Three bad things about being an ICS student

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by J.David Korse on September 4, 2010 at 8:46pm

The ICS program within the UH system is structured to provide introductory and advanced courses, service a diverse community island and state wide, and prepare graduates for success. In reality, the system is broken.

First and foremost, is a lack of emphasis on "teaching". A problem for the entire university system, the caliber of educators is sorely low. Here we have to clarify that "teaching" means to effectively evaluate and motivate students. This requires both innate skills in communication, and training in educational methods. While instructors with degrees in education may possess the later, they are not "graded" on their success in teaching students and thus many sub-par instructors remain in the system for years. And, even more disturbing, the "research" institutions such as Manoa force students to endure lecture after lecture with professors who have neither skill nor training in how to teach. Additionally, these "educators", who may be experts in their field, often lack the ability or awareness to effectively mentor students.

As a second point, let me just say that on the whole, a research institution should not be providing introductory level courses. It seems to me that the professors who teach at the 100-200 level really aren't enjoying it, and thus the experience is not rewarding for the student. Leave the intro to the community colleges where they can focus on improving teacher quality.

I suspect that change will be slow to occur, if ever, unless it is forced. The current societal interest in teacher evaluations and pay-for-performance should be heeded by the higher-education community. I am very surprised that the UH system has end-of-term online evals of instructors by students, but that an instructor can choose not to release the results. How is this helpful? Is the data used by anyone? If the evals are consistently poor, can management take action? It may be time for taxpayers to call for a legislative fix.

Permalink Reply by Hansen W.K. Cheng on August 27, 2011 at 1:37pm

1. Some important classes such as Software Engineering and Operating Systems aren’t offered in the early course of ICS requirements. I think that the new curriculum of offering these two courses in the early course of ICS requirements will be beneficial to every ICS majors.

 

2. Offered a couple more writing intensive and ethics courses.

 

3. Our department should offer a course that truly base on internships to earn the course credit. By having a course like that can help many ICS majors to get hands on experience of the technology industry.

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Michael Beck on August 27, 2011 at 3:10pm

Three ways the UH ICS Graduate program could improve:

1. Offer more courses and more variety of courses per semester

2. Allow more opportunities for TA and RA-ships and larger stipends

3. Allow for more directed study and/or more focused-area M.S. degrees for those that wish to do so

Permalink Reply by Jayson Gamiao on August 27, 2011 at 11:51pm

1) The amount of time put into your work will not always yield what you expect. I can spend hours banging my hang against the wall and come up with nothing.

 

2) With the financial cutbacks going on, there are certain ICS courses not being offered. This may force some students to select a course they are not really interested in just to graduare sooner.

 

3) Not everyone is an expert in math. But it seems like doing well in discrete math/algorithms is a good sign you're not gonna have any problems down the road in ICS.

Permalink Reply by Jason Yeo on August 28, 2011 at 1:09am

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).  I was looking forward to learning from the networking guru this semester but unfortunately no networking classes were offered.

 

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 Jordan Takayama on August 28, 2011 at 1:45am

1. Though something like ICS is naturally going to require a lot of self-motivated pursuit of internships or learning of skills on one's own time, I do agree that there are a lot of skills (e.g., XML, PHP, AJAX, and other mostly web-oriented programming and markup languages, as well as SQL and version control) I saw on sample resumes when I took ICS 290 that aren't necessarily available as classes. I know these subjects might not be broad enough to be taught as a university course when there are more essential core skills like C/C++, algorithms, and Java, but it would be nice (as has been said) to have some more specialized classes. (That said, it looks like we'll be learning about version control systems in ICS 314, so I'm looking forward to that.)
2. I agree with the issues raised regarding focus requirements. The only ICS writing-intensive courses I know of right now are 314 (Software Engineering, Writing) and 390 (Computing Ethics for Lab Assistants, Writing/Ethics/Oral), and I actually can't take 390 because I skipped ICS 101. I looked over some online listings from past semesters with an advisor; it turns out, like others have said, that many upper-level ICS courses are writing-intensive, just not with much consistency. I joined the Honors program partly to try to get access to some specialized classes later on (e.g., Honors 380 gives a 300+ level Oral focus) but this poses scheduling issues of its own and usually isn't as relevant to my major.
3. As a sophomore who just finished ICS 211, I will say that I think the lack of connectedness might partially have its roots in class policy - students in 111 and 211 are told to work on their own so they can learn the basics more independently. That said, computer science as a field offers many potential career paths for everyone, so the split might just as easily be due to everyone specializing in something different (or due to some other reason else entirely; I'm relatively new and definitely can't claim to have the clearest idea of what I'm talking about).

Permalink Reply by Shawn Matsuura on August 28, 2011 at 10:00am

1. While I know there is not enough funding for Manoa, the lack of courses over the semester is a bit discouraging. I have noticed that a lot of the courses offered all year are requirements for the ICS major while others are sometimes offered once a year.

 

2. Not enough students are introduced to the tech world while in the lower classes. This is especially true for the community colleges, when I was at Leeward I had idea sites like TechHui existed.

