|
|
| Comments from lecturer
inline in red below. |
| Survey ID |
1393 |
| Title |
COMP3231/9201/3891/9283 15s1 |
| Description |
End of semester Operating Systems
course survey. |
| Anonymous |
Yes |
| Fill Ratio |
79% (131/165) |
| # Filled |
131 |
| # Suspended |
3 |
| # Not Filled |
31 |
|
 indicates required field |
|
|
|
Please provide us with as much
constructive feedback as you can. We do
read these surveys and act on the
information you provide. Thanks for your
input. |
|
|
|
| 1. |
Give a high
rating if you have a good opinion of
something (e.g. interesting, useful,
well-structured, etc.). Give a low rating
if you have a bad opinion of something
(e.g. too slow, confusing, disorganised,
etc.)
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
Very similar
to previous years.
Of minor note:
- Tutorials
were rated slightly lower than
previously
- ASST3
also rated a little lower than
previous
|
| |
Excellent |
|
Satisfactory |
|
Poor |
N/A |
N/F |
| Lecturer: Kevin
Elphinstone |
66 (50%) |
50 (38%) |
14 (11%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
0 (0%) |
0
(0%) |
| General OS
lectures |
34 (26%) |
64 (49%) |
24 (18%) |
4 (3%) |
1 (1%) |
4 (3%) |
0
(0%) |
| Your tutor |
36 (27%) |
22 (17%) |
29 (22%) |
8 (6%) |
6 (5%) |
31 (24%) |
-1
(-1%) |
| Tutorials |
22 (17%) |
43 (33%) |
22 (17%) |
13 (10%) |
3 (2%) |
25 (19%) |
3
(2%) |
| Asst1:
Synchronisation |
43 (33%) |
63 (48%) |
24 (18%) |
2 (2%) |
0 (0%) |
0 (0%) |
-1
(-1%) |
| Asst2: Syscalls
|
30 (23%) |
58 (44%) |
32 (24%) |
8 (6%) |
3 (2%) |
1 (1%) |
-1
(-1%) |
| Asst3: Virtual
Memory |
40 (31%) |
49 (37%) |
23 (18%) |
14 (11%) |
6 (5%) |
0 (0%) |
-1
(-1%) |
| Textbook |
10 (8%) |
17 (13%) |
27 (21%) |
5 (4%) |
2 (2%) |
70 (53%) |
0
(0%) |
| Computing
resources |
25 (19%) |
44 (34%) |
40 (31%) |
5 (4%) |
4 (3%) |
13 (10%) |
0
(0%) |
| Course web page
|
33 (25%) |
53 (40%) |
38 (29%) |
4 (3%) |
1 (1%) |
1 (1%) |
1
(1%) |
| Piazza message
board |
74 (56%) |
40 (31%) |
14 (11%) |
2 (2%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
0
(0%) |
| Wiki |
33 (25%) |
61 (47%) |
26 (20%) |
8 (6%) |
1 (1%) |
2 (2%) |
0
(0%) |
| Help with
technical questions |
44 (34%) |
53 (40%) |
23 (18%) |
2 (2%) |
1 (1%) |
8 (6%) |
0
(0%) |
| Lecture slides |
39 (30%) |
60 (46%) |
24 (18%) |
5 (4%) |
0 (0%) |
1 (1%) |
2
(2%) |
| Lecture video
capture |
68 (52%) |
39 (30%) |
15 (11%) |
2 (2%) |
0 (0%) |
7 (5%) |
0
(0%) |
| Operating
Systems overall |
43 (33%) |
76 (58%) |
10 (8%) |
1 (1%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
0
(0%) |
|
|
|
|
| 2. |
Would you
recommend this course to another student
such as yourself? |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
| Very similar
to previous years |
| Yes |
124 (95%)
|
|
| No |
7 (5%)
|
|
| N/F |
0 (0%) |
|
|
| 3. |
What were the best things
about this course? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (120 comments) |
|
| 4. |
What were the worst things
about this course? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (112 comments) |
|
| 5. |
Did you get
the impression that the staff (lecturer,
tutors, consultants) tried their best to
answer your questions and help you? Please
tick N/A if you did not attend lecture,
consults, tutes)
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| Similar to
previous years |
| |
Strongly
Agree |
|
Neutral |
|
Strongly
Disagree |
N/A |
N/F |
| Lectures |
74 (56%) |
49 (37%) |
5 (4%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
3 (2%) |
-1
(-1%) |
| Tutorials |
54 (41%) |
32 (24%) |
8 (6%) |
4 (3%) |
0 (0%) |
34 (26%) |
-1
(-1%) |
|
|
| 6. |
How does the
quality/value of this course compare to
other....
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| I bit of a
downtick, compared to previous years (10%)
compared to courses in general. I suspect
this might be related to the large cohort
this year? |
| |
Among
the best |
|
Average |
|
Among
the worst |
N/F |
| Year 3 COMP
courses |
79 (60%) |
33 (25%) |
18 (14%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
0
(0%) |
| COMP courses in
general |
71 (54%) |
43 (33%) |
17 (13%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
-1
(-1%) |
| Courses in
general |
73 (56%) |
45 (34%) |
12 (9%) |
2 (2%) |
0 (0%) |
-1
(-1%) |
|
|
| 7. |
What background knowledge
do you think you were missing that would
have helped you in this course? Are the
official pre-requisites a suitable
preparation? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (108 comments) |
|
| 8. |
Consultations were
underutilised during semester. Please
comment on why you did not take advantage
of the available consultations. (e.g.
inconvenient time, did not need, not
useful, piazza sufficient, etc..). |
|
Question type :
Short-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (121 comments) |
|
| 9. |
Given the
material covered in the course, please
rate how helpful the following
components/sources were in understanding
the material.
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
Interesting
- the textbook is the outlier here. Most student
seem indifferent to it. I don't find this
an issue as I suspect it is more related
to readily available source of info on the
net. Though I can't really confirm this either
way.
I should survey the textbook more deeply
next year as to why?
|
| |
Very
helpful |
Helpful |
Neither
helpful or unhelpful |
Unhelpful |
N/F |
| Lectures |
66 (50%) |
54 (41%) |
7 (5%) |
1 (1%) |
3
(2%) |
| Lecture video
captures |
63 (48%) |
52 (40%) |
11 (8%) |
0 (0%) |
5
(4%) |
| Tutorials |
36 (27%) |
56 (43%) |
26 (20%) |
6 (5%) |
7
(5%) |
| Tutorial
questions |
35 (27%) |
77 (59%) |
14 (11%) |
0 (0%) |
5
(4%) |
| Assignments |
72 (55%) |
49 (37%) |
7 (5%) |
0 (0%) |
3
(2%) |
| Sample exam
questions |
50 (38%) |
59 (45%) |
16 (12%) |
0 (0%) |
6
(5%) |
| Textbook |
8 (6%) |
31 (24%) |
77 (59%) |
6 (5%) |
9
(7%) |
| Other sources on
the Internet |
31 (24%) |
57 (44%) |
32 (24%) |
5 (4%) |
6
(5%) |
|
|
|
|
| 10. |
Is the current
mode of lecture delivery, using
computer-projected slides, effective? |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
|
| Yes |
126 (96%)
|
|
| No |
3 (2%)
|
|
| N/F |
2 (2%) |
|
|
| 11. |
Was the
subject material (lecture notes,
information on the subject web page,
textbook, tutorials, manuals, etc.)
sufficient to follow the course? |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
|
| Always |
35 (27%)
|
|
| Most of the
time |
82 (63%)
|
|
| Sometimes |
10 (8%)
|
|
| Rarely |
1 (1%)
|
|
| Never |
0 (0%)
|
|
| N/F |
3 (2%) |
|
|
| 12. |
Did the
explanations in the lecture help you to
understand the subject material? (please
choose N/A if you generally did not attend
lectures) |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
|
| Always |
34 (26%)
|
|
| Most of the
time |
65 (50%)
|
|
| Sometimes |
16 (12%)
|
|
| Rarely |
1 (1%)
|
|
| Never |
0 (0%)
|
|
| N/A |
12 (9%)
|
|
| N/F |
3 (2%) |
|
|
| 13. |
Tick any
statement below that is true for you in
regard to lecture attendance and the
lecture videos (you can tick more than
one). |
|
Question type : Multiple
answer -- Check Box |
| Confirmed
that students find the videos helpful,
with very few students not taking advantage
of them. |
| I did not use
videos |
17 (13%)
|
|
| I had a
clashing timetable, and used the
video to regularly catch up. |
11 (8%)
|
|
| I nearly always
used the videos and skipped the
lectures. |
17 (13%)
|
|
| I generally
attended lectures, but I FREQUENTLY
used the videos replay material I
did not understand in the lecture. |
28 (21%)
|
|
| I generally
attended lectures, but I
OCCASIONALLY used the videos replay
material I did not understand in the
lecture. |
71 (54%)
|
|
|
|
| 14. |
If you have not been
attending lectures, were there any factors
that influenced your decision not to
attend, not including the availability of
lecture videos? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (71 comments) |
|
| 15. |
Any suggestions for
improving lectures (including the lecture
video captures)? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (70 comments) |
|
|
|
| 16. |
The aim of the
tutorials is to help you understand the
subject material better. Please convey how
they performed in this role
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
|
| |
Strongly
Agree |
|
Neutral |
|
Strongly
Disagree |
N/A |
N/F |
| The tutorials
helped me understand the material |
34 (26%) |
53 (40%) |
9 (7%) |
3 (2%) |
2 (2%) |
25 (19%) |
5
(4%) |
| The questions
were of appropriate difficulty |
33 (25%) |
52 (40%) |
18 (14%) |
0 (0%) |
0 (0%) |
23 (18%) |
5
(4%) |
| The questions
should have increased difficulty |
4 (3%) |
10 (8%) |
48 (37%) |
35 (27%) |
5 (4%) |
23 (18%) |
6
(5%) |
| The number of
questions was appropriate |
13 (10%) |
64 (49%) |
20 (15%) |
4 (3%) |
2 (2%) |
23 (18%) |
5
(4%) |
| The number of
questions should be expanded |
5 (4%) |
22 (17%) |
55 (42%) |
18 (14%) |
2 (2%) |
23 (18%) |
6
(5%) |
| I always
prepared for the tutorials |
6 (5%) |
20 (15%) |
33 (25%) |
28 (21%) |
12 (9%) |
27 (21%) |
5
(4%) |
| Class
participation is important for
understanding the material |
20 (15%) |
33 (25%) |
21 (16%) |
19 (15%) |
9 (7%) |
24 (18%) |
5
(4%) |
| Occasional
tutorials being out of sync with
lectures (due to public holidays
etc..) is not a problem |
11 (8%) |
42 (32%) |
29 (22%) |
7 (5%) |
6 (5%) |
29 (22%) |
7
(5%) |
|
|
| 17. |
Please rate
how effective your tutor was. Check N/A if
you did not deal with the particular
tutor.
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| We have two
tutors of amazingly high standard. I'll
provide some feedback to the tutors with
the relatively "normal" feedback. |
| |
Excellent |
|
OK |
|
Poor |
N/A |
N/F |
| Tutor A |
21 (16%) |
10 (8%) |
4 (3%) |
0 (0%) |
0 (0%) |
78 (60%) |
18
(14%) |
| Tutor B |
20 (15%) |
5 (4%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
0 (0%) |
91 (69%) |
14
(11%) |
| Tutor C |
2 (2%) |
8 (6%) |
20 (15%) |
2 (2%) |
6 (5%) |
80 (61%) |
13
(10%) |
|
|
| 18. |
Any suggestions for
improving tutorials?
|
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (64 comments) |
|
|
|
| 19. |
Please rate
the level of difficulty of the assignments
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| Pretty
similar to previous years. |
| |
Too
easy |
|
Just
right |
|
Too
difficult |
N/F |
| Asst1:
Synchonisation |
3 (2%) |
38 (29%) |
76 (58%) |
9 (7%) |
1 (1%) |
4
(3%) |
| Asst2: System
Calls |
0 (0%) |
2 (2%) |
71 (54%) |
49 (37%) |
5 (4%) |
4
(3%) |
| Asst3: Virtual
Memory |
0 (0%) |
3 (2%) |
48 (37%) |
52 (40%) |
24 (18%) |
4
(3%) |
|
|
| 20. |
How well was
each assignment specified (taking into
account a significant part of the
assignments is understanding what to do
from the commented code itself)?
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
|
| |
Very
clearly |
|
OK |
|
Confusing |
N/F |
| Asst1:
Synchonisation |
48 (37%) |
50 (38%) |
26 (20%) |
3 (2%) |
0 (0%) |
4
(3%) |
| Asst2: System
Calls |
14 (11%) |
37 (28%) |
39 (30%) |
24 (18%) |
13 (10%) |
4
(3%) |
| Asst3: Virtual
Memory |
20 (15%) |
36 (27%) |
26 (20%) |
25 (19%) |
19 (15%) |
5
(4%) |
|
|
| 21. |
Did the
supporting material (manuals, notes,
comments in code) provide sufficient
information for solving the assignment?
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
|
| |
Very
much |
|
Somewhat |
|
Not
at all |
N/F |
| Asst1:
Synchonisation |
54 (41%) |
43 (33%) |
26 (20%) |
2 (2%) |
1 (1%) |
5
(4%) |
| Asst2: System
Calls |
25 (19%) |
38 (29%) |
46 (35%) |
13 (10%) |
5 (4%) |
4
(3%) |
| Asst3: Virtual
Memory |
21 (16%) |
46 (35%) |
34 (26%) |
15 (11%) |
11 (8%) |
4
(3%) |
|
|
| 22. |
How confident
were you with the following low-level and
general programming concepts PRIOR to the
course.
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| Pretty
similar to previous years with students
having some 'C' programming experience,
but little experience invoking system
calls, debugging, and working with larger
code bases. |
| |
Expert
(e.g. > 100hrs) |
Solid
experience (e.g. < 100hrs) |
Some
experience (e.g. < 10hrs) |
Little
to no experience (e.g. < 1hr) |
Never
heard of it before |
N/F |
| C programming |
46 (35%) |
67 (51%) |
13 (10%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
4
(3%) |
| C pointers |
33 (25%) |
61 (47%) |
32 (24%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
4
(3%) |
| C pointer
arithmetic |
25 (19%) |
56 (43%) |
34 (26%) |
11 (8%) |
0 (0%) |
5
(4%) |
| Compilation
toolchains (gcc, ld) |
11 (8%) |
33 (25%) |
57 (44%) |
24 (18%) |
2 (2%) |
4
(3%) |
| Debugging with
GDB or similar |
4 (3%) |
14 (11%) |
48 (37%) |
55 (42%) |
6 (5%) |
4
(3%) |
| Application
programming using system calls |
6 (5%) |
24 (18%) |
24 (18%) |
48 (37%) |
24 (18%) |
5
(4%) |
| Assembler
programming (on any platform) |
7 (5%) |
47 (36%) |
45 (34%) |
25 (19%) |
3 (2%) |
4
(3%) |
| Source code
version control |
21 (16%) |
38 (29%) |
34 (26%) |
21 (16%) |
12 (9%) |
5
(4%) |
| Source code
navigation (cscope, gtags, ctags or
similar) |
12 (9%) |
5 (4%) |
15 (11%) |
43 (33%) |
52 (40%) |
4
(3%) |
|
|
| 23. |
How confident
are you with the following low-level and
general programming concepts AFTER the
course?
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| Nice!! A
"collateral benefit" of doing OS has been
a significant increase in confidence in
general software engineering skills. |
| |
Expert
(now part of your programming
toolbox) |
Could
use the concept elsewhere with a
little effort |
Now
roughly know what it is |
Still
have no idea |
N/F |
| C programming |
78 (60%) |
47 (36%) |
2 (2%) |
0 (0%) |
4
(3%) |
| C pointers |
72 (55%) |
54 (41%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
4
(3%) |
| C pointer
arithmetic |
63 (48%) |
57 (44%) |
6 (5%) |
0 (0%) |
5
(4%) |
| Compilation
toolchains (gcc, ld) |
23 (18%) |
75 (57%) |
27 (21%) |
2 (2%) |
4
(3%) |
| Debugging with
GDB or similar |
31 (24%) |
69 (53%) |
24 (18%) |
2 (2%) |
5
(4%) |
| Application
programming using system calls |
26 (20%) |
68 (52%) |
31 (24%) |
2 (2%) |
4
(3%) |
| Assembler
programming (on any platform) |
17 (13%) |
74 (56%) |
34 (26%) |
2 (2%) |
4
(3%) |
| Source code
version control |
51 (39%) |
51 (39%) |
24 (18%) |
1 (1%) |
4
(3%) |
| Source code
navigation (cscope, gtags, ctags or
similar) |
31 (24%) |
38 (29%) |
43 (33%) |
15 (11%) |
4
(3%) |
|
|
| 24. |
Which source
code version control system were you most
familiar with BEFORE taking the course. |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
Again, while
git is a "winner", I think it is too
complex to expect 29% of students to just
"pick it up" as part of the course.
I might reconsider, but I find git has too
many ways to shoot oneself in the foot.
|
| git |
93 (71%)
|
|
| hg (mercurial)
|
1 (1%)
|
|
| svn
(subversion) |
9 (7%)
|
|
| other |
5 (4%)
|
|
| I had not used
version control before |
19 (15%)
|
|
| N/F |
4 (3%) |
|
|
| 25. |
The aim of the
assignment work was for you to develop
practical skills with the concepts covered
in lectures.
