting.
• (MB) I uploaded the excel spreadsheet for our assessment work to the file area. We just have to read and summarize/count the comments for question 6 and question 7. There are 2 sheets in the spreadsheet, spring05 and fall05. PAPER ASSESSEMENTS IN YOUR MAILBOX, DO NOT LOSE!
• Hi, for questions 6 and 7, are we covering "topics" (lots of students say they like BST in Beckman's class, whatever that is) or are we covering "TA" (love the TA, TA knows nothing) or just the instructor? If we cover all of these, how much detail do we need? E.g., should we just count "topic" as something that was liked, or should we state "BST?"
• Comments related to anything should be summarized/counted and included. You can summarize all the topic points under one count "Liked topics", not the individual topics. See the samples for more help.
• #6 What did you like best? professor/lectures(17); programming/problem solving(4); easy(4); interesting(3); well organized(2); grading scale fair(1)
• #7 What would you like to change? labbook bad(10); programming tests should be on computer(1); pace a little fast(2); eliminate project(1); less lab work(1); bad TA(1); lecture/lab boring(1); more lecture/lab time(1); more lab work(1); more creative problems(1)
• MB has sent out an e-mail to collect detailed sample materials from all undergaduate CS courses in Spring 2006 for Summer 2006 review. This is an extra detailed review for NCA (not in our regular assessment process).

• 2/6/06 - (DG) Here are the minutes from our meeting this week. Since it includes faculty names, I suggest that these minutes should be scrubbed (removal of names) before they are posted to any website. Thanks for your help at the meeting -- I thought it was an excellent discussion.
• The committee reviewed results from course evaluations from Spring and Fall of 2005 Summary Data (Step D2). As part of our standard yearly evaluation process. Feedback from all reviews will be sent to each person who taught a course. The committee focused on opportunities for improvement. These were usually identified by somewhat lower scores than found on all other courses. Three areas of focus were the question “did you understand the goals”, “did your course achieve the goals”, and “did you have the necessary pre-req’s for the course”.
• Understand Goals Problems are:
• Spring05
• CS330 - Suggested Solution: Appears to be with the instructor and not the course Most above 90% if not higher
• Achieve Goals
• Spring05
• CS450 – 61% - Suggested Solution: Redesign of course over the summer summer by new instructor (Lee) and new Course Manager (Lan); Repairs will be made with course goals to remove overlap with 351
• CS470 – 58% - Suggested Solution: improved to 83% in fall 2005; discuss with instructor;Wait for student comments. Suggest having a meeting with department chair; Course needs to be very different from 350; Should look at previous years
• CS330 – 25% - Suggested Solution: CS330 not course specific, instructor expectations
• CS115 -- 60% - Suggested Solution: Instructor not following guidelines (See details under "Other Issues" below). We will not schedule this instructor for the fall. George K. will be new instructor; Will start one meeting over the summer and then at least once during the semester.
• Fall05
• CS350 – 68% - Suggested Solution: Recent redesign of CS350/CS351 sequence still needs time to adjust the difficulty level of the course, speak to instructor. Longer lectures starting in fall may help.
• CS450 – 61% - Suggested Solution: Redesign of course over the summer summer by new instructor (Lee) and new Course Manager (Lan); Repairs will be made with course goals to remove overlap with 351
• Prepared by Pre-req
• Spring05
• CS330 66% - Suggested Solution: CS330 not course specific, instructor expectations
• Math230 60% - Suggested Solution: MATH230 - we will have friendly conversation with math professor
• CS441 64% - Suggested Solution: Review objectives to CS441, too much like ITM right now, we will discuss with Instructor and course manager. CS441 tends to have a large number of students without the pre-req. See if this is a complaint of grad students or undergrads.
• CS445 60%; - Suggested Solution: Require pre-req to CS445, this will now have a pre-req of (CS331 or CS401) and CS441
• Fall05
• CS201 73% - Suggested Solution: CS201 claim to not have pre-reqs. We will check the AP vs non-AP exam. Possible exam over the summer
• CS445, 67% - Suggested Solution: Require pre-req to CS445, this will now have a pre-req of (CS331 or CS401) and CS441
• The committee selected CS450 for review last semester and key materials were collected. The following assignments were made to review this material and Discuss it at our nexst meeting.
• Hw --- -- Nazli
• Exams – Wei Gen
• Projects -- Shlomo
• Lectures ---- Zhilin
• Detailed Course Review - CS487 materials collected for Spring 2006, to be reviewed in Fall 2006 - collect the sample graded materials already requested for NCA assessment, and also give us a copy (paper or electronic) of your lecture notes/slides, www page, all materials for class, etc. We review and give feedback next fall to you and course manager Korel.
• Next meeting will be March 20th.
• (MJB) I posted the minutes (cleansed) and the CS450 materials on the wiki http://iit-cs.pbwiki.com/ pwd undergrad

