Three bad things about being an ICS student

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jason Yeo on January 13, 2013 at 7:30pm

1.  Class availability is scarce now that there are less professors to teach and not enough money for UHM.  For example some classes are offered once a year (most 4xx classes).  

2.  Team projects, talking with some major IT companies here in honolulu there seems to be a significant emphasis on working as a team.  There are no project requirements in the ICS curriculum, whereas I believe engineering students are required to complete a senior project.

 

3.  Community, most students in ICS are here to just get a grade -> pass -> graduate.  There are no ICS events or places to congregate and 'make friends'.  

Permalink Reply by Alexander Cam Liu on January 13, 2013 at 9:56pm

1. Classes offered each semester are scarce. Specially graduate classes. I know there are more undergraduate students in the department and their priority is to offer more undergrad classes, but maybe a selection of professors should be focusing on the graduate level and the other on the undergraduate level.

2. The community environment in the ICS department is not that "good". We only have the GreyHats which is more about security and believe me, many of us are not into that field. We should make more ICS events or create another club or group that focus more on another field, maybe programming.

3. A finale project for the undergraduate level. I was lucky enough to do a final project with a professor in my last semester as a undergraduate student by taking a ICS 499 class. Now I am bragging about that project on my resume. There are no big projects that most ICS student can put on their resume since most classes focus more on "Homework Assignments". I think we should learn a bit about the engineering department curriculum. 

Permalink Reply by Bret K. Ikehara on January 13, 2013 at 9:57pm

1. It would have been helpful to do a project as part of my undergraduate work and to better prepare for a master's course.

Permalink Reply by Alex on January 13, 2013 at 11:12pm

Hey maybe look outside the ICS dept too? I've been teaching Webdev. at School of Com. basics in HTML / CSS to domain purchase through server management to full on custom theming for wordpress. 

To ICS defense though, if you learn the basics well, the rest will come a lot easier with experience. It is a mode of learning, and then you apply later. 

:-) 

I know for sure there are DMBS courses that are pretty good there now. It is a huge advantage learning real relational db design in school. 

Tyler Wolff said:

1. There aren't enough web development courses to take at UH. Just as others have mentioned above, I think UH could definitely offer some more web development courses for those students who are interested in that field. I am taking 415 this semester and after that the choices are limited for web programming.

2. Classes get dropped a couple weeks before the semester starts. I know there is probably a legitimate reason for this, but when I was told both ICS313 and ICS415 weren't being taught this semester, I was disappointed in the program on a whole. ICS313 is a required class, and ICS415 is one of the only web development courses available at UH. These should definitely be taught in person. Although there are online versions being offered, I would much rather take a real class.

3. Some classes you still need a windows operated machine. I don't really know if this true for more than one class, but in ICS321 you need to own or have access to a pc to use the software needed. I am a big mac user and haven't owned a pc for awhile now, so it is a bit of a challenge for me to meet the requirements. The lab computers don't even have the software available for use. That at least should be done. I wouldn't mind having a pc but the cost is just too much for me right now.

Permalink Reply by Anthony Christe on January 14, 2013 at 11:03am

I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a solid ICS department, though there are several things that I would consider "bad".

1. Not enough low-level professors. UHM loves to focus on HCI which simply is a field that I have little-to-no interest in. As others have pointed out, it's already hard enough trying to find interesting graduate level courses every semester. When half of the courses offered are related to HCI, it's make for slim pickings. Maybe it's just bad timing. I know there have been a lot of vacancies in faculty in the past 5 year and a lot of professors have been on sabbatical. I would really love to see more low level graduate architecture, robotics, theory, parallel, and OS classes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing the importance of HCI, it's just an area that I'm not particularly interested in.

2. Not enough communal space. The physics department has a massive room as a "graduate work room" complete with a mini-library, computers, and many spaces to work. The same is true for the philosophy department as well. ICS graduate students on the other hand get one small room with a couple of white boards and a conference table. I've used the graduate work room for meetings in several classes and also use it for community lunches, but you might think that computer scientists would at least get some computer related pieces of hardware for students to use. I realize that space is an issue, but it would be nice to have something a bit more spacious and suited to computer scientists. 

3. Lack of community interaction. Other than community lunches, I don't often get to interact with professors or other graduate students within the program. I believe that it would be beneficial to meet with faculty and other students more often. I'm not sure if there is a solution to this problem. There is a general lack of time and space within out department, but I would love to organize something like an ICS hiking group. There is also a large disconnect between graduate students and undergraduate students. Graduate students make for perfect mentors to undergrads, and I feel that there is a lack of communication between the two groups. There should be opportunities for undergrads to learn from the rest of the graduate students in the department. 