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| Pretty
similar to previous years |
| |
Not
really |
|
Somewhat |
|
Very
much |
N/F |
| Did the
assignment work help with this? |
0 (0%) |
6 (5%) |
21 (16%) |
37 (28%) |
62 (47%) |
5
(4%) |
|
|
| 26. |
Please
indicate how much time you spent on ALL
the assignments combined, for each of the
following aspects of the solving the
assignments. |
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
Interesting.
The "average" student spent about 73 hours
per semester on the assignments, about
5.6 hours per week.
My main take away is that debugging is
the most time consuming activity, and
it should not be. Acquiring debugging
skills is a bigger issue than just
(E)OS.
This is backed up by activity on
Piazza being mostly related to
debugging.
I'll have a think about how OS can add
improved debugging as another
side-effect of the course.
|
| |
<
1 hour |
2-3
hours |
4-8
hours |
9-15
hours |
16-30
hours |
30+
hours |
N/F |
| Reading/comprehending
the spec. |
10 (8%) |
41 (31%) |
39 (30%) |
22 (17%) |
7 (5%) |
7 (5%) |
5
(4%) |
| Following/answering
the guided questions to the source
code. |
24 (18%) |
51 (39%) |
29 (22%) |
14 (11%) |
4 (3%) |
1 (1%) |
8
(6%) |
| Further browsing
of the OS161 source code to
understand the assignment task. |
4 (3%) |
29 (22%) |
46 (35%) |
27 (21%) |
10 (8%) |
10 (8%) |
5
(4%) |
| Designing a
solution |
6 (5%) |
24 (18%) |
44 (34%) |
25 (19%) |
15 (11%) |
12 (9%) |
5
(4%) |
| Coding |
0 (0%) |
10 (8%) |
35 (27%) |
39 (30%) |
29 (22%) |
12 (9%) |
6
(5%) |
| Debugging |
0 (0%) |
7 (5%) |
23 (18%) |
38 (29%) |
33 (25%) |
25 (19%) |
5
(4%) |
| Testing using
the provided tests |
8 (6%) |
49 (37%) |
39 (30%) |
20 (15%) |
8 (6%) |
3 (2%) |
4
(3%) |
| Writing your own
tests |
61 (47%) |
43 (33%) |
19 (15%) |
3 (2%) |
1 (1%) |
0 (0%) |
4
(3%) |
| Learning assumed
knowledge (e.g. C pointer
programming, casting, source code
browsing) |
53 (40%) |
46 (35%) |
18 (14%) |
7 (5%) |
1 (1%) |
2 (2%) |
4
(3%) |
|
|
| 27. |
Any suggestions for
improving the assignments? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (89 comments) |
|
| 28. |
I got very little feedback
on the support videos I recorded this
semester (subversion and asst3
walkthrough). Now is your chance to
encourage or discourage me spending more
time doing them, or suggest improvements.
|
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (109 comments) |
|
|
6.
COMP3891/9283 Extended Operating Systems
|
|
|
Skip this section if you did not do
COMP3891/9283 Extended Operating Systems.
|
|
|
Extended OS aims to be an informal
lecture on selected advanced topics from
real systems, research areas, or state of
the art. It also aims to cover OS/161 in
more depth to prime students for the
advanced assignments. |
|
| 29. |
Please answer
the following.
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
- Automarking
is still unpopular
- I
can't do much about that given the
rise in enrolments and limited
resources
- A mild
desire for an EOS tutorial exists,
though I do encourage you to sit in on
normal tutorials if you need it.
- EOS staying
"less structured" viewed more
favourably than in past years.
- The
size of the EOS assignments also
viewed more favourably than previously.
I have reduced their scope this year.
|
| |
Strongly
Agree |
Agree |
Indifferent |
Disagree |
Strongly
Disagree |
N/F |
| EOS should be
assessed differently to OS. |
5 (4%) |
13 (10%) |
15 (11%) |
3 (2%) |
1 (1%) |
94
(72%) |
| Compared to OS,
completing EOS should indicate a
greater OS understanding and level
of achievement. |
5 (4%) |
22 (17%) |
4 (3%) |
0 (0%) |
0 (0%) |
100
(76%) |
| Having separate
exams is a good way to differentiate
EOS from OS. |
5 (4%) |
14 (11%) |
9 (7%) |
1 (1%) |
2 (2%) |
100
(76%) |
| Requiring
completion of a subset of the
advanced assignments is a reasonable
way to achieve a higher "bar" for
EOS. |
8 (6%) |
12 (9%) |
6 (5%) |
1 (1%) |
3 (2%) |
101
(77%) |
| Only automarking
the advanced assignments is OK. |
1 (1%) |
4 (3%) |
10 (8%) |
12 (9%) |
4 (3%) |
100
(76%) |
| EOS should have
tutorials in addition to the extra
lecture. |
5 (4%) |
8 (6%) |
14 (11%) |
4 (3%) |
0 (0%) |
100
(76%) |
| EOS should be
more formal and structured like OS.
|
2 (2%) |
7 (5%) |
7 (5%) |
15 (11%) |
0 (0%) |
100
(76%) |
| The advanced
assignment components were too
large. |
5 (4%) |
7 (5%) |
10 (8%) |
7 (5%) |
2 (2%) |
100
(76%) |
| The advanced
assignments should be worth a higher
fraction of the EOS mark. |
10 (8%) |
4 (3%) |
9 (7%) |
6 (5%) |
2 (2%) |
100
(76%) |
|
|
| 30. |
How would you
rate extended OS as a whole? |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
| Similar to
previous years |
| Excellent |
9 (7%)
|
|
|
17 (13%)
|
|
| Average |
4 (3%)
|
|
|
3 (2%)
|
|
| Poor |
0 (0%)
|
|
| N/A |
3 (2%)
|
|
| N/F |
95 (73%) |
|
|
| 31. |
Any suggestions for
improving COMP3891/9283 Extended OS? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (23 comments) |
|
|
|
| 32. |
Any comments on the exam
sample questions provided on the wiki as a
study aid? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (85 comments) |
|
| 33. |
Answer the
following questions to convey your opinion
of the final exam (or leave blank if
submitting the survey before the exam).
|
|
Question type : Single answer -- Radio
Button |
| Pretty
similar to previous years. |
| |
Strongly
Agree |
Agree |
Neutral |
Disagree |
Strongly
Disagree |
N/F |
| The exam overall
was too hard |
1 (1%) |
5 (4%) |
39 (30%) |
15 (11%) |
0 (0%) |
71
(54%) |
| The exam overall
was too short - i.e. it should be 3
hours |
5 (4%) |
11 (8%) |
14 (11%) |
26 (20%) |
3 (2%) |
72
(55%) |
| The exam should
contain more True/False questions |
3 (2%) |
3 (2%) |
20 (15%) |
21 (16%) |
10 (8%) |
74
(56%) |
| The exam gave me
the oppurtunity to demonstrate my
understanding of operating systems |
5 (4%) |
31 (24%) |
18 (14%) |
2 (2%) |
0 (0%) |
75
(57%) |
| I think my exam
result will be representative of my
operating systems knowledge |
4 (3%) |
17 (13%) |
25 (19%) |
9 (7%) |
1 (1%) |
75
(57%) |
| The final
assessment should be weighted more
towards the exam |
0 (0%) |
2 (2%) |
19 (15%) |
29 (22%) |
6 (5%) |
75
(57%) |
|
|
| 34. |
Do you have any particular
comments you would like to make about the
exam? |
|
Question type : Long-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (46 comments) |
|
|
|
| 35. |
This year we
used Piazza as an additional medium for
student support. Please choose one of the
following. |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
|
| Keep using
Piazza. |
113 (86%)
|
|
| Get rid of it.
|
3 (2%)
|
|
| I do not have
an opinion of it. |
11 (8%)
|
|
| N/F |
4 (3%) |
|
|
| 36. |
Any comments on the use of
Piazza? |
|
Question type :
Short-answer |
|
Answer at the bottom
page (73 comments) |
|
| 37. |
We always look
for evidence of cheating in assigments and
try or best to catch and penalise
cheaters. Please tell us what you think
about the treatment of cheaters in the
course. |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
|
| Too soft |
1 (1%)
|
|
|
6 (5%)
|
|
| Just right |
110 (84%)
|
|
|
1 (1%)
|
|
| Too harsh |
0 (0%)
|
|
| N/F |
13 (10%) |
|
|
| 38. |
What do you
think your final result will be for the
course? |
|
Question type : Single
answer -- Radio Button |
|
| HD |
15 (11%)
|
|
| DN |
54 (41%)
|
|
| CR |
33 (25%)
|
|
| PS |
8 (6%)
|
|
| FL |
0 (0%)
|
|
| No Idea |
17 (13%)
|
|
| N/F |
4 (3%) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Back to Summary |
| 3. |
What
were the best things about this course? |
|
1: |
interesting syllabus |
|
2: |
Very interesting and great course
materials |
|
3: |
It was very interesting to learn about the
content |
|
4: |
In depth and really hands on |
|
5: |
Assignments which help us to study for the
exam at the same time. |
|
6: |
Learning the fundamentals of operating
systems and synchronisation is good
experience which I would recommend to any
CSE student, good course structure, good
real life examples, exposure to a large code
base as it would be in workplace |
|
7: |
Very practical, assignments were rewarding
and examples were relevant |
|
8: |
having assignments in general, with a high
weigting rather than 100% focus on
meaningless theory |
|
9: |
Assignments are challenging but rewarding |
|
10: |
The lecturer. He was very thoughtful when
it came to preparing lecture material and
videos and he was fairly prompt with
answering questions on piazza. |
|
11: |
Well-designed assignment and
well-organised content |
|
12: |
The challenging programming, learning the
stuff behind the scenes. |
|
13: |
Perhaps I'm a bit weird but I really loved
concurrency. The lectures were great, some
were better than others.
The not as good lectures had a greater focus
on surface learning, this is how it's done
and that's it. The best lectures were the
ones where I felt engaged and really
understood what was happening (Semaphores,
Paging, Concurrency, Buffer Caching).
Piazza was excellent, that saved me hours
worth of time. |
|
14: |
Concepts learned
Practical situations
Exam (surprisingly)
Overall, enjoyed learning the content |
|
15: |
Challenging yet enjoyable assignments. |
|
16: |
Challenging assignments. Teaches useful
skills for use beyond OS. |
|
17: |
It's a nice return to the low-level gritty
stuff of first year, plus it's all practical
understanding of how computers do magic. |
|
18: |
Assignments |
|
19: |
Practical and group based work |
|
20: |
Assignments were challenging and
interesting. The tutor, Tutor B, was helpful
and knew her stuff. |
|
21: |
The amount of content covered within a
semester. I felt I got a really good grasp
on Operating Systems in a very effective
manner.
Providing tests was amazing - really helped. |
|
22: |
The assignments provided good experience
with navigating and understanding a large
code base written by someone else. |
|
23: |
The content was good and it was lectured
well. |
|
24: |
Overarching coverage of components that
make up an operating system. Without looking
at implementation specifics, things were
fairly straight forward. |
|
25: |
Real tough work, and really can improve
ones' skill. |
|
26: |
No labs, with an emphasis on becoming
familiar with the course material at your
own pace. |
|
27: |
Interesting content. It was enjoyable
learning about the low level stuff. |
|
28: |
It was organised well. |
|
29: |
Useful and interesting content
Interested and helpful staff |
|
30: |
The content was interesting and useful |
|
31: |
I learned the most from the tutorials,
both content wise and how to actually do the
assignments.
|
|
32: |
assignments |
|
33: |
Really good range of topics. I feel like I
have a much better understanding of how the
OS does its job. Also, while it could be
intimidating to first start each assignment,
as you had to get a feel for where the
moving parts were in the huge code base, the
fact that we were actually working on a
proper OS was really good. Kevin marking up
the slides as he went through was really
helpful. You could go back and watch the
logic in the recordings, incase you forgot
the steps.
Tutorials really good. Good topics/questions
and the tutor (Tutor A) was great. |
|
34: |
The actual content being taught was very
interesting, although complex at times but
was taught in a clear manner. |
|
35: |
The lectures were concise and very easy to
follow. The recordings were of very good
quality, much better than any other course
has done! |
|
36: |
Relevant to my area of interest |
|
37: |
Interesting and useful contents. I
actually learnt a lot from this course. |
|
38: |
It was learning about operating systems,
in particular the way we went about learning
about them was great. OS's are intimidating
and everything is interlinked, but the
course definitely broke up each part really
well, and explained basic concepts before
delving into more complex ones. |
|
39: |
Great lecturer, interesting content, and
the case study's were great to bring some
practicality and real world knowledge to the
theory |
|
40: |
It challenged me |
|
41: |
Fundamentally interesting subject to learn
Lecture recording is always nice
Lecturer himself is also excellent |
|
42: |
- Good coverage and overview of how OS
works
- Concepts were well explained by the
lecturer
- Lecturer has good pacing and is organised
|
|
43: |
Assignments are well designed, yet more
interesting if it's Linux. |
|
44: |
Very interesting introduction to operating
systems. Content was thorough and
assignments were interesting. |
|
45: |
The challenging nature of the assignments.
Once you understood what was happening and
finished the task there was a real sense of
accomplishment. |
|
46: |
Piazza message board |
|
47: |
Lots of hints given for assignments |
|
48: |
The assignments. |
|
49: |
It made me work had, and they threw us in
the deep end, but that was great. The course
was extremely interesting. |
|
50: |
Kevin |
|
51: |
The lecturer was fantastic and the course
covered everything that I hoped to learn
from the OS course. |
|
52: |
contents are interesting
Programming assignments are fun, difficult
but not overwhelming |
|
53: |
Great and useful lecture materials. |
|
54: |
Really interesting content, good help on
piazza from lecturer and classmates |
|
55: |
Kevin was a fantastic lecturer and was
extremely helpful on the course forum.
The concepts were taught in a clear and
concise manner, and it was always obvious
how this was relevant to current OS design. |
|
56: |
Content was interesting and informative,
many useful concepts to be learnt. |
|
57: |
Lectures and course content presented in a
very clear logical way. Found the course
content to be very interesting, plus Kevin
is an excellent lecturer. |
|
58: |
Helps me think critically |
|
59: |
Challenging content, some of the content
is essential fundamental knowledge. |
|
60: |
Video for assignment 3 was immensely
helpful.
Clear and interesting content.
|
|
61: |
Learning interesting ideas about how OSs
work, synchronisation, scheduling and the
TLB particularly. |
|
62: |
The content were very interesting. |
|
63: |
Interesting and challenging theoretically
while still containing a good deal of
programming. |
|
64: |
Lecturer, best lectures + recordings I've
had. |
|
65: |
interesting, challenging assignments where
just enough assistance is provided. |
|
66: |
recorded lectures |
|
67: |
Having hands on experience with system
level code. The content we learn is quite
useful. |
|
68: |
Tutorials and lectures, and group
assignments in general. |
|
69: |
Nothing in particular honestly. |
|
70: |
Very organised, topics nicely segmented
and followed on from previous. |
|
71: |
The Hands-on approach to coding and OS
implementation |
|
72: |
learning about the stuff that would be
difficult to learn elsewhere - e.g. virtual
memory and file |
|
73: |
The assignments |
|
74: |
Good lectures, good consultations. |
|
75: |
Online recordings and the amount of help
the lecturer gave on the piazza forums.
Helped significantly and answered any
questions I had concerning assignments and
course content. |
|
76: |
course community |
|
77: |
Content was interesting, pacing (except
for asst3 3) was good, lecturer was
engaging. |
|
78: |
Multiprogramming concepts including locks,
dataraces, synchronisation techniques and
methods to prevent deadlock. Also the
appreciation of scheduling used for
applications other than OS. |
|
79: |
The assignments |
|
80: |
It is hard. |
|
81: |
Lecture recordings with most examples
visible in the lecture recording (unlike a
lot of other courses which do examples on
the blackboard). |
|
82: |
The content and clarity |
|
83: |
Enough practical assignments to help us
understand. |
|
84: |
Assignments, engaging lecturer |
|
85: |
Good lecturer who explained/communicated
the content well |
|
86: |
The assignments were very interesting, the
lecture content was laid out in such a way
that it was easily understandable. |
|
87: |
Learning the basic concepts for the first
time really opens your eyes to the operating
systems side of computing. |
|
88: |
Practical, challenging |
|
89: |
Very interactive assignments, that aided
the material very well.
Fastest response time on the piazza forum of
any courses done so far. |
|
90: |
assignment and quick respons from piazza |
|
91: |
The projects are really great experience.
The theory is well taught and interesting.
Good to learn about concurrency. |
|
92: |
Variety of OS Topics Covered
|
|
93: |
Everything was taught clearly and
concisely. Overall I found the course
rewarding towards understanding the concepts
behind programming for different operating
systems. |
|
94: |
Lecturer has hands on experience as well
as an appreciation for quality teaching |
|
95: |
interesting course, engaging lectures |
|
96: |
Interesting Content that is very useful
for future reference |
|
97: |
I liked the lecture video captures because
even if I can't follow along in class I know
I can always look back and relearn what I
didn't understand. |
|
98: |
Technical, Interesting content, Kevin is
genuinely passionate about teaching the
course |
|
99: |
video capture of the lectures was good for
going over a lecture again |
|
100: |
Good overview of operating systems.
