<p>Gotta say I am really disappointed in my daughter’s CS class.</p>
<p>It is a programming class that I encouraged her to take. All of the tests and assignments are graded by an automated process. There appears to be no human evaluation. This is led to some very confusing grading.</p>
<p>In addition, she is just now getting all of her grades back from assignments she submitted months ago. Had she received this feedback in a timely matter she could have adjusted. But now she is finding she is getting very poor grades. This includes a zero on a test (from more than a month ago) that she made one small mistake but since it is graded by an automated process it only checks the output. It gives no credit for the knowledge she did display.</p>
<p>Several of the assignments have had ambiguous instructions but then she loses points when she did not make the correct assumptions. Again this may have been correctable had she received feedback on an ongoing bases.</p>
<p>I am a 25+ year IT professional and a CS instructor at a local college. I have a BS and MS degree in computer science. I have never seen anything even remotely this bad. The evaluation of assignments and tests is atrocious. </p>
<p>I have seen all of her work along the way so I know it is not a question of effort. She has tried to connect with her instructor many times throughout the semester and received a casual “don’t worry about it” when she received any response at all.</p>
<p>Since the whole class would be subjected to this same grading process, is the entire class doing poorly?</p>
<p>I don’t know if this would help, but maybe help your D craft a letter to both the prof and Dr. Cordes with the concerns. Since your D has already spoken to her prof, I think it’s ok to give a “heads up” to Dr. C at this point.</p>
<p>I would put the concerns in bullet format…easier to read, each point short but to the point.</p>
<p>Is this a 1XX level course? If so, then an accurate mid-term grade should have been available…sounds like that didn’t happen with this prof.</p>
<p>I don’t think she is the only one. However, she is not a CS major so she does not know any of the other students in the class.</p>
<p>Yes it is a 1XX level class. She had an B on the mid-term report. No graded assignments or tests were reported since then. Yesterday she received a bunch of them back and now has an F. </p>
<p>I probably should have suspected something was amiss back when she said she wasn’t receiving much in class instruction and asked for online resources on how to learn programming.</p>
<p>One of my biggest disappointments is that now she absolutely hates anything related to programming and won’t even consider another CS class of any kind. I may be biased but I believe CS skills are as fundamental as writing skills in today’s world, which is why I encouraged her to take the class in the first place.</p>
<p>The other issue is that she is worried about the final. She has had no indication of what will be on it. She asked the professor on Monday and he said “I’m not sure yet”. They have 1 class left (today) before the final and I can’t imagine going in blind. He even indicated that he may not need to have class today. </p>
<p>I am trying to convince her contact someone but that really isn’t in her blood. She is very upset with me right now for suggesting the class in the first place, so she is not really open to my advise right now.</p>
<p>Some professors, unfortunately, do not grade work till its too late. I had a very bad experience in grad school at Florida State, with a lazy professor, who waited till the last week of class to give me grades for six out of 8 of my class papers. Simply inexcusable and IMO, grounds for disciplinary action. But ya know what? He has tenure, so there is nothing I could do. And yes, it affected my ability to make the desired grade.</p>
<p>Back when I was in college, I had a very similar class to the one you describe - only it wasn’t graded by a computer, but either a very lazy prof or one who didn’t understand code very well. It wasn’t actually through the CS department, but the department of education. I had taken upper level CS courses and knew several programming languages, but for the final project for the course, the prof in the education department wasn’t interested in looking at the code (actually did not want it turned in at all), just wanted to be able to sit down and see the program work to his exacting specifications. After explaining to him repeatedly why I couldn’t make the program work as he wanted (my code was actually too large for the compiler back in those days) and his refusal to even look at a printed copy of the code I had spent months writing, he finally gave me an incomplete with six months to complete the program for the grade. That was in the December before I graduated. I had a degree less than 6 months later, and now permanently have an ‘I’ on my transcript since I never completed the project the way the prof wanted. It is EXTREMELY frustrating when trying to learn a programming language to not have the code analyzed…the error may be as simple as a typo or a minor logic error or the student may be on the wrong track completely, but without having the code reviewed, you have no idea where you need to make corrections. I too would be very unhappy with a course that is trying to teach programming that is only looking at the output</p>
<p>Does Alabama have freshman forgiveness? At D’s school a freshman can drop a class up until the last day in their first two semesters. This may be her only option at this point…the responsiveness of the prof is unlikely to change…</p>
<p>Agree. It is even worse when done for an in class test where they really have little time to debug the code.</p>
<p>I tell my students for tests. Get the syntax as close as possible for the in class test I’ll be able to tell what you mean, exact syntax is for the editor and out of class programming assignments.</p>
<p>One test I’ve seen from my daughter involved writing a program to interpret some input that the user would type in based on a prompt.</p>
<p>Then questions 2 and 3 are to use the same code but modify to get input from command line and then a file.</p>
<p>The only evaluation of right or wrong is do you have the exact right output. Well if that base code has a small logic error you get all three wrong despite the fact that the second 2 questions show you correctly know how to change the input source. Which is what questions 2 and 3 (and partially 1) where supposedly testing. Nope, all three wrong.</p>
<p>The more I look at the details, the angrier I get.</p>
<p>*Yes it is a 1XX level class. She had an B on the mid-term report. No graded assignments or tests were reported since then. Yesterday she received a bunch of them back and now has an F. *</p>
<p>then really, this does need to be brought to Dr. Cordes’ attention. </p>
<p>I know that your D doesn’t want to “make waves” but will this affect a scholarship or anything? What is her major?</p>
<p>Is is possible that any of this grade is due to the fact that your D didn’t want to take this class, but you made her? I realize that you think programming skills are as essential as writing skills, but in reality there’s a bunch of good careers where that knowledge (at least from a class) isn’t necessary.</p>
<p>My son is in the same class. In addition to the grading fiasco - it as not well taught.