• 4/24/06 1:30-2:00pm
• CS450 Detailed Course Review due in 2 weeks
• (MB) Creating/Distrubuting/Collecting Student Course Assessments(Step A1) and Instructor Course Assessments(Step A2)
• Review Assessment Summaries Spring05-Fall05

Review of Course Assessments Spring 2005/Fall 2005 (Step D1)

• (NG) The comments on the evaluations of all 10 classes I was given are uploaded also on http://cs.pbwiki.com under the Files. The file is : Nazli-UG CS Course Assesment 2005.xls
• (SA) I just uploaded mine as well, as ShlomoUG CS Course Assessments 2005.xls

CS450 Detailed Course Review (from Fall 2005 Offering) (Step A3)

• (ZL) Lecture Comments - are the lecture notes being used for several terms or was it newly designed by the instructor? I also checked the assignments to see whether they are consistent with the notes. It seems that most of questions are from the textbook. Is programming a major part of this course? Currently, it does not look so. It is more focused on concepts. So the question is: what do we really expect this course to be, conceptual based or both conceptual and implementation?
• (MB) The notes are designed and used only by current instructor. Yes there should be programming exercises to support the objectives It should be both conceptual and implementation
• (ZL) CS450 Lecture notes: · Lecture 1: overview of operating systems · Lecture 2: computer system structures · Lecture 3: structures of operating systems · Lecture 4: processes · Lecture 5: threads, examples: Pthreads and win32Threads · Lecture 6: CPU scheduling · Lecture 7: process synchronization · Lecture 8: deadlocks · Lecture 9: memory management · Lecture 10: virtual memory · Lecture 11: file systems · Lecture 12: file systems · Lecture 13: mass-storage systems · Lecture 14: I/O systems · Lecture 15: network structure and distributed file systems
• (ZL) I also quickly went through the assignments to see whether they are consistent with the lectures. It seems that the lectures are well organized as they mainly follow the textbook (a well-known book in operating systems). In fact, the assignments also focus on the conceptual part of OSs, as most of the questions are from the textbook with very limited amount of programming efforts. I consulted with Matt, and believe that as a core course for undergrad CS, the course should focus on both concepts and implementation. It will be better that CS450 follows the structure of OS courses used in most top CS schools (e.g. UIUC, CMU, UW-Madison, UC-Berkeley, etc.), that is, the lectures provide the conceptual view of OSs, and use a set of well-designed programming assignments (e.g synchronization, memory management, file systems) to enforce the objectives. In addition, it would be good that the programming assignments are in C or C++ or Java, instead of a mix of languages.
• (NG) HW/Project Comments - Assignments 2, 4, and 6. Below I list the topics in the homeworks. Note some of them were given in the homework descriptions, and many of them were not given (These were the questions from the book and I used the student answers to guess the questions). Regarding the grading and feedback, they are not done on this digital submissions. (only couple of them are done).
• Assignment 2:
• 1-A program is given and asked to draw the Activation frames that are active in stack part of the memory
• 2- Questions from chapter 3.
• 3- Writing Unix shell script using pipe
• 3- programming hw in C to display messages and creating child process to perform some action. After that transfer the control to parent process.
• Assignment 4: Questions from Textbook Chapters 6, 7, and 8. - Mutual Exclusion - Progress - Bounded waiting - Busy Waiting - Spinlocks - race condition - Hold and wait - Circular wait - Frist/Best/Worst fit