Very interesting. |
|
101: |
Feeling of completing an assignment (or at
least thinking you've done it correctly). |
|
102: |
The breadth of concepts that are not OS
specific (Eg. Synchronisation, Optimisation
via understanding of fundamentals). |
|
103: |
Getting to understand the low level
details of an OS. |
|
104: |
good content |
|
105: |
The support and the content |
|
106: |
The lectures, and applications for the
concepts given. The projects/assignments
were also very interesting. |
|
107: |
Assignments |
|
108: |
Rich knowledge for students to understand
OS |
|
109: |
The content. It was exactly what I wanted
to learn |
|
110: |
Challenging and interesting assignments on
a real codebase. |
|
111: |
The Tutorials were very helpful. |
|
112: |
Clarity and reinforcement of information
(lecture, tutorial and assignments
complementing eachother). Tutor and lecturer
were both knowledgeable and helpful. |
|
113: |
The best things, were learning about the
different sections of the OS, how it works. |
|
114: |
The ability to delve into the low level
aspects which is helpful for any electrical
student. |
|
115: |
The extremely practical and hands-on
approach to learning. Being able to actually
implement the features that we learn about
in theory on a nice, simplified OS is a
great way to really solidify our
understanding of the theory.
Kevin was very responsive to questions on
Piazza and provided all the necessary
resources for us to complete the tasks
(without making it too obvious or easy) |
|
116: |
The assignments were very interesting, and
quite challenging. The lecture content, in
places had some very interesting concepts. |
|
117: |
The assignments were challenging and very
interesting. We covered a broad range of
important and interesting content as well. |
|
118: |
The lecturer, the content, the
assignments. |
|
119: |
The Assignments particularly because of
the great support we were given with them
through piazza and great tutorials.
Tutorials themselves were also fantastic. |
|
120: |
The resources were killer, as in seriously
great. This is helped primarily by the fact
that there is a lot of talent at UNSW for
OSs, secondarily by the fact that the course
is arranged so well (i.e. assignments are
calibrated perfectly and time-tested) and
thirdly because the CSE program is
structured well enough to bring students to
the level (within a certain small epsilon)
required of OS. |
|
| 4. |
What
were the worst things about this course? |
| Noted |
1: |
Tutorials - hard to understand tutor |
| My aim is to
record a walk-through for assignment 2 in
the future. |
2: |
Assignment 2 particularly felt overly
complicated due to the foreign code base. I
understand getting familiar with the code
base is part of the challenge, but this
assignment felt like it went too far this
aspect. A video or textual guide describing
what the existing code provided would have
been greatly appreciated. I did not find the
answers to the tutorial questions or the FAQ
to be sufficient. |
| Wish you
defined "harder" stuff more precisely. |
3: |
Easy stuff was taught well, harder stuff
wasn't. |
|
4: |
Assignment due dates were always a week
after the due dates for AI assignments. |
|
5: |
The assignments. They seemed quite helpful
at first and I did learn stuff from them,
though they turned into a massive debugging
headache where most of the time was just
finding stupid small bugs (I got very little
out of this bug finding) |
|
6: |
Lectures could be a bit more interesting |
|
7: |
Attending tutorial is somewhat boring and
redundant aside of getting tutorial mark,
which does not make sense to be one of the
marking criteria in this course. |
| You have the
option to submit git diff, it was described
(but unsupported), and students have used
it. |
8: |
SVN is weird. Replacing it with git, or
having the option to submit git diffs, would
be great. |
|
9: |
Assignments too hard |
|
10: |
Assignment 3. Actually, it was more like a
love-hate relationship in my case. |
|
11: |
Harmonic average for marking.Variance
between lectures (eg some lectures learning
interesting and difficult things, others
learning ideas that a 3rd year CS could be
reasonably expected to know) |
|
12: |
Participation marks for tutorials. |
|
13: |
The vast amount of theory that just has to
be memorised |
|
14: |
I think we should have been encouraged to
use git in the assignments, and more support
should have been provided for it. Subversion
doesn't work well for sharing code in a
group the way git does. |
|
15: |
The workload was a lot larger than other
comp courses this semester, assignments took
roughly 2 - 3x as long to complete when
compared to other comp courses. |
|
16: |
I found the assignments were extremely
difficult (Not an excellent student, but
also not terrible and probably spent about
45+ hours for assignment 2 and 3, 90+
between my partner and I). |
|
17: |
The questions in piazza sometimes no one
answers |
|
18: |
Portions of the extended course high
workload for minimal marks. (Asst2.) |
|
19: |
Obviously assignments were
time-pressurised, as they have to be given
a) the course requirements and b) the
requirements of other subjects.
However, OSs are not a rushed art form: too
much emphasis on shorter deadlines may
incorrectly prioritise shipping dates over
OS correctness and efficiency. |
|
20: |
the assessment was very rough -
assignments were time consuming and hard,
and extended sections weren't worth the time
and effort (2.5% of total mark each, and
took over 15 hrs per student.. not worth
completing if you have other priorities) - i
would suggest either making extended
sections marked on "attempt", ie if you've
done 5 hrs or so of work, you should get the
marks, or simply make it easier - the base
assignments already cover a lot of material
anyway |
|
21: |
Having to write our own test cases for
things... (yes, yes, we're all mature adults
who can do that without handholding, but it
still sucks). |
|
22: |
n/a |
|
23: |
Lectures were very dry, not much
reading/writing actual code. |
|
24: |
No toolchain for OS161 for Mac OSX - I
can't really blame you for that though.
Bit of a nitpick, but it would be awesome if
you switched to Git instead of SVN. It's
widely used enough in industry now to be
something useful for most students to learn
anyway. |
|
25: |
Confusing assignment specifications |
|
26: |
Late assignment penalty deducting marks
rather than capping marks
Assignments were ambiguous at certain points
Assignment 3 was a nightmare
Harmonic mean
Negative marking in exam MCQ |
|
27: |
Too many lecture slides, revision was
difficult. Too many misc facts to remember. |
|
28: |
In other courses when given an Assignment,
it's instantly clear WHAT has to be done and
it's up to me to deduce HOW.
At the start of every Assignment in OS I was
asking myself WHAT do I have to do. I
understand that "Yes I have to implement
syscalls" but WHAT do I do to accomplish
that?
I would have liked a little more guidance at
the start of Assignments. Once we worked out
what we had to do, we could stop bashing our
heads against bricks and get to the actually
challenging parts.
|
|
29: |
Lots of content |
|
30: |
The tutorials. The way that participation
was marked did not encourage participation
at all. The tutor marked participation if
you answered a tutorial question. While this
meant that each student had to prepare for
the tutorial if they wanted a mark, at the
same time the question to student ration
wasn't equal enough to support this marking
scheme and tutorials became a stressful
competition to answer questions.
Furthermore, students who asked meaningful
questions were not marked for participation
either, which meant that students no longer
cared to ask meaningful questions/pay
attention during the tutorial if they
already got their participation mark. |
|
31: |
Assignments are time consuming |
|
32: |
harmonic mean,
incredibly boring course content,
utterly useless assignment specs,
meaningless puzzles instead of clear cut
tasks,
mixing undergrads with postgrads and
extended nerds, lecturer assumes we are
coding gods and have been using linux since
kindergarten,
harmonic mean,
and did i mention harmonic mean?
oh and ... harmonic mean, |
|
33: |
Assignments had very little direction |
|
34: |
Having an ineffectual project partner made
the latter projects quite difficult but that
is my own fault really. Although the low
penalty on the late assignments helped
mitigate this somewhat, also the bonus marks
helped here and there |
|
35: |
Tutorial participation marks |
|
36: |
Pacing of the assignments felt a bit
rushed |
|
37: |
The assignments were confusing! |
|
38: |
With the assignments it sometimes felt
like the difference between spending 20
minutes on something or 4 hours was simply
whether someone
(lecturer/tutor/student/internet) just
happened to mention the relevant point. I
don't know if this is something that can be
avoided though. |
|
39: |
Bugs in assignments |
|
40: |
There was to some degree a mismatch
between what the assignments covered and
what the lecture slides covered. I would
have also liked some degree of coding
homework aside from the assignments. |
|
41: |
Criticism is more useful than praise but I
don't have many criticisms to make. |
|
42: |
The lack of coding aside from the
assignments, felt unbalanced, and there was
a degree of mismatch between assignment
content and lecture content.
Additionally walking through assembly code
was a little boring. |
|
43: |
The high level of content that are only
assessed during the exam time and probably
forgotten afterwards or at least remains but
a strand of information 1 year on from now. |
|
44: |
The Virtual Machine portion took the
longest for me to understand. |
|
45: |
Assignments didn't cover every single
concept taught. |
|
46: |
The pressure of having to talk in exams. I
also found it difficult in reading the
assignment specifications in the first week
of the assignment as it is quite vague in
some parts. |
|
47: |
assignments - took too much of my time
especially with other subjects where
assignment due dates were about the same |
|
48: |
Some of the OS161 code-base for the second
assignment was not overly well documented
and hence example usages (even in other
parts of the OS like dumbvm Ass3) would have
wasted less time figuring out usage of
data-structures and more time designing and
testing. Lecture content could sometimes be
dry but this was often offset by providing
real life examples or details about other
systems which made it less of a problem. |
|
49: |
Assignments were very time consuming. |
|
50: |
not enough info about assignments |
|
51: |
assignments were hard to figure out
exactly what/how to do |
|
52: |
I'm sad we didn't get to go through the
security portion of OS but I understand that
we didn't have the time. Other than that,
everything was great! |
| Umm, it's
mentioned in lectures and at the bottom of
the assignment specs? |
53: |
The wiki was poorly advertised when it
comes to help with assignments, students
need to be reminded to check it more often |
|
54: |
Too many students in lecture room
Weird tutorial dynamic with people trying to
get marks and worrying more about answering
one of the questions than listening to the
rest of the discussion |
|
55: |
I did find the course challenging but
overall it was a very enjoyable course. |
|
56: |
Nothing in particular, except that the
assignments were time consuming. |
|
57: |
it's deadlines happened to fall exactly on
every other subject, but that's a collective
thing. |
|
58: |
Feedback on assignment marks |
|
59: |
Assignments were very hard, often with
little guidance |
|
60: |
My tutor was not very good. He did not
speak clearly and had a tendency to rush
through explanations. My group partner was
terrible. I did about 95% of the work, but I
suppose that's not the fault of the
course... |
|
61: |
Extended assignment marking |
|
62: |
Not much support for partners that do not
do the work. Maybe make it one person to do
per assignment so there isn't any confusion. |
|
63: |
Not enough assignments on theory.
Assignment marks were too harsh. |
|
64: |
Not much. |
|
65: |
page tables. The initial bombardment of
hints and tips for asst3 was overwhelming
and difficult to understand until the
student has made a significant effort to
complete it. asst3 would be the worst and
best thing about this course. |
|
66: |
Tutorials (participation mark and content) |
|
67: |
Setting up the environment was a mission
and a half. There was very VERY dated
information concerning how to install and
set up os161/sys161 on home computers. I
spent days trying to get it to work, and it
still did not work. Ended up having to ssh
and upload to cse servers and run it
virtually every time i wanted to test
assignments. Very annoying. |
|
68: |
Nothing |
|
69: |
Tutorial Participation, while the tutorial
questions and answers themselves are useful
for guiding study, I don't feel that
participating in the tutorials help very
much. |
|
70: |
assignments |
|
71: |
some of the details of OS was quite dry
particularly when looking at assembler code. |
|
72: |
My tutor, I couldn't understand what he
was saying and effectively learnt nothing
from tutorials. |
|
73: |
Some of the theoretical components were
less interesting, such as the hierarchy of
accesses in files (probably necessary
though) |
|
74: |
The assignments were very time-consuming |
|
75: |
More open consultations would be
appreciated |
|
76: |
Assignments were super confusing and time
consuming |
|
77: |
Tutorials. As a postgrad I was relieved by
the fact that attendance was optional. Of
the tutorials I did attend, it seemed that
students would be overly competitive to
answer particular questions or alternatively
just blurt out anything just to allow them
to get their name marked off. While I
understand the importance of class
participation, I felt the tactics
used/competitive nature didn't make for the
greatest learning environment. |
|
78: |
Confusing assignments at first since the
code base is quite big. |
|
79: |
The assignments were a lot harder than I
was expecting, but there's no real way
around this. Kevin did warn us of the
difficulty at the beginning of the semester.
There was a lot of information to cover in
order to feel prepared for the final exam.
However, the exam |
|
80: |
None of my complaints are related to the
teaching aspect of the course. |
|
81: |
assignments involved a lot of components
working together and can be difficult to
complete, even when knowing the basics of
the content. |
|
82: |
Sometimes it felt that the instructions
weren't clear for some of the assignments. I
know that we had many people asking us how
we interpreted the question and where to
look in the code. I found it challenging but
it was tough. |
|
83: |
Nothing struck me as bad, but sometimes
the content is a bit dry. I don't think
theres a solution to this, it's similar to
how i felt about the networking course. Kind
of like a "this is how it is, and this is
why" kind of subject. (Assignments are a
counter to this). |
|
84: |
assignment is hard |
|
85: |
The tutorials sometimes were not too
helpful as we did not get to go through all
of the questions. |
|
86: |
Requires more attention than most courses
for good marks; unfortunately of which I
couldn't provide due to other courses and
work.
I felt the assignment spec could be quite
vague in precisely what was required,
leading to some confusion in what to
deliver.
The harmonic mean for calculating the final
mark (for a mostly philosophical reason as I
feel it doesn't reward learning; and rather
benefits those who already have knowledge of
the content). |
|
87: |
Not the worst things, but something could
improve:
(1) Too much details, could reduce the
materials to have a final course teaching
something in general. e.g. docker, etc.
(Scheduling at least could leave to students
to learn by themselves.)
(2) Lecturer might be speaking a little bit
too fast for international students, but
it's okay actually. |
|
88: |
Marking in assignments seemed to take away
marks too generously |
|
89: |
Virtual memory. I felt that virtual memory
was really dry, and a bit uninteresting.
Mainly because of the nature of the topic,
but I would have liked to of heard more
about how real world OS apply virtual memory
management techniques. |
|
90: |
The extended component was a mistake.
Extended components of the assignments are
considerably more challenging, and I didn't
feel like I gained much by taking extended. |
Hmm, I'm
called lots of names, but "rude" is not
usually one. I wish I new what this was
about?
|
91: |
lecturer seemed very rude |
|
92: |
Group work on the assignments. It wasn't
necessary. I did the whole things myself and
then wasted time trying to integrate it into
my partners solution.
|
|
93: |
- Unforgiving assignments, I felt the
final assignment was particularly difficult
compared to the others. - The assembly code
in the lectures were a bit of a turn off and
I felt it added to my confusion. I think the
most useful stuff to learn was the broader
picture of each of the topics (TLB
operation, justification behind design
decisions in OS', etc) |
|
94: |
The assignments were poorly explained. It
was often very confusing as to what was
expected/how your solution was expected to
work. It felt like you wasted hours and
hours of your life on trivial details that
didn't help you learn anything about the
course content. The first assignment was
well explained (particularly the library
part) and so was the frametable section of
the 3rd assignment. If the rest of the
assignments could be more like those
sections that would be great. |
|
95: |
Too much contents |
|
96: |
Assignments - not given enough time to do
them and the specs were too vague to
actually get started and plan time. It was
hard to keep up with course content when the
assignments were too time consuming. |
|
97: |
The way the final marks would be
calibrated according to a harmonic mean
scale. This is rather harsh, and almost
overlooks the hard work and effort placed
into the assignments. A normal average
should be taken. |
|
98: |
Content was very straight forward, but the
assignments weren't (probably
intentionally). Probably the lack of tests
in the assignments before marking is what
made it difficult. You often get caught out
on little bugs that the given tests don't
necessarily test for. |
|
99: |
The lectures were rather dry, and there
are too many slides (~ 800) which can put
people off of the content. Perhaps separate
content out so "animations" aren't created
through sequential slides. Also, a lot of
information was repeated from slide to slide
making it difficult to follow. |
|
100: |
Trying to understand the assignment task
and the code base before starting to work
was time consuming and not fun. |
|
101: |
The assignments seem to be particularly
difficult, as in you get lost very quickly
on what code you need where. |
|
102: |
- |
|
103: |
N/A |
|
104: |
It is hard |
|
105: |
course was pretty legit
os161 environment bit difficult to set up at
home |
|
106: |
Not much code reference. |
|
107: |
Vast coverage of the topic. |
|
108: |
Assignments were too hard, particularly
assignment 3. Tutor replied to my email
queries with "Post on Piazza" and not
answering my question. |
|
109: |
Steep learning curve, with:
1. Technical terms
2. Large code base written by someone else,
SVN 2. Understanding the code base at a high
level and how one part interacts with each
other. |
|
110: |
Assignments are actually a little bit too
challenging for some students. Lectures are
a little bit boring and dry. |
|
111: |
The workload ended up being quite high
because of the assignments, but I always
find that I learn the most in the the
courses requiring more work, and this was no
exception. |
|
112: |
Assignments were confusing. |
|
| 7. |
What
background knowledge do you think you were
missing that would have helped you in this
course? Are the official pre-requisites a
suitable preparation? |
|
1: |
N/A |
|
2: |
I felt that ELEC2142 was suitable
preparation. |
|
3: |
A much solid understanding of pointers
would have helped greatly and COMP1927 being
completed in first year did not help. |
|
4: |
Pre-requisite knowledge was sufficient. |
|
5: |
Current pre-requisites are fine. I felt
that I probably should have brushed up my C
programming more. |
|
6: |
Fine |
|
7: |
Official pre-requisites are adequate. |
|
8: |
yes |
|
9: |
Its all good |
|
10: |
The pre-requisites are suitable
preparation for if there is no background
knowledge about the data structure and some
algorithms, it will be very hard to learn
this course. |
|
11: |
Yes, most of the theory and skills needed
were taught in the course |
|
12: |
I don't feel that you really need much
background knowledge before attending the
course. |
|
13: |
The official pre-requisites were
sufficient but a solid knowledge of C is
very important |
|
14: |
Everything was good. |
|
15: |
Prerequisites were suitable. |
|
16: |
Pre-requisites seem reasonable, although
more experience with C would have been
beneficial |
|
17: |
None needed. Official is suitable |
|
18: |
none. The official prereqs are sufficient,
but pointer revision (possibly from C++
primer) would be beneficial. |
|
19: |
I probably was lacking in some background
knowledge of OSs (Linux, Uniprocessors) but
this is all external information. |
|
20: |
They're fine. |
|
21: |
The pre-reqs were enough for me. COMP2041
came in handy a few times but it was hardly
necessary. |
|
22: |
Not really much. |
|
23: |
The prereqs seem fine. |
|
24: |
N/A |
|
25: |
Pre-requisites are suitable. |
|
26: |
More tutorials on gdb. Was a lifesaver in
the last assignment, but I didn't use it for
the first 2. It would have saved me a lot of
time.