At least for my son and (I think) OP’s daughter, it is not lack of effort or attention to administrative details.</p>
<p>Midterm grade was only based on a few quizzes - no projects or exams (a very small portion of the grade). All 5 exam grades were posted Monday or Tuesday. The out of class projects still haven’t been graded/returned.</p>
<p>My DS is in the same class (but different professor) and is a CS major in the Honors College. He says her professor sounds a lot less understanding and organized. Where as my son’s professor is willing to help and consider unfair grades. </p>
<p>He also agrees about the grading policy as the way they’re doing it is not how code should be graded (DS’s opinion). </p>
<p>He has offered to help your DS prep for her final (he lives in Ridgecrest South) – I’ll send a PM to you.</p>
<p>Midterm grade was only based on a few quizzes - no projects or exams (a very small portion of the grade). All 5 exam grades were posted Monday or Tuesday. The out of class projects still haven’t been graded/returned.</p>
<p>these points, as well, should be brought to Dr. Cordes’ attention.</p>
<p>There is probably something to what you say. But I have seen most of what she has submitted and while I would say its not an A, it is also no where near an F. I have also talked to her about the class along the way and think I have a pretty good handle on what she understands. Again, probably not an A but surely her grade does not reflect what she has learned. </p>
<p>I don’t want to give too much information about her to avoid possibly revealing enough that others might be able to figure out who she is. She is looking to double major and does have some other vigorous courses including one other that is completely new material for her and she is doing very well in all of these other courses. So I am sure it is not a question of effort.</p>
<p>The major reason I encouraged her to take it was to have her be exposed to as many diverse avenues as possible. She came in with a good number of AP credits and most of her core classes were covered, giving her a lot of flexibility. She took a range of classes from different departments to position her to then be able to pursue those that interested her.</p>
<p>This is the same approach my son took and he ended up in a major that he wouldn’t have expected and loves it.</p>
<p>I do not think this course will effect her scholarship status. It is only 2 credits. But is very frustrating.</p>
<p>I have been watching this thread and thinking, unfortunately, one occaisionally gets a very poor instructor. However, you certainly don’t expect that in an honors section.</p>
<p>Right, you don’t expect this in an Honors section. However, the Honors College has no control over who various major depts choose to teach THEIR versions of honors classes. The HC only controls who teaches the HC’s honors classes.</p>
<p>As for this one teacher, it’s hard to know what happened. Perhaps someone else (better) was supposed to teach that honors section and then (for some reason) someone else had to be chosen. Who knows. </p>
<p>Does this prof have ratings for THIS course on RateMyProfessor?</p>
<p>He does have one rating for this course on that site. It is a relatively positive post.</p>
<p>He has 5 ratings overall. Mixed of poor, average, and good. Overall a 2.7.</p>
<p>Unfortunately I don’t think 5 total ratings with only 1 for this course provides enough information to have made much of a difference in decision making on a specific instructor. And the Honors designation did influence her decision.</p>
<p>Just an update on the class. She just called me after leaving the class (scheduled for 2:00 and they were out by 2:30). He said he does not know what will be on the final because it comes from someone else. He gave them a list of topics to study, which was basically the titles of chapters in the online text. When asked if it will be of the same nature as the other exams his response was “probably”.</p>
<p>He provided no information proactively. Just started with “are there any questions”. He only provided what he did after my daughter asked enough to get the above.</p>
<p>I think it is interesting that the quizzes are hand written and graded by a human and she has a high 80/low 90 average in that. But the automated grading she has a much lower grade. Teaching is a human activity.</p>
<p>The only positive is that he did seem moderately open to partial credit. He told her to go back through the tests and send him comments on them and he will consider it.</p>