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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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1) It is almost required for ICS students to have side projects on top of the projects that are assigned in class. I think the class projects should be interesting enough so that we can possibly use them in the future.

2) Many of the ICS courses are only offered later in the evening, which causes study times to go later into the night.

3) Not all ICS professors encourage collaboration on projects and homework. Some people learn better in groups and collaborating with other people to understand the topics.

1.  Have more than just ICSpace as a study area.

2.  Have more defined "paths" according to specialties, and more resources to help choose your "path" (Networking, IT, Software Development)

3. The should NOT let the "no re-taking of classes" thing be approved.  That is just so freaking ridiculous, its unbelievable that they would even think of doing that.  It wouldn't even be worth the risk to be a ICS major.  Stop being ridiculous guys, cmon now we have to focus on people making it through all the way, not scaring them off before even starting.

These are the top three things I'd like the UH ICS program to improve:

1. Not enough emphasis on real-world development: I listed UH's emphasis on fundamental CS skills as a positive, but I do believe that emphasis may be to a fault. For all the emphasis on algorithms and math, the program's theoretical abstraction isn't strongly anchored to skills that are useful in the workplace. It wasn't until I was two years into college that I felt I understood programming well enough that I could create a useful command-line program. I haven't learned how to link a program to a GUI or pass values between programs, or do much of anything a modern workplace would expect me to know. I can identify and design efficient algorithms, but I couldn't deliver something customer-ready and don't yet feel like I could be very helpful at a hackathon. I know computer science is broad and some computer scientists never code again after graduating, but everyone should be able to develop a simple, user-friendly application.

This isn't just my opinion, I've talked to many employers and managers who feel that UH grads don't have the skills necessary to hit the ground running on their teams. Perhaps it's that the expectations are mismatched (ICS != IT), but the fact it's a common sentiment and perception is important to consider. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I believe Dr. Johnson's own RadGrad project was started do address some of these complaints about skill shortfalls...but if we know about the shortcomings, why not rework the curriculum itself to address them?

I think Software Engineering or a class like it (and computational problem solving) needs to be introduced much earlier, so that students can learn to create a complete solution early on (even if it's "janky"), and then expand upon that experience with theoretical knowledge. If software bootcamps can do it, surely a university can.

I'm excited for the software engineering class, because I think I'm going to finally learn how to build an entire app, GUI, algorithms, database, and all. I'm glad it will be required now. I just wish it was much earlier in the program.

2. Assumption that students don't or shouldn't have a job: This is a tricky issue, but I think it's something UH Manoa's ICS program could bear to be more aware of. The price of attending UH Manoa has skyrocketed in the last decade. The education used to be considered a bargain, as of 2014 it was the 19th most expensive school in the country. (source) Furthermore, we live in Honolulu, which has a cost of living comparable only to the likes of famously expensive cities like San Francisco and New York City.

What does this mean? Students probably need a job to get by, but I've been told by multiple ICS professors that I shouldn't have job (one even told me I shouldn't have a full course load) while taking their classes. Though I realize learning ICS is like learning a whole new language and way of thinking, and that students--and even experienced computer scientists--need to devote a lot of time to their craft in order to have fluent proficiency, I feel that this expectation is insensitive at best, and destructive (source) at worst. Sadly, times have changed.

I'm not sure what the solution is here, or if there even is one due to the intense nature of learning a discipline as broad as computer science, but I do know designing course loads (and schedules!!!) that assume UH Manoa students shouldn't have a job has been outdated for at least eight years now.

3. Not enough cross-disciplinary interaction or exposure to industry leaders: Unlike many disciplines, computer science is not really an end in and of itself--it's a tool set to solve problems, but the problems to be solved often come from other fields, like biology, physics, or business (the discipline of finding problems to solve)--there are very few pure CS problems by comparison. In addition to collaborators from these fields, we also work with collaborators to deliver products, and as far as I know, only the Video Game Design and Development class brings in students from other departments (2D/3D artists) to work with computer science students on projects. UH should strive to create and integrate collaborative relationships between departments (especially the engineering department) to expose students to real problems and realistic collaboration with people form other disciplines, like they will encounter in the real world.

Related to the lack of emphasis on inter-disciplinary work, UH Manoa does not have a lot of opportunities to encounter industry leaders in both tech or industries that are using tech to solve their problems. One of the advantages of school at Stanford is that leaders from billion dollar companies are always being invited to give talks or even classes. UH Manoa doesn't have access to such a deep pool of speakers, but I feel like we could still make an effort to create those opportunities with local tech companies (like Ikayzo/Contix, Blue Planet, Sudokrew, Tetris), prominent companies with high tech requirements (Hawaiian Airlines, Hawaii-based banks, Anthology Marketing Group, the State of Hawaii), notable alumni (Henk Rogers, Eric Nakagawa), tech people with Hawaii ties (Evan Rapoport of Google X), or even set up teleconference talks over Skype with Silicon Valley types who are willing to do that sort of thing. While it might be tempting to say this is the purview of clubs like ACM, the faculty automatically will have a much deeper network than most students, and more credibility/access with heavy hitters, so the faculty could and should be supplementing ACM's efforts by feeding them opportunities to take advantage of. These unique networking opportunities and exposure to experienced industry leaders and their problem sets would be invaluable, helping to mitigate the lack of exposure that happens so often due to living in such an isolated place.

