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 Xen Huang on
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1. Spend more than expected times in front of computer.
2. Programming is not easy.
3. Not enough advanced or special courses. -
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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Hedricks on
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1. I think that the ICS program could improve the variety of courses being taught or change how a course is presented. Most of the ICS courses teach programming and their relevant syntax, algorithms, and applications. There is little in the ways of applying material in interesting ways, beyond a series of standard project-based assignments. If there were more assignments that asked instead of 'make said algorithm work", but "use said algorithm in this application that incorporates things learned in other ICS courses to do something interesting and unrelated to using the algorithm for the sake of learning the algorithm", that would be both useful and presentable in a professional portfolio.
2. As several people have mentioned previously, there seems to be a lack of required classes available in either fall or spring semesters. Having to wait a whole semester for a required class to pop-up is a major downside and greatly hampers ICS students wishing to retain working memory of the material they learn. Also there seems to be a lack of online classes for ICS required courses. I think having more of those could potentially make it so that ICS students can take their courses without filling up other ICS courses while they wait for the required course in a later semester.
3. Having transferred from a Game Design & Development major to Information & Computer Science major, I was saddened to learn that most of UH's "game-centric" courses are under the ACM department and limited to students with working portfolios of either art or previously designed projects. I just wish there were maybe courses that catered to students who maybe wish to learn programming from a game design standpoint. -
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Permalink Reply by Alexander Sanchez on
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I would have to say the three worst things about taking ICS classes would be the extremely long hours to complete certain tasks, the strain staring at a computer screen can have on your eyes, and the rising costs to enroll in certain schools that offer ICS programs.
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1. Improvement in class availability would be nice. Classes are available only at certain times, whether it be only during evening hours or being available during a specific semester. This can make planning for what classes to take pretty difficult.
2. Course work can be time consuming and extremely frustrating from time to time, especially if those courses are only offered during the evening hours.
3. While there are a variety of fields that the courses cover, I'd personally like more courses that would focus on game development.
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Permalink Reply by Chad Morita on
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1. Classroom location
It would be better to have most of my ICS classes in the POST building. I understand that it would be extremely difficult to schedule a lot of classes in the POST building because of the limited classroom space, but it would be nice if more classes could be there. Last semester I was lucky to have both of my ICS classes in POST and I really liked it. I was able to go to class and then go to the ICS Space quickly right after class. Everything was centralized. This semester I have to travel quite far to get to my ICS classes. I’m not sure if this is even possible, but it would be nice to have more classroom space in the computer science department even if they are smaller classrooms.
2. Class availability
While selecting classes for each semester, it can be quite a task to schedule classes in a way that they fit together well. More options for class times would be a great improvement. A lot of the time, different sections of the class are taught at the same time, but by different professors and sometimes there is a single section at a different time. I observed that the section taught at the different time will often have a full waitlist before I am even able to register and that the other two sections taught at the same time will still have a lot of space. I think that a survey before registration to gauge the amount of people who would like to be in a class could be a solution, but I can also see some problems with the survey. Students might just fill in late times because they do not want to wake up early instead of answering the survey according to their availability.
3. Flexible deadlines
It seems like at least one professor in the ICS department is trying out flexible deadlines. I think that if students use flexible deadlines correctly, it can be beneficial. I found that especially with coding assignments, problems can arise that might take a few minutes or a few hours to solve. There have been times where even if I had a head start on an assignment, I would still run into last minute problems. Because the problems were last minute, I was not able to see my professors or TAs for assistance. A flexible deadline would allow students to seek help at reasonable times and also reduce the unnecessary stress associated with a hard deadline.
I can also see potential problems with a flexible deadline because students might just think that they can always turn in assignments late. The way I see is that the flexible deadlines enforces time management even more. If a student takes advantage of a flexible deadline by consistently turning in assignments late, they will fall behind in the class and their grades will suffer on exams.
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Permalink Reply by Matthew Schultz on
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1. Adding more service learning projects that apply ICS skills for the good of the community
2. Increased ICS outreach to minority groups because demographics tend to be skewed and not representative
of the general population, which can lead to misunderstandings of those groups
3. Increased interdisciplinary collaboration with other programs -
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Permalink Reply by Wyatt Bartlett on
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What are three ways that the UH ICS program could improve?
