Back Comments from lecturer inline below Survey ID 1401 Title COMP3231/9201/3891/9283 16s1 Description End of semester Operating Systems course survey. Anonymous Yes Fill Ratio 76% (169/223) # Filled 169 # Suspended 4 # Not Filled 50 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. Quick Evaluation 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 Generally a significant increase in "Excellent" across almost all categories.   Excellent Satisfactory Poor N/A N/F Lecturer: Kevin Elphinstone 139 (82%) 26 (15%) 4 (2%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) General OS lectures 91 (54%) 65 (38%) 12 (7%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Your tutor 63 (37%) 29 (17%) 19 (11%) 7 (4%) 5 (3%) 46 (27%) 0 (0%) Tutorials 50 (30%) 31 (18%) 30 (18%) 11 (7%) 1 (1%) 45 (27%) 1 (1%) Asst1: Synchronisation 84 (50%) 49 (29%) 31 (18%) 4 (2%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Asst2: Syscalls 71 (42%) 71 (42%) 22 (13%) 4 (2%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Asst3: Virtual Memory 82 (49%) 51 (30%) 29 (17%) 3 (2%) 4 (2%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Textbook 28 (17%) 20 (12%) 23 (14%) 8 (5%) 0 (0%) 89 (53%) 1 (1%) Computing resources 48 (28%) 56 (33%) 42 (25%) 5 (3%) 1 (1%) 15 (9%) 2 (1%) Course web page 55 (33%) 64 (38%) 44 (26%) 5 (3%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) Piazza message board 90 (53%) 46 (27%) 23 (14%) 6 (4%) 2 (1%) 2 (1%) 0 (0%) Wiki 80 (47%) 53 (31%) 28 (17%) 6 (4%) 0 (0%) 2 (1%) 0 (0%) Help with technical questions 68 (40%) 55 (33%) 30 (18%) 4 (2%) 0 (0%) 12 (7%) 0 (0%) Lecture slides 78 (46%) 65 (38%) 20 (12%) 5 (3%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Lecture video capture 127 (75%) 23 (14%) 10 (6%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 8 (5%) 1 (1%) Operating Systems overall 105 (62%) 56 (33%) 7 (4%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 2. General 2. Would you recommend this course to another student such as yourself? Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button Yes 164 (97%) No 5 (3%) N/F 0 (0%) 3. What were the best things about this course? Question type : Long-answer Answer at the bottom page (162 comments) 4. What were the worst things about this course? Question type : Long-answer Answer at the bottom page (147 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 Lectures were up 20% and tuorials 10%.   Strongly Agree Neutral Strongly Disagree N/A N/F Lectures 130 (77%) 24 (14%) 5 (3%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 8 (5%) 1 (1%) Tutorials 85 (50%) 25 (15%) 8 (5%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) 48 (28%) 1 (1%) 6. How does the quality/value of this course compare to other.... Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button General uptick this year continues.   Among the best Average Among the worst N/F Year 3 COMP courses 125 (74%) 32 (19%) 10 (6%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 2 (1%) COMP courses in general 116 (69%) 40 (24%) 11 (7%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) Courses in general 120 (71%) 34 (20%) 14 (8%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 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 (140 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 (158 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 Hmmm, the textbook continues to be an outlier. The overall uptick continues, with the biggest being lecture video and sample exam questions. Given low lecture attendance, it's not hard to see what's happening here.   Very helpful Helpful Neither helpful or unhelpful Unhelpful N/F Lectures 108 (64%) 56 (33%) 2 (1%) 0 (0%) 3 (2%) Lecture video captures 120 (71%) 37 (22%) 9 (5%) 0 (0%) 3 (2%) Tutorials 58 (34%) 69 (41%) 32 (19%) 5 (3%) 5 (3%) Tutorial questions 62 (37%) 84 (50%) 19 (11%) 1 (1%) 3 (2%) Assignments 112 (66%) 48 (28%) 6 (4%) 1 (1%) 2 (1%) Sample exam questions 98 (58%) 55 (33%) 10 (6%) 3 (2%) 3 (2%) Textbook 28 (17%) 35 (21%) 89 (53%) 9 (5%) 8 (5%) Other sources on the Internet 37 (22%) 89 (53%) 38 (22%) 2 (1%) 3 (2%) 3. Lectures 10. Is the current mode of lecture delivery, using computer-projected slides, effective? Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button Yes 166 (98%) No 2 (1%) N/F 1 (1%) 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 61 (36%) Most of the time 100 (59%) Sometimes 7 (4%) Rarely 0 (0%) Never 0 (0%) N/F 1 (1%) 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 56 (33%) Most of the time 89 (53%) Sometimes 14 (8%) Rarely 1 (1%) Never 0 (0%) N/A 6 (4%) 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 General trend towards "self study" using video continues. Though 60% claim lecture attendance with video replay (75% last year). I did not use videos 15 (9%) I had a clashing timetable, and used the video to regularly catch up. 39 (23%) I nearly always used the videos and skipped the lectures. 35 (21%) I generally attended lectures, but I FREQUENTLY used the videos replay material I did not understand in the lecture. 51 (30%) I generally attended lectures, but I OCCASIONALLY used the videos replay material I did not understand in the lecture. 55 (33%) 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 (92 comments) 15. Any suggestions for improving lectures (including the lecture video captures)? Question type : Long-answer Answer at the bottom page (111 comments) 4. Tutorials 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 Generally similar to previous years.   Strongly Agree Neutral Strongly Disagree N/A N/F The tutorials helped me understand the material 53 (31%) 55 (33%) 15 (9%) 2 (1%) 1 (1%) 42 (25%) 1 (1%) The questions were of appropriate difficulty 46 (27%) 66 (39%) 18 (11%) 2 (1%) 1 (1%) 35 (21%) 1 (1%) The questions should have increased difficulty 9 (5%) 23 (14%) 66 (39%) 21 (12%) 12 (7%) 37 (22%) 1 (1%) The number of questions was appropriate 40 (24%) 58 (34%) 26 (15%) 6 (4%) 1 (1%) 37 (22%) 1 (1%) The number of questions should be expanded 12 (7%) 23 (14%) 55 (33%) 28 (17%) 13 (8%) 36 (21%) 2 (1%) I always prepared for the tutorials 9 (5%) 30 (18%) 40 (24%) 19 (11%) 19 (11%) 51 (30%) 1 (1%) Class participation is important for understanding the material 37 (22%) 35 (21%) 27 (16%) 11 (7%) 12 (7%) 46 (27%) 1 (1%) Occasional tutorials being out of sync with lectures (due to public holidays etc..) is not a problem 30 (18%) 31 (18%) 24 (14%) 20 (12%) 13 (8%) 50 (30%) 1 (1%) 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 The tutor quality varied from really high to OK on the balance. I'll pass the feedback on to improve all.   Excellent OK Poor N/A N/F Tutor A 14 (8%) 11 (7%) 8 (5%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) 108 (64%) 27 (16%) Tutor B 26 (15%) 4 (2%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 113 (67%) 26 (15%) Tutor C 2 (1%) 7 (4%) 0 (0%) 4 (2%) 1 (1%) 126 (75%) 29 (17%) Tutor D 31 (18%) 12 (7%) 6 (4%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 103 (61%) 17 (10%) 18. Any suggestions for improving tutorials? Question type : Long-answer Answer at the bottom page (91 comments) 5. Assignments 19. Please rate the level of difficulty of the assignments Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button Hmmm, assignments have rated more "just right" than previous years.   Too easy Just right Too difficult N/F Asst1: Synchonisation 12 (7%) 38 (22%) 106 (63%) 10 (6%) 2 (1%) 1 (1%) Asst2: System Calls 1 (1%) 7 (4%) 113 (67%) 43 (25%) 4 (2%) 1 (1%) Asst3: Virtual Memory 1 (1%) 3 (2%) 79 (47%) 61 (36%) 23 (14%) 2 (1%) 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 95 (56%) 40 (24%) 26 (15%) 7 (4%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) Asst2: System Calls 51 (30%) 48 (28%) 39 (23%) 24 (14%) 6 (4%) 1 (1%) Asst3: Virtual Memory 37 (22%) 40 (24%) 49 (29%) 29 (17%) 13 (8%) 1 (1%) 21. Did the supporting material (manuals, notes, comments in code) provide sufficient information for solving the assignment? Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button Another general uptick, though still unclear why 2016 was a good year.   Very much Somewhat Not at all N/F Asst1: Synchonisation 97 (57%) 37 (22%) 28 (17%) 2 (1%) 2 (1%) 3 (2%) Asst2: System Calls 51 (30%) 58 (34%) 43 (25%) 12 (7%) 2 (1%) 3 (2%) Asst3: Virtual Memory 40 (24%) 64 (38%) 37 (22%) 16 (9%) 7 (4%) 5 (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 51 (30%) 90 (53%) 25 (15%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 2 (1%) C pointers 43 (25%) 77 (46%) 43 (25%) 4 (2%) 0 (0%) 2 (1%) C pointer arithmetic 37 (22%) 65 (38%) 53 (31%) 11 (7%) 0 (0%) 3 (2%) Compilation toolchains (gcc, ld) 12 (7%) 47 (28%) 67 (40%) 36 (21%) 4 (2%) 3 (2%) Debugging with GDB or similar 11 (7%) 28 (17%) 52 (31%) 65 (38%) 11 (7%) 2 (1%) Application programming using system calls 6 (4%) 26 (15%) 33 (20%) 66 (39%) 36 (21%) 2 (1%) Assembler programming (on any platform) 6 (4%) 67 (40%) 78 (46%) 14 (8%) 2 (1%) 2 (1%) Source code version control 29 (17%) 54 (32%) 53 (31%) 22 (13%) 8 (5%) 3 (2%) Source code navigation (cscope, gtags, ctags or similar) 9 (5%) 12 (7%) 24 (14%) 42 (25%) 80 (47%) 2 (1%) 23. How confident are you with the following low-level and general programming concepts AFTER the course? Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button Like previous years, 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 110 (65%) 57 (34%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) C pointers 100 (59%) 66 (39%) 2 (1%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) C pointer arithmetic 93 (55%) 68 (40%) 6 (4%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) Compilation toolchains (gcc, ld) 31 (18%) 90 (53%) 39 (23%) 7 (4%) 2 (1%) Debugging with GDB or similar 33 (20%) 86 (51%) 40 (24%) 9 (5%) 1 (1%) Application programming using system calls 39 (23%) 95 (56%) 31 (18%) 2 (1%) 2 (1%) Assembler programming (on any platform) 20 (12%) 107 (63%) 36 (21%) 2 (1%) 4 (2%) Source code version control 70 (41%) 75 (44%) 23 (14%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) Source code navigation (cscope, gtags, ctags or similar) 45 (27%) 60 (36%) 42 (25%) 20 (12%) 2 (1%) 24. Which source code version control system were you most familiar with BEFORE taking the course. Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button Hmmm, the fraction of students unfamiliar with git is shrinking. I'll check again in 2017, but I suspect that 2017 might be the last year before switching to git. It'll depend a little on what the new COMP1511 looks like. git 145 (86%) hg (mercurial) 0 (0%) svn (subversion) 8 (5%) other 4 (2%) I had not used version control before 11 (7%) N/F 1 (1%) 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 Another small uptick   Not really Somewhat Very much N/F Did the assignment work help with this? 3 (2%) 9 (5%) 13 (8%) 36 (21%) 105 (62%) 3 (2%) 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 Pretty similar to previous years, except for coding appearing more time consuming than previously and approaching debugging.   < 1 hour 2-3 hours 4-8 hours 9-15 hours 16-30 hours 30+ hours N/F Reading/comprehending the spec. 13 (8%) 62 (37%) 52 (31%) 27 (16%) 11 (7%) 2 (1%) 2 (1%) Following/answering the guided questions to the source code. 30 (18%) 67 (40%) 49 (29%) 14 (8%) 4 (2%) 4 (2%) 1 (1%) Further browsing of the OS161 source code to understand the assignment task. 7 (4%) 43 (25%) 62 (37%) 33 (20%) 14 (8%) 8 (5%) 2 (1%) Designing a solution 8 (5%) 39 (23%) 56 (33%) 39 (23%) 17 (10%) 9 (5%) 1 (1%) Coding 1 (1%) 15 (9%) 35 (21%) 53 (31%) 41 (24%) 23 (14%) 1 (1%) Debugging 2 (1%) 12 (7%) 36 (21%) 45 (27%) 42 (25%) 31 (18%) 1 (1%) Testing using the provided tests 13 (8%) 64 (38%) 53 (31%) 21 (12%) 14 (8%) 3 (2%) 1 (1%) Writing your own tests 81 (48%) 58 (34%) 23 (14%) 5 (3%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) Learning assumed knowledge (e.g. C pointer programming, casting, source code browsing) 85 (50%) 46 (27%) 25 (15%) 4 (2%) 4 (2%) 4 (2%) 1 (1%) 27. Any suggestions for improving the assignments? Question type : Long-answer Answer at the bottom page (106 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 (139 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 Seems similar except the smaller automarked advance assignment components are viewed more favourably (especially providing the testing tools). Balance seems about right, and 2017 will be similar.   Strongly Agree Agree Indifferent Disagree Strongly Disagree N/F EOS should be assessed differently to OS. 13 (8%) 20 (12%) 19 (11%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) 115 (68%) Compared to OS, completing EOS should indicate a greater OS understanding and level of achievement. 21 (12%) 28 (17%) 3 (2%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 117 (69%) Having separate exams is a good way to differentiate EOS from OS. 12 (7%) 28 (17%) 10 (6%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) 117 (69%) Requiring completion of a subset of the advanced assignments is a reasonable way to achieve a higher "bar" for EOS. 21 (12%) 29 (17%) 2 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 117 (69%) The amount of extra assignment work in EOS is about right. 14 (8%) 29 (17%) 9 (5%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 117 (69%) Only automarking the advanced assignments is OK. 7 (4%) 18 (11%) 17 (10%) 7 (4%) 3 (2%) 117 (69%) Releasing the automarking tools for EOS is a good approach. 20 (12%) 22 (13%) 9 (5%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 117 (69%) 30. How would you rate extended OS as a whole? Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button Excellent 28 (17%) 17 (10%) Average 7 (4%) 0 (0%) Poor 0 (0%) N/A 5 (3%) N/F 112 (66%) 31. Any suggestions for improving COMP3891/9283 Extended OS? (e.g. lecture, assignment, or any other component you car to mention). Question type : Long-answer Answer at the bottom page (35 comments) 7. Exam 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 (134 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 Hmmm, exam seemed to be viewed as easier than previous years (a little surprising given the similarity of the material). True/False still  unpopular, but this is not a popularity contest :-)   Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree N/F The exam overall was too hard 2 (1%) 18 (11%) 75 (44%) 57 (34%) 11 (7%) 6 (4%) The exam overall was too short - i.e. it should be 3 hours 6 (4%) 19 (11%) 55 (33%) 58 (34%) 25 (15%) 6 (4%) The exam should contain more True/False questions 1 (1%) 3 (2%) 49 (29%) 71 (42%) 39 (23%) 6 (4%) The exam gave me the oppurtunity to demonstrate my understanding of operating systems 31 (18%) 92 (54%) 33 (20%) 7 (4%) 0 (0%) 6 (4%) I think my exam result will be representative of my operating systems knowledge 21 (12%) 77 (46%) 44 (26%) 17 (10%) 3 (2%) 7 (4%) The final assessment should be weighted more towards the exam 3 (2%) 14 (8%) 50 (30%) 65 (38%) 31 (18%) 6 (4%) 34. Do you have any particular comments you would like to make about the exam? Question type : Long-answer Answer at the bottom page (110 comments) 8. Miscellaneous 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 People are okay with Piazza (though I wonder whether this is more related to my responsiveness) Keep using Piazza. 149 (88%) Get rid of it. 8 (5%) I do not have an opinion of it. 9 (5%) N/F 3 (2%) 36. Any comments on the use of Piazza? Question type : Short-answer Answer at the bottom page (96 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 3 (2%) 9 (5%) Just right 145 (86%) 4 (2%) Too harsh 2 (1%) N/F 6 (4%) 38. What do you think your final result will be for the course? Question type : Single answer -- Radio Button HD 27 (16%) DN 57 (34%) CR 47 (28%) PS 14 (8%) FL 2 (1%) No Idea 19 (11%) N/F 3 (2%) Back to Summary 3. What were the best things about this course? 1: the best things about the course were the projects/assignments. They helped with my personal understanding of the lectures and content . Personally, i thought the content of the course was pretty good aswell. 2: I think this should be a compulsory course for Computer Science students. Even for those who would not specialise in this field, having knowledge of the underlying system would make one a better programmer as they program with the consideration of the OS in mind. 3: The challenge assignments are very useful to help students having a deep understanding of OS and its components in practice 4: Lecture recordings, which helped with study immensely. Content was reasonably challenging without being too much of a burden. 5: assignments are very interesting 6: Teaches real things that are interesting, relevant, and applicable in the real world. 7: The course was constantly engaging, I felt the lecturer was truly passionate and broadly knowledgeable on the subject, everything felt relevant to programming in a broader sense. 8: Interesting and useful topics, set out well 9: I really liked how there was an overview of a lot of different things that I hadn't really considered in that detail before or only understood on a basic level. 10: Course content was interesting and assignments were challenging. 11: Assignments 12: Super interesting content 13: The content was extremely relevant, I found the concurrency/deadlock topics especially relevant since other courses didn't expose us to these topics in depth even though they're super important. 14: Good lecturer Good content 15: Content was interesting and relevant to real to practical applications, no over reliance on theory. 16: The hands on approach it took to learning OS, the content was taught through examples and experience. 17: Very good information on OS for anyone that's interested in how the machines we are glued to every single day for so long (as coders) work. Hands on with a simple yet still relevant OS that really helps understanding of modern OSes such Linux. Good coding experience. 18: Great structure, pace, content relevant 19: The assignments were highly interactive, providing both a fun technical challenge and an awesome learning tool that tied in with the courses content. 20: The tutorials and learning new concepts. 21: Lectures were clear and concise, most concepts that were presented could be related to the fundamentals of operating systems taught in previous lectures. Content was challenging to learn, but it was delivered well. 22: Well structured and learnt a lot! 23: Very well organised. It is easy to follow the Kevin in the lectures. The assignments comprehend and help to understand the materials. The assignment specs are well written. We got quick response from instructors in the forum. Good contributions of students in the forum. 24: Overall the entire content was engaging, relevant and interesting. The assignments were challenging, but fascinating. The textbook recommended was excellent, the only textbook I've actually worn out from use. Easily one of the more exciting courses I've done. 25: The assignments were fun and the lecturer was great. 26: Videos 27: Overall content, piazza, assignments. 28: Very good coverage of stuff in topics, assignments taught a lot in doing them, recordings very useful for going over things again. 29: Assignments complement learning very well Assignment walkthroughs very helpful 30: The practicality of assignments 31: 1. Engaging lectures 2. Good tutorials 3. Challenging assignments 4. Interesting material 32: This is the best course I've taken in my 3 years of Comp Eng. Content, Lectures, Recordings, Assignments, Wiki, The way things were presented, the technical and course support (resources etc.) - absolutely fantastic, top notch. 33: Great lectures - covered alot of content, learnt alot of new things. Assignments were highly relevant and built upon lecture materials 34: The course covers a broad range of topics that are practical e.g. deadlocks/concurrency. The lecture videos posted by the lecturer after each lecture was excellent revision material in case I missed some of the details during lectures. The tutorials were quite useful since some 3rd year COMP courses don't even have tutorials. 35: The virtual memory assignment was really interesting, by the end of it I was ready to explore more low level os internals. 36: Very interesting course with good lectures. The extended lectures in particular were very interesting. 37: I loved all the things we learnt! Definitely one of the best courses I've taken. 38: Extremely well structured, interesting content, passionate lecturer 39: Breadth of content, fun and interesting assignments. 40: Learning about problems OS programmers face 41: Content is interesting and useful. 42: - Well structured - Really good lecture recordings <- This is really important, because 1) clashes with Elec subjects seems frequent (even in previous years); 2) Really good way to re-listen to the lectures from start to finish. Best part of the course tbh. MOOC worthy videos I reckon (or just chuck it on youtube for the world's benefit). - Lecturer took the time to answer people's Questions on Piazza. Since the lecturer/tutor answers the question, we know that the answer is right (and not an educated guess by another student studying at the same time). 43: It teaches you in detail about all kinds of things related to operating systems, to the point where I would feel comfortable writing most of these things 44: Useful knowledges and practical technologies 45: good practical activities. (assignment, piazza and tutorials) 46: Assignment overall are good desire,and make me understand theory more deeply 47: The lecturer. 48: Having the wiki/forums to answer questions, making all the research/queries for assignment being answered in one location (or directed by) 49: the real OS programming assignments; pizza help 50: Kevin is brilliant. Good to see the staff are all interested and knowledgeable in what they are doing, including recent research. 51: Well-structured and organised (unlike many other uni courses), lectures were very well done - interesting and attention-holding 52: The lecturer was amazing, great notes, lectures and material. Assignments were highly helpful in understanding the content. 53: lecture slides were very clear 54: The assignments and Kevin's lectures. 55: Interesting topics, fun assignments. 56: Very well structured and well articulated lectures. 57: Good important content that I never learned anywhere else in detail. 58: Understanding things at lower levels, completing assignments and seeing it work. 59: Overall of the course is excellent 60: Learnt quite a bit about operating systems. 61: Kevin gets straight to the point. The lecture video captures were very helpful for revision. 62: Very interesting content 63: Really interesting content, challenging and high-envolvement assignments. 64: Content 65: Wide knowledge about OS 66: in review when I found I studied so much things and I could put them together like a knowledge net 67: Interesting content that ranged between higher level stuff as well as lower level more technical details. Interesting examples looked at etc.Best tutor out of every course i've ever done (Tutor B (sorry if i spent it wrong)) 68: The assignments were very interesting and challenging. You learned a lot about data structures and programming kernels. The theory is also quite interesting. 69: Enthusiasm and interest in subject demonstrated by the lecturer. Organisation of the lecture materials and course as a whole. In depth nature of the course. Quality of supporting materials such as the wiki. Though challenging the assignments are valuable learning experiences that I overall enjoyed. Among the best lecturers I have ever had. 70: The assignments actually help you learn concepts described in the course 71: -Great lecturer -Great tutor -Plenty of resources, don't even need the book. 72: Best: Extremely good assignments. Even with pairs/doing most of it. Very high quality lecturer. Clear notes. Reasonably good lecture recordings. Just great content. Honestly, this was a course I didn't really anticipate enjoying because I thought I'd never need to know how to make an OS because that would be reinventing the wheel/an entire waste of time, but I did actually get a lot out of it especially with concurrency. Deadline leniency was extremely nice and I liked it a lot. Means I actually continued doing the assignments well afte rit was overdue to perfect it. I didn't even hand in (overwrite) one of my assignments on concurrency. I just did it for the sake of finishing it. Was very enjoyable to not have huge deadline pressure. 73: The course content. It covered various things that are useful even outside of an OS context. The lectures and tutes were well run. 74: Lectures/Lecture videos 75: Assignments helped understand a lot of the course content 76: full of challenge 77: The Assignments! They were very challenging and time consuming but I got heaps out of them and they were really satisfying to have achieved. 78: Assignments were fun. Lectures were engaging just like the content. 79: Almost every single topic was interesting. Almost all material covered felt relevant 80: Very good lecture slide content 81: Interesting content, engaged lecturer, useful (but difficult) assignments 82: the contents were useful knowledge 83: Learning about the MMU and virtual memory, as well as the extended topics 84: Getting to understand how operating systems work 85: Very interesting content. Fun, problem solving questions. That feeling when things worked. 86: The content and the lecturer. 87: The lecturer was deep in OS research, and so had profound insight, and interesting stories, about OSes in general. The assignments set, though quite challenging prima facie, were actually quite adequate given the topic material. The extended assignment parts were also quite interesting, and allowed one to have certain design responsibilities that real OS designers face. 88: Interesting and in depth content. Assignments were all practical as opposed to theoretical. 89: - Lectures generally quite interesting - Coding in the OS/looking at a simplified OS codebase was fun - I can now understand blog posts on the internet related to OS dev and Linus' rants^W^W^W. - not specific to the course (more about os161) but the design doc about asst2 included in asst3 was interesting 90: Learning about how operating systems work. Some things were really interesting like VM and Multithreading. 91: Good quality video recordings 92: How operating system works 93: -Covers a broad range of topics to appropriate depth -Structured very well, content heavy but easy to revise -Lots of useful information on Piazza that was a big help for the assignments and just general learning (simply browsing through Piazza posts clears up confusion) 94: Learning lots about operating systems and how everything works, really in depth and covering a broad range of topics. Assignments were interesting, at an appropriate difficulty and definitely enhanced learning the outcomes of this course. 95: Lots of interesting content, challenging assignments 96: It's practical and built me a solid fundamental understanding on OS. 97: The content (especially the theory) was really interesting, and I found myself sometimes enjoying learning it, which does not happen for many subjects. Lecturer was also excellent, one of the best I've had at the university. He was very good at teaching and explaining things. 