Hardware knowledge, however this was not an
issue as I picked it up quite quickly. |
|
27: |
The pre-requisites were suitable. I didn't
think I was missing anything |
|
28: |
Coming from an ELEC background, the finer
technique of debugging was not there. |
|
29: |
Pre-Requisites are as good as it gets,
since you don't really touch C after first
year. |
|
30: |
N/A |
|
31: |
Yes, the official pre requisites are
suitable preparation. |
|
32: |
We had a suitable knowledge of C
programming, but it was a steep learning
curve to come straight into working within a
large pre existing body of code. |
|
33: |
None |
|
34: |
Official ones where ok, COMP2121 and
COMP1927 should be enough. |
|
35: |
I think probably for computing students
this subjects wouldn't be difficult but for
those who chose it coming from the
electrical department it's a challenge, so
probably a good requirement is to actually
score at least a D or C for electrical
students in the various pre-requisites to
attempt this. |
| You've
indirectly observed what I have observed
myself, too little programming/software
development experience in 2nd year. I
can't influence the structure of the
degree directly, however the school will
go through a degree revamp at some point
in the next couple years, and your issue
will be addressed for future students. |
36: |
i think there was a mismatch with prereqs.
it is logical that you need to have done
1927 and 2121, however, please note that
1927 is a sem 2 course often done in year 1,
2121 is a sem 1 course (only) and done year
2. as OS is only offered in sem 1, you have
to do it in year 3. this was bad in my
opinion because 1927 was the last time i had
used C (18+ months ago), and in the initial
two assignments, i struggled simply due to
not having done C coding in 18 months, and
easily spent a few nights entirely just
having to sit and debug my solutions to
figure out my mistake was a simple C
syntactical error. My suggestion: allow OS
to be taken as a co-req to 2121 (most
knowledge from 2121 isn't actually entirely
necessary for OS), which will make OS a year
2 course, which would be much better as 1927
is the most important prereq. |
|
37: |
None really, I learned as I went along and
it was manageable. |
|
38: |
No extra background knowledge would have
been helpful, besides knowing some of the
content of the course beforehand. The
prerequisites are suitable. |
|
39: |
No background knowledge at all. |
|
40: |
Maybe a little more C programming
experience would help, especially some more
complex C projects. |
|
41: |
Not much really. |
|
42: |
Not sure, but even with the prerequisites
I struggled to understand some of the
concepts in this course, possibly because
they were covered too fast. |
|
43: |
Official prerequisites are suitable |
|
44: |
Didn't feel like I was lacking in
background knowledge. |
|
45: |
More rigorous coverage of C would be nice,
though is fine overall. |
|
46: |
pre-requistite is suitable |
|
47: |
The officialy pre-requisites are
sufficient. |
|
48: |
n/a |
|
49: |
Hardware knowledge |
|
50: |
The pre-requisites are suitable
preparation. |
|
51: |
The pre req of 2121, I will hopefully
prove is unnecessary, given that I took it
concurrently.
However, concurrency, in my specific case
would have been good to seal the deal on
100% in the first assignment. OSs, however
are the largest programs that will run
concurrently save for boutique NSA super
computing algorithms, so a certain amount of
the course still has to be dedicated to
teaching this (in its OS context) rather
than outsource it to a pre req (with
potentially patchy results). |
|
52: |
The current prerequisites were sufficient |
|
53: |
Basic C knowledge - a lot of small things
I forgot since 1927 |
|
54: |
NO!!!
i barely know how to use linux,
didnt even know linux existed until 2 years
ago
and you just assume we are linux gurus |
|
55: |
I felt like I was well prepared for the
course. = |
|
56: |
Nothing I did in previous courses seemed
particularly essential. |
|
57: |
The requirements of 9032 and 9024 were
spot on. It would be impossible without
9032, and any higher level COMP course is
impossible without 9024. I cant think of any
part of the course where I felt I was not
properly prepared in the preceding courses
of my degree. |
|
58: |
Everything was fine, could do the course
with just a bit of c programming experience |
|
59: |
I think the prerequisites are suitable. |
|
60: |
Pre-requisites are suitable. |
|
61: |
Official prereqs are fine. |
|
62: |
Official pre-reqs are suitable |
|
63: |
Potentially some knowledge picked up from
Elec eng, pre-reqs seemed adequate. |
|
64: |
The official pre-requisites were enough
for me to understand all the course content,
although there were some jargon terms used
that I was initially confused about. The C
code involved in the assignment was a bit
involved, especially since I havent touched
c in a long time. Additionally my partner
was hopeless in C, he was an Electrical
enginnering student and never understood
what was happening in any of the
assignments, so maybe a little c refresher
video similar to the assignment 3 video. |
|
65: |
Device driver programming, might be? |
|
66: |
N/A |
|
67: |
N/A |
|
68: |
In terms of theory, Algorithms (3121)
which I did concurrently was a massive help
in justifying what were the best algorithms
to use (Eg. EDF and Optimal Caching). I
think it would be helpful to have this as a
pre/co-requisite. |
|
69: |
Official pre-reqs felt suitable |
|
70: |
More about concurrency and memory. |
|
71: |
pre-requisites suitable |
|
72: |
the pre-requisites were sufficient |
|
73: |
C from COMP1927. Mastering low-level
computing from COMP2121 would have been
useful to understand the course better. Yes,
they are suitable. |
|
74: |
I think the prerequisites were suitable,
there wasn't really any other background
knowledge that seemed essential. |
|
75: |
Didn't have any experience in application
programming w/ syscalls |
|
76: |
You learn the basics for everything, maybe
COMP3222. |
|
77: |
I think they are suitable. I think it
helps if people have already seen the
concepts covered in this course at a
superficial level prior to undertaking it.
This is something I was fortunate enough to
have inadvertently and it definitely helped
with my understanding |
|
78: |
Prerequisites are suitable |
|
79: |
None really |
|
80: |
Didn't really feel like any additional
background knowledge was needed. |
|
81: |
My C knowledge was lacking in some parts,
I had never heard of extern variables before
but anyone with knowledge of C from the
first year courses should be able to
complete this course with help the forums. |
|
82: |
It was good |
|
83: |
N/A |
|
84: |
The prerequisites are suitable. |
|
85: |
N/A
I think the prerequisites were sensible |
|
86: |
N/A |
|
87: |
I think current pre-requisites are good. I
struggled a lot in ass2 and 3 because I
hadn't used C in a very long time resulting
in a lot of semantic bugs so maybe a
separate refresher video would be handy. You
would only need to record it once and can
reuse it every year. |
|
88: |
Nothing in particular, but perhaps
consider making this a core course. The
concepts taught are pretty crucial for any
computer scientist to learn. |
|
89: |
Granted, I am an exchange student and did
not take courses here but I felt readily
capable to take on the course |
|
90: |
Some connection to COMP2121, but then I
don't know if it's already a pre-requisite
and I can't be bothered checking. |
|
91: |
Prior experience in using gdb would've
helped with assignments, but learning while
doing the course was sufficient. |
|
92: |
sufficient |
|
93: |
Strong C knowledge is required |
|
94: |
The current pre-reqs are suitable, no
major gaps in knowledge. |
|
95: |
official pre-requisites are suitable
preparation. |
|
96: |
official pre-reqs are legit |
|
97: |
coming from an ELEC2142 background, as
opposed to COMP. Felt like we were missing
some terminologies. For example words like
x86.
Even something as simple as "disk" was
foreign to me at the start. I've heard of
hard disks and use them on a daily basis,
but seeing it in the context of OS was a bit
different. |
|
98: |
Some more knowledge about how the hardware
side of things worked. I guess this was
partially covered from COMP2121 and isn't
really necessary but it would be nice to be
able to correlate the software and the
hardware. |
|
99: |
I took COMP2121 as a co-requisite and felt
I learnt more about Interrupts, Assembly and
hardware from OS than Microprocessors. |
|
100: |
Nothing in particular. |
|
101: |
None, I actually felt that it once
overlapped very slightly with stuff I
already knew from comp2121 |
|
102: |
I think the official ones suffice. |
|
103: |
Official pre-reqs are suitable. |
|
104: |
only done 1917 and 1927, had no problems |
|
105: |
basic structure of low level hardware |
|
106: |
Suitable |
|
107: |
nothing much, just a solid C foundation
was useful |
| Summary:
debugging seems a theme and 'C'
knowledge to a lesser extent. |
108: |
- |
|
| 8. |
Consultations
were underutilised during semester. Please
comment on why you did not take advantage
of the available consultations. (e.g.
inconvenient time, did not need, not
useful, piazza sufficient, etc..). |
|
1: |
inconvenient time and piazza was more
accessible |
|
2: |
I found no need for one on one. However I
would have used the service if I needed it |
|
3: |
Not organised enough. |
|
4: |
Piazza sufficient |
|
5: |
Other provided resources were sufficient. |
|
6: |
Piazza was sufficient, was always able to
figure things out by myself. |
|
7: |
time inconvenient |
|
8: |
Friends usually answered a bunch of
questions and poor time management on my
part to actually use the consultations
meaningfully. |
|
9: |
No need |
|
10: |
Did not need them, in general. Piazza and
the coursework was sufficient. |
|
11: |
PIzza was sufficient, and I didn't really
need them |
|
12: |
inconvenient time |
|
13: |
Piazza sufficient |
|
14: |
Piazza and tutors were sufficient |
|
15: |
Piazza was sufficient due to quick
answering of questions from lecturer and
other students. Would have been nice to see
tutors on there. |
|
16: |
inconvenient time, easier to use email and
piazza |
|
17: |
I had a very busy semester; piazza was
most useful for asking questions at a time
that suited me. |
|
18: |
did not need - tutes+piazza was sufficient |
|
19: |
I was unaware of the consultations. Piazza
was very helpful. |
|
20: |
Did not need it except for assignments.
Piazza also helped a lot. |
|
21: |
piazza was very sufficient |
|
22: |
Time/place information was not as
emphasised/convenient as piazza. Piazza was
also pretty sufficient for most things
(apart from extenuating circumstances) |
|
23: |
piazza sufficient |
|
24: |
did not need them. piazza + reading
lecture slides + reading code sufficient |
|
25: |
Didn |
|
26: |
not useful |
|
27: |
Piazza was sufficient |
|
28: |
did not need |
|
29: |
Inconvenient time |
|
30: |
Piazza covers most cases. |
|
31: |
Piazza was good. Ability to rewatch videos
at your own pace helped with understanding
topics. Time Constraints. However if time
allowed, I would use the consultations if
required (near asst time) |
|
32: |
i mostly used piazza if i needed
consultation |
|
33: |
did not need |
|
34: |
did not need |
|
35: |
Did not need to/easier to ask questions
over piazza with example of code &
errors |
|
36: |
I have to commute 2.5 hours each way to
uni, it was not worth it for the amount of
work i could get done without the consult. |
|
37: |
piazza was sufficient and inconvenient
time |
|
38: |
Usually also don't require them in other
courses - piazza sufficient |
|
39: |
N/A |
|
40: |
No much thoughts on the theory part. |
|
41: |
piazza was sufficient |
|
42: |
Didn't need |
|
43: |
Didn't need. |
|
44: |
Piazza was sufficient, both for my own
questions and looking at others' |
|
45: |
did not need, piazza sufficient, lazy me |
|
46: |
Did not need |
|
47: |
Did not find out about them until late
into the semester. |
|
48: |
Piazza was awesome and answered
everything. |
|
49: |
did not need, piazza sufficient |
|
50: |
I believed in the whole purpose of piazza |
|
51: |
Our group used the consults. |
|
52: |
Piazza is sufficient |
|
53: |
Inconvenient time |
|
54: |
piazza fine |
|
55: |
did not need as piazza answered all my
questions before I asked them myself. |
|
56: |
I never use consultations so... |
|
57: |
Piazza + google, there are good resources
available online for os161 |
|
58: |
Hmm I was too far behind at the start and
preferred not to waste your time on
questions I should already know. |
|
59: |
was busy |
|
60: |
Piazza was sufficient |
|
61: |
didnt even know they were on, just used
piazza, would have gone but, if could help
debug code in person |
|
62: |
Didn't have time to go |
|
63: |
Inconvenient time |
|
64: |
Most of the questions were asked by other
students |
|
65: |
clash with classes. Generally too busy. |
|
66: |
Found piazza to be very helpful |
|
67: |
We never encountered problems that
couldn't be covered by piazza |
|
68: |
piazza sufficient and tutorial time also
sufficient. |
|
69: |
Did not need, but would have used had the
need arisen |
|
70: |
Piazza + tutor were good |
|
71: |
I felt that I could find out from the
textbook/lecture slides rather than bother
the lecturer with questions that could
easily be answered by the course resources |
|
72: |
I didn |
|
73: |
Piazza sufficient/did not need/too busy
flailing arms in attempt to finish
assignments on time |
|
74: |
piazza + lecture coverage was pretty
sufficient |
|
75: |
They were at inconvenient times and piazza
was very helpful as someone usually had the
same problem and could help solve it from
personal experience. |
|
76: |
piazza sufficient |
|
77: |
Tutorials and Piazza are sufficient. |
|
78: |
Piazza itself is already sufficient due to
its fast response |
|
79: |
Outside responsibilities tended to
restrict this. |
|
80: |
piazza sufficient |
|
81: |
I found piazza forums really useful, most
of the time i didnt think about using them,
although they would have been really helpful
during the assignments. |
|
82: |
Piazza sufficient. |
|
83: |
I only use consultations as a last result,
I do everything I can do be independent when
solving problems. |
|
84: |
Did not need and piazza sufficient, comp
students are lazy too |
|
85: |
Don't ever really go to consults for any
courses. Prefer to post on Piazza if needed. |
|
86: |
I wasn |
|
87: |
Everything was online |
|
88: |
Time commitments to other courses, if the
lecturer was remotely as helpful as in
lectures/tutorials they definitely would
have helped a lot, I regret not going to
consults. |
|
89: |
piazza and tutorials were sufficient |
|
90: |
There are generally easier ways to find
the information you need rather than making
a special trip into CSE for a meeting that
lasts a few minutes. |
|
91: |
piazza sufficient |
|
92: |
No time, tutorials and piazza were enough. |
|
93: |
piazza is sufficient, and I mostly would
have other projects to do. |
|
94: |
I was a bit behind in other assignments
anyway so most things I was searching for
was already on piazza. |
|
95: |
The consultation hours clashed with other
subjects. |
|
96: |
Piazza, tutorial answers and the
assignment FAQs were sufficient |
|
97: |
Piazza sufficient, learned most of the
content at the end of semester. |
|
98: |
Would only need it for assignments. The
content is fine. |
|
99: |
Did not need, piazza sufficient |
|
100: |
Piazza was more useful |
|
101: |
Piazza was good. The lecturer was
fantastic at responding. |
|
102: |
Would have used if I knew they were
underutilised. |
|
103: |
Piazza was very useful, but also it was
hard to think of questions. |
|
104: |
piazza sufficient |
|
105: |
Never personally used consultations for
most courses, piazza was a step above other
courses therefore even less need for
consultations |
|
106: |
We had consultations? I think that
problems in OS are really hard to put into
words, I think if we had a consult in a lab
where we could work on our assignments and
ask questions at the same time would be an
invaluable asset |
|
107: |
Insufficient time due to a high
workload/times not lining up with hours |
|
108: |
Piazza and tutorials were sufficient |
|
109: |
did not need |
|
110: |
piazza was sufficient for me |
|
111: |
I cram my study, so I don't have questions
when they are on. |
|
112: |
did not need |
|
113: |
Piazza was pretty sufficient for answering
my questions, and the lecturer was pretty
thorough in the material. |
|
114: |
Did not even really know about the
consultations |
|
115: |
Pizza wasn't offered... And inconvenient
time. |
|
116: |
electrical engineering student doing 4
hardcore courses, barely had time to finish
the assignments in the first place |
|
117: |
I was bogged down with other subjects
mostly |
|
118: |
I should have used them. |
|
119: |
Didn't need/piazza sufficient |
|
120: |
inconvenient time |
Summary:
Piazza continues to substitute for
consults. Regarding time for consults, the
timeslots are chosen based on your
timetable so I find it hard to believe
they are all "inconveniently" timetabled.
|
121: |
don't usually use for any course |
|
| 14. |
If
you have not been attending lectures, were
there any factors that influenced your
decision not to attend, not including the
availability of lecture videos? |
|
1: |
The chemistry theatre had a terrible
smell.
