Hawaiʻi's Technology Community
Three bad things about being an ICS student
If you can think of more than three things, then please limit your response to your top three!
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jordan Dumlao on
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1. Professors
- While most professors are good, some professors are not the best at teaching. Now this is not to say that these professors are bad computer scientists. It just may be harder for them to teach what they know to others. I suggest that this department hire professors that are enthusiastic and know how to teach a class well. I believe that this will greatly improve the performance of the students as well as the quality of the classes. "The student is only as good as the master". Not sure where I heard that from but yeah it applies to this.
2. Availability of classes
Some classes are only available exclusively to Spring or Fall semester or for a awkward time slots or even for just one time slot. This makes it difficult for those are trying to graduate but need a specific class to do so. I've had friends who had to push their graduation dates back because they needed a class only offered in a semester after their expected graduation date. Additionally, a lot of the core ICS classes fill up extremely fast. While I do agree that students should be proactive and sign up for these classes ASAP, it could just be an issue of there are not even seats being made available for all of the students needing to attend these classes. More seats should be made available for classes.
3. Languages being learned
While Java is a common language that should be learned, we do not really go into other common languages that can be considered important in modern computer science industries. I do believe languages such as C are important as well as back end web development languages such as PHP or Python. In fact, UH Hilo had a curriculum based off of C++. When transferring here, I had to start from scratch to learning Java.
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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Quemuel on
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This course(ICS314) was hosted in Hamilton, and I really love the feel of this place..Personally, I think the ICS program could improve by having better classrooms. I took a few other courses in ICS and all of them were in POST or Holmes Hall. That's 30+ students per class, and no windows! I think having better classrooms would help the students to focus.
Speaking of the students, I feel like ICS students tend to be a lot more antisocial than other majors. I recall in one of my classes being one of two people actively talking and interacting when the professor would throw a question, which was kind of sad.
Finally, I think there needs to be more CS-focused clubs and that they need to be more active in recruiting. I only heard about ITMA and the grey hats. Clubs are a great way to network, improve your resume, and meet new friends so I hope to see more ICS clubs in the future.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Chock on
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1. Being a computer engineering major, it would be nice to have the ICS department collaborate with the Electrical Engineering department and assimilate more ICS courses into the computer engineering curriculum. Currently, any ICS course (aside from ICS 141 and 241 which are needed for our version of Algorithms) are technical electives for us.
2. I'm not sure about how the department works, but in Electrical Engineering, there are several tracks (systems, electrophysics, and computer). If the ICS program could consist of different paths for computer scientists, that would probably allow students to narrow their focus. A few examples might be a track for cyber security, front-end web development, or back-end algorithm development.
3. I'm also not sure exactly what it would take for this, but when registration came around, I needed to request an override to get into ICS 314. Therefore, my senior status and credits accumulated meant nothing when it came to my preferred class time. In fact, I received the override a day later and was put on the wait list. If there was some way to give computer engineers an override in advance, it would be greatly appreciated.
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Permalink Reply by Anthony Kuloloia on
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1. Stress - the ICS department is highly demanding. Students are expected to perform well whilst given a small amount of information. Although this isn't necessarily bad and prepares us for real world situations, it does place a great deal of stress on a student.
2. Lack of time - the amount of material we learn in each class is colossal. I believe one semester's worth of time isn't enough to adequately teach a student each aspect of a particular ICS class.
3. Self learning - there have been several ICS classes that are solely based on how well you learn on your own. Although I enjoy the freedom of learning at my own pace, I would have liked a professor to further elaborate on a certain subject. -
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Permalink Reply by Gabriel Viloria on
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1. At least two TA's per class. 1 is okay, but I feel really bad for them having to juggle a lot of things. Having two also means more availability for students to get help.
2. More tutors for Computer Science at the Learning Emporium. Last time I believe there were only 2-3 of them but I wasn't able to get help from them because my classes conflicted with their schedule.
3. More variety in the 400+ courses.
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Permalink Reply by Egan Nakano on
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- Lack of class availability. What I mean by this is that some classes are only offered in the Fall/Spring/Summer respectively. Like others have mentioned I too have seen friends have to delay their expected graduation dates to accommodate for this. I personally have not yet had to, but it is a worry I am mindful of. Additionally some classes are only offered at less than convenient times for students. For more than a few required classes it has been very challenging trying to fit them into my schedule and be able to balance the workload with my part time job, outside of school, due to their extremely early or late start times.