98: Lecturer could explain things clearly. Content was interesting. Assignments were challenging but doable and kind of practical. 99: The course content was interesting and I feel like it would be helpful to know in the future 100: tutorials were informative, content was interesting, content seemed practical and relevant to today, lecturer had a sense of humour 101: The list of good things is long, but the main are: 1. Very good slides 2. Very competent lecturer, could answer any question 3. Provided sample questions, much easier to learn 4. The lecture covers a lot of OS, very deep 5. Very good intro to assignments, may the major point. Shorten significantly the time for me to start to solve it. In the sum: the top 3 lecturer at UNSW, seriously. I had a lot of bad experience at UNSW, but Kevin like to teach. I felt always that the lecturer want to provide the knowledge. 102: First/Third Assignment 103: That wiki is absolutely brilliant. 104: Interesting assignments, and the content was very applicable to other areas. Extended OS was also always interesting. 105: Assignments - tough but well guided Bonus marks - rewards extra effort Content - Covers a wide range of topics without having to rush or skim over details 106: Detailed information for beginner to learn about OS 107: Assignments were really helpful for understanding the major topics of the course. Challenging but rewarding. Contents are very useful. 108: Lecture recordings high quality and readily available. Lectures were well explained. Tutorials Structured well and All staff very knowledgable 109: It's an interesting course and provides a lot of great and useful knowledge for not necessarily just operating systems that could be applied elsewhere. 110: Learning about how everything relates in an OS 111: Depth of all general topics of operating systems and their uses/examples. Having different ways of solving the same solution with the os161 code. 112: This course was well presented and supported with interesting and challenging content throughout the semester. The assignments gave an opportunity to work with a large code base, which I had not been able to experience in other courses. 113: Good overview of operating systems, with practical assignments to cement understanding 114: Structured and paced really well, content was challenging but well worth it 115: EOS advanced assignments were lots of fun and very rewarding. Given the really 'difficult' parts were worth bonus marks, I did not feel I was at a disadvantage doing EOS. 116: The content, assignments and lecturer 117: Understand important part of OS, very helpful for not only OS, also other course such as database 118: the student submitted Q&A on the wiki. the answers to the tutorials were uploaded (after the tutorials). video lectures could be played at 2x speed. 119: Good content, lectures and assignment. 120: Great lecturer, great assignments, awesome content 121: Kevin explained concepts in a very simple and concise way, it made learning a very easy experience. 122: The assignments 123: Challenging assignments, good lectures and recordings, good lecturer and tutor. Lots of practice exam questions, also access to previous year's material and surveys gave a lot of insight into the course. Piazza was great, helped figure out some content I wasn't sure about, and point out some possible bugs in the code. 124: The clarity, depth, pace, breadth, tutorials, lecturer, and the challenging assignments! 125: -Excellent structure and content -Good variety of OS internals taught -Focus on concepts and ideas rather than on a specific system(especially the fact that most concepts could be extended to non-OS systems) 126: Working with a large code base and integrating solutions into it. Learning that OS's are not scary and boil down to small modules and repeated programming paradigms. Lecture format with the video bookmarks are informative and easy to revisit and skim through for writing notes. Ample time to do assignment. 127: The assignments, though difficult, really forced you to understand the course content, so I felt as if I really understood what I had been taught after completing the assignments. The tutors and lecturer really seemed to be passionate about helping the students and providing content in an accessible way. The course recordings were amazing; it really felt like Kevin cared about how well the students did, which does not come across in a lot of other courses. 128: All the extra marks from assignments to this survey is very motivating. And my partner is also amazing. My tutor was also bloody amazing, stayed back hours just to answer the questions we had even though he was busy. Rafi! 129: Kevin is awesome 130: Course content is tight and interesting, comes together very well for a complete understanding of the foundations of OS's. The assignments were great - very focused, scaled well alongside content we learnt, and very good for understanding concepts. Lecture recordings were f****** awesome, great quality. My tutor Kalana was an absolute god, and I would not have done near as well without him (proven by the fact that the 1 week that he was not there and we had another tutor, I had to work much harder to understand). 131: Good structure 132: The lecturer and how the content was presented. The assignments and detail. 133: Rich resources 134: It was hard, full of non-trivial content, but taught me a lot. Recording video content HELPED A LOT! In the lecturers I didn't always understand things and would zone out. Being able to watch the lectures on a slightly faster speed helped a lot with my attention. These helped A LOT with revision revision!!!! 135: Recorded lectures, assignments, content, wiki and tutorial questions for exam prep. 136: I like the idea that it teaches you the underlying detail of the Operating Systems. I would not say it is an easy course but it is one of the most fun and challenging courses I have ever encountered. It teaches you think in a different way. 137: Working on a large system, implementing features to run against set tests. The content was always interesting and felt relevant. 138: Course content was explained very clearly and the assignments were helpful in further understanding the content. 139: course is really well organized and I can almost get help/hint on anything i have question on. 140: I think this course contains content that I believe no one should graduate without having been exposed to. I also think that being introduced to a huge pre-built codebase like OS161 provides invaluable experience. Everyone will eventually be thrown into even more difficult projects than this. 141: The content is substantial and challenging. 142: Learning how things worked at a low level 143: The quality of lectures/ lecture recordings. Assignments were challenging but not impossible. Message board was very useful. 144: A whirlwind tour of operating system notions that feels comprehensive. 145: Challenging assignments 146: My tutor was amazing, the wiki was great for the exam and the lecturer was really good and engaging 147: Lecture videos, really good 148: Assignment really help us to understand the materials. I hope there will be more assignments 149: Very interesting and challenging assignments and content. It feels like a big achievement when assignments work. 150: Good course content, good lectures 151: Interesting content, well organised and lots of help available. 152: Syllabus was clear and the hardness level was appropriate. Learnt at a good enough depth. 153: This course is well organised - particularly with course resources: lecture slides and recordings. Piazza was very helpful for the assignments (e.g. getting hints). 154: Really well structured walk through operating systems. Forum was very useful. 155: Kevin and good quality recorded lectures that made rewatching them to understand parts much better than other classes. Kevin seems to enjoy teaching the students and seeing us learn, whereas some other lecturers make it seem like they don't want to be there. 156: it is a course with a good pace of learning, did not feel that I was behind when attempting assignments 157: Tutor (Tutor B) was really helpful with advice and feedback. Lecturer (Kevin) was well versed in the content and explained things well/interestingly. 158: most of the course; content was pretty interesting, assignments were great, exam didn't feel cheap barring some multiple choice questions. 159: The assignments were a good balance of challenging and satisfying. 160: Content 161: the lecturer was excellent, 162: Learning about how an operating system really works. Understanding and appreciating the underlying concepts of an operating system. 4. What were the worst things about this course? 1: Nothing bad, just that synchronisation seemes to be covered in a lot of courses and seems like an overlap. 2: - Give longer time for assignments. - Final exam multiple choice was too wordy. (2 full pages!) - May be a bit too much content (esp. to remember for the final exam). Definitely don't add more! 3: nothing 4: My tutor wasn't very good, and the last assignment was a bit fast for me. 5: -Lecture slides were fairly ambiguous at times (I learnt mostly off slides due to clashes with work and uni). What lectures I did watch were great however. 6: Nothing 7: Debugging 8: Some parts of the lecture slides seem to be missing crucial 'general' elements of the topic as the 'what' component. Although most it can be inferred from context. Also, the wiki is really annoying to log into. 9: Not enough support for ext OS(especially about ext assignment) 10: 3rd assignment was very difficult, unfortunately clashed with other obligations I had at end of semester. 11: "some multiple choice questions" 12: The code base for the assignments is much bigger than anything I have worked with before and I spent a lot of time just working out what was happening. 13: the ambiguity of the assignments the extreme difference between 'practice' exam and the final exam lack of mid session negative marks for the ambiguous worded mcq 14: Pair assignment/not a particularly timely/helpful partner. Made large assignments very difficult to handle (along with other subjects). Assignments were quite difficult to get a grasp on at first, extended lecture into helped but maybe more explicit kind of help? They were still reasonable, I just found it coding when I wasn't 100% sure what I was doing. Yes, Matthew B had some kind of 2.4G interference with my mic setup. I was under the impression I had fixed it by using a USB extension cable to move the dongle away from the lectern. I monitor closely next year. 15: Some recordings have sound issues. Also, the amount of course content can be overwhelming. There are lots of concepts to remember especially for the final exam. 16: the assignments were difficult to understand when first reading it 17: Sample exam structure was different to the actual exam 18: Nothing really, everything was good. 19: Class participation felt a little forced in the tutorials. Not sure of a good way to approach this though 20: I'd prefer git or mercurial be used for source control, as it is easier to manage them. I found myself frequently wanting the ability to do partial commits (e.g. git -p) which is not supported well in svn. 21: -Assignments were due at the same time as other 3rd year comp classes! 22: Assignment difficulty and workload 23: last assignment was too hard 24: Time pressure of assignments. 25: Can't think of any. Perhaps the fact that we're studying HDDs in a bit too much detail given that it's probably redundant with SSDs, or it feels like it. We're essentially just talking about circle geometry with disk rotation and it's good to mention but perhaps more focus could be given on security or another topic. 26: It was a good experience, but there was a struggle to understand fully what was required to be known to complete the assignments. 27: Assignment deadlines, only had a week to complete assignment 2 with the early bonus. Negative marking in T/F, that had a 1:1 correspondence. 28: None 29: Lecture was split, unable to attend most 30: I wouldn't say it's "bad" but at the beginning of the course the lecturer said debugging was an issue. I feel like that hasn't been addressed. It would be good to somehow integrate debugging more formally into the course. To somehow encourage people to use debugging tools rather than stick with printfs. 31: There's a lot of content to cover - I enjoyed the content, but found keeping track of all of it hard. 32: some terminology was not clear introduced before use, cause some confusion, in addition the topic inherence was a bit weak, which cause some difficulty connecting those topics 33: Not enough time for the later assignments. We only had one week to do assignment 2 and 3 in order to make the early bonus deadline. 34: There was a fair bit of content that I was already familiar with in the lectures. Also the mark distribution was somewhat confusing 35: hard course content 36: No lab component. 37: I feel there was a lot of topics covered, some of them were covered too in depth and others not so much. For example, I would have liked multiprocessors covered more in depth. Perhaps a little less time on file management. 