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What are three ways that the UH ICS program could improve?

If you can think of more than three things, then please limit your response to your top three!

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I feel that taking Chemistry 2 & Physics 2 for Computer Science major is a wast of time because of the niche connection it have with Computer Science, it would be nice if it serves as a elective instead of a requirement.

Class schedule get more difficult each semester, many ICS courses starts lat, or is full, causing huge down time in schedules.

Many ICS courses require a huge amount of time from the students, so having multiple ICS courses and a job could be difficult.

I think that the top 3 things the ICS program could do to improve would be:

1: Update classes/class requirements. Some classes have been around for a while without much development to their curriculum and it shows. Such classes are designed with odd artificial difficulty added to the course, such as using dated text editors to program or not presenting examples demonstrating material.

2: As the university has opted to use Laulima, it would be beneficial to have all courses in the same space. While the MOREA site provides many strong advantages, it separates course information from Laulima, and, I think, ultimately detracts from the overall experience. It becomes more difficult to effectively manage tasks, as the assignment information and schedule are spread across multiple sites. 

3: Either the use of alternate teaching methods (like flipped classrooms) should be dropped, or effort should be made to understand how to properly use them. Incorrect use of these teaching methods is something I find problematic; they require a significant understanding of the theory behind them and proper execution of said theory to function correctly. From the classes I've taken so far, I haven't seen these teaching methods being applied to their full effectiveness.

1) There is so much new information to learn. Some people have a really easy time with assignments and some find things extremely difficult. I think a big factor comes down to experience. Some people join ICS already having experience and background knowledge in programming. Others come in ICS with little to no experience programming but have a love for technology. Sometimes the amount of information can be overwhelming.

2) Time. ICS requires a lot of time. You'll spend a lot of time studying and doing research in order to understand topics. You will spend a lot of time fixing bugs in code only to realize you forgot a semicolon hours later. You will spend time learning a programming language if you haven't learned it yet. On top of that many classes start late at night. I've had to stay on campus 12+ hours and commute back home.

3) Classes are not always available. Plan out your future before hand. The higher up you go the harder some classes may be to get into. Some classes are only available certain semesters. Some classes will fill up and you wont get in. Some classes may interfere. Talk to Gerald and have a plan for what classes you will take for your college career.

1.  I feel like some of the times for classes are too late. This really messes up my schedule for other classes.

2.  I feel like everyone is going to say this but the price of getting a good laptop that satisfies the class requirements alongside books and other things we may need.

3. Not sure if there's a way to improve this but I feel like taking a foreign language is kind of annoying when learning code along side it.

This is about CENG,

Some things that the CENG program could improve on:

1: The plan template for CENG track can be slightly vague, and does not include Hawaiian studies, which was confusing.
2: More options for x96 projects, would be better for flexibility with what people want to learn about/their schedule.

3: Specific to the current situation of Covid, but perhaps a way to remote login to the computers in the labs, to use software that students can't install themselves.

(This is for CENG)

Some things the CENG program can improve on:

1. Better course planning and advising. Although the advisors I had try and guide me to classes that would be good towards my career, they don't check specific requirements for completing my degree. I had to make a lot of changes to my schedule to make sure I met the requirements.

2. Have some courses which combine Computer Science with Electrical Hardware. It would be cool to have labs where we can combine knowledge from these two fields and build our own circuits.

3. Just general EE stuff, but I feel that students don't have enough practice with circuit building for specific applications, so having labs that allows you to try and solve a problem rather than testing components and their effects, but that might be hard to squeeze in with the current syllabuses.

1. For most of the CS classes, you don't have many options for what time of day you want to take it at. The lower division classes, 111/141,211/241 there is an extra class time (lab) that you will have to take with the main class. Which can actually be useless if the TA's don't provide us with help or some type of lecture.

2.  The broad range of material given can be very frustrating for an average student to understand. For example, ICS 311: Algorithms.

3. When pursuing a BS instead of a BA, you are required to take some general classes that seem to be somewhat troublesome. For example, why do we need to take Chemistry and at least one semester of a form of biology. Not to mention the requirement to take a Foreign Language for multiple semesters.

A few things that the CENG program could improve on:

  1. There is currently only one professor who teaches CENG core courses. Adding in a couple more professors to teach the core classes would lessen the stress load for Dr. Sasaki and they would be able to grow the department.
  2. The advising schedule for the Engineering department in general can be confusing. Each advisor has different ways of scheduling appointments, and advisors are sometimes switched without informing the student.
  3. The courses and labs we take are not always applicable to what we will be using in the software engineering field. I started an internship with a local company over the summer and taught myself most of the skills that I needed to succeed.
  1. One bad thing about being an ICS student is that it can be difficult to find the steps needed to solve a problem, sometimes I'll have difficulty even finding how to start approaching a problem.
  2. Having difficulty with being able to keep up with the quick pace of the the material is another bad thing about being an ICS student. If you don't pay attention or don't understand a concept in one module, it'll be hard to understand the next module, and it'll just keep compounding to the point you're feeling behind.
  3. Since tech companies are very regional (notably Silicon Valley) it's difficult to find many software development jobs in Hawaii, but perhaps we can change that.

1) (With the exception of the current events this year) I think that the ICS section of the Learning Emporium could use some improvement in terms of covering more areas of ICS, as from the last time I was there, the ICS section only covered up to ICS 211 and 241 which is underwhelming when compared to the topics covered in the math and chemistry sections of the Learning Emporium.

2) There are some classes with very "out of the way" scheduled times (at evening/night) like ICS 212 and 311 that can mess up the focus and study flow of students who have most of their classes during the day. At least for me, I am already mentally drained throughout the day and having classes during the night can sometimes drain me completely, making it mentally difficult to continue studying/working for the rest of the night. 

3) I think that the difficulty jump for the lower level courses should be evened out. This is mainly about the jump from ICS 111 to 211. From my own experience, going into ICS 211 after 111 felt like I went straight from recruit difficulty to expert difficulty which made it hard to keep up with the deadlines.

1. Limit class option and time, which causes me to have a hard time to schedule each class I need to take.

2. The cost to keep up is expensive, such as good laptops, textbooks.

3. It is very time-consuming, it could take you a few hours to just figure out a small bug in your code, which causes stress and no time for other classes.

What are three ways that the UH ICS program could improve?

1) Increasing the weight of the homework score more than the test. It's important because I know how much about the class, but we can use a variety of medias to solve our task in a more comprehensive way when solving a task.

2) I think there should be a well-equipped environment where students can systematically learn the competencies that S/W engineers should have.

3) Currently we have non-face-to-face classes due to COVID-19. I've never taken an in-person class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, so I'm not sure what needs to be improved.

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