1. Students need to have more math exposure before they take Discrete Math I & II. In the ICS plan it is
recommended that students take these courses in their Freshman year. I noticed that many students coming into these classes did not have enough math experience to understand a lot of what was taught. I'm sure there are pros and cons to this approach, but perhaps it should be recommended that students take Calc I & II before Discrete Math I & II to give them some time to adjust to college-level mathematics.I took Discrete Math I with Kazuo Sugihara, as a number of others in this class have. It was a hard class, but
because I was an engineering major for three years prior and had taken Calculus I-IV and a course in
differential equations I had a good amount of math experience to help me through. There were many concepts in that class that I had seen before as an engineering major (such as series and matrices), but I was definitely
never introduced to those things in high school. I imagine that many students coming out of Hawaii high schools are in the same boat. I think that if I had started as an ICS major taking Discrete Math I after coming out of high school that I would have failed the class and switched my major.2. There are way more male students than female students in the ICS program. In my engineering classes
I also noticed more guys than girls, but it seems like in ICS the difference is even greater. There is a branch
of the Society of Women Engineers on campus. Perhaps a club like this for women in Computer Science would help to give female ICS students a sense of community and support.3. It might benefit students in the ICS program if there were more instructors
with a full-time teaching position. This way, you could rely on instructors to be focused on
teaching their students without being distracted by other work responsibilities. I realize, however,
that full time staff may have research responsibilities as well.I was actually a bit hesitant to post this suggestion because at the same time there are also some really
awesome instructors who have outside jobs and also manage to lecture at the University (such as Ravi Narayan). It is definitely worth keeping these instructors. -
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1. I know UH is a research university but maybe more technical lectures than just theoretical lectures for certain topics. For example, after taking some of the security courses, I do not feel like I could actually implement any safety measurements into my programs even though I have a more in-depth idea of how they work.
2. More classes by Ravi. They're hard but fun and I still remember most of what I learned. Oh the trauma....
3. Maybe internship courses? That way we could build real world experience. I know there's not a lot of internships for our field in Hawaii which gives us incentives to either not use our degree or to move out of state.
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Permalink Reply by Dee Mosher on
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Again, computer engineering. Can't really contribute.
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Three things that the UH ICS program could do to improve the student's experience.
1. Focus more on lab work. I personally understand more information and retain it longer if I actually do it myself.
2. Do a better job of connecting the math related classes like 141 and 241 with ways that they will be used in real life. I think that would make the classes more interesting and easier to follow.
3. Offer more classes every semester. Sometimes it becomes difficult/frustrating when you want to take a class so because it is the prerequisite for another class, but the first class isn't even available that semester. Then you have to wait even longer for the class that you wanted to take in the first place.
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Permalink Reply by Kenji Clemmer on
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I would have to say that the three things that come to mind when either considering plainly bad things about the experience or about ways in which we could improve the experience would be:
1. Social Boundaries. I feel like there are inherent boundaries that exist for anyone anywhere, but especially with those of us in this field. Society has labeled our archetype as anti-social or unable to communicate or express ourselves. I think that over the last few years especially this has been trended down, but its something that is only happening passively as society understands the difference between introverted and anti-social. But I feel like a more structured approach or at least slightly more inclusion of this topic in the day-to-day would help.
2. Parking. This has a lot of things surrounding it both with basic costs of parking and its availability, also it applies to anyone on our campus. Personally, I end up parking rather far away and walking so as to reduce these costs, but it's still a gripe I have.
3. Creativity. While I haven't taken a large amount of classes in this field yet, I have noticed that there doesn't seem to be a ton of room for creativity, at least in certain assignments. I understand that there are certain requirements and benchmarks that have to be achieved but sometimes it feels like there is barely room to breathe in that respect. To say that we should do side projects on our own time and to say that that would be the place for creativity should not be the solution. After all we want free thinkers looking at problems from all sorts of angles, not a bunch of monkeys on typewriters.
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1) There should be more seats available for the courses. If that's not possible, the department should implement more ways to weed out students early on.
2) There should be a larger selection of ICS classes that fulfill graduation requirements such as writing intensives so it could be easier to graduate on time.
3) The department should encourage greater diversity. ICS students seem to be predominantly Asian men. More diversity will bring in new perspectives and networks.
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