38: The fact that content was so deep and that the course was so broad personally felt like this course forces you to commit at least 2.5x the amount of reading and understanding required for the course in comparison to the average COMP course. The content is not necessarily difficult but since the scope is too large it's hard to drill certain things into memory without constant practice. This in turn makes me realise that I should have been fiddling around with the OS and trying to make things work on my own, even just small things such as a single syscall or solve a simple deadlock issue prior the actual assignments or even content has been uploaded. 39: Heavy workload at times 40: Assignments were very difficult 41: Felt like there were a few "learn these algorithms just because", e.g. memory allocation was just learning 4 algorithms, including useless ones, same with page replacement 42: Not much really. As an extended student, I regret not making time to also go to the tutorials. (This was my responsability, and the opportunity was available to me, just not the time) 43: For assignment 2 and 3, being unable to test your functions until you have you complete all the function sand being unsure what you're doing is correct. Yes, it was painful to be watched.... It's a known intermittent bug when drawing while inside presenter view in powerpoint. Sadly, MS has not tracked it down in PP 2013 or 2016. I plan to just use the screen duplicate view which does not suffer the bug. 44: The unresponsive drawings on the lecture slides were painful to watch. 45: A lot of things to remember, all types of algorithms etc. 46: Debugging. 47: Lecture Slides have errors in them which can confuse us. Tutorial questions should explain answers a bit more for various (computation based) questions. Also wiki answers should be improved, some are outright wrong/misleading. 48: Personally I found myself quite lost for parts of the second and third assignments, although this could be a positive thing as it encouraged independent learning. This isn't really a bad thing, as it was a challenge at the time but resulting in me learning more in the end. 49: Exam multiple choice layout 50: Content was sometimes covered a bit slowly 51: So much content. Realise that's necessary but for me personally it was a bit too much to handle. 52: Not sure if there's anything I'd say are poor aspects of the course itself. 53: Needing to partner up, tutorial marks. 54: It was difficult to know if the best approach was being taken to a problem, and how to detect when something was not working as it should. 55: Should be a bit more about debugging 56: negatively marked multiple choice 57: At times content got boring/hard to focus during lectures. 58: - 59: Assignments felt overly difficult at times. 60: Bit of a divide between theoretical lectures and practical assignments. The assignment specific EOS lectures/wiki helped with this. Very short turnaround time for content from lectures to tutorials. Multiple choice in the exam. 61: Assignment 2 had very short time. Assignments 2 and 3 weren't that easy to figure out what we were supposed to do. Could have used more help/hints on those. 62: - A fair bit of outdated content (memory segmentation, unused memory allocators, assuming uniprocessor, etc) - Lack of extended topics (only 5) with many lectures replaced with "assignment walkthroughs". Could have spent the time learning about virtualisation to a greater depth, for example. 63: extend student have no tutorial, so lecturerer have to use extend class to do the tutorial 64: Not much to be very honest. 65: The timing of the lectures/assignment releases didn't always line up, so the assignment would be out but we hadn't covered the necessary content to complete them. 66: Nothing 67: The worse thing about this course was how the tutorial was always a week ahead of the lectures. It was hard to prepare for the tutorials and we were often lost with the content until the lectures came by. 68: Exam 69: Losing sleep from assignments :) Some resources such as the Intro. To Programming Threads on the course website are difficult to understand when it's not using a familiar syntax to explain how it's done. Perhaps consider updating the static resources that are available to students. 70: Workload wasn't necessarily distributed across the semester. i.e. Work was mostly concentrated on assignments 71: n/a 72: Nothing :) 73: Hard to say, I felt asst2 was honestly a bit confusing to do despite the explanations given (both base and extended) if I had to a pick a "worst". 74: Assignment I'm going to try to change my lecturing style to get better with the virtual laser pointer in PP. 75: The lack of a lab. Understand it is a 3rd year course but i strongly believe a 2 hour lab session with tutorial 1 hour would be highly useful. Theory is awesome but implementation is where a lot of people struggled. Recorded lectures where kevin doesnt use the mouse pointer to point to specific parts in the diagram and uses lazer points. Use the mouse pointer so online viewers and follow too. 76: Too challenging assignments 77: mm, mostly the fault of my partner and I, but the third assignment was really hard to approach! 78: Going through tutorial content that we didn't cover yet in the lecture. 79: Class Marks and my Tutor. Class Marks The class marks were a lost cause for me. When the semester gets deep, it's very hard to keep up with the material due to assignments, and hence answering questions (and even asking a question) in tutorials is impossible, so the marks are literally thrown away in an attempt to get more marks via the assignments. The tutorial structure is fantastic, but allocating marks for participation is IMO a bad strategy to engage people in tutorials. Sometimes I just want to go there and absorb things without the guilt or pressure of performing so I gain some marks. My Tutor I do not intend on being judgemental or mean whatsoever - this may indeed be my own shortcoming - but I had trouble understanding my tutor because of his accent. Half the time I had no idea what he was saying, and by the time I figured out what he had said, he said many other things which I completely missed. I had the same problem with the Computer Architecture Lecturer, because of which I'm learning the entire course from the textbook (thankfully your lectures are super excellent :) ). My tutor was nice and tried his best, and whatever he did explain he explained it well. I just had a problem with not understanding the accent. I'm not trying to be offensive - this is a genuine issue I faced. 80: Tutorial before lecture is bad. And tutor is not very good at explaining concept that is not yet covered in lecture. 81: There wasn't a very clear roadmap on what each subdirectory of OS/161 was. It would have been helpful at the start of the course to have a diagram or something that explained what each directory contained 82: The assignment version control uses svn, with which I'm not familiar with and hope we can use git. 83: Big jump in knowledge from the lectures to the assignments 84: I did the extended course and at the end of it I'm not really sure if it was worth it. The extra assignments were good but the extra content wasn't as interesting as I was expecting based off the regular course. 85: I feel sorry for anyone that used svn. 86: N/A 87: N/A really 88: n/a 89: The acronyms (and the lack of glossary in the final exam) 90: the order of different part. Concurrency and Deadlock are the most difficult part i think, if these can be scheduled later that would be helpful to adapt to the difficult of this course 91: Some of the base lectures were a bit dry and I felt could have been covered in less time. 92: - P() and V() are silly names. - somewhat minor: I would've liked less time spent on concepts that are outdated/largely succeeded as of now (e.g. memory segmentation) - Please word wrap website. 93: My partner not putting enough work into every assignments. Maybe the buddy system could be revised. 94: could have some small tasks for the assginement3 . I eventually can not debug my assignment. and up until now i still have no clue what i did wrong regarding to multiple-process vm. 95: -Even with good knowledge from lectures, assignments were difficult, especially due to debugging issues (i.e. didn't know how to debug because no idea what problem was) -wanted to use git for version but ended up using svn because of official support (git > svn) 96: That I had an unavoidable clash with 1 hour of lectures. 97: Density of material covered; but still not a major issue. All topics felt important, even the less involved (multiprocessing, etc.) 98: The requirement for a partner for assignments 99: I personally found the assignments a little difficult and overwhelming. Most of the time I needed my partner to explain concepts/details to me. 100: asst code walkthrough did too late; more guiding needed for reading Os161 around asst0 101: So much content which had to be memorized for the final exam, would have preferred the finals to be of less weightage 102: None 103: Tutorials were boring. I'm also painfully afraid of speaking in class, I sometimes chose to say nothing and lose a mark despite having attended. 104: keeping up with content around the middle/just after the middle for Asst2 and Asst3. 105: Group work. Feedback takes incredibly long and is pretty unclear at times. EOS wasn't very interesting (only 5 content lectures). 106: I hope more details about populate os like Linux or windows 107: Lack of code walkthrough from the lecturer. There are some great ones on youtube. 108: Would have liked more pseudocode or pointers to relevant os161 code for the parts of the course not covered in assignments. Related, not sure how feasible it is, but I would have liked more code walkthrough guides for the lower level code in os161. I enjoyed reading through the code that the assignments were built on top of but past a certain depth it was confusing, particularly trying to piece together all the parts. 109: I can't think of anything bad with this course. 110: Some small topic not included, I want to know how OS boot and how Linux kernel organized 111: Course Website :) Use WebCMS3. Honestly could not blame anything else. 112: The textbook. 113: The assignment review lectures should have been 1 week earlier. The assignments were made a lot more clear by them, but the early due date usually occurred before the review lectures. 114: N/A 115: Assignment 3, maybe due to my lack of understanding and my partner's but yeah... 116: The second and third assignments were too difficult and too long, and having to do them in pairs did not work well (in terms of diving workload). 117: None 118: tutorial and tutor, somehow, are not so helpful as not strictly 119: N/A. Best COMP course I have taken. 120: Don't really have anything bad to say! 121: there were a few lighting issues but that was really unforeseeable. 122: Tutorial participation felt a bit pointless since people simply turning up to tutes would be awarded marks. 123: Needed more guidance for starting the assignments. 124: The worst things about this course were the fact thst the tutorials were poorly presented and sometimes not that relevant. 125: Would love another 15 min on the final 126: insufficient instruction for the assignment. Too difficult at the beginning. 127: Security is not included 128: I have a strong fear of double clicking when highlighting text now. 129: I did not enjoy the format of having to answer questions to get a participation mark at the tutorials. Everyone raises their hand and it feels like a competition, and not a good learning environment. Also, my tutorial was before the lectures in the weel, so we were covering content not yet taught in lectures, which was not ideal. Assignments were also difficult. 130: The broad course content. Studying for the exam was hard because there is so much content and so much things to remember. 131: Tutor was not so prepared each week. Stopped going to tutes because he was annoying me. 132: Perhaps Harmonic Mean marking system for the course, the negative marking of the multiple choice question in the exam. I suppose that some of the answer in wiki is not really that helpful in the sense that it provides a not too serious answer (mainly because of other students who wrote it down). Another thing is that it really takes a lot of your time especially the assignments. 133: sometimes the lecture covered things with assumptions that were not mentioned. maybe for the complex topics, have more extensive examples and explanation of assumptions (for self-study) for the weaker students who may not immediately understand the concept. 134: Due to difficulty, some assignments were initially hard to start, but once you got going it became understandable. 135: Assignment 3 was a bit confusing, and the number of topics covered in the final was too broad 136: The assignments were really hard. Also tutorial marks were spuriously given out. 137: The tutorial questions did not seem to line up with the lecture materials very well. it seemed as if the tutorials were sometimes one week ahead, and we were asked questions to things we have not learnt yet. Using svn was a bit frustrating although this is my own fault. i would have preferred git but in the end it doesnt matter much 138: The assignment questions/walkthroughs could be difficult to follow/answer sometimes. Very minor nitpick though, and was alleviated by the tutorials covering it and the solutions being posted. I can't think of anything else! 139: Second Assignment/Tutor 140: Too many topics need to learn in one semester 141: None that i can think of. 142: We are basically thrown in the deep end of the pool in the assignments, especially assignments 2 and 3. Though there were introductory explanations of what we had to do. I feel 80% of the assignments were roaming and delving through the code to understand what fits with what. To counteract this difficulty, Piazza was my go-to when it came to learning. 