Sometimes a higher priority assignment is
due. |
|
2: |
I attended every lecture but once due to a
clash. |
|
3: |
Lecture videos were good quality, and you
don't really gain any additional benefit
compared to sitting in a lecture. |
|
4: |
With so much coursework (in all subjects),
I would often work on assignments instead of
lectures. |
|
5: |
N/A |
|
6: |
Timetabling shenanigans and distraction
with other courses, the lectures were
definitely not bad. |
|
7: |
I was away from lectures for about 2 weeks
due to illness. I used the videos to catch
up. |
|
8: |
I attended most lectures, and when I
didn't it was due to needing to spend the
time on signalments etc |
|
9: |
Clashing timetable, extracurricular
workload and sufficient lecture notes. |
|
10: |
none |
|
11: |
N/A |
|
12: |
A lot of content is covered in each
lecture, and often when I missed a lecture
due to work, I found the following lecture
to be confusing if i didnt attend or watch
the previous lecture. |
|
13: |
+ Didn't go to lectures the day before the
assignments were due because I needed the
time to do the assignment. |
|
14: |
- |
|
15: |
N/A |
|
16: |
N/A |
|
17: |
I attended the lectures all the time. |
|
18: |
sometimes necessary because of work and
other uni subjects and assignments |
|
19: |
For lectures I did skip, I was catching up
on assignments for this and other courses. |
|
20: |
clashing timetable |
|
21: |
I attended lectures most of the time. I
skipped a few times due to assignment
deadlines. |
|
22: |
N/A |
|
23: |
I generally used the lecture time to work
on the assignments as my partner and I had
difficulties meeting up outside of this
'reserved time'.
Also, I sometimes need to have things
repeated, and replaying sections of a video
a few times is handy. |
|
24: |
I wasn't available to come in to uni for a
week due to illness and I used the videos to
catch up. |
|
25: |
N/A |
|
26: |
OS was the only thing I had on Thursday. |
|
27: |
At the start, I worked a lot and was very
far behind. Coudn't attend lectures after 3
weeks so needed to catch up via video for
the rest of the semester. |
|
28: |
too many things to do. learn faster from
lecture videos than in-person lectures |
|
29: |
I don't attend lectures for anything. If
there were no videos I probably also
wouldn't have attended, but the course would
have been a lot harder then. |
|
30: |
The lecture room is too comfortable and it
is quite easy to fall asleep during the
break.
|
|
31: |
N/A |
|
32: |
I attended lectures. |
|
33: |
Part time work meant I could only attend
the Thursday EOS lectures, but slides were
sufficient for the rest. |
|
34: |
Inconvenience/time wasted travelling to
uni. Some examples presented in lectures are
very straightforward - can skip them in
lecture videos. |
|
35: |
Too long, and I don't find lectures to be
an effective way for me to learn |
|
36: |
I had a start up that failed, burnt out
this semester. Unfortunately I could have
done really well, since I did well in the
assignment, and knew most if not all the
content in the exam! |
|
37: |
N/A |
|
38: |
The lectures fit inconveniently with my
timetable, and I felt that the tutorials and
slides combined with occasional videos would
be sufficient |
|
39: |
N/A |
|
40: |
my bed at home is very warm and cosy :) |
|
41: |
I'm a bad student and also had a couple of
clashes. Lectures in general just seem to
involve reading the slides out loud which
feels like a waste of time for me. I went to
a couple of OS lectures and did find them
useful, but not enough to overcome my
laziness. |
|
42: |
N/A |
|
43: |
BBQs |
|
44: |
N/A |
|
45: |
Rate of content coverage, particularly
wrt. concurrency was very slow. |
|
46: |
N/A |
|
47: |
repeating to understand the lectures |
|
48: |
If I missed/couldnt keep up with one
lecture, it was very hard to follow with the
next ones. So i used the lecture videos at
my own pace. |
|
49: |
I did attend lectures but slept or did
other things like the actual assignments
during them which many others did. |
|
50: |
sometimes because of the assignment |
|
51: |
I always attend lectures. |
|
52: |
assignment 3 was gigantic |
|
53: |
I found the delivery to be somewhat slow
and arduous. Reading the slides, while not
always comprehensive, was a much more
efficient use of my time. |
|
54: |
- |
|
55: |
n/a |
|
56: |
I attended all lectures. |
|
57: |
I found the lecture slides and tutorials
sufficient to gain a basic understanding of
the content |
|
58: |
- |
|
59: |
N/A |
|
60: |
N/A |
|
61: |
N/A |
|
62: |
N/A |
|
63: |
Too many people |
|
64: |
No point attending current lectures until
I've caught up with previous ones. |
|
65: |
I was on other assignments. |
|
66: |
When I did miss lectures, it was because
there was a conflicting, one-off event on. |
|
67: |
Clashing work commitments |
|
68: |
I found the lecture videos to be adequate |
|
69: |
Project director of Sunswift |
|
70: |
None |
|
71: |
N/A |
|
| 15. |
Any
suggestions for improving lectures
(including the lecture video captures)? |
|
1: |
For delivery of the content, consider
varying your tone more. Sometimes it feels a
bit monotonous, which makes it harder to
follow along, particularly because complex
concepts are being taught which means that
your sentences are fairly long already. |
| Thanks for
all the detailed feedback. I actually
attempt everything you suggest, but as you
see, it's not easy to keep it together,
old habits die hard as they say. |
2: |
lecture video captures were decent but
sound was too quiet and audio quality was
not the best.
i went to one lecture. here are some
suggestions:
- When you have a diagram and also text on
the slides, you have two potential focus
points for the viewer. It should be explicit
in the lecture slides which part they should
be focusing on.
- Make sure words are properly linked to the
diagram with arrows,etc.
- Try to make wording more natural and
shorter. A bit of over-use of jargon
- Interact with the audience more to make it
more difficult to tune out. Perhaps ask a
question to increase engagement, or have an
interesting puzzle that the audience should
think about
- When introducing a new concept, link it
back to something which the audience is
familiar with. e.g. "For example in the Mac
OS ....etc ... and this is why Mac OS is
crap" or something, to improve memorability
and engagement.
- Reduce speed of speaking and express ideas
as concisely as possible
- No need to disclose your intentions when
you are lecturing - e.g. "I explain it this
way because..." - detracts from the material
at hand
- Signpost your speaking by adding "titles"
to your speech to add structure and notify
the audience when you change topic.
- Leave diagrams on for some time so
students can absorb information better. They
need time to think about how this links to
their existing information and construct
mental links
- Better eye contact
- Text density should be as minimal as
possible (was done well in most cases
though)
- Make sure diagrams focus on the main idea
conveyed. Fetch-execute cycle diagram was
done a lot better than CPU architecture
diagram
- Good to link cpu instructions back to 1917
or 2121 work to give students a better
foundation
- Vary tone of presentation to elicit
importance on certain words and to improve
engagement. |
|
3: |
Less text, maybe some youtube videos to
explain some concepts as thats how I learned
quite a bit of content. |
|
4: |
Showing more code would be much more
helpful at times than just high level views.
|
|
5: |
Server was down a lot of the time which
made getting the videos difficult.
Especially before final exam |
|
6: |
- |
|
7: |
Since you already cut out start up/end
times and break time, not much can be done.
Better than Echo360. |
|
8: |
no |
|
9: |
In terms of the video records, sometimes
the audio is not that clear. |
|
10: |
less big walls of assembly code |
|
11: |
More examples and code. |
|
12: |
No - one of the few subjects that does the
video captures very well (i.e. writing on
the slides is very helpful). |
|
13: |
Slides can be a bit boring for any course.
Suggest mix it up with more blackboard and
going through code in lectures (as opposed
to putting code in a lecture slide) |
|
14: |
More explanation on OS161 code base to
help through assignment. |
|
15: |
More engagement of the audience. |
|
16: |
N/A |
|
17: |
It's tricky, but I would prefer it if they
were organised by topics more than dates. On
the other hand that's hard given the nature
of lectures and having to cover certain
things at different times. |
|
18: |
Some of it was rushed which I am not sure
why. Perhaps the late attendance, I am not
sure. But we seemed to be constantly behind
which made some of the later content a
little overwhelming. |
|
19: |
No, they were very well structured and it
was really easy to understand what was
happening most of the time. |
|
20: |
No they were great! |
|
21: |
N/A |
|
22: |
Kevin's message tone should be played at
the start of each lecture to call everyone
to attention. |
|
23: |
N/A |
| That's what
a "lecture" is |
24: |
The lecturer often verbally explains and
expands concepts a lot better than the
lecture notes. I often found myself writing
down what he says far more often than just
summarising the lecture notes. But often in
class I found that i could not keep up with
what he is saying. Also in videos the audio
quality is good, but when he referenced
images or diagrams on the slide without
pointing to them on the screen on his
tablet, it was a bit confusing to understand
what he is referencing on the slide, when it
cant be infered from what he is saying. |
| This is on
of the regular pieces of feedback I get. |
25: |
For worked examples I found these more
useful in the online videos than lectures so
you can quickly review and ensure your
understanding without having to go through
the whole lecture (Eg. Bankers Algorithm
Video) but thought accompanying notes (typed
or handwritten) would be helpful to
illustrate how we should show working in
solving theses problems. |
|
26: |
Maybe less talking and more
writing/drawing to illustrate some concepts. |
|
27: |
n/a |
|
28: |
N/A |
|
29: |
I think the lecture slides are fine most
of the time. Sometimes the voice was a
little fuzzy ( however generally still able
to follow along). |
|
30: |
No, lectures were great. |
|
31: |
For the video captures including which set
of lecture notes they cover and the time at
which topics are changed if it occurs |
|
32: |
I'm not sure you can improve the lectures.
They perfectly convey the material and the
recordings ensure anything missed can be
caught up. Maybe try and improve the audio
capture on the video (body mounted mic?). I
try to listen to the lectures at about 1.25x
speed and because the audio isn't super high
fidelity, it can be a little dodgy at that
speed. Still, it's comprehensible at that
speed, so not a critical issue. |
|
33: |
More real world examples, don't just read
lecture notes, any student can read the
lecture notes, give examples and worked
solutions to help us understand the content
in a real world environment. |
|
34: |
None really |
|
35: |
If Kevin points the projection screen, it
would not be captured on the video and could
be hard for one to understand what is going
on. |
|
36: |
Give a 2 minute recap of what we have done
in recent past lectures so that those (me)
who skip often can still benefit from going
to lectures. |
|
37: |
The lecture slides should stand alone as
material in themselves. Sometimes the slides
would just be a diagram with little to no
labelling which made it difficult to go to
as a quick reference. So I kept having to
replay the lecture video which often took
longer. |
|
38: |
When explaining diagrams, I can't see
physical gestures in the lecture recordings.
It would be nice if the mouse could hover
over the relevant part of the diagram. |
| You can
download the video via "save as" or what
ever your browser uses. |
39: |
Upload lecture videos to youtube -
privately if you want. Youtube loads faster
and is more convenient to access, and
generally works better than whatever the web
player that is currently used. |
|
40: |
None. |
|
41: |
Bit more content on slides. Easier/quicker
to revise content. |
|
42: |
Not much can be done. |
|
43: |
Playback in Safari doesn't seem to allow
skipping (ended up using chrome) |
|
44: |
- Reduce slides (like a good sauce)
- Split between primary material
(Lectures+Notes) and secondary material(web
links, animations, papers).
- A live code run (once is probably
sufficient) of OS161 might help people. |
|
45: |
Ask more questions i guess... but it was
ok generally |
|
46: |
No |
|
47: |
Maybe more examples, or more detailed
notes. |
|
48: |
Nope. |
|
49: |
Lecture slides were confusing. |
|
50: |
N/A |
|
51: |
No.
Personal preference however is that |
|
52: |
No |
|
53: |
Audio quality could be improved in video
captures. |
|
54: |
I didn't (haven't) used the video captures
very much (yet) as I prefer the in-person
UX.
However, the asst3 video was killer.
Decisively helped bag many many marks in a
much shorter timeframe than what the general
web would have yielded (eventually) |
|
55: |
i found sometimes the explanations
provided in lectures were too long and
indepth. this made it really difficult to
follow and generally didn't work in our
favour. |
|
56: |
Continue doing the lecture video captures. |
|
57: |
Not really, I found them great. |
|
58: |
Lecture captures are great. Although
difficult to see where the attention is on
the slides during the recording as we cannot
see the pointer. But that is understandable |
|
59: |
More frequent snippets of examples from
the past (*nix, microsoft, apple, etc.)
where current topic of discussion has been
(in)efficiently implemented/deployed. |
|
60: |
- |
|
61: |
Videos are great, especially the video
released to help with assignment 3, that was
super helpful! |
|
62: |
To focus more on the specifics of the
implementation instead of a broad range of
theory that isn't used practically |
|
63: |
- |
|
64: |
Have some more detail (or direct links to
more material) on the slides. |
|
65: |
more explanation on os161 and mips |
|
66: |
N/A |
| Yes it was.
However, it can't compensate that much. |
67: |
Audio was not normalised, often when
moving away from the computer to point at
the screen the audibility of your voice
decreased. Also, it was hard to visualise
which parts of the lecture you were
physically pointing at when
watching/rewatching videos. |
|
68: |
N/A |
|
69: |
N/A |
|
70: |
Less clicking through/reading slides, more
code reading/writing, drawing on a
whiteboard etc. |
|
| 18. |
Any
suggestions for improving tutorials?
|
|
1: |
Sometimes in tutorials i found the answers
were a bit bare and lacked detail, so i
often found myself looking at the answers
after the tut. So maybe either reducing the
question scope or reducing the number of
questions so that concepts and answers can
be explained in greater detail |
|
2: |
Tutorials were great. I don't know how she
did it, but we had a great vibe. The
participation mark was good to ensure
everyone had a go, and the questions varied
in difficulty, so there was always a low
hanging fruit for students having a harder
time to give it a go.
Great work! |
|
3: |
I did not like the compulsory
participation marks because it made me feel
obliged to ask something or look for
something to get the mark. |
|
4: |
participation mark should be clarified
more clearly (in terms of how they are
awarded). |
|
5: |
N/A |
|
6: |
They were fantastic |
|
7: |
They were pretty good. |
|
8: |
voice is not clear for non-native speaker |
|
9: |
Get tutor to read out names of people to
answer questions. Force people to prepare
for all tutorials and avoid passing around
the participation sheet and awkward dynamics
of students desperately trying to get to
answer the easier questions |
|
10: |
More exam style questions (longer and more
detailed) |
|
11: |
Give Tutor C a raise, fantastic tutorials. |
|
12: |
N/A |
|
13: |
I think it's just that my tutor who was
Tutor C didn't explain concepts clearly and
had a soft voice which couldn't be heard
well. |
|
14: |
Did extended - no tutes. |
|
15: |
None. |
|
16: |
N/A |
|
17: |
- |
|
18: |
Tutor C needs to work on his public
speaking, he was too quiet and did not speak
clearly. I found that if I did not rush to
the tutorial from the lecture I would not
get a seat in the front row and this meant I
wouldn't get any benefit from Tutor C's
explanations. |
|
19: |
Our tutor was confusing at times. |
|
20: |
More structured around helping with
assignments if they are to be kept as hard. |
|
21: |
No |
|
22: |
The last tutorial should have more than 5
questions for class participation mark. |
|
23: |
Add more questions, or spread questions
more amongst students. Hard to earn
participation marks because there were not
enough questions for everyone and some
students fielded more questions by themself,
making it a fight to earn marks. The
questions were usually very direct with a
single answer, so it is hard to contribute
to an answer if another student has already
answered it. |
|
24: |
The way tutorial participation marks are
given out. It doesn't really encourage
people to ask questions when they don't
understand the material and it turns the
entire tutorial into a competition to see
who gets to answer a question. |
|
25: |
Nope. |
|
26: |
Carefully selecting who the tutors are and
fluency in english would assist
exponentially. |
|
27: |
As mentioned earlier, while class
participation is important - a better
approach is needed. The overly competitive
nature of the class (given its larger size)
means that students only really care about
finding a chance to speak and be able to
mark their name off. Clear cut
questions/answers do not really facilitate
discussion and even if you knew the answer,
there is no point repeating the same points
again. |
|
28: |
I had tutorial just after the 2hr lecture.