1.  There's a lot of self-teaching with the courses.

2.  The technologies you learn may not be relevant to jobs in your location.

3.  It's a lot of work.

1. I would personally like more courses that focus on mobile app development.

2. This is a criticism that could be mentioned towards many college programs, but more courses could benefit from an emphasis on group participation throughout the semester.  ICS 314 is a good exception!

3. Another personal preference is having another course or two on game development available.

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

1) More classes should be taught with a hands on approach that will apply to the industry.

2) More sections available for registration since a lot of classes do fill up before some get a chance to register.

3) Although some may disagree, I wish there were more online classes. It makes it easier when making your schedule. This was something that I liked at the community colleges.

This is my first ICS class, due to the engineering department not having an equivalent EE version of Software Engineering. What I would like to see, from a computer engineering student perspective, more ICS classes that Computer Engineers can branch out to. Most of the ICS classes offered are often already covered by EE equivalent courses, or require several ICS prerequisites, which computer engineers do not have. Yes, some classes can be entered with an override, but the other main difference between the ICS track and Engineering track is that we use different languages, Java vs C/C++. Concepts are indeed the same, but engineers would need to catch up/ learn java, on their own before being able to take the higher level ICS courses not offered within engineering like AI Programming.

My main issue is I don't want to have "duplicate courses" and would rather have more variety. I do understand that the computer engineering degree offered by UH is still relatively new, but towards the future, maybe more classes can be offered in replace of the duplicates. Example is Discrete Mathematics. ICS department offers two courses, ICS 141 and ICS 241. Engineers cover all of that in only one course, EE 362. 

1) I have no clue what I want to do and it is hard to decide what I want to focus on in the ICS program.

2) Everything is self-taught, and resources are recycled/reused from other campuses and professors. 

3) I feel like programming is a language in itself and there is no other language like it. So I don't understand why we're forced to take second language requirement when we are learning multiple programming languages as well as writing pages on pages of code. I found programming to be a language of computers, where we write/read instructions (programs)  that need proper syntax and requirements for the computer complete the given task.

1. Some of the lower division classes have large lectures. This can make it hard to get help from the professor, which is important when first learning to program.

2. There is limited class availability. I've noticed a lot of the classes only have a couple of sections a semester, and those sections fill up quickly making it hard to get the required classes.

3. There is a large work load. It can be frustrating, and time consuming to code and debug large projects for class. However, I do understand that this is a difficult field, and this is preparing us for a professional environment.

Being a computer engineering student I have had a slightly different experience but I'm sure we share many of the same thoughts.

1)The cost of textbooks in a technical field such as this has been a problem for myself and many others. However, free and open source resources are becoming more and more available allowing students to go elsewhere for information. It will be interesting to see if classes and curriculum may adjust to have less need for a "textbook" in the future.

2)There aren't many courses in the engineering department tailored to the computer engineers. It would be helpful to have more classes available within the college itself, but there are opportunities outside the college such as here in the ICS department.

3)A reason we may not have many computer engineering courses might be that we don't have enough people to teach the courses. It seems like there are only two professors for the computer engineering classes, so if we would be able to increase that amount we would be able to support a wider variety of classes.

1. There aren't enough professors to teach all the students.  Often, classes are filled and graduation is delayed.

2. CS textbooks are very expensive.  A semester's worth can cost $500-$1000 alone.  More online materials might reduce the printing costs, and may make learning more affordable.

3. Large workload compared to some other majors.  It's not really something the UH ICS program could improve, since computer science is a difficult field.

I'm going to edit this question just a bit since I'm not actually a part of the UH ICS program...

What are three ways that the UH Computer Engineering program could improve?

1) More integration with the ICS program: I know that these are two separate majors that learn different things, but I think, from my own personal experience, that CE majors should take more ICS classes to broaden and deepen their understanding of other "higher level" languages (since we are only really required to learn C and C++).

2) More hardware experience: This is more of a CE thing, but there is not much in the way of computer hardware in the program. Because we deal with both hardware and software, I think that more effort should be put into understanding what makes optimal hardware and the physics of it. Right now the highest level hardware class available is at a 300 level, and I think it might be beneficial to have a 400 level one, and one way to do that might be to have...

3) More CE centered design projects: Maybe there are some that I am unaware of, but it seems like there are more projects available to all the other engineering majors readily available (the only ones I can think of is an Android development project and micro mouse). Since most engineering students have to complete 3 years of x96 projects, it would be nice to have some that specifically dealt with CE (I had to settle with an EE project for two semesters).

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