143: Assignments (esp 3) 144: Gaps between lectures and assignments. Perhaps a few labs to help understand how to work with and implement into OS161. 145: Some technical content could be explained in more detail (exactly how everything pieces together within the OS) 146: Didn't really like how the participation class marks worked. 147: A lot of content 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: Maybe you can have COMP3211 as a suggested co-requisite because it does help clear up concepts about pipelining, processors, memory, binary, etc. 3: I would say that COMP1917 and COMP1927 or basically C language in general. I didn't do both of the courses due to credit transfer and as such I have to learn the content for both subjects along the way which takes time. 4: They are suitable. 5: Memory allocation. Yes, it is. 6: All good. 7: The official pre-reqs (mainly knowledge with C) was sufficient but getting introduced to os161 source code was a bit daunting. 8: None.Really only required C fundamentals (1917, 1927) which are pre reqs anyway. 9: Things werent too hard to pick up 10: Fine as it is now. 11: I feel like my background knowledge was adequate to help me understand the course 12: None - COMP2121 was pretty much it. 13: - 14: I dont think I was missing anything, though my C was weak at the beginning. Having done COMP2121 was very very helpful for understanding assembly, as well as understanding the underlying relationship between hardware. 15: Prereqs were good. Felt like I didn't have the interest/background of some people in EOS but I didn't fall behind. Some people were even doing them as coreqs and seemed to do fine. 16: N/A; yes 17: The pre-requisites are suitable. I was a bit rusty on my C at the start of the course (hadn't used C for more than a year) but I got the hang of it again fairly quickly. COMP2121 did help with being comfortable with interrupts, registers etc. 18: Not much. Knowing a bit about computer hardware does help in understanding the pipeline structure and the relationship between OS and the hardware, but it's not necessary. Strong coding skills is all that's needed really. 19: different level of memory 20: Background knowledge was fine 21: 1. None 2. Yes 22: Yes, prerequisites are suitable. 23: Prereqs were fine (but I had entered the course with prior experience) 24: Official pre-requisites are suitable. 25: Nope 26: Pre-requisites are suitable. 27: Wasnt missing anything, official pre-reqs are fine 28: Pretty sure it was brought up in recent surveys but the 1+ year break between taking a C-based course makes it difficult to pick up quickly and well. This includes debugging techniques. That being said, good resources were provided for debugging. 29: Nothing. Just know about C. So 1927... 30: I think the prerequisites prepared me pretty well. 31: Nothing really. COMP2121 was a really good base, more linking between the two would be interesting (as an example, 2121 deals with interrupts, nested interrupts etc. and this could be mentioned in the OS context). 32: nothing, they are good 33: The prerequisites were suitable preparation 34: File navigation. Pre-reqs are suitable. 35: knowledge about 9032 and 9222 36: Coming from elec eng, I didn't feel like there were any serious gaps in prereq-knowledge. 37: Just first year computing is fine 38: official prereqs are suitable, if anything 2121 is not needed. 39: The official prereqs provide adequate background for understanding what is not in the course itself. 40: Just an introduction back to c and low level implementation. Could be a simple video 2-3 hour introduction video that eases you into the c required to work the os/161 41: I had any background knowledge required. COMP1927 and COMP2121 were suitable in preparing for OS. 42: I don't think I was missing any background knowledge. The prereqs are good. 43: I think pre-requisites had given comprehensive illustration 44: OS seemed very standalone. Some 2121 microprocessor was included but was not examined. 45: Nothing comes to mind, elec eng versions of prereqs were mostly suitable. 46: The pre-reqs are fine. Don't think there's enough time in a semester to cover anymore knowledge 47: None 48: COMP2121 is quite sufficient. Prior knowledge to C is helpful (COMP1917/COMP1927). 49: I believe that the prerequisites were appropriate for the course. However I struggled to learn to use GDB on my own, never having used it much before. A GDB lab would have been helpful. 50: Given that this is a third year elective and I am currently in my second year (but third and final year of my degree) I have not completed 2911 as of yet which holds an introduction to concurrency. Although it is not deep I would probably recommend that most students don't attempt to undertake OS unless you have completed 2911 or are completely confident in your talent/time/dedication 51: It would have been nice to know a bit more about the hardware before I started, but that isn't necessarily needed in this course. 52: I got ELEC2142 waived for EOS, and I did not come across any unknown knowledge. I don't really think it needs to be a prerequisite. 53: pre-reqs were suitable. 54: Basic systems programming 55: The official pre-requisites are quite sufficient. Maybe you can add diligence as a requirement! 56: I think as a 3rd year a lot of the information has already been prepared for us. Of course, we are likely to forget that information which is why it was nice to have it refreshed by Kevin. 57: N/A, everything was covered in a satisfactory manner as new concepts were introduced. As long as student's C comprehension is good. 58: Version-control, and low-level programming. Generally, suitable. 59: None. Prerequisites are fine. 60: I think the pre-reqs covered enough. 61: I don't think it impacted my performance in the course, but a better understanding of the basics of Linux/Unix may have made some content more relatable. 62: Yes 63: NA 64: Not sure of the requisites, but I felt a good standing with C and microprocessors from 2121 was very helpful. 65: Knew next to nothing about OS before this course, had no problem. 66: I think the prereqs covered everything. 67: Debugging with GDB. Source code navigation. 68: 2121 and 1927 69: I somehow was not missing any background knowledge. 70: Prerequisites are suitable. 71: I think I had all the background knowledge I needed 72: The pre-requisites are suitable. 73: I think having more programming experience would have benefited me more for the assignments. 74: Not really. The first assignment was a good warmup 75: The official prerequisites are suitable for preparation. 76: I don't believe I was missing any background info 77: The only background knowledge I think was missing was using gdb to debug C programs, which turned out to be very useful once I used it for later assignments. However I think the pre-requisites are suitable for this course. 78: I felt sufficiently prepared to tackle the content, but the content itself took time to understand. Yes they are suitable. 79: Official pre-requisites are enough. 80: My lack of hardware knowledge, for example in multiprocessors you talked about cache lines but I had no idea what they were (later found out they were mentioned in week 1-2 lecture slides but I had forgotten about them by then). Prereqs are suitable. 81: Suitable 82: COMP2121 definitely helped and knowledge in C - would be hard without either of these. 83: The prerequisites were fine 84: Pre-reqs were suitable. 85: Pre-reqs were fine. 86: I think 2121 is a good prereq, 2041 could also be useful, I think I would have struggled if I didn't use linux much. 87: I think 1917/1927 was suitable preparation for this course. 88: None, and yes 89: lacking of experience of read through large number of code 90: None 91: Os161 walkthrough 92: I think the prerequisites were enough. 93: Knowledge of SVN would have helped quite a bit. 94: Not really 95: The official pre-requisites are suitable 96: yeah, I feel like 2121 gave me enough interest in lower level operations of a system such as saving registers in function calls, while 19(2?)7 was required for the C you had to write for assignments. 97: You certainly need a lot of knowledge of C programming and a bit of low-level knowledge helps as well. 98: I think some experience about hardware details would be great. 99: i think maybe some of the ISA/hardware/processor design could be introduced. and maybe some key concept in OS161 could be taught before assignment. (such as how a user program run,how the os build on hardware,some key aspects like process components relate to stack management, register management, memory, files, concurrency issues.) 100: None really. I didn't do Microprocessors here at UNSW (a did a similar course at another uni and a long time along) but I was still about to look at the machine code and get along ok BUT that had a lot to do with the fact that it was explained well. 101: The official pre-requisites are definitely suitable, providing that you paid attention during them. I probably needed to cover a bit more on pointers but I got through okay. 102: Yeah, these were fine. Some background knowledge about using cscope/ctags would have helped a lot for asst2 (didn't know how to use these until asst3). 103: None, pre-reqs are fine 104: N/A, found background knowledge sufficient 105: none 106: knowledge of c is a must pre-requisite is suitable 107: Yes, they are suitable. 108: none 109: N/A 110: More familiarity with gdb. 111: Understanding more about lower level hardware. 'microprocessor' etc. The per-requisites do talk about the 'microprocessor' and their technicalities but not so much about the uses in detail. 112: As an EE student the prereqs were more than enough. Background knowledge in version control would have sped up workflow but assignment SVN instructions were enough to get the job done. 113: None. I believe the pre-requisites are suitable. Databases/Networks/COMP2041 is also good. 114: All was fine. There was only one moment that Kevin assumed something that some people in the room might not know; hashing in first year courses is often not taught very well, or the handling of hash collisions isn't. (at least it wasn't in my course). It is technically covered in COMP1927 but not necessarily very well. 115: Using GDB 116: C knowledge and GDB knowledge 117: Pre-requisites are good. 118: Suitable 119: no background knowledge needed 120: I think I was fairly fine for the course and 2121 didn't seem highly needed as a prereq 121: more details about the assembly and general OS structure. Offcial pre-requisites is an appropriate preparation. 122: Yes. 123: Official pre-requisites are adequate for this course. We only really touched upon microprocessors knowledge for interrupts and assembly, and of course 1927 is absolutely necessary for the C. 124: Pre-reqs are good. 125: I wouldn't say I was missing any required background knowledge. There was a lot of crossover with computer architecture (COMP3211) although that is unavoidable. 126: n/a 127: Nothing really, the official pre-reqs are fine and the only background knowledge i "needed" would have been more experience using version control (had used git previously but not really to a level of good understanding). 128: Pre-reqs are sufficient 129: COMP2121 (Microprocessors) definitely helped. In my unprecedented case, I don't know anything about computer hardware parts (motherboards, CPU, drivers, memory chips ect.), and most people did. So general knowledge of these things were assumed where I knew nothing. =( 130: The official pre-requisites are suitable. 131: none 132: Computer Architecture would be a helpful addition as it gives a better understanding of some of the hardware details, but I don't think it is completely necessary 133: yes 134: Yes 135: The official pre-requisites were suitable. Better knowledge of the power of gdb could be helpful 136: I wasn't able to take this course last year because COMP2121 was a pre-req, and I wasn't able to do it as a co-req since I did not have a high enough WAM after not doing so well in 1st year MATH courses. Personally, 2121 probably should be allowed as a co-req regardless of the WAM of a student. This would have allowed me to complete the course a year earlier, and also take a higher level course, such as distributed. (Currently my 3rd year of COMPSCI) 137: The official prerequisites are fine. 138: it's fine. 139: Official pre-requisites are suitable preparation. 140: N/A 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: Piazza sufficient. 2: Did not really need, usually inconvenient time too, should integrate with tutorial (ie. make tutorials slightly longer) 3: No need 4: No need. 5: Piazza and after lecture questions were sufficient most of the time. Did use the consults on a few occasions 6: Did not need the consultations 7: Often consulted peers and tutors 8: Either I didn't need them, or I just was too busy with other things to go to consults. However lectures were quite comprehensive so I doubt I would've come anyway. 9: I don't really use consultations (maybe I should do that more?) 10: Too busy with work and piazza was sufficient 11: Piazza sufficient / did not need 12: I felt confident that any questions I had could be answered by the tutor or on piazza. 