Tutorials were often for the same week as
the lecture, so there really wasn't time to
attempt questions before tutorials. |
|
29: |
Extended. N/A |
|
30: |
Participation is quite annoying. Can't
really pay full attention since everyone is
trying to get the mark. |
|
31: |
No, I had a fantastic tutor, probably the
best tutor I have ever had! |
|
32: |
More questions so everyone gets a chance
to get the participation mark |
|
33: |
No. |
|
34: |
Totes were great - but the compulsory
interjections were a bit forced at times and
yielded questionable or at least not
immediately apparent high learning to marks
ratio... |
|
35: |
A quick recap of content before launching
into the questions may be a good initiative |
|
36: |
n/a |
|
37: |
Participation marks are not necessary,
self-study should be done at this stage
(year 3) |
|
38: |
- |
|
39: |
No. Tutorials seem adequate and support
the lecture content. |
|
40: |
Short tutorials make it very difficult for
everyone to get participation marks. |
|
41: |
Perhaps an extended timeslot for more
questions? |
|
42: |
Don't force attendance on the tutorials.
Remove the participation marks. |
|
43: |
N/A (Did EOS, I didn't have tutorials) |
|
44: |
No tutorial marks, it somewhat distract
the primary reasoning of tutorial : catching
up |
|
45: |
Nope, they were good! |
|
46: |
Participation marks for speaking in class
doesnt always work, especially for the weeks
with very few questions. Marking by
attendance or the tutor checking an attempt
at questions would be more beneficial and be
more indicative of tutorial participation. |
|
47: |
Did EOS, no tutorials |
|
48: |
- |
|
49: |
There were times where the tutorial ended
early due to us rushing through the
questions. If 1-2 questions were added then
I believe it would suit the time more. Also
I believe we should have more calculation
questions as the coverage of those in the
lecture was low. |
|
50: |
None really |
|
51: |
We could not just discuss questions,
instead we could discuss something in
general or find a specific topic. Leave the
questions to students and we could ask if we
have something not understand. |
|
52: |
N/A |
|
53: |
Class participation should not be
compulsory because I think it does not help
students to learn better. On the other hand,
it may make some shy students feel anxious
or nervous and thus, not paying attention in
tutorials and eventually, skipping
tutorials. |
|
54: |
The class participation during tutorials
was rather pressuring, as I had felt more of
trying to think up which question to answer
or what to say rather than always listening
attentively to the tutor speaking. If
possible, could the tutor check that we've
done the tutorial every week like some math
courses? I believe that it shouldn't take
very long to type/write the answers to the
questions. |
|
55: |
participation marks are good, but my
tutorial which had alot of students in it,
it was hard to get the participation mark. |
|
56: |
n/a |
|
57: |
A more formalised marking scheme for
participation to encourage participation
through questions and preparing for the
tutorial. Tutor needs to speak up a little.
|
|
58: |
The tutor did not ensure that everyone
understood the content |
|
59: |
The participation mark made it so people
contributed but sometimes it wasn't a real
contribution, just enough to get the mark. |
|
60: |
I did not attend Tutorials as I was in
Extended |
|
61: |
More questions, increasing in difficulty,
some were just going over basic ideas |
|
62: |
N/A |
|
63: |
Perhaps removing participation. I noticed
many people googling answers in the class
for later questions. Meanwhile the people
who knew the answers had to keep quite to
give other people a go since they had
already been 'marked off'. |
| Summary: participation
marks are getting (too?) competitive. I'll
review with tutors and evaluate changing
it next year. |
64: |
More foundational/basic questions to
refresh, rather than jumping straight into
harder questions regarding application of
this knowledge. |
|
| 27. |
Any
suggestions for improving the assignments?
|
|
1: |
Nope. |
|
2: |
- |
|
3: |
n/a |
| Yep, as
mentioned above, recording a video walk-through
is on my todo-list for next year. |
4: |
I would have liked a tad more guidance for
asst2. I felt pretty thrown in the deep end,
didn't have a much idea about how a lot of
things were meant to work.
Maybe a bit of a clearer idea of how they
would be marked would've been nice. It was
clear after asst2.
In general the assignments are very good
though. |
|
5: |
Nope |
| You can
submit using git also. |
6: |
Use git instead - its taught in COMP2041,
so most students have already been exposed
to it. Subversion was completely new. Our
group ended up using git to sync between
ourselves, and only using svn to submit. |
|
7: |
A bit more handholding to get started on
assignment 3 would be nice. |
|
8: |
A video like the one for assignment 3
would be helpful for assignment 2 as it was
much more difficult to initally understand
than the other 2 assignments. |
|
9: |
N/A |
|
10: |
A bit more focus on error checks and
testing would be good, but I think the
assignments would also need to be slightly
easier to fit with the time constraints. |
|
11: |
For the assignments, there were a lot of
common design mistakes or assumptions people
(including me) made, it would be best I
think to collate these into the wiki.
Otherwise it's a bit of a pain trawling
through piazza. |
|
12: |
Make them easier or provide more
information. They were very confusing |
|
13: |
Possibly state instruction more clearly |
|
14: |
Some part of assignment 2 is really
confusing just by the specs |
|
15: |
N/A |
|
16: |
Provide more documentation, particularly
for assignment 2. I didn't know where to
draw the line in terms of what we should
implement, versus what was already
implemented for us. For example, despite
viewing the source code, I still wasn't sure
what the uio's were for. |
|
17: |
no |
|
18: |
Stress even harder how difficult they are. |
|
19: |
I found it was difficult to know how to
start the assignments. Usually it was a mix
of just browsing piazza, the wiki, the
source code. Even after following the code
walkthroughs. The video for ass3 was helpful
in breaking down the assignment to help
decide where to start (e.g. clearly
separating the assignment into 2 parts, the
frame table and the 2 level page table). |
|
20: |
Clearer specs for Assignment 2. |
|
21: |
N/A |
|
22: |
Provide additional tests - or at least
some starter tests where we can easily
modify and write our own. Usually most of
the time was spent designing, implementing
and debugging but not really enough time to
write your own tests. ie: You spend a lot of
time testing your code with the given tests
to make sure they are solid before
proceeding to write your own - of which you
would have little time to do. |
|
23: |
Assignment 2 was pretty hard and few
resources could be found. |
|
24: |
First two assignments were reasonable,
with the second being a nice challenge.
Assignment 3 was extremely challenging and
even though there was a support video
released I found that I was unsure of where
I should be placing my code. Assignment 3
also did not have very informative comments
compared to A1 and A2 which added to the
confusion. The spec provided, I found, was
not very informative and was missing details
such as testing (which I found was in the
wiki much later). However what I did find
useful was the suggestion on how to tackle
the assignment so maybe that can be
expanded. |
|
25: |
N/A |
|
26: |
I liked the difficulty of the assignments
because it taught you how to read a large
code set and adapt to it. Sometimes the
tutor would not answer questions because he
wanted you to think about it, but I wanted
clarification on whether I was going in the
right direction, which he wouldn't help with
assignments instead relaying me to Piazza. I
know others had trouble clarifying the
assignments as well as they thought it was
unclear, so maybe some more instructions.
The lack of tests available for all
assignments was annoying, we didn't know
which tests were functional for that
assignment. We passed all tests but we didnt
do correct implementation for one function
and got punished for it. It was something
that was extremely hard to recognize whether
it was needed and a simple 1 line command in
the 2nd assignment would have saved a couple
of marks. |
|
27: |
Make them harder, solo and slightly more
time. |
|
28: |
The assignments were great, but I had the
hardest time on the syscalls assignment. I
wasted a few days just trying to get a grip
of what we were meant to do. I had no idea
about how to go from the sysread() call to
the vfs function. Luckily my partner
eventually worked it out and then everything
was fine. But that was the one point in all
the assignments I couldn't work out on my
own. Perhaps just a rough example of one of
the calls. Like maybe give us a completed
sysread() function as an example. The
example syscall you gave us didnt have any
vfs calls in it, so it was a terrible
example to work from. Without it, it is very
hard to work out where to find and put the
vfs calls. |
| You can
refer to the lecture? |
29: |
possibly more explanation about the KSEGS
and the virtual vs physical memory locations
on the asst3 specs page. |
|
30: |
give more instruction on what to do in
assignment |
|
31: |
more guidance on asst3 |
|
32: |
More explanation on how parts of the OS
that we need to use work. For example, in
assignment 2 particularly we had to use a
lot of calls to lower levels and it was very
confusing figuring out how they worked and
what they returned and what they did to the
structs we passed in etc |
|
33: |
All assignments have solutions, and
student should find the solutions on their
own. However, the information of the
assignments are separated to guides, wiki,
piazza, and lecture slides, which one could
miss something easily and may take lots of
time to find. |
|
34: |
Give more guideline |
|
35: |
Marking was too harsh. |
|
36: |
The difficult part of the assignments was
understanding what had to be done, but I
think it's fine as it is. Being forced to
read through the code and seeing how
everything actually worked was very
educational. |
|
37: |
Was not clear from the asst3 spec that the
implementation of the basic assignment was
not expected to result in a functional
malloc & heap. Felt as though it was
billed as a drop-in replacement to dumbvm,
but in reality introduced regressions. Felt
this could have been made clearer. |
|
38: |
Provide examples for the 2nd assignment.
It was really hard to have an idea of what
the functions were supposed to look like.
Dumb VM in ass3 was really handy for getting
an idea of what was wanted. And ass1 was
well explained/similar to lecture material. |
|
39: |
Can't really make something like that much
easier, but in the end I'm happy with how it
went. |
|
40: |
assignments were legit |
|
41: |
More frequent, shorter assignments
covering more topics. |
|
42: |
more detail specification |
|
43: |
Assignments were a bit time consuming and
hard to start. |
|
44: |
cover more OS concepts, such as process
scheduling, file system. |
|
45: |
N/A |
|
46: |
Did not know enough about svn to setup a
remote repo and work from home which made
development tedious. A small VM for
virtualbox with os161 and all the build/test
tools installed would be a massive fix for
setting up this environment.
|
|
47: |
Very time consuming, but I assume its
supposed to be that way
Keep the assignments to be done in pairs, as
it helps to have another person to exchange
ideas and learn. |
|
48: |
Please make the design specs slightly less
vague? |
|
49: |
They are a bit on the difficult side |
|
50: |
Honestly, they went pretty well - we
conceded pretty much all marks we lost, with
the exception of a few arguably double
penalties due to high 'correctness and
style' discretionary marks.
It is our submission that we "got it" as
soon as we'd realised we'd failed X or Y
test... As in could fully explain and point
to failing code, with exact patches to
fix... Getting a comment in the source code
with "-1" for correctness was, in our view,
a bit of overkill. |
|
51: |
Give more specific instructions for what
to actually do in the specs. |
|
52: |
The specs were a bit vague. A lot of
waffle then "now implement this file". |
|
53: |
It would be nice if there was a page that
listed things that can be penalised, such as
linear searching through data structures. |
|
54: |
N/A |
You can use
git, and the magic incantation to generate
compatible diffs was on the wiki.
I will advertise this more.
|
55: |
Please change from svn to git
COMP2041 teaches git anyway, so students
will probably be familiar with git to begin
with.
Additionally, it allows for easier setup
regarding programming at home.
Finally, commits are made regarding the
whole repo and not the pwd; this was an
issue when I accidentally didn't commit
design.txt due to a lack of experience with
svn. |
|
56: |
I can only say it was hard for me but
that's it. I came into this course hoping
for a credit and I have probably achieved
that because of the difficulty of the
assignments despite putting plenty of effort
in. If I've achieved my initial expectation
of how hard the course is for me then it's a
good course.
Also I'd prefer the assignments to be a solo
task and that's probably a selfish reason
since I did nearly all->all of the work
required for the assignments which I'm sure
many others did too. |
|
57: |
Maybe make the assignments about just
reinforcing the material covered. Too much
other stuff in the assignments - I don't
feel I get much out of trying to work out
what someone elses code does so I can fix
mine. |
|
58: |
More videos (such as the assignment 3
video) as they were very helpful. |
| Another vote
for more getting started material. |
59: |
Help get the ball rolling a bit better at
the start.
Book a lab once or twice for each assignment
with yourself and maybe some tutors on
standby to answer questions and help us get
our head around what we need to do.
Honestly that would have made this course
perfect.
I found the best part of this course the
hours leading up to the assignment deadline
(yes even 8am) spent in K17 with everyone
else working to finish the assignments. We
were all helping each other and it was
amazing.
I have little doubt that if I wasn't doing
other courses I could have got 100% (or very
close) in everything. My partner an I
literally spent days just working out what
to do. If we had a little bit more guidance
then it would have made a world of
difference. |
|
60: |
The extended parts were too difficult and
way way out of proportion to the rest of the
assignment |
|
61: |
N/A |
|
62: |
No |
|
63: |
Perhaps a little more of a helping hand,
especially in regards to Assignment 3. |
|
64: |
VFS layer in assignment 2 is still a bit
abstract
The address space struct in assignment3
could have been really simple to understand
if given, but took a while for us to figure
out what to do with it on our own |
|
65: |
Please do an explanation video for asst2! |
|
66: |
Giving a much more guide into the source
code and making us understand the code would
have made starting the assignments much more
easier.
Most of the time was understanding the
source code which was horrible... |
|
67: |
More explanation of OS161 code base. |
|
68: |
none |
|
69: |
Possibly make Assignment 1 a bit harder. |
|
70: |
N/A |
|
71: |
More detailed specifications would be
nice, a lot of time was spent figuring out
what exactly we were supposed to do. |
|
72: |
Maybe explain address spaces a bit more
for asst2, including the use of uio, uiovec
etc. as it was unclear what these did. |
|
73: |
Perhaps give a list of the different types
of errors and possible causes of them, would
have helped a lot in assignment 3. Other
than that, most of the time on the
assignments was spent debugging.
The good thing about the assignments is that
you end up learning the material the
assignments are on extremely well (otherwise
you wouldn't have been able to do much of
them). |
|
74: |
No |
|
75: |
Perhaps tie in some I/O stuff. |
|
76: |
Break them down into weekly labs. |
|
77: |
Only real complaint is to use git
instead... I think the learning curve is a
little bit less than SVN too (so nothing
major)
Also perhaps break down the assignment into
smaller subsections that are due earlier to
force people to start at an earlier date...
But that would probably be annoying to
mark... |
|
78: |
More specific guidelines about what order
to implement things in. |
|
79: |
write up a proper assignments specs, 5
lines of mystery and puzzles is just not
enough.
assignment spec for comp3331 project was 9
pages... |
|
80: |
more support video for assignment |
|
81: |
Less requirenments to look through the
whole code, maybe an explicit scope on which
files you need to look at to complete it. |
|
82: |
A more refined assignment specification
that specifically outlines what marks are
given for, and perhaps breaks the latter
(asst2&3) into logical stages (with % of
marks given) to help students complete them
in a more timely manner. |
| Take
advantage of the consults, they are there
to help for exactly these kinds of issues. |
83: |
It took a very very very very very very
long time (3+ 8-hour blocks per assignment)
to figure out anything. I understand reading
through code is an important skill but not
getting anywhere after 24 hours of work was
very stressful. Try more guidance for
assignments. Ass 3 video was very helpful
for high level over view but still took a
very long time to understand where things
were meant to go and how things were meant
to work. |
|
84: |
More specification or steps to follow for
implementation. |
|
85: |
Making them roughly equal difficulty
considering that they are all weighted
equally. |
|
86: |
Combining ASST0 and ASST1 would allow
ASST1 to be file systems, ASST2 to be memory
management, and ASST3 to be something about
scheduling. |
|
87: |
The third assignment was generally unclear
on what we were supposed to do, if it
weren't for the assignment video and support
lectures, there'd be no way to know what we
were actually MEANT to be doing. Some more
coordination in the spec would be useful |
|
88: |
Provide just a bit more time to do them.
Though an undergrad, I found I still
struggled to get around to starting the
assignment until the last week (due to
working 2 jobs and a full load of uni) |
|
89: |
More hints should be given because the
lecture materials are way to high-level
compared to the assignment specs. |
|
| 28. |
I
got very little feedback on the support
videos I recorded this semester
(subversion and asst3 walkthrough). Now is
your chance to encourage or discourage me
spending more time doing them, or suggest
improvements. |
|
1: |
The support videos are good, but it would
be better if you can also post the
corresponding slides up as well. It's a bit
annoying to always having to seek in the
video when forgetting some part of the
assignment. Especially when I'm at a
location with slow/no internet. |
|
2: |
The asst3 walkthrough was very helpful,
and cleared up a lot of questions. Did not
watch subversion video as I am already
familiar with and prefer git. |
|
3: |
very informative |
|
4: |
They we're great and really helpful. |
|
5: |
I did not attend many lectures or watch
lecture videos, but this video I did watch
and was very helpful. 10/10 would watch
again. |
|
6: |
The video was great! I watched it about 3
times during the course of doing the
assignment and as I understood more about
the problem I got more out of the video. The
only thing I would request is that you
release the lecture notes file as well so
that I can add notes. |
|
7: |
+ I was already familiar with SVN so
didn't really watch the SVN video
(instructions in assignment were sufficient)
+ asst3 walkthrough was probably the main
reason I submitted on time, so I would say
it was a resounding success |
|
8: |
Didn't even look at subversion or use it.