• Assignment 6: Questions from Textbook Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, and 17. -The problems that may occur if a new file is created in the same storage area or with the same path name. - extents and block access - fragmentation - problems when multiple files are created by different clients - FCFS, SSTF - Scan, CScan, Look, CLook - AFS, NFS
• (WY) Exam Comments - There were two exams for this course, one midterm and one final. Both were 20 short-answer or multiple-choice exams.
• Comments on Midterm - For multiple choice exams, is 20 questions appropriate? I always believed that, because of the variance in grading-there is no partial credit-there should be many more questions to really judge a student. If there are 13 major topics in this course, about 7 should be covered by the time of the final. Each major topic would have fewer than 3 questions if there were 20 multiple-choice questions. Another way to look at it: given multiple choice exams, if you ask too few questions, you find out what the student does not know instead of what the students do know.
• Question 1: This question asks about the history of technology, but it has no context within the exam. Why is the development of a microprocessor important?
• Question 2: Do we need to be so Unix-oriented? Are we teaching scripting or OS concepts? Grammar problem in answer d.
• Question 3: See comment for question 2. Is this really important?
• Question 4: What is "residing in the text area" for answer b?
• Question 5: Grammar problem in question description. The answer to question 5 is 2762? Is this question supposed to "trap" students into guessing 2763? If there are only 20 questions, you should consider the wisdom of "trick questions."
• Question 6: Grammar problem.
• Question 7: How are students supposed to remember page numbers in the text during an exam? If the concept is properly taught, such information should not be necessary.
• Question 9: What is the point of this question with respect to the goals of the course? The Java Virtual Machine is not core to the study of operating systems.
• Question 10: There is no question in "question 10."
• Question 11: Question/task is mis-stated.
• Question 13: Again, this question tests a student's knowledge of C IPC commands. Although I believe in teaching through practice, there should be a focus on concepts as well. The second part of this question contains superfluous information in the form of the address of the shared segment.
• Question 17, 18: Too programming-language focused.
• Summary: This exam covered the concepts of process scheduling, threads, process memory allocation, client-server, child-parent. There is too much of a focus on programming. The exam is too short. There were some grammatical errors in the exam.
• Final exam comments:
• Question 3: Why are there underscores after the answers?
• Question 4: Shouldn't there be an mention of R4 somewhere in the solution?
• Question 5: I get the feeling that this question is too misleading because it deliberately manipulates the deadlock detection heuristic in the answer. The question might be better off leaving out mentions of cycles in the answer.
• Question 7: What is the point of having two memory usage tables in question 7?
• Question 17: Answers should be listed as they are in the other questions.
• Questions 19, 20: Two questions on Java seem too platform specific.
• Summary: The final exam covered process state, resource allocation, paging, buffer management, disk file-system in 20 multiple choice and short-answer questions. Although the topics covered in both the mid-term and final seem to cover those topics listed in the "Major Topics" of the Course Overview, it seems that 40 questions for 13 topics is quite low, depending on the weight of the exam.