13: piazza can help 14: I did not need them. Piazza was helpful. 15: Piazza was sufficient and I usually consult my peers first. 16: I have never attended a consultation for any subject. 17: Too lazy to go 18: Didn't need 19: Did not need (Piazza sufficient) 20: I personally had no need for consultations. Any questions that I had were answered by my tutor or had already been asked (and answered) on piazza 21: piazza is good 22: Inconvenient time. 23: Did not need 24: Was not aware 25: I do not even aware that there are scheduled consultations. Piazza is sufficient. I only go to consultations if I 26: Firstly I was crazy busy. Secondly because my tutor was awesome and helped me out by explaining a lot of stuff, when I asked him. Thirdly, I didn't know they would be so useful till I went to them at the end of the course (some lecturer's consults are crap, but Kev's were good) 27: no need, piazza is fast and sufficient 28: did not need, was always good to understand 29: I only really needed them during asst2, and piazza covered sufficiently for what i needed 30: By the time I got to a point I would use them, it was too late 31: piazza is enough. 32: I ask my questions during tutorials. Reading piazza is very helpful too. 33: Did not need, piazza sufficient. 34: Inconvenient time 35: I did not have enough timee 36: Did not need and piazza 37: Did not need 38: I just realised we have consultations after assignment 3.... 39: Did not know there was consultations 40: Piazza 41: piazza sufficient 42: Piazza and tutorials are sufficient 43: Did not need 44: Piazza sufficient in most cases. 45: Piazza's anonymous question and search functionalities are quite good. 46: did not feel the need to come 47: Seems difficult knowing where to start what to ask if I did go 48: Inconvenient time for me 49: Did not need 50: Didn't require 51: piazza sufficient 52: Tutor/tutorials were sufficient. 53: piazza was helpful, so were tutorials, also a bit shy 54: help on piazza is enough for me 55: I attended about 4 consultations 56: Most questions solved on piazza etc. - more convenient doing it that way since can be done anytime. I also didn't keep up to speed with the course for 4 weeks or so which makes it hard to go to consults about anything when I needed to catch up on everything first. 57: Didn't need, either figured it out myself or looked at similar questions on Piazza 58: Piazza was sufficient 59: Lazy 60: I generally don't go to consultations. 61: piazza was sufficient. didn't hit any super-tough bugs during assignments :) 62: did not need 63: didn't need them 64: no time... 65: Did not need 66: Piazza is sufficient 67: did not need 68: Didn't need/have never gone to any consultation time/ask friends first 69: Piazza 70: I don't find consultations very useful in general. I can usually find the answer online. 71: Did not need consultations, generally just asked friends. 72: I didn't think I needed them 73: piazza sufficient 74: piazza sufficient 75: Qian and piazza were sufficient to cover for the help we needed. 76: Piazza sufficient 77: inconvenient 78: did not know they existed 79: Tutor and piazza were sufficient. 80: did not need 81: piazza good enough 82: just missed them 83: Inconvenient time 84: I probably should've, I simply forgot they existed most of the time, and only turned up to one for assignment 3, which was very helpful. Possibly adervtise them more in lectures? 85: did not need, i live like 5 years away from uni 86: Piazza was sufficient for the problems I faced. 87: I did not need them 88: I had a timetable clash so always seemed to be behind with the lecture watching. Going to consultations seemed like I would be wasting their time if I hadn't watched the lectures myself. 89: Did not need 90: inconvenient time 91: Do not have enough time... 92: Would've used the Thursday consultation if it was in the afternoon - I worked on the other two days. 93: Did not need. 94: Inconvenient time 95: Didn't need/Piazza good enough 96: piazza and searching online was enough 97: Piazza sufficient 98: Didnt know about consultation 99: Piazza sufficient 100: Did not need 101: did not need, piazza sufficient for general questions 102: I found that due to personal time constraints and the quality of wiki/ piazza I did not need to use this opportunity. 103: did not need tutorials were good sources 104: Did not need/Piazza sufficient 105: Piazza sufficient 106: did not need, did not care to find out about them 107: Wasn't organised or up to date enough to be able to utilise them (without wasting anyone's time). 108: Piazza was good, would have used the consultations for debugging help if necessary 109: did not need 110: i don't know what to ask; i did not know to what level of detail i should know the material; lecture was too broad whereas the exam was focused on minute details 111: piazza was very useful so it wasnt required as much. 112: Inconvenient times 113: inconvenient time 114: Not really needed 115: Didn't need 116: piazza sufficient 117: piazza sufficient && consultations are mainly useful for assignment or exam help 118: Piazza had most of the answers, and was more convenient. 119: Piazza was good, time inconvenient 120: No need. I don't want to come in to uni any more than I have to, so only would attend on days I'm at uni. Honestly never attended a consultation once though for any course. I feel that's possibly a course-wide thing. 121: They were all during my clashes with other classes, and piazza was pretty good regardless 122: Inconvenient time 123: inconvenient time and piazza sufficient 124: Was not required. Piazza was quite sufficient. 125: felt embarrassed to show that i knew very little and/or hadn 126: At a bad time, and I rather stick to tutes. 127: piazza sufficient 128: Time could not fit my schedule 129: didn't know about them 130: Inconvenient time and wasn't really aware that Kevin was actually available for us 3 times a week. I know this sounds stupid but I really wasn't aware that he had allocated 3 chunks of time per week for all weeks for us to ask any questions. 131: did not need 132: Overestimated how much I knew 133: Consultations are not used because there are no examination assessments during the semester. A majority of the learning occurred at the end of semester, and by then people would use piazza to ask questions 134: Afraid of confrontation/receiving closer attention. It's not you, it's me. 135: I think I need consultation but sometime forget to attend 136: inconvenient time 137: I didn't feel the need to attend consultations; asked only a couple of questions on Piazza 138: did not need 139: inconvenient time i suppose, distance to university 140: Piazza sufficient / did not need 141: piazza sufficient 142: Inconvenient time, did not attend 143: piazza sufficient 144: Felt they were not required. Piazza was really useful, plus EOS lectures helped answer extra questions. 145: Didn't need it. 146: Didn't know they were on, didn't need them 147: did not need 148: Most problems could be solved by thinking about it, I think it's more helpful that way. Also, Piazza was very helpful 149: piazza sufficient 150: Didn't need them. Piazza was sufficient as lecturer was present there 151: Piazza sufficient 152: Piazza, tutor, and friends felt sufficient. 153: too busy on all assignments and piazza is also sufficient... 154: Did not need, Piazza is also more convenient 155: inconvient to go just for one question. usually one question lead to another, and the questions are small, so tutorial is a better way to ask question(ask question, try, and the next question) 156: piazza was sufficient 157: Piazza was sufficient General take away is that piazza was viewed more favourably than consults. 158: piazza sufficient 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: N/A 2: Availabilty of the video allowed me to work during times more convenient for me. 3: A clashing timetable... 4: About half way through semester I decided to stop attending the lectures and watch the videos instead. This decision was made because the videos were excellent in quality and allowed me to speed up certain parts and slow down and repeat any sections that I didn't understand. 5: I generally don't attend lectures, just because I find I don't normally have to do well in a course. 6: Lectures had some clashes, inconvenient times compared to other postgraduate courses 7: I always go to lectures but was pretty under the pump this semester, so I didn't always get to go. Sometimes I got lost in the lectures as well and at times thought I would be better to review the content in my own time. 8: mostly because the due of other courses. Anyway, the lecture of OS is the also important for me among all the courses 9: clash with assignments.(maybe with other course as well). so a conventional thinking is "ok i need to submit ass2 this week, its on vm now i wont be tested on that, i can catch up in the videos." 10: This semester is my highest pressure semester in my three years so far, so while I usually try to make the effort, I've needed to skip whole days of lectures to ensure compulsory components of all courses are completed on-time. 11: i attended nearly all the lectures 12: Availability of video recordings. 13: I had an hour clash with another lecture, so I ended up missing out the first hour of the weekly two-hour lecture. Due to this, sometimes I didn't attend/pay attention to the second half, as I wasn't too sure what was happening. 14: I sometimes can't catch up on the fly, will repeated listen to the video to understand the lecture. 15: Lecture videos are too convenient - you can watch at your own pace (for me this is 1.5x), at a time that suits you and rewind if one part didn't quite make sense. I don't ask questions during lectures so attending lectures in-person doesn't really make sense for me. I'm actually confused about why the lectures are run in full and rerecorded every year - a typical MOOC, for example, would not rerecord a lecture unless the content needed to be changed substantially. 16: I generally need to stop, pause, rewind lecture videos to fully comprehend material. 17: N/A 18: aa 19: Timetable issues 20: Skipped a few times on inconvenience as the recordings are EXTREMELY good. 21: I attend every course this semester 22: Clashes with 2911 which doesn't have a lecture recording made it difficult to attend both so a compromise needed to be made. Also as the semester continued, the amount of assessments and difficulty they projected increased, and hence time was taken off as a way to make room for other assessments. 23: I prefer listening to the lecture videos at a faster rate 24: N/A 25: Usually the only lecture for the day, not worth the travel time. 26: Had other subjects with bigger workloads to focus on, had to catch up later. 27: Lecture clash on Tuesday, quality of lecture video was significant factor in picking which lecture to miss. Also catching up on 2hrs (faster on 1.25x speed) was less draining then the clashing 3 hour lecture... 28: Honestly, too lazy by the end of the semester. Lecture videos were faster, more comfortable and more efficient. 29: I got smashed by assignment waves in week 8. 30: Clashes. 31: n/a 32: N/A 33: N/A 34: Tutors and tutorials covered a lot of content 35: Timetable clash. Actually mostly watched last year's video's so I could watch them ahead of the actual lectures (this improved the short turnaround time from lectures to tutes) 36: My timetable for OS clashed with 2911 this semester. 37: (tue) 2hr clash with core (wed) inconvenient time 38: Well personally for me, I live super far from uni, the travel time is a pain (4 hour daily commute to and from uni). Otherwise I would have attended, videos were super useful. 39: Long commute times mean watching videos is much more efficient than being there in person. 40: conflict with other course 41: Time of first lecture was in the middle of the day 42: I can control the speed and step when I watch recording, because I don’t always have enough time to read the lecture notes. 43: Attended most lectures, only skipped during heavy assignment loads. Good point. I'll have that conversation in the first lecture. 44: I'd just rather stay home sometimes because of travel time to uni. I attended half. Before the exam I reread/rewatched all lectures. I noticed that the ones I had attended I remembered and understood a lot better than the ones I had previously watched at home. Something to tell future students perhaps. 45: Sometimes skipped a lecture (when busy) because it was the only class I had on that day + videos were very well recorded (convenient/fast/slide selection) 46: Clashes with work timetable 47: Clashes and bad days 48: Generally attended lectures 49: None 50: Availability of lecture videos, video quality (including audio etc.), times of lectures kind of inconvenient when i can stay home and watch them etc. 51: Kevin was a great lecturer. More humor is good. Talks a bit slow. 52: Inefficient timetabling, clashing with other classes 53: some topics required me to search online for more explanations, as i didn't quickly get the information as other students. 54: Clash. Because cs2911 does not have lecture material I had to attend the clashing lecture. I was relieved to find that cs3231 has videos. 55: Occasionally when multiple assignments were due on the same week. 56: -Skipped because perfect clash with work. Nothing that can be done about that on your end. 57: Too many assignments for CSE.....and some of them are challenged, so spent a lot of time on them 58: N/A 59: Clashing courses 60: Very few contact hours, long commute to uni 61: I can rewind parts of the lecture video when understanding more complex concepts. 