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 Jacob Rude on
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1. Not having anyone to ask for help outside of the professor and TA. Just like how there is a learning emporium for Math, Chemistry, and other subjects, ICS should have something along those lines.
2. Not having much class flexibility, and having to take certain classes at night since they are only offered at those given times. Maybe have a better variety of scheduling?
3. More group orientated and real world scenario coding earlier. Now in my second year at UH Manoa, I have only just recently began to code in a manor appropriate to industry standards. I feel first year ICS students should have better habits instilled in them, like comment style and tracing. Instead of waiting until later to be taught this.
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Permalink Reply by Mark R Cummins on
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1. Focus on the ICS. One of the gripes I have about college is that my entire curriculum isn't dedicated to ICS. I'm forced to divert my time into the liberal arts and other miscellaneous courses. While some may argue that these courses make you a well rounded student, most students don't care about these other courses yet they have to invest time into them. Even though I like reading about history and literature, I'd rather focus on those things on my own time rather than take a introductory course to them. I feel it would be optimal if the curriculum was more like those 12 week coding boot camps but stretched out to four years, creating exceptional computer scientists.
2. Treat us like the professionals you want us to become. It would be great if the professors not only taught us computer science, but other soft skills that make us the ideal candidate. I also appreciate it when professors comment on work that doesn't meet proficiency when compared to the real world. Constructive criticism is invaluable. Giving students a reality check every now and then allows students to reflect introspectively, identify their weak points, and make an effort to improve them.
3. Train us to be business people. It might just be me, but I don't like the image of the timid and shy computer scientist who doesn't dress well, doesn't know business etiquette, and doesn't have that salesman mentality. I like to believe that the students in the field of computer science can be equal if not be better than the business students in business while having the technical knowledge of a computer scientist. Instead of looking like Mark Zuckerberg, we can aspire to look like James Bond while knowing the runtime of all the different sorting algorithms. ;)
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1. Some class times are a little inconvenient, like the night ones (332, 212).
2. I never really felt pushed to do internships or development jobs, or big projects like the engineering school requires. Now I'm worried about graduating this May without a good enough portfolio for the kind of jobs I'd be interested in.
3. Less of a problem now but I took a handful of non-ICS classes just to meet the WI requirement (all 5 non-ICS). It's pretty frustrating that if I waited I could have saved the time, money and effort by taking WI ICS classes now. -
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Permalink Reply by Jory Leech on
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1. Professors connected to technology, often try to incorporate technologies that haven't been fully realized into their classes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't always work out.
2. Computer science courses tend to happen during the night, while other courses tend to happen during the day, making finding a work schedule difficult.
3. I can't take every class! At the end of the day I have to admit there is only so many classes i can take, and i will have to teach myself the other topics I am interested in.
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1) ICS courses should count more towards the general requirements so we don't have to take so many other courses.
2) Some ICS course times may not be ideal if we work since some are really late.
3) Having more ways of getting help (i.e Slack)
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Permalink Reply by Jameyia Shamia on
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1. You have much less free time than people of different majors than you.
2. You are in a very competitive environment, which can be stressful.
3. There really is no going back after you have gone down the rabbit hole so far. -
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Permalink Reply by Shaziney Natividad on
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Three bad things about being an ICS student includes but is not limited to the following:
1. Enrolling in the classes you need can be difficult, especially if you lack the number of credits necessary to even be able to register for a course before it is filled. Courses like ICS 314 and 311 are high in demand while only a couple or a few sections are offered for each course (respectively) each semester. Those who are unable to take these classes risk delaying their expected graduation date further since these classes are now prerequisites for many upper-division ICS courses. Personally, it has taken me a year to enroll in ICS 314. I had to get overrides from Gerald to take other courses, many of which have ICS 314 or 311 as a prerequisite. This issue can be resolved if there were more professors to teach additional sections for courses that are high in demand.