 

3. Some students are not encouraged to keep coding once they finish the class. It appears they want to graduate and get a job without practicing the original skills they learned at school.

Permalink Reply by Christopher Foo on August 28, 2011 at 1:46pm

1. The lack of sections for required or highly desired courses causes them to fill up extremely fast.  While I was normally able to get away with a back-up schedule, it was rather disheartening to see the class you were looking forward to fill up days before you register.  It also does not help that some of the 400-level elective courses seem to be offered at erratic intervals, making it hard to figure out whether you will be able to take a certain elective before graduating.
2. The issue of focus requirements is also another problem.  There are only a handful of classes in the ICS department that offer focus requirements and when they are offered, they fill up quickly.  This forces students to fulfill these requirements with classes from other subjects (which we may or may not be interested in) and makes scheduling classes rather troublesome (should I take this ICS class I've been dying to take or that random ethics class so I can graduate on time?).
3. The lack of an emphasis on portfolio building throughout the program (at least until the student takes Software Engineering!).  Most classes seem to focus on small assignments and not large projects that could be used in your portfolio to impress potential employers.  In addition, I was not even introduced to the idea of building a portfolio to show employers until ICS 290 and Software Engineering.  This might be alleviated as students take Software Engineering earlier, but I still wish that I was aware of this earlier so that I could have worked towards expanding my portfolio before the final year of my undergraduate studies.

Permalink Reply by Chris Fang on August 28, 2011 at 2:04pm

1. Course offerings - The UH ICS program, unfortunately, does not always offer courses that exist in its catalog and that can pose problems to the graduation paths of students.  Between course conflicts and the lack of course availability, delays in ICS students' academic routes are almost inevitable.

 

2. Professor availability - Although we have very knowledgeable professors in the program, at times, a professor somehow ends up teaching a course in which the content is not necessarily their forte.  This can result in a less engaging learning experience for the students if their teacher is either out of practice/touch with the subject or is simply not as enthused about it.

 

3. Online courses - Online teaching is still relatively new, but some courses have been somewhat more hectic and disorganized than others.  Between ambiguous due dates and a lack of guidance from instructors, some online courses can get downright confusing in terms of how a student can expect to succeed in the class.

Permalink Reply by Sean S K Chung on August 28, 2011 at 2:31pm

Unfortunately I am scheduled to graduate next semester, but hopefully this may help future students.

 

1) More sections for required and/or in-demand classes.

 

A good example is this semester's ICS 314 class. Even though it is a required class there was only one small section with many people still trying to take it, who without it may have their graduation pushed back an entire semester.

 

2) A larger variety of 400-level courses taught per semester.

 

For example compare the dozen or so 400-level English courses compared to the 4 in the ICS subject. Even though the B.S. degree in Computer Science technically only requires 5 non-specific 400-level courses I wouldn't think people want to take a class they are not interested in.

 

3) More "structured" options for different ICS paths.

 

To the best of my knowledge there is one and only one degree option for those pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science. While it has good requirements for a broad understanding of the field it doesn't really help those who would want to specialize in a specific field. Maybe an option and class schedule for a B.S. in Computer Science with Mobile Design focus, or Database Design, etc.

Permalink Reply by sergey.negrashov on August 28, 2011 at 2:44pm

This is my first semester so I take these with a grain of salt. I have been in the department for all of 1 week.

 

1) There is no graduate student organization. No sense of community.

2) There are no classes focused on embedded/close-to-metal programming.

3) Main focus is on industry, not enough attention paid to academia. Teach Lisp instead of Java!

-Serge

Permalink Reply by Ardell S Klemme on August 28, 2011 at 4:01pm

1. While I understand that there are fundamental topics and skills hopefully gained in certain prerequisite, or "bottleneck" classes, I feel that UH limits the amount of ICS classes that you can take early on.  This has forced most of my ICS classes into the last 2 semesters, while leaving me feel completely unprepared to tackle everything in such a short amount of time.

 

2. While coarse-load may be appropriate for each class individually, as a result of the former point, I find that I'm forced into a predicament where I simply may not have time to do as well as I'd like in each class.  This forces me to have to chose a class, or classes, to have to sacrifice time from in order to do well in others.  There is always inherent balance issues when you work in addition to going to school.

 

3. Class availability for working professionals is horrible!  When I decided to go back to school, and subsequently discovered a passion for logic and programming, I was faced with a massive obstacle.  Had I been able to alter my schedule more at work, and possibly extend lunch hours, I MAY have been able to earn my degree in 8 years.  After spending so much time working in an unrelated field, that's not an acceptable timeline.  Especially when studying ICS, that would be time wasted that I could have been gaining experience and doing what I really want to do!  As it stands, I had to sacrifice everything to come back to school.  In addition, the types of jobs available that work around college schedules are not very glamorous, and are barely worth the opportunity cost.  Unfortunately, we all have to eat somehow.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• …
• 57
• Next ›
• Page