62: Some lectures is easy. I can self study 63: Generally trying to spend less time at uni... 64: N/A 65: I was never able to focus for the 2nd hour on Tuesday, Three 1 hr lectures would have been a lot better than and one 2 hr lecture, given the second half of the course is content intensive. 66: n/a 67: 1. Timetable clash 68: n/a 69: I learn best when I can absorb information at my own pace. Videos let me rewind and pause when I need. I play at x1.6 speed. 70: N/A 71: I generally find it hard to concentrate for a long period of time (unless I'm motivated by an evil force inside, like before exams), so if I attend lectures I'll only absorb the first 20 mins or so (and retain none). With lecture videos I can listen on 1.5x and 2.0x, and skip and rewind and listen to a certain section 50 times if need be, whereas attending lectures live if I miss a certain concept and the lecture moves on then I miss the whole lecture effectively. 72: n/a 73: Lecture times did not fit in well with my timetable. 74: Wanted contiguous time allocation for OS longer than 4 hours (so used videos). 75: - 76: Sometimes busy on other assignments. 77: N/a 78: Assignment deadlines. 79: Other assignment timing 80: I did not attend some lectures because I had other assessments or assignments going on at the same time and had to prioritise completing them first. 81: No, the reason why I did not attend was because I was able to watch it at home online. 82: I knew I could access the video recordings and that they are good substitutes for the lectures, so when it came to prioritizing other commitments I skipped lectures. 83: N/A 84: I had no other classes on 3231 days and decided it would be more efficient to use the videos rather than in transit. The breaks being cut out, and being able to watch the lecture at 1.5/1.25 speed at times where I feel comfortable with content/already knew some/are just rewatching some parts, is very efficient. 85: I wish i could have attended more lectures, I don't think i've had a better lecturer at uni, but I had a clash at the clash was not recorded, so I could not attend the second half of every lecture. 86: The content was great, concise, clear but also quite dense. I always found myself overloaded and fell asleep in the lecture. I did not want to disrespect Kevin so I just stopped coming. 87: I've found that I learn more efficiently through reading on my own time, than listening to a lecture. 88: it is a bit boring, with the video i can play at 2x speed even though there is enough course content to learn 89: Clash, also couldn't be bothered going to uni because I live far away. 90: Primarily i didn't attend lectures because i like to stop and pause my lectures and search for any content that i didn't get and then continue. Additionally, i would use the pause time to write notes and so forth. I think os is a understanding intensive course and it was hard for myself to get certain content straight away at the lectures. 91: Working part time General consensus (besides clashes, etcc..) is that video suits some student learning styles. Happy that it seems it works well. Hopefully, I won't end up being too lonely if the trend continues.... 92: - Lecture videos were pretty good, and with piazza, I can see why people stopped attending. Unlike other courses, this doesn't mean the lecturer is bad - in fact it means lecturer is good at explaining such that one can learn it from home! 15. Any suggestions for improving lectures (including the lecture video captures)? 1: The microphone dropped out obviously a few times, but compared to other courses these videos were good. I think in the lecture you need to repeat acronyms a lot with their expanded representations. When talking about the TLB for example you said TLB = translation lookaside buffer just once (or so) and then said TLB for the rest of the lecture. I don't bring a laptop to uni (didn't have one till recently too), so I can't go back and look up what acronyms stand for. It's hard to follow when you don't know what it stands for, and something super simple to keep in mind. 2: If possible try to condense the lectures a little bit. Too many scattered snippets of theory. 3: i think the lecture recordings were extremely helpful and were of a good quality 4: None 5: Perhaps a different room without as much interference (the matthews theatre...). Other than that the quality is excellent. 6: No they are very good they way they are, Kevin is very concise and does not waffle on, making the lectures always worth watching. Not only that but the content Kevin delivers is top quality, trying to learn it any other way would be very stupid. 7: Could have been a little faster in pace during lectures. Slow pace makes it that much easier to lose focus and encourages web browsing during lectures. 8: N/A 9: The lecture slides contain many typing errors. 10: For longer topics (e.g. file systems, memory management), dedicate some time at the end to a general overview of how the pieces fit together to lead to/form the most commonly used system. 11: Please provide more explanation by hand writing in lecture. It is very helpful for me to understand new topics. 12: Repeat the question when someone asks you something, you can only hear the answer in the video, so you have to figure out what the question was. 13: Use more on screen tools like pointers that show up in lecture vids! 14: More responsive live drawings on slides. 15: Put memory before file systems 16: Possibly Kevin could do more code-walkthroughs when explaining OS/161 specific implementations. e.g. when explaining the syscall section, having him walk through the kern/arch/syscall/syscall.c file would have helped me greatly. 17: I hardly ever watch records as lectures gave me a very good help. 18: It would be extremely helpful if there was a pointer/cursor that indicated the general area of where you were pointing physically so we could tell what was being referred to on the slide. 19: Was on point 20: None 21: aa 22: N/A 23: The one thing I could suggest is re-reading out questions people ask during the lectures, so they're in the video too. 24: nop 25: I found the lectures to be fine. 26: Use something that can be captured by the video instead of laser pointers? Might be a bit difficult to do, though. 27: Student answers recorded in lectures Sorry, powerpoint is broken in this regard. 28: Slightly off topic, but make the lecture slides with animations look ok when viewed normally 29: All good 30: possibly better digital pen (seemed to bug out a lot). 31: I think the slides could use some terminology cleanup (always using the same term for the same thing) as I found searching them with control+F to be somewhat of a challenge 32: slightly speed up. i display videos in 1.25 speed and realize its really helpful. 33: The diagrams on the slides were occasionally confusing without listening to the lectures; attempting to read the slides before the lecture to prepare would occasionally make things more confusing. 34: Please you the digital pen a lot more when pointing on the slides. When i was reviewing via the video, you gesture at the diagram but sometimes i do not know where you are pointing to 35: Maybe add some tutorial for ext class, so that we can use ext class for more ext material 36: Lectures were excellent overall 37: Spend a little bit more time exploring the code base early on. Perhaps in an optional video lecture. 38: Fix lecture slide errors/elaborate various parts. Provide 100% correct answers to each wiki question. This then allows one to efficiently learn everything and study for the exam. 39: Sometimes there would be stuff written on the lectures during the lecture. Maybe add the stuff written during the lecture to the slides on the site too. 40: Nope, the best lecture recordings i've had 41: Use youtube to upload videos, ux is better. 42: n/a 43: Everything is fine at least in my opinion. If anything sometimes it was hard to follow when you went back or forwards a couple slides (but i can see why jumping around may be necessary). 44: N/A 45: n/a 46: Possibly camera to record yourself. It's nice seeing where you are pointing on the screen. 47: Can use more videos or animation to illustrate some points. 48: Signalling in the recording what is being pointed at when referring to something on screen, as well as repeating a question before answering it. 49: It might be good to have a few (maybe) harder sample exam questions gone through in videos (outside of lectures and available on the website) 50: If lecture slides could be release before the lectures, that would be great since I print out a copy of the lecture slides to bring into lectures and write notes on them. 51: N/A, it was easy to follow the slides in the videos 52: Often tired at end of day (i.e. 4-6pm), sometimes sleepy and hard to follow these technical lectures at end of day 53: N/A 54: There is some problem with the audio in the middle of the semester and as such there is a lot of buzzing sound. Perhaps it can be fixed with new microphone. Also the quality of the recording is no better than echo. Perhaps improving the quality of the video would be preferable. 55: 1. Sometimes you say "this" and in real life I supposed you point with your laser gun, but I can't see that on the videos. 2. For things like syscalls, interrupts and context switching, all three require the OS taking control and doing things with the stack and calling interrupt handlers and such, but it's not very clear what the similarities and differences are between the two, because you explain it with differing amounts of detail. 56: - Figure out why that pen didn't work... - Next step, use a camera and record the lecturer too! (Harvard/MIT/Stanford do this really well; see Harvard CS50, Stanford CS106a/106b/193p) 57: N/A 58: N/A Lecturer is already among the best I have ever had. 59: please speak more colloquially for general ideas/overview, and please emphasise what you really want us to learn in detail 60: Static lecture slide diagrams are fine. But for some concepts, having interactive animation would be extremely helpful (such as for scheduling algorithms ect). 61: n/a 62: Would REALLY like it if lecture slides had the sub-topic they were related to printed on the slides. The lecture slides from cs6771 are a good example of what I mean... Makes scanning through them alot easier, especially for the longer slide decks. 63: For the assignments, I recommend to use git instead of svn. For the tutorial, I recommend tutors to strictly follow the questions and teach something really helpful. For the lecture, I recommend the lecturer to talk about more details about general OS structure during the introduction. Others are perfect already! 64: have self-study material for weaker students 65: None. Lecture Video captures were immaculate and I greatly appreciate the effort. 66: Some recordings quality are poor 67: Sometimes when the lecturer says "over here" and "over there" he uses his hands to point to the location. His hands obviously don't show up in the videos which makes it hard to review and follow some lectures. 68: Lectures/Videos were perfect. Some of the best lectures I've been in and definitely the best recordings I've ever utilised. 69: - 70: N/A 71: Better drawings present in the final version of the slides. 72: Is it possible to chuck videos into smaller pieces with specific slides? Like online tutorials. It would be enough to do that once and put it on the wiki. Would be much faster to find the right topic, the search discourage me sometimes to find the right point in the video and therefore consult other online resources. If it is possible to do once the walkthrough of the whole code on video. The students would appreciate it. 73: Thank you for not using echo =) Possibly get to understand points in the content where students tend to pick up quicker? I found some parts were over explained 74: More step by step stuff. When Kevin wrote on the lecture slides to do diagrams e.g. producer consumer process using bounded buffers, that was really helpful to me 75: when i watch the video capture on the fastest speed, the pauses while explaining would preferably be cut out, but not absolutely necessary - at least the 5 min breaks were cut (two thumbs up). 76: Lectures are fine, the recordings were exceptional, except for 1-2 where the audio wasn't up to par. I found the recordings Kevin put up were a lot better than the ones on Echo. 77: Umm not really I think the were pretty good.. it is just that the content has a lot going on conceptually and I just think it takes time to absorb. 78: More examples will be helpful. 79: Not really. Doing pretty well 80: Perhaps use mouse to point things out 81: could use more hand writing rather than talk with projected slides. explaining with writing let students easier to follow up. 82: nope, they're some of the best lectures of any CSE course 83: More audience questions. Sometimes there were large monologues that caused sleepiness. 84: It's great 85: Drawing on the slides for when you point in real life (did this occasionally) 86: Might be useful when each topic is introduced to outline 'what kind of solution this component/term provides to general OS structure and what that means'. A lot of terms are introduced at the same time, and meaning can be easily lost when something like 'checking the valid bits in the page table entry' makes sense on the presumption of knowledge that 'The page table structure is accessed on TLB Miss, an exception responsible for checking virtual addresses and loading them in physical memory.' Learning is hard :( 87: Some lectures notes were a bit vague on the concept they were explaining in some dot points. 