- Additional course offerings to fulfill the miscellaneous graduation requirements in major would be nice. Classes that would fill our requirements for things like the 4 upper level writing intensive classes, oral communication, or ethics. The past few semesters, it there have been slim choices for most of these.
- The required physical books and the very high prices that they are offered at is a third thing that could be improved. More and more the courses that I have been taking have been transitioning to paperless resources for the respective classes, I think it only makes sense that in a computer related field there should be a greater availability or option to go digital with course materials. The flip side of that however is the sometimes exorbitant prices that digital access codes can come with, this semester I paid about $150 for a piece of 81/2 by 11 paper with an access code printed on it.
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Permalink Reply by Minako Doi on
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1. The first bad thing is that unlike writing papers, one homework assignment takes a lot of time and one small mistake could affect the whole propblem. We just need to be very carefully, but it is very stressful sometimes.
2. A lot of classes offer only fall/spring semester. If we miss the opportunity to take those classes, we need to wait until next school year. The bad thing is that those classes are requireents in order to graduate.
3. Since the class is small, it would be nice if there are the same class more with different time. There is a time that I wanted to take two classes but they were providing on the same time. I could only take one of them and neede to take another semester.
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Permalink Reply by Chad Palpallatoc on
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1. ICS majors have a large work load and have to commit a lot of time to their studies. I personally didn't manage my time well between school, work and time with family and friends that well in previous semesters and barely passed some of my classes because of this.
2. They also need to be up to date on the latest technology (i.e $1,000+ computers), can be difficult for less financially stable students to be able to afford them.
3. There is a strong focus on programming in the ICS department, there should be more topics to go along with it such as classes about computer hardware and building them.
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Permalink Reply by Yohan Yang on
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The three bad things about being an ICS student are:
1. Because of its diversities, sometimes it might be hard for students to narrow down their focus areas in ICS.
2. I have seen that some of the ICS courses are available only on Fall semester or Spring semester, which could make students to wait until Fall or Spring semestErika to take the courses that they need.
3. Lastly, it would be nicer if ICS courses offer focus like WI, OC, and ETH more. -
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1. Software engineering and programming can be used to accomplish almost anything. The problem is deciding what is worth trying to accomplish and the wide range of directions to choose from can sometimes feel overwhelming.
2. Also the fact that courses do not seem to be scheduled in a way that matches the university's 4-year plan template online. As a computer engineering student, classes are scheduled so that anyone following the 4-year plan provided by the university can (if seats are available) take all the recommended classes in the recommended semester and all within a Monday-Wednesday-Friday or Tuesday-Thursday schedule; this does not seem to be the case for ICS classes at Manoa.
3. Most of the undergraduate courses cover a wide range of foundational material, so if you find something that interests you (eg. you want to try to go deeper in algorithm design), you're going to have to pursue those things outside of the university system. This can lead to conflicts if you need to maintain a certain amount of credits, but also want to dedicate a certain amount of time to studying those interests not covered by the university. -
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Permalink Reply by Mary Elizabeth Santabarbara on
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Being a senior in college, I have my fair share of experience to say that there are many things the UH ICS program can improve on.
First, I believe that one of the teachers (I will not say names) needs to change the way they teach their class. Especially since he/she is an introductory class and is really hard to understand. He/she can leave a really negative impression on the upcoming freshman.
Second, the ICS department is still growing so there are not that many different classes as there should be. Hopefully the department can offer classes related to game development.
Third, the department does not offer a lot of online classes. A lot of students have jobs and they might not be able to limit their hours especially since the university keeps raising their pricing. Online classes can offer those students a great solution for those students.
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Permalink Reply by William Siu on
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1. Certain classes being open in certain times for (example only night time is available) may hinder students learning at optimal times. Maybe add more sections to the class and/or add times that students can take that course in the morning, noon, or in the evening.
2. There arent specified core sections of computer science to learn in the major. Learning abit of everything is maybe something one was not wanting and wanted to focus in certain areas instead. Maybe add a core path in ICS to take such as a path to lead to web development and focus on it.
3. The work load per ICS class seems overwhelming since students are expected to spend X amount of hours to do well. Having to do that with non ICS courses such as ethics or needing to take other required courses to graduate sounds difficult to manage (not to mention those who may have jobs). If courses like 314 could be counted to WI or other requirements would be helpful and possibly can narrow down into just ICS courses. Or if its an option, perhaps re-evaluate the contents in the courses time to time to teach what is more relavent to todays time and decide if the outdated content is that important to teach.
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