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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. There could be more ICS courses that fulfil the Writing Intensive, Oral Communications and Ethics requirements. Some of these require at least a 300 level course, which usually require having taken another course in that department.
  2. When I was at Leeward Community College many ICS Courses had both a live and online section available. It would be nice if Manoa would do the same thing particularly for the prerequisite courses since online classes are flexible for scheduling.
  3. At Leeward sections that had a meeting time in a classroom and required a lot of online work were labeled as hybrid. This also included classes that used the inverted approach or when the professor decided that attending the live portion was optional. If Manoa employed a similar, if not the same, labeling system then the students would have a better idea of how the class they were registering for would be structured and prepare their schedule around that or register for a different section if a traditional section is available, allowing students to more easily choose a learning approach that they prefer.

1. For the BS degree in ICS, I dislike how we have to take Physics and Chemistry for 2 semesters with both the labs. Taking these classes take up a lot of our time and I would rather spend that time and energy in ICS courses. 

2. There should be more clubs available for ICS students to join so they can get to know their peers and work on projects together. These projects would be very useful to help students build a good portfolio and prepare for jobs when they graduate.

3. It would be nice to have tutoring services for ICS like the learning emporium for math, physics, chemistry, etc. Although ICS professors and TAs provide office hours to help us on our assignments, sometimes this is not enough. It would be nice to get a little extra help since ICS is quite a difficult major. 

1. The classes usually favor those that have past programming experience. I had no programming experience when I started this major, so I felt behind compared to other students who could finish assignments with ease because they knew what to expect in programming.

2. The grade requirements for the ICS prerequisite classes are higher than any other major that I have seen. Not meeting the high grade requirements in a certain class could delay your progress significantly.

3. To be successful, you have to also work outside of class. Your portfolio and projects become very important for your resume. This seems to be more prevalent in computer science.

I have not had much experience in ICS courses at UH Manoa because I am a Computer Engineering student. In my experience thus far, I have no experienced anything negative in Professor Johnson's class. My classmates are knowledgable and friendly, I feel like it would be unfair for me to say anything constructive about the ICS program thus far.

1. Although I understand that some professors are only available to teach in the late evening or some students prefer the late times due to other external reasons, for those of us where it takes an hour or more to commute home, having a class end at such a late time is fairly difficult. 

2. As was stated previously, it would be great if the ICS classes offered would also count toward general education requirements. I appreciate that there are some classes that do count towards a WI or O credit, but the amount of classes that do offer our very few. 

3. This only really applies for the intro courses like ICS 111, 141, 211, and 241, but I feel that the required B letter grade (not B-) can be quite stressful for students and pretty shocking as the majority of courses offered from other departments only require students to get a C to pass the class.

1) Extra help outside of classes just like learning emporium.

2) The field is definitely growing and it has been growing very well on perspective of past comments made here. I would actually like an established college of Computer Science which diversifies more specific fields with in this major. It does seem like the staff is spread out thin teaching various other low level courses on top of their specified higher level course.

3) Somewhat of a continuing point from above I think a staff increase for types of advisors would since Gerald does definitely do a good job, it just that basically ALL students have to go to him for mandatory advising/meeting which seems hard not only for him but also the students on when they have free time and can squeeze in sometime with the mandatory advising/meeting. 

-So overall an Computer Science department expansion?(Of course coming with time)

1. Offer places to study for ICS students as well as more opportunities for students to receive help like study groups etc. 

2. Incentive students to join the GreyHats and provide extra credit opportunities for participating in hackathons or side projects. 

3. Create social events for ICS students so everyone can become more familiar to each other, especially within the major. Networking is a significant skill to have. 

  1. There are too many prerequisites for upper division ICS courses (i.e. Going down a security track needs ICS 222, but also ICS 314, 311, and 212/215 is needed as prerequisites for some of the ICS courses, whereas 311 is needed for almost all of the upper division classes) and, there are often time conflicts with some of the courses.
  2. Midterms and Finals for classes that are usually taken concurrently could be scheduled better. Speaking from the experience of having midterms and finals on the same day for two ICS classes, and on a Monday, too (ICS 211 and 241, both of which are usually planned for students to take during the spring semester).
  3. Labs with lots of outlets would be nice. 

1. Updating the website to make sure that the graduation requirements are correct.

2. Offering more than one oral and ethics course

3. Consistency of classes each semester

1. You give up a lot of free time, whether it be for yourself or other classes.

2. Not enough seats for 314 so if you don't get into it, you have to rely on overrides.

3. Getting an Ethics or Oral Communications credit is a pain since most of them need prerequisite classes.

1. The UH ICS program could provide more class availability for certain courses. Classes such as ICS314 was very limited and selective, so it was hard to get into. Due to the growing field and increasing amounts of students, it would be nice to have more available courses to accommodate the growth. 

2. Other than simply making more classes available for the same subject, we could introduce new topics to the ICS program, which could potentially be taken as an alternative to some of the required courses. This would allow students to follow different paths and not all be stuck to learning the same things form the same teachers.

3. More hours dedicated to tutoring would help out the ICS students a lot. Many of the students in ICS do homework until late at night, and usually they are stuck without any help due to the hours. Although it may be hard to accommodate, it would be nice if there were tutors or upperclassmen available during the evenings to help out students who are struggling to find simple bugs in their program. 

  1. One of the biggest concerns ICS students face is the limited amount of classes available to students. Many of the required classes have maybe one or two sections of about 30 people which limits the hundreds of ICS students to waitlist and/or take longer to graduate. We could definitely benefit more by gradually working towards staffing ICS professors, which I understand will take some time.
  2. Maybe more WebDev related classes and/or classes that focuses on not only tech based aspect of coding, but the design aspect of coding as well.
  3. Possibly finding a solution for students who need to work 20+ hours to make a living to also be able to get their degree in ICS. Many professors stress the importance of not working over 20 hours if students want to pursue this degree because of the heavy workload, which I agree with to an extent, but it is also a part of life that some people have no control over. Hawaii is an expensive place to live in and most people just can't afford to NOT work 20+ hours, but still want to get a college degree. Just something to think about.

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