Git FTW :)
Asst3 was good though. The switching of
slides were a little jittery but good
otherwise. Helpful to have. |
|
9: |
The asst3 walkthrough was very very very
very helpful at getting started at ASST3
since without it we would be unsure of our
allocator which would then pile onto the
rest of the assignment |
|
10: |
The ass3 walkthrough was very helpful for
the assignment as the spec was generally
pretty confusing. The video helped clear up
how we should break down the work and how to
get started. |
|
11: |
Subversion video was so so, we basically
ended up only every using svn up, svn commit
and svn log. I think there is a preference
for git these days among students. Asst3
video was quite helpful. Please do one for
asst2; asst1 does not require it. |
|
12: |
- |
|
13: |
The asst3 walkthrough was useful, and I
didn't use svn video as I felt familiar
enough with it. |
|
14: |
subversion video is not very necessary,
because it is easy. asst3 video is quite
useful, and would be better if spends less
on teaching C pointers. |
|
15: |
They were actually quite useful, the asst3
one hinted at good design choices which made
not screwing up slightly easier. |
|
16: |
The assignment 3 one was very helpful. I
used Git instead of Subversion. |
|
17: |
The asst3 walkthrough was very nice, but
it spent 70% of the time talking about the
easy part of the assignment and 30% of the
time talking about the hard part, which
didn't help with the spec that lacked in
detail. |
|
18: |
Very good, but please provide a few more
(but shorter) videos. This will make finding
a particular concept a lot easier than
needing to watch a full one hour video. |
|
19: |
the video on asst3 was very helpful and
made the assignment much easier to
understand and where to start. |
|
20: |
Asst3 walkthrough was a god send.
Everything made so much more sense. Please
continue your efforts on utilising such
videos. Didn't watch svn video. |
|
21: |
The support videos were very informative
and helpful, especially assignment 3
walkthrough. |
|
22: |
the videos were generally helpful,
in assignment 3 u promised to go through
some code on addrspace and pagetable "later
in the video" but never did! |
|
23: |
I watched both of them and found both of
them helpful. Maybe add a little bit more to
the asst3 video, specifically about the page
table and TLB entry structure |
|
24: |
It was great. Need to trim the fat a bit
though |
|
25: |
Didn't watch the subversion one (we used
Git). The asst3 walkthrough was very
helpful. Any help with ass3 was helpful. |
|
26: |
The assignment 3 walkthrough was a great
help to getting started with assignment 3. I
would have liked to see it a little earlier
as my partner and I started before the video
was posted. |
|
27: |
asst3 walkthrough was very useful! It made
the third assignment really quite simple - a
lot simpler than the second assignment which
involved a lot more digging around and
trying to get things right. But that might
just be because I didn't go to many
lectures...
I do feel that digging around and figuring
things out based purely on the code and
lecture slides helped me understand how
everything fit together a lot better,
although the process itself was time
consuming and somewhat frustrating.
I didn't watch the subversion videos - just
used git. (why subversion anyway, git seems
a lot more popular these days). |
|
28: |
The asst3 walkthrough was helpful and more
should be needed for the other assignments. |
|
29: |
The asst3 walkthrough video was extremely
helpful, please keep doing these!
Personally, I looked up what I needed to
know for subversion online, though. |
|
30: |
I think they were great. |
|
31: |
I think the slides overall were great,
especially when I was trying to catch up
after recovering from illness. It was easy
to navigate to find the topics. The sound
might be a little fuzzy at times, but didn't
bother significantly. Thank you! |
|
32: |
It was very helpful. Would very much
suggest to do it again |
|
33: |
The asst3 walkthrough was extremely
helpful in understanding what to do. I would
recommend it in the future. |
|
34: |
the video for assignment 3 was helpful for
explaining the concepts that it did explain. |
|
35: |
The asst3 video was very helpful, please
continue to do it |
|
36: |
The assignment 3 walkthrough was extremely
helpful and would have been nice for
assignments 2 and 1. |
|
37: |
Both videos were excellent resources.
The subversion video was adequate to learn
enough svn to use for the assignments.
The asst3 walkthrough video was also very
helpful, and the examples helped with
understanding. Watched it multiple times |
|
38: |
asst3 walk-through was fantastic. |
|
39: |
Didn't use subversion but the asst3 one
was very useful. A valuable tool! |
|
40: |
the asst3 walkthrough video was
invaluable. The assignment was extremely
hard for me, and the walkthrough helped
there. If anything, more information in the
video would have been useful. |
|
41: |
Helpful! |
|
42: |
It's alright to have support videos. |
|
43: |
asst3 helped but my group still struggled
with it. |
|
44: |
I was discouraged to watched the svn video
after noticing the length of it was roughly
1hr. I relied on svn docs online.
I watched the asst3 walkthrough 2 times in
full, and 2 more times jumping between
sections. It was very helpful, please do it
again next year. |
|
45: |
The asst3 walkthrough was my bible.
Literally replayed over that video at least
7 times to help me understand and get
through the assignment. There were a couple
things that wern't really clarified but
asking on piazza cleared that up. |
|
46: |
asst3 walkthrough was very very helpful. |
|
47: |
Videos were really good however some
additional examples/showing where specific
code is and how it works would greatly
assist it. Basically more hand holding would
be nice haha :) |
|
48: |
Very useful, any additional information of
guides are always welcome. |
|
49: |
Video recording for asst3 was really
useful, I got the general idea of vm_fault
function, as well as the using of trace161
and objdump. |
|
50: |
Definitely keep doing them. Found them to
be extremely helpful. |
|
51: |
The videos for both subversion and asst3
are extremely useful. It would be great to
keep them for the next terms. |
|
52: |
Fantastic, thank you very much for them! |
|
53: |
The videos provided a great starting
point. I thought the subversion video was
useless, since I had nothing but problems
with SVN diff with each assignment, which
required me to manually delete html files
that eclipse had added to the repos. I
understand why you used SVN diff but I hated
using it. I would suggest using bitbucket
and git, it is far easier and a lot more
help is available online. |
|
54: |
ASST3 walkthrough was extremely (almost
too) helpful. Didn't watch the subversion
one. |
|
55: |
strongly encourage for the support video |
|
56: |
Didn't use the subversion video, I found
the "walkthroughs" in assignment spec to be
sufficient, and happily learnt svn online.
Asst3 walkthrough was very helpful. |
|
57: |
They are okay and useful. |
|
58: |
Asst3 walkthrough was very useful |
|
59: |
They were helpful |
|
60: |
The support videos were great. I watched
the svn video and then had no problems using
svn, so that worked great. I watched the
asst3 video a number of times (in bits and
pieces) as I built my solution. It would
have been a lot harder without it. Please
keep doing them. |
|
61: |
Do more of these! The asst3 one was great,
but for some of the as functions could have
benefited from even more depth. For example
the load and load complete functions were
still confusing as were the activate and
deactivate functions. Some thing like this
for ass2 would have saved hours upon hours
of time. |
|
62: |
they are useful |
|
63: |
The video helped a lot, and it should be
even more detailed especially on the second
part of Assignment 3. Assignment 2 should
also have a video. |
|
64: |
I highly suggest continuing with them, as
they are indeed helpful and assist in
completing the assignment. |
|
65: |
The ass3 was good (maybe too much focus on
the frame table part), svn is close to git
so i didn't watch that one. |
|
66: |
Asst3 video was helpful. Didn't need the C
pointer section though. |
|
67: |
I found the asst3 walkthrough video very
useful as it helped me understand the
assignment more and also things to look out
for when working on it. |
|
68: |
The asst3 video was really helpful. Maybe
a few more pointers on how to go about
completing the assingment |
|
69: |
need some writing on the material when it
needs. not by only words with using picture
on it to understand further more |
|
70: |
asst3 was excellent. did not watch
subversion video. used git for version
control because more familiar |
|
71: |
I would like to encourage for the
supporting videos. It was quite helpful |
|
72: |
The video for asst3 was useful except at
times it was unclear which part of the
assignment you were referring to. Also more
code-walkthroughs with suggestions on where
we should be tackling what. For example, the
frame table struct could be placed here and
you could initialise it in ___ function.
That would make it very clear as that was
one of my main problems - struggling to
figure out where to place what. Also a |
|
73: |
subversion video: still pretty confused
with using svn
asst3 walkthrough: they were great |
|
74: |
You should do them. They are very useful
especially for people who have no or little
experience with subversion and asst3
walkthrough is super helpful. We would not
be able to finish asst3 without the
walkthrough. |
|
75: |
The asst3 walkthrough video was very good
- watched it a few times which really
solidified my understanding of what we were
supposed to do for the assignment (what the
address space api was for, virtual memory
and physical memory addresses, frametable)
and useful debugging tips for the assignment
(objdump, trace161). |
|
76: |
Walkthrough for assignment 3 spent too
much time on C programming rather than the
assignment concepts. Suggestion of doing
little snippets of videos covering subsets
of the larger video so people can watch the
ones for what they need rather than having
to skip through the larger video and not
have any context to what they've forwarded
into. |
|
77: |
Please record more video for assignment 2 |
|
78: |
Did not watch the subversion video.
Asst3 walkthrough was very helpful. Please
continue them in the future and possibly
extend it to Asst2 as well. |
|
79: |
the video helped a lot on the assignment,
and hints like the video would be very
helpful. I would say these videos is also a
way to adjust the difficulty of assignments. |
|
80: |
The support video for assignment 3 was
definitely helpful. |
|
81: |
Asst3 video is extremely helpful but not
sure about subversion |
|
82: |
The asst3 walkthrough was helpful, wish
I'd watched it before starting the
assignment.
We used git, so the SVN walkthrough didn't
help much. |
|
83: |
Im more comfortable reading slides than
watching videos as I can read slides at my
own pace. Videos were useful but not
essential. |
|
84: |
The asst3 video was very helpful and gave
me the starting push that would have
otherwise taken a while to do |
|
85: |
The asst3 video was very helpful for
several parts of the assignment,
particularly the understanding and design
phase. |
|
86: |
The support videos were a good way to
reference on whenever we got stuck on the
solution designing stage, so keep it up
don't get rid of them! |
|
87: |
Worth the effort, best lecture recordings
ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 |
|
88: |
The asst3 walkthrough was extremely
helpful in understanding what to do and how
to start the assignment |
|
89: |
Did not watch subversion video but the
asst3 walkthrough was very helpful to tie my
knowledge together in preparation for
beginning a plan for the solution,
definitely a worthwhile video with lots of
use. |
|
90: |
Assignment walk through was very useful
and I watched it multiple times to
understand the assignment. It helped fill
some gaps, but didn't fully complete my
understanding. Was a good starting point
though. |
|
91: |
The asst3 video was very helpful, and a
similar one for asst2 would have saved me a
lot of time trying to figure out where to
start. |
|
92: |
Very, very good! One of the only courses
I've done where the staff do additional work
to help with understanding the assignment,
which I think is really quite necessary with
OS, there are so many different challenges
to the assignments that I've not encountered
much before. |
|
93: |
Assignment 3 video was great, i highly
recomend you do another one particularly for
assignment 2. Also consider doing them in a
little bit more depth. I found the part
about VM fault in asst3 was skimmed over
with little detail, while the part about the
frametable was abit over done. |
|
94: |
These videos were really helpful. Would be
nice to have one for assignment 2 as another
source of information. The subversion video
was really helpful as i had not used
subversion before. |
|
95: |
The sound quality for the asst3
walkthrough was all over the place! Made
what was otherwise a really helpful video
very difficult to follow. This video was
integral in aiding my understanding of the
assignment though -- definitely keep it or
something similar for next year / future
courses. |
|
96: |
The videos were really helpful. You spoke
a bit slowly and often paused, but I just
sped up the playback to get around that. You
accidentally changed slides a bit in the
asst3 video which was a bit annoying. |
|
97: |
asst3 walkthrough was very helpful in
understanding the theory and what to do.
Didn't use the subversion video because the
notes in the assignment spec were
sufficient. |
|
98: |
Asst3 walkthrough was helpful, and well
worth the watch from me. I have experience
with svn so i didnt watch the svn video and
didnt encounter any issue with it. |
|
99: |
Asst3 support video was amazing. |
|
100: |
The asst3 video was really helpful, I
think everyone referred to it a lot.
Didn't watch the subversion video. |
|
101: |
The asst3 walkthrough was very helpful! It
would have been 10x more confusing than
before if you hadn't posted that. |
|
102: |
The assignment 3 lecture video fully
clarified all the questions left remaining
after going through the spec and codebase. I
felt it was a necessary part of the
assignment and would have struggled to grasp
all the concepts without it. The subversion
video could have included setting up a
remote repo to be able to push and pull from
home. |
|
103: |
They were helpful in understanding what
certain bits of the assignment were supposed
to do. |
|
104: |
The assignment 3 video was used well! It
was very helpful and I encourage you to
continue to do it |
|
105: |
I didn't watch subversion but the asst3
walkthrough was excellent!
In some places there was too much detail
others were a little rushed. I would have
liked a little more guidance. |
|
106: |
They were useful, not sure if video was
any more useful than a written document
though. I just skipped through them and read
the slides rather than sitting through an
hour long video. Came back to some slides
(particularly in the asst3 video) quite a
few times during the assignment for
reference. |
|
107: |
Ew on the subversion, defs switch to the
source control of the future.
But LOVED! LOVED LOVED!!!! the asst3
walkthrough!!! Especially for its cogent
explanation of the steps. I feel it was easy
to extend out the unsaid parts of (i.e. the
frame table -- doubly linked list) the
assignment for more marks, but this left the
basic explanation clear to begin with.
Audio quality had a few silent spots/dropped
frames(?) and was a little too quiet for the
macs in safari - but otherwise pretty good |
|
108: |
Asst3 video was really good, I personally
didn't watch the svn video (sorry). |
| Summary: the
asst3 video was really appreciated, but
could be split into components based on
student background (e.g. debugging tips,
C-programming tips, etc..). Not sure it is
worth the effort, you can always skip with
the online player. |
109: |
Assignment 3 video was great, strongly
recommend continuing them. |
|
| 31. |
Any
suggestions for improving COMP3891/9283
Extended OS? |
|
1: |
Seemed similar enough, to OS which I guess
was fine anyway. |
|
2: |
I feel the lecture notes for EOS is
ambiguous. the assignment specs are less
precise as well |
|
3: |
No, I thought EOS was excellent. |
|
4: |
I became too confused to follow along so
can't give much feedback. |
|
5: |
- |
|
6: |
I was able to follow along in the extended
lectures generally quite well, but found the
extended assignments very difficult and not
worth the extra effort. |
|
7: |
The extended portions of the assignments
took a long time for the marks that were
associated with them. |
|
8: |
N/A |
| I used to
run EOS "unassessed" and 50% of students
enrolled. I assume just to get EOS on
their transcripts (or to skip
participation in tutorials) resulting in
dissatification for both students (found
it too hard, fast, or didnt' even attend)
and staff (spent too much time trying to
teaching students who lacked the
background, ability or interest). |
9: |
I really appreciated the opportunity to do
extended OS and like the core aims. However,
I feel students should not feel punished for
choosing the harder course. The fact that
marks are simply given away in the tutorials
(for little or no effort), whereas in EOS
they require more effort than the base
assignments (which are huge). Perhaps better
than having a 1 hr lecture stream and then
give marks by extended assignment, the 1 hr
lecture should be treated as a participation
marked tutorial, and assessment in all other
aspects should be same as base course. This
would reward students that want to learn
more in EOS, and at the same time, the
disinterested students would simply do OS
due to the easier (and more relevant)
tutorials.
|
|
10: |
has stronger connection with adv
assignment |
|
11: |
A few times me and my partner were burned
because we spent more time on the (in my
opinion more interesting) extended portion
of assignments, and we lost marks on the
basic portion. We made that choice in the
knowledge that it wouldn't maximise our
marks, but I wish we didn't have to worry so
much about that choice. |
|
12: |
I think one of the more important parts of
EOS was getting acquainted with actual
research and papers (and what motivated
them). BUT it would be nice to have more of
an introduction to good OS research
practises (how to setup good, reliable
experiments. how to benchmark particular
features of OSs , how to interpret results
etc). Sometimes i felt like we were just
looking at graphs.
Also schedular activations confused the hell
out of me, and i think the major reason was
that we didn't really get to see a concrete
implementation (which is fair enough). In
the regular lectures, i found that seeing an
example implementation of a concept (ext2,
os161 context switch) really helped solidify
understanding. |
|
13: |
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
HAVE A TUTORIAL
while (true){ kprintf("WE NEED A TUTORIAL
KEVINn");
}
|
|
14: |
The current format is great. As an
extended course, there is the risk of a
number of students taking it who might not
be prepared for the workload. The work/mark
tradeoff in the Extended assignments meant
that a student biting off more than they
could chew in their original enrolment
didn't mean an automatic fail for them. I
think adding tutorials could be good though. |
|
15: |
If you do decide to make the eos
assignment component worth more or
mandatory, you should give eos students
longer on the assignment or require that
they complete less of the base assignment.