Permalink Reply by Keone Hiraide on January 14, 2013 at 5:51pm

1. There should be a work area for ICS students. This work area would be open 24/7 to ICS students. This room would contain lots of desktop computers, it would have a fridge, a microwave, and couch. We could host programming competitions in here, host LAN parties for fund-raising, and of course, help each other study when we pull off all-nighters for exams.

2. We should encourage people to work together more and collaborate (different from copying each other's work).

3. Being an ICS student takes a lot of effort and time. Sometimes it's difficult to put in the time to go out and have fun with your friends.

Permalink Reply by Dylan Kobayashi on January 15, 2013 at 11:39pm

Physical problems like eye strain from bad lighting or aging projectors, cramped desk and seats(depends on the room actually), air con is almost always on full blast(most annoying is when my fingers become numb or my eyes dry out).

Classes availability: Undergrad courses have a very limited selection of time slots. Those that are available are often at bad times and may overlap preventing someone from taking multiple ICS or core courses. Grad classes are arguably much worse in availability. Would be nice if more courses of the different required areas were available. Something I think could use more visibility is the independent 490 credits. They are a great way for students to try branch out with regards to their own interests rather than be constrained by what the department offers.

Knowledge reenforcement: Although it is understandable that each person should be responsible for reviewing learned concepts, once a class is completed there is often little reason to retain it. Few courses build upon a previous course's concepts. The only ones I can think of at the moment are 211/111, 241/141, and the 400 level courses and their grad course counterparts. However, I would be hesitant to consider the grad counter parts because they are incredibly daunting from an undergrad perspective(I held off on taking grad courses as an undergrad simply because they were "600" level). If classes don't review taught information it will slowly be forgotten or discarded from lack of relevance. If classes don't build upon previously taught material, the best condition for retention is if the student finds a reason, like usage on a job or for a hobby. But honestly, that can be rare.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Waltz on August 24, 2013 at 7:16am

I'd like to preface any criticisms with the fact that i've just begun my ICS journey and have only completed ICS 111, 211, 141, and 241 so far.

1) It'd be great to see more classes with an emphasis on rapid web application development and entrepreneurship. Even if students don't have plans to found their own startup, learning these relevant skills would likely make students more employable to small and growing companies. Skills i'd like to see in a class like this would be along the lines of Server-side JavaScript, market-research on a startup idea, using cloud infrastructure like Amazon Web Services, and a deployment platform like Heroku.

2) Class time is valuable and should be spent getting the most "bang for your buck". I'd like to see more classes move away from the lecture-during-lecture, code-during-lab model and move towards lectures being available online so that students can digest that information anywhere and at their own pace so there is more time for professor interaction and actual programming. I believe this is called the inverted classroom and it's good to see ICS classes adopting it.

3) I understand ICS already has a pretty steep learning curve, especially for those students with no prior programming experience, but I think students should be introduced to the command line and a command-line editor as soon as possible. I think these are invaluable skills that provide benefit to any area of study within ICS.

Permalink Reply by Scott Honda on August 24, 2013 at 7:42pm

1. The classes that I've taken have usually been the hardest classes I've come across, but I'm better off because of it.

2. Having a mac makes life a lot easier, but they cost SO much.

3. It's a shame that there are no outdoor classes (not that there's a reason to) to be able to enjoy the Hawai'i weather.

Permalink Reply by Taylor Kennedy on August 24, 2013 at 11:41pm

1. A lot of the elective classes that are interesting are hardly offered and often have requirements to get in that you need to know about before hand.
 
2. There should be more advanced programming language classes. Java,The language most focused on, is only taught in two classes and maybe to a beginner/intermediate level. There should be a series of classes that teaches a single programming language more thoroughly and doesn’t just repeat basics.

3. Foreign language classes should be optional and more focus requirements should be fulfilled by the ICS curriculum or removed as well. I’m already learning several new programming languages and learning oral communication,writing, hawaiian, and ethnic  issues is certainly diverse but not very helpful when it doesn't pertain to our current major. 

Permalink Reply by Kevin Paek on August 30, 2013 at 9:03am

Availability of courses: Many of the courses offered are taught maybe every other one of two years. Having a higher availability would make planning for future semesters easier.

More programming languages: Java is the language used in most of the courses. We have a few other such as C++ and SQL, but I think that using a wider variety of languages will bring students to a higher level technically.

Focus in a variety of fields: The ICS program has a variety of courses, but it would be good if multiple courses in a particular field were offered.

Permalink Reply by Eduard Gamiao on August 30, 2013 at 9:42am

1. Offer more web/mobile development classes would be nice since it is a market that has grown quite a bit in the last few years.

2. Some classes can benefit from switching from few large projects to numerous small/medium sized projects in a semester.

3. Class availability has been somewhat of an issue since a class I wanted to take was offered in a previous semester but not in the one that I am registering for.

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