2. Some classes are only available once a year and can even be dropped right before a semester starts. Without careful planning, one may be at risk for the delay of his or her expected graduation date if he or she is unable to enroll in a required class or class of interest that is only offered once a year. In some cases, a particular course may not even be offered throughout the year due to other needs. For example, this semester, I had hoped to take ICS 466, which is Design for Mobile Devices. It is usually only offered in the spring. However, according to Gerald, the academic adviser of the ICS department at UHM, Dr. Binsted, who usually teaches ICS 466, was needed to teach ICS 361 instead. It is to my disappointment to have found that it is unlikely that ICS 466 will be offered in the following fall semester, despite it being dropped from this spring semester. This issue can be solved with added faculty to either teach classes so that professors won’t get pulled to teach other courses, or to make certain courses available both in the spring and fall semesters.
3. Students who are new to the ICS program are required to pass ICS core classes with a grade of B or better and must not fail or may be forced to drop-out of this major. Classes are also not repeatable. It is understandable that it is quite necessary for students to do well in these classes in order to succeed in all other classes in this program; however, I simply believe that some students may be faced with unfortunate circumstances that may honestly contribute to student’s inability and failure to meet this requirement. If this notion was kept and has already been put in motion, I think it should be removed. -
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Permalink Reply by Anh Lam on
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1. I am a transfer to this University of Hawaii and I have only taken two classes in the ICS department so my perception on things are quite general. So far I took both discrete math and honestly I didn't learn how to apply the problems to a real programming situation. I wish that I could have an example of the math's application before I just dive into proving theorems. I was lost when were talking about big-O notation to figure out the run-time. I think it would have help me understand a lot better if there were some correlation to programming.
2. I have talk to developers and friends that have jobs in the computer science discipline and they have told me that on the job, they are required to continue with an existing project and would have learn how to read the program. This skill I believe is very important and have not been taught since I started majoring in computer engineering. I wish we could learn a skill that could teach us to be versatile and have the ability to pick up on current projects and how to go about making it better.
3. I do not know how to read other people's code very well and I think this would help me and motivate to dive into different projects. I have a hard time understanding what the code does at times like the open source code on GitHub. I wish there was some procedure to identify the focus of a program and the functionality it needs to make it work while minimizing time.
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Permalink Reply by Hailing Li on
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1. It's time comsuming
2. We do a lot of self-study
3. The passing requirements for funcdamental ICS classes are high.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Tan on
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1. Lots of credit requirements makes it nearly impossible to graduate early, or even on time for transfer students like myself.
2. There should be mandatory advising. As a transfer student, I wasn't aware of a specific ICS advisor. For a few semesters I would go to general advising, and often they didn't have answers to my questions about any ICS courses.
3. Since the course load requires a lot of outside work, it makes balancing work, social life, and family time very difficult.
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Permalink Reply by Samuel Rasay Jr. on
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1. The amount of work and stress can sometimes become unhealthy if you don't handle it properly.
2. The times when courses are offered can be difficult to work around, considering that many classes are offered at night, rather than during the day.
3. The general education requirements are a little ridiculous. I understand that ICS heavily involves math, and that the general education requirements help us build a solid foundation, but I find it a little ridiculous that we need to take General Physics I and II and General Chemistry I and II with their labs, alongside Calculus I and II. I'd rather be able to spend more time studying ICS related material.
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Permalink Reply by Russell Omo on
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1) Although this point has been made a by numerous people before me, I think it is a point that could really improve the state of the program, and that is the difficultly of signing up for classes, namely 300 level courses. This in turn causes a very topsy turvy progression for most students where they take classes which they don't even have the prerequisites for. The core requirement was implemented to remedy this, but I, as well as others here, have already been through most of the curriculum.
2) Very few classes in the program satisfy FOCUS requirements. Perhaps this is just due to the nature of the field of study, as most of it is in practice and implementation. Classes like 314 are very appreciated and I would like to have more classes that allow us to write academic journals and essays in our field of study.
3) Being in this major is getting increasingly stressful to a point of being almost unnecessarily so. With the implementation of new core requirements and the "B or higher" requirement for such classes being in consideration, things are looking dim for most of the new ICS students. Granted, this (314) is the last core class that I must take, but I would be lying if I said that these classes are easy, in fact they are far from it. The possible "No Repeat" rule in conjunction with all of this makes ICS possibly the most high risk STEM major offered at UHM. And that's a scary thing for both new and current students. Simply getting a B- in 311, in my opinion the most difficult class in the curriculum, will weed out a lot of students, if they weren't already scared away from the harsh requirements. I believe that these requirements are more detrimental to the student.
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