Logistically, I dunno how you'd do that. |
|
16: |
Can't think of anything. |
|
17: |
Considering the advanced components of the
assignment would often take >50% of the
time, yet are worth <15% of the total
marks means there is disproportionate amount
of time spent on the advanced component than
the basic component. The advanced components
are fun and challenging, but should be worth
more marks. |
|
18: |
EOS does not have normal tutorial
materials, but going through those would
also be helpful. (I know we should do these
:P ) |
|
19: |
There was very little difference between
the two courses. The assessable content of
EOS is very small (4 x 1h lectures), and we
didn't even get to more
interesting/challenging topics :(
Add more topics! Or record a video about
assignments so you won't have to spend that
much time in it. The advance component was
OK, interesting to do, learnt a lot but
there was a significant amount of work (for
5 marks). And auto-marking was quite harsh
awarding all or nothing, particularly if you
are close to a working submission (or you
thought you had one using a design you came
up with). There was also very little
feedback for this part, making it not-worth
the effort and time put in. Give feedback on
the extended assignments, especially if you
make it compulsory. Overall, the lack of
content and the extra compulsory work with
little feedback was a let-down. Also the
assessed part of EOS in the exam was good,
but again there wasn't enough. |
|
20: |
Should provide more useful knowledge or
more chance to practice |
|
21: |
N/A |
|
22: |
Advanced assignment marking should either
contain more tests, or be marked by a
presentation. It does not seem fair to lose
the entire mark for a section if only a
small part of it isn't handled. Design doc
also seems useless for this part, due to
automarking. |
| Summary:
Issue are the workload (substantial) and
assessment (automarking is harsh). Ideally,
only students who enrol are enthusiast
interested in going the "extra mile". I
will look at what I can do, but EOS needs
a higher "bar". |
23: |
It didn't really feel different from OS,
apart from a couple of extra tasks that
weren't exactly harder - just more things to
do. Perhaps the course should have a clearer
aim, and tutorials would have been nice - I
generally find tutorials more useful than
lectures. |
|
| 32. |
Any
comments on the exam sample questions
provided on the wiki as a study aid? |
|
1: |
The sample questions were a great study
guide, I'll have to see how much they
prepare me for the exam. |
|
2: |
Needed to be more questions about UNIX.
As that was common in the exam. |
|
3: |
They were very helpful, and I think on
average the sample questions were more
difficult than the real exam questions,
which is fine by me. |
|
4: |
More questions would be nice |
|
5: |
If this is not the entire paper, is it
possible to upload the entire paper for
practice in the future? Otherwise, I am
happy that it is available for us to study. |
|
6: |
Good for format, but a little misleading
in terms of type of questions. Actual exam
had a lot more problems solving etc whereas
sample had more theory. |
|
7: |
The questions are very helpful. I think
it'd be useful to know how many marks each
questions is worth. |
|
8: |
Good revision but weren't long enough to
match the style of the questions in the
actual exam. The 100 or so sample questions
were good for revision but did not have
enough problem solving questions to prepare
us for the exam. |
|
9: |
Great that they are provided to work
through with good answers, more sample
questions are always nice but there are a
good amount already |
|
10: |
The content of the questions is helpful,
but the question format isn't representative
of what we have been told the final will be
like, e.g. no multiple choice. |
|
11: |
Classic questions, looks pretty promising.
Hopefully this marries up with the actual
final's difficulty level within reason!!! |
|
12: |
Not completed yet. |
|
13: |
- |
|
14: |
I didn't use the wiki, I just prepped by
drilling the tutorial questions. I felt they
did a good job covering the material. |
|
15: |
Haven't started |
|
16: |
No comments |
|
17: |
Wiki had some good questions that were
very useful for study. |
|
18: |
Looks pretty good, hopefully the final
will be similar. |
|
19: |
N/A |
|
20: |
They were a good aid in studying. I was
only able to skim them however. |
|
21: |
I feel that they are quite useful in
studying for the exam |
|
22: |
Good resource. |
|
23: |
No comment. |
|
24: |
Okay |
|
25: |
Still going through, but they look good. |
|
26: |
Haven't looked at them yet but sample exam
questions are always beneficial! |
|
27: |
I would have liked a few numerical
questions. |
|
28: |
Although the sample questions covered
pretty much all the theories, it would be
helpful if there were few practical question
as well. |
|
29: |
good sample |
|
30: |
- |
|
31: |
Really helpful. |
|
32: |
N/A |
|
33: |
The sample questions were less useful than
the tutorial questions for me. |
|
34: |
I am submitting this before the exam but a
few more sample papers would be great.
Cheers. |
|
35: |
Nearly perfect. Would have been nice to
have an explanation to go with each multiple
choice answer. |
|
36: |
Sample questions are very helpful to give
a good example of how to phrase responses as
well as an indication of the important
concepts from each course section. |
|
37: |
Really helpful - might want to reconsider
letting students edit it though. I saw a few
things that were a bit questionable which
could mislead others. |
|
38: |
Good stuff. |
|
39: |
More material on EOS |
|
40: |
Good example and help to practice solving
some questions. |
|
41: |
N/A |
|
42: |
Can't really comment yet |
|
43: |
very good, helpful |
|
44: |
Found the wiki to be a good resource for
studying, though some of the answers seem a
bit questionable at times. |
|
45: |
Very helpful
Cleared up a few things I was uncertain
about
Please keep for next year |
|
46: |
Pretty useful and well-organised |
|
47: |
have not yet seen it |
|
48: |
- |
|
49: |
They were a good studying tool |
|
50: |
somehow a good indication of what the exam
question look like |
|
51: |
Looks good, study resources plentiful. |
|
52: |
The given questions seemed alot more
specific (in terms of content) than the exam
questions |
|
53: |
A decent guide for final exam |
|
54: |
they are useful but more sample papers
would be nice. |
|
55: |
It's good to have an idea of what to
expect. |
|
56: |
The wiki page layout is messy. |
|
57: |
i did this survey before i looked at the
sample exam questions |
|
58: |
They were helpful for study |
|
59: |
please sir, may i have some more? |
|
60: |
Useful. |
|
61: |
didnt see it yet. |
|
62: |
very helpful in general,
didnt have to go through hundreds of
meaningless slides.
but the final exam format was rather
different |
|
63: |
Useful |
|
64: |
Good! The extra questions on each topic
was also a good idea |
|
65: |
Didn't read so far. |
|
66: |
good test of knowledge |
|
67: |
some of the sample solutions were wrong |
|
68: |
Very helpful to see the layout and types
of questions to expect on the exam. Tutorial
questions could be reworded to always be
potential exam questions. |
|
69: |
Could have used some more questions like
in the exam. For example where would locks
go etc |
|
70: |
Sample exam questions were a great
resource when studying, and was a great way
to refresh knowledge in the important areas
of each topic |
|
71: |
Useful Resource |
|
72: |
N/A |
|
73: |
Quite useful |
|
74: |
Pretty useful. |
|
75: |
The questions were good. Perhaps some more
calculation questions would be good for
practice as well? |
|
76: |
Thank you for providing sample exam
questions, some COMP courses do not provide
them |
|
77: |
gave a decent idea as to how exam would be
structured. |
|
78: |
Really good. Gives a little insight in how
straightforward an answer should be |
|
79: |
none in particular |
|
80: |
Good. I was expecting a lot more pros/cons
of strategies because there were so many in
the lecture slides/sample questions. |
|
81: |
Have not revised on the exam yet. |
|
82: |
N/A |
|
83: |
too easy comparing to the exam |
|
84: |
They were really helpful |
| Generally
positive feedback |
85: |
Lots of practice resources is good. |
|
| 34. |
Do
you have any particular comments you would
like to make about the exam? |
|
1: |
The questions were fairly shallow, but I
don't think that's necessarily a bad thing -
I think that it does successfully guarantee
a decent understanding of some of the main
concepts that were covered. But a longer
exam that touched on more topics would
probably be better. |
|
2: |
I think I just had bad time management in
studying for this exam/being more on track
during the semester since I found that there
was a lot of content. However, I think that
had I allocated my time better, I would have
found the exam quite straightforward. |
|
3: |
The assessment should be weighted more
towards the assignments because they are way
more challenging compared to the exam.
However, you should provide more sample exam
papers for practice. |
|
4: |
For a 2 hour exam there was a lot of
content meaning it was harder to think about
the answers |
|
5: |
The coding was a bit unexpected but not
too difficult. Also the question regarding
TLB converting virtual addresses was not
covered specifically in the course (in that
format). The negative marking should not be
so harsh as to remove a whole mark for every
incorrect answer. -0.5 would be more
appropriate, if there is to be negative
marking at all. |
|
6: |
The exam gave us an opportunity to show
our knowledge without relying us on
memorising dozens of acronyms (even though
the course was full of them). It was good as
it tested us on demonstrating our knowledge
of function instead of form, a much more
valuable metric since in the real world you
can just look up acronyms but need to know
function like the back of your hand. |
|
7: |
The exam was fine. Not too hard, not too
easy. I finished with about 15mins to double
check everything. A perfect exam and a great
way to finish the semester. |
|
8: |
N/A |
|
9: |
no |
|
10: |
- |
|
11: |
i did this survey before the exam |
|
12: |
Haven't done it yet. |
|
13: |
n?A |
|
14: |
I would be better if there were less
memorization type questions. |
|
15: |
- |
|
16: |
Submitted before the exam |
|
17: |
N/A |
|
18: |
Make the questions clearer. Although it
was my fault, I did not answer the TLB
question properly as I didn't read it
properly. I only gave whether it had a valid
mapping, it should have been 8 easy marks. |
|
19: |
True/False Questions made me worried about
attempting questions, even if I had felt I
knew the answer because of the negative
marks penalty. Other than that, it was okay.
|
|
20: |
3 hours would be better, or more weight
towards the assignments. |
|
21: |
no |
|
22: |
I feel the true and false questions are
actually much easier than the other
questions |
|
23: |
The exam overall seemed to reflect the
concepts we have learned in this course. I
liked the coding questions. I still find
reading the questions slightly hard, perhaps
due to language barriers. |
|
24: |
N/A |
|
25: |
N/A |
|
26: |
There was some good questions that made me
think, there was also a good mix of simple
and complex questions so it felt fair. |
|
27: |
written exams are the most stupid idea in
the world,
imagine if in real life jobs your boss told
you "you have 2 hours to do this task or
you're fired!" |
|
28: |
N/A |
|
29: |
i feel like the amount of content in OS
there should be a 3 hour exam for it all. |
|
30: |
n/a |
|
31: |
Please remove negative marking for MCQ. |
|
32: |
You should consider doing actual multiple
choice instead of just true/false. |
|
33: |
Pretty good exam :) |
|
34: |
I feel like we could have been asked more
interesting questions (if the exam were
open-book). |
| Sorry, but it
has the result distribution that is most
bell-like, and its also highly correlated
with WAM. |
35: |
I think that negative marks in multiple
choice is cruel and doesn't achieve what its
supposed to (ie it won't separate students
based on skill) |
| :-) |
36: |
Haven't sat it yet, please have mercy on
us :P |
|
37: |
A lot of content I knew was not tested |
|
38: |
It would be great if I were to receive
101% for it....
* * *
Q38 is a cheeky question though!!!!! |
|
39: |
I prefer real multiple choice (4 answers)
without negative marking, since I believe it
gives more chance to demonstrate knowledge. |
|
40: |
Submitting before exam |
|
41: |
please don't put the last question as a 1
page at the absolute back of the paper,
really prone of being missed |
|
42: |
N/A |
|
43: |
Materials are a little overwhelming. I
hope it could be pruned a little. |
|
44: |
I would have preferred multiple choice to
True/False, with a lower negative mark (e.g.
-1/4).
I also struggled for time and did not
provide as many details for some answers as
I would have liked. |
|
45: |
Need more time |
|
46: |
Exam is good since it covers the theory,
that you don't really implement through
assignments.
Downside is that there is a lot of theory,
and whilst interesting it boils down to a
memorization game about how things work,
etc.
Timing was good (enough time to do
questions, not too much or too little). A
good mix of questions too. But OS was quite
a content heavy course, so only a small
subset was assessed. |
|
| 36. |
Any
comments on the use of Piazza? |
|
1: |
Pretty awesome forum. Best I've used in
any course. Other courses NEED this. (Please
make them use it please.) |
|
2: |
Disable email spam by default |
|
3: |
all helps suddenly stop once deadline is
passed.... |
|
4: |
No |
|
5: |
Website kind of annoying but useful as a
forum as opposed to not having one at all. |
|
6: |
I really like the duplicate question
feature. Some students just don't read. |
|
7: |
Really helpful and lecturer answered
rapidly. |
|
8: |
good |
|
9: |
great for assignments |
|
10: |
Kevin stepping in to answer questions was
always fantastic and valuable appreciated |
|
11: |
really helpful in debugging |
|
12: |
helpful |
|
13: |
It's fantastic, all courses should use it |
|
14: |
it's good |
|
15: |
Good |
|
16: |
excellent |
|
17: |
Merge of similar/repeated questions would
be helpful. |
|
18: |
Best form of communication and support
method for a course I've seen so far |
|
19: |
The sidebar randomly moves when first
loading.. |
|
20: |
It was very helpful during assignment
periods |
|
21: |
Very useful for clarifying assignment.
Much better than trying to use a message
board. |
|
22: |
It's quite useful and the responses are
fast and great. |
|
23: |
Good, but kevin disappeared towards the
assignment 3 deadline. It was fantastic
otherwise. |
|
24: |
Excellent |
|
25: |
Need to find a way to encourage student
activity on it. |
|
26: |
lecturer responded really fast |
|
27: |
Extremely useful but I found that if you
asked a tutor in person they would refer you
to piazza. But I find it easier to learn
from actual contact were you can actually
ask questions back without waiting a day for
response. |
|
28: |
Really helpful. Generally contained a
wealth of info helpful for assignments. I
think the ability to ask Anon Q |
|
29: |
good support |
|
30: |
No |
|
31: |
Happy with it |
|
32: |
Good for debugging assignments. |
|
33: |
It's great |
|
34: |
Good |
|
35: |
It works pretty good. |
|
36: |
GOOD STUFF. |
|
37: |
In the past I've been happy to contribute
responses to piazza which has helped my
understanding. Kevin's average response time
was something around 20 minutes, which I
feel eliminates half of the reason for using
such a tool. |
|
38: |
Very good |
|
39: |
It's good. |
|
40: |
No comment. |
|
41: |
Its good to see if other people are having
the same problems as me |
|
42: |
Piazza is great, and the lecturer was
generally very prompt at replying to
questions |
|
43: |
useful |
|
44: |
It's pretty handy. All courses should
probably use it. |
|
45: |
Helped SOOO much for the assignments! |
|
46: |
Great resource, helped lots |
|
47: |
Classic, turn it into a fixture I reckon |
|
48: |
Useful, allowed us to see questions from
other students as well. The lecturer's
replies were reasonably timely and concise. |
|
49: |
It is extremely helpful |
|
50: |
Fantastic |
|
51: |
Kevin's quick replies got straight to the
point and were very prompt. Looking through
his replies to other questions also helped
understand the assignment. Without Kevin, I
don't think piazza would be as successful as
it was this semester. |
|
52: |
Is useful. |
|
53: |
Answers sometimes weren't exactly
answering the question being asked. |
|
54: |
Should be used for more courses, great
stuff. |
|
55: |
N/A |
|
56: |
N/A |
|
57: |
Annoying emails, cumbersome to read. |
|
58: |
It works well as a sort of FAQ but the
signal to noise ratio could always be
better. |
|
59: |
It's cumbersome to have to use another
website. Just use a facebook group like
other subjects. |
|
60: |
The idea is great. Piazza itself, however,
leaves some things to be desired. The
default email settings are obnoxious, the
editor and support for code formatting is
clunky and annoying to use. But the idea is
great. |
|
61: |
Being able to post anonymously seems
useful - saw quite a lot of people doing
this, which is a great for students who may
not normally ask questions. |
|
62: |
Great system. |
|
63: |
Very fast response time. |
|
64: |
useful to have a discussion forum |
|
65: |
It gets a bit overwhelming, worrying why
half the assignment questions don't seem
relevant to my assignment and whether they
should. |
|
66: |
very helpful |
|
67: |
It is extremely helpful! |
|
68: |
I rarely used it as I forwarded all
messages from Piazza to my UNSW email. |
|
69: |
N/A |
|
70: |
N/A |
|
71: |
It's better than everything else we've
been using at uni. |
|
72: |
Great way to encourage students to ask
questions |
| Summary:
Very positive, though I'm not sure I can
sustain the responsiveness - I made 600+
posts during the semester. |
73: |
The course instructors replied
impressively quickly! |
|
|
Summary overall: Another
generally positive semester.
- The usual love/hate
relationship with the assignments with the balance
about right.
- Debugging skills seem
an issue (i.e. debugging is a bigger time sink than it
should be)
- Piazza is popular, but
still a time sink for me.
- Video support for
assignments is viewed favourably.
- Students who get stuck
are not taking advantage of consults.
- Git is popular, but
some students did not know that they can use it.
- Participation marks
in tutorials seem to not be scaling with the increase
in tutorial size.
- EOS workload was raised,
though it is hard to know how much of an issue it is
for the target audience.
I will look at the following for next year.
- Evaluate
the continued use of participation marks in
tutorials given their size.
- Evaluate
the "extra mile" required in EOS, specifically look
at the advanced assignment workload and automarking.
- Provide
overview (video) material for the assignments.
- Investigate
how to help with debugging.
- Advertise
availability of self-supported git in the course also.
|
|