Other Issues

• Registration without Pre-req - (NG) We have to see how we can resolve this situation that students do not register in a class without the course prereq(s) or instructor's permission. I have students in my class that just now came to me and said she has registered in my CS422 class and is currently taking CS401 and has noticed that the class is very difficult for her!!! She either will Fail, as I see, or will pass borderline if she puts all of her time on my course. How can they get into the class without having prereq classes? I suggest that we inform the faculties (advisors) that no one can override the prereq of a given class, unless discussing that with the instructor of the class. I remember that this was the policy that only the instructor can waive the prereq, after discussing it with the student. On the other hand, we were also talking in the Undergraduate committee that some faculties may easily also ignore the prereq for most of their students without a careful consideration. This is also another problem that it is not clear what is the best way to solve that.
• (MB) I agree there is a problem, let me check how widespread this problem is. I can do the below for all CS classes and see how many "Enrolled w/ Auth" or "Enrolled w/ Perm" there are. These are waiving pre-req (or allowing UG in internet section). Ann/Dawn will not waive anything with instructor permission. Maybe we need to stress this again with faculty that use SIS and have permission to override pre-reqs. You have one student in CS422 without the pre-req. If we look at the 107 screen of SIS, the "Enrolled w/ Auth" student is taking cs401 concurrently. We could ask Rebecca in student services who waived it for her. The "Enrolled Conditional" means they have "transfer credit" for CS401 in the system.
• (DG) I agree with Nazli --- I remember the only person who could waive the pre-req was the instructor.
• (BK) We are trying to find out who issued the permission to this student so hopefully this will not happen again. Do you believe that this student should drop cs422? She is on J1 visa and needs to take 3 courses. Hopefully, we will be able to find a different course for her.
• (NG) She came and talked to me yesterday...she said she is planning to withdraw from CS422 and would like to register for a short course that she has found. I talked to the registration office. They said that the student needs to go there and fill out a form. I did send her to the registration office to take care of it. It may be that she will come to you if she needs your signature.
• She came and got my signature; she should be fine in the accelerated courses. This student is on a full scholarship from the Thai government but has very little programming experience.
• ABET - Proposed Computing Criteria - Dear Colleague, As you are undoubtedly aware the Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC) of ABET has recently worked to revise the Criteria for Accreditation of Computing Programs. The ABET Board of Directors has approved this Criteria for public comment. We would like you and your faculty to review the proposed criteria, and submit your comments. Your views on the proposed criteria are extremely important. Please send any comments to accred@abet.org <mailto:accred@abet.org>. You will notice that the proposed criteria has four parts: General Criteria, which all computing programs must satisfy; and then specific criteria for Computer Science, Information Systems and Information Technology. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Norma Belton, Administrative Assistant for CAC, nbelton@abet.org <mailto:nbelton@abet.org>, or me, dlidtke@abet.org <mailto:dlidtke@abet.org>. Comments will be considered until June 1, 2006. Sincerely, Dr. Doris K. Lidtke Tel. (410) 347-7703 Adjunct Accreditation Director for Computing E-mail dlidtke@abet.org ABET
• (MB) Something we have to review at our next meeting. I will do some prep work on this before then
• (DG) We see no major changes from the prior criteria, just a renumbering/reordering of criteria. We do not have any issues with this "new" document.
• CS115 Fall 05 issues effecting CS116/CS201 Spring 06
• (MB to JS) - I was going over your materials from CS115 Fall 2005 and the student assessments. You spent way too much time on number systems at the beginning of class and that is not a listed objective for CS115. Also, not enough time was spent on loops and object oriented design and user defined classes. In the future, it is imperative that you follow the listed objectives for the course.
• (MB/BW/VW) - Outcomes of detailed discussions on how to bring all CS116 students up to level expected (due to poor preparation by some CS115 Fall2005 sections):
• Counsel poorest students (C or worse in CS115) to transfer back to CS115 in Spring 2006 semester
• Spend first 3-4 weeks reviewing CS115 material
• Involve the ARC tutors more by providing remedial CS115 materials
• Prepare a standard set of labs/exams for CS115 for future semesters
• (MB/BW/VW) - Final grades in CS116 Spring 06 were in general no worse than normal, and all required objecties were covered, so it looks like our actions had some effect. Both instructors felt students worked hard to make up for previous semester deficiencies.

Proposed Changes (from Spring/Summer/Fall 05 assessment cycle). (Step E1)

• Improved CS115 consistency. Course Manager (MB) has developed a standard syllabus/lectures, and lab/project/exam standards in conjunction with recent sucessful CS115/115/201 instructors.
• Better CS201 placement. Institute unofficial summer placement exam for all students registering for CS201. MB will handle all CS/CPE/EE new students. VW will also add a first week skills test to CS201.
• Lengthen CS331, CS350, CS351 weekly lecture from two 50 minute lectures to two 75 minute lectures. Shorten labs from one 100 minute lab to one 50 minute lab.
• Try adding required CS330 weekly recitation with TA leading. Unofficially scheduled in Fall 2006, Officially in schedule Spring 2007.
• Require pre-req to CS445, this will now have a pre-req of (CS331 or CS401) and CS441
• Redesign of CS450 by Saelee with input Spring/Summer/Fall 05 assessment cycle. Possible change to Course Overview (i.e. Objectives).
• Meet with faculty teaching a course for the first time to review objectives and expectations for the course. CS115(Koutsogiannkis), CS330(Sasaki),CS350(Hood), CS445(aldawud), CS450(Lee), CS487(Leung)