88: it was pretty good, having the videos up earlier would have been good for the few occasions when I was unable to attend. 89: no 90: Not really, they were generally quite good. 91: None, lecture video captures were the best I've experienced 92: None 93: I enjoyed when you quizzed the class, it helped solidify my understandings more. But also a better mic or maybe a full body camera recording might be nice too, since the board is sometimes used. 94: Lectures need no change. 95: N/A 96: More diagrams, videos, examples, etc etc. Just to make lectures easier to follow and not boring. 97: Maybe put Kevin in the recording. 98: No 99: Please use the mouse pointer to refer to disgrams !!!!! 100: more detail about the assignment 101: Audio was sometimes not as clear 102: Not really 103: They're amazing as is. (except for the 1 recording in week 6(?) which was messed up) 104: I want to do assignments by myself 105: Video capture seemed fine. 106: Perhaps some more worked out examples, or going through the steps of a process along with the class using drawings/graphs/whiteboard(digital whiteboard I guess). This was done a decent amount in lectures, but I find the more of this type of engagement really helps understand content more deeply. 107: All good, no comments on videos since I didn't use them. 108: Less assignment walkthroughs, more extended content 109: - For quite some time I thought the disk scheduling algorithms scheduled movements along both tracks and sectors, instead of just tracks. I think it is partly because the graphs showing movement across the tracks are so abstract. Maybe a quick review of what a track and sector is would be useful? Not sure if this was a common misconception. - I found the system calls lecture by far the hardest to understand but I'm not sure what would make it easier. Maybe using more diagrams in the high level explanation of a system call? The concepts explained in the lecture didn't make really make sense to me until I did the system calls assignment. The diagrams that shift the status between current and previous were really good as well as the one explaining the system call conventions. I didn't feel that the detour into assembly at the beginning of the lecture was helpful given the extensive commenting in the OS/161 codebase (including the snippets in the lecture slides) and what I had learnt in COMP2121. - I think it would make more sense to put the learning outcomes at the end of a lecture, when the jargon and the concepts have actually been explained. At the beginning of the lecture it just tends to sound like gibberish, but at the same time it probably helps the lecturer summarise the content. 110: better detail in lecture notes (not that important) Yep, pen flaking out (actually PP flaking out) was noted above. I'll use a different strategy this year. In the past I was reluctant to give up presenter view. I'll bite the bullet this year and use screen duplication (and hopefully remain relatively coherent :-) ) 111: no 18. Any suggestions for improving tutorials? 1: Tutor C, please talk a little louder! 2: N/A 3: N/A 4: Tutorials and tutor was great 5: No class participation marks. Doesn't help. 6: N/a 7: I don't think the class participation was necessary. Many questions were answered straight from the lecture notes so it was just getting people to repeat it (unnecessarily). 8: Remove the marks for input and change it to attendance. Either that or the tutors need to work out how to gather this information better than sticky notes handed out. It's a truly awful idea which is distracting. I naturally have input anyway. It front ends the lecture too as people race to answer questions. There's no need. Also tell Tutor D that having people put up hands to answer questions is specifically good for tutorials of this nature when everyone wants to compete to get their mark for the tute. 9: N/A 10: Need to be in sync with lectures so that they follow up on material. 11: Get rid of the participation mark for answering questions, and have them cover content that was already taught in lectures. (Also I don't remember my tutors name so I can't answer the previous question) 12: Cover the tutorial content in the lecture before the actual tutorial. 13: Didn't go 14: No they were very good 15: Sometimes content in tutorials hadn't yet been presented in lectures, which wasn't detrimental, but could be something to consider. This didn't seem to be due to public holidays. From memory there were questions on journalling a week or two before it was presented in lectures. 16: no 17: N/A 18: -none at all, probably best tutor I've had, explained things well/encouraged questions and gave good feedback. 19: Perhaps schedule tutorials so they follow after the lectures. In my case everything in the tutorial were confusing due to the offset and how tutorials began to be ahead of the lecture and so it became almost useless 20: Tutor A's accent was a little difficult to understand at times - not trying to be mean; it did make following the tutes a bit harder 21: - The assignment tutorials were really long, so maybe make them more shorter; or more targeted for the tutorial. Or maybe change the tutorial to be instead of answering questions, give the tutors a set of things to cover. (Like the EOS assignment 3 "tutorial") - Class participation still got a bit competitive. There's got to be a better way to do this 22: Tutorial was before lecture, so sometimes it was confusing 23: n/a did not attend since I was in extended. 24: I had the monday tute which was before lectures had happened. We always covered the content in the tutes before the lectures -- not ideal. My tutorials were very dry -- the tutor seemed to try to engage the students but didn't really explain things so it was a lot of reading from the notes. 25: Have Tutor B tutor all of them he was amazing! In all seriousness, maybe just more focusing on assignment material in the early stages after assignments are released. 26: I think it would be good to have harder questions but not at the expense of the current questions. Like many COMP3xxx tutes, a one hour tute is too short for students to ask anything extra. A one and a half hour tute would be quite good. 27: Maybe more questions. Make them a little more relevant to the final exam. The exam notes and tutorials sometimes differed a little. 28: N/A 29: More questions to further aid understanding of concepts 30: N/A 31: n/a 32: Maybe leave out computational questions that take more time, upload those as (Youtube video solutions) or something. Spend tutorial time discussing theory. 33: I am not pointing on any one of tutors, but I think tutors speaks too quickly, which is not friendly to the international students because I CAN NOT TOTALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT! besides, tutorials do not have recordings, I also can not watch it to let myself understand. I think the speaking speed of Kevin is just appropriate for understand. 34: Longer, more in depth, assignment focused 35: More diagrams in tutorial may aid comprehension. 36: Some felt really rushed (the File Systems assignment tutorial?) 37: n/a 38: None 39: N/A 40: Asking questions that you need to think about a bit more, instead of copy paste information straight out of lecture slides 41: Reevaluate how to implement participation marks. Good that extended to include questions as well as answers, but larger size means difficult to learn names throughout semester. 42: They are pretty good based on my limited attendance. 43: More time between lectures and tutorials. Make a distinction between questions that can be done before hand and questions that cover content that wasn't really taught on lectures and is meant to be run through in the tutorial. 44: no 45: - 46: make it so tutorials are after lectures 47: some of the tutorials were longer than others, sometimes brinking on overtime. I was fortunate in our tutor had a tutorial earlier and was able to better estimate how many questions we could ask. 48: I think that mandatory participation makes things hard for people who have anxiety disorders, etc. Maybe instead of mandatory participation marks, have bonus marks available instead? 49: n/a 50: I recommend the tutor to follow the question strictly and tell something really useful. Others are good enough. 51: No strong opinion on improvements/faults 52: I have already outlined above :) Class marks shouldn't be defined by participation, because sometimes you can be very behind in the course because all your time is spent doing assignments, and in such a state you cannot answer or ask questions in the tutorial, and hence lose class marks in order to gain more class marks. 53: Did not need to attend tutorials (extended student). 54: aa 55: Nah, other than put my tutor on all of them, he was a legend! 56: NOT using the current participation marks would be nice. As of now, the few 'less polite' individuals are the ones that talk all the time, and others don't really have a chance to answer questions and get the marks. 57: No, I was in eos 58: N/A 59: I would say that the tutor should be more clear of the explanation cause some of the students really does not understand the basic. 60: Perhaps make participation marks required for only half the tutorials and mark attendance for the rest. The participation marks were good for starting discussion but sometimes there just is nothing that comes to mind. 61: -Either more time or less questions: Almost never got through the content and when we did it was quite rushed. The issue is probably that engagement is required, and when people don't yet understand things completely, tutorials take a while to deal with a question. 62: - 63: N/A 64: I didn't take tutorials, but I read most of the materials. It's very helpful. 65: N/A 66: can tutorials be recorded? I find them really useful 67: Have the class more involved, Smaller assignments yet marked tutorial questions 68: more questions 69: More questions would be good - to ensure we cover all/most points of the topic. 70: Class participation is kind of pointless. I'd still go to tutorials and pay attention even if there is no class participation mark. In fact, without class participation there could be more questions to be covered by the tutor instead of wasting time trying to compete with other students. 71: Try to put the lectures before them. Sometimes the tute was about content we just covered in the lecture. 72: Maybe change the participation system and move the marks to online quizzes? 73: N/A 74: more mcq type of question like the ones that appeared in final 75: I think some of the tutorial content we just learning in that same week/were about to learn, which might have affected a lot of students, if this happens in the future, maybe have the tutorials happen only after the last lecture for the week. 76: The tutorial should always be scheduled after the lecture. 77: Tutorials should be after each week's lecture otherwise I cannot follow the questions.. 78: answers were always as text, need more graphical explanations (e.g. Flow-charts etc.) as in the lecture. 79: They were constantly ahead of the lectures. Answers were sometimes confusing. 80: nop 81: N/A 82: no 83: No. 84: I don't want to be trying to force myself to say anything just for a class participation mark. 85: Provide a weekly session for tutors to attend and discuss interesting questions posed to them in class, or ways they answer common questions. 86: More diagrams 87: N/A 88: Have Tutor B teach all of them, the guy is a beast. 89: Did not have tutorials. 90: I didn't actually look at the tutorial questions during semester (except for the assignment related ones) but they were very handy in preparing for the exam - mainly due to the quality answers provided. Another year that seems to confirm the trend I perceive that the management of participation marks in a tutorial of 25 students is becoming unwieldy and distracting (it worked will with 15). 91: Assign questions for individuals to answer 27. Any suggestions for improving the assignments? 1: I think more practice in thinking about design of systems and developing this mindset. 2: No 3: Some way of debugging in user level programs would be helpful. There were some bugs which viewing the state of the user level program and kernel state at that stage would have been helpful. I did not find a way to break part way through a user level program with os161-gdb. 4: Make the scope of them a little smaller, especially assignment 2 5: Also advertise when the assignment lectures are going to be to the students taking COMP3231 since they were a great help 6: N/A 7: N/A 8: Providing more tests, because generally it is a good idea to encourage students to write own tests but in praxis the students are to busy to write them, therefore more tests would force students to spend more time on programming. 9: Having more time to do it. 10: i wish it was more clearly defined (e.g. saying that there were already structs and functions within the asst spec that we could have used) second asst was the most confusing 11: Was challenging... A lot was understanding what each component did, what you need and where it goes. Could reference what lecture slides each is explained in if you wanted to make it easier for students to 'know what they need' sooner. 12: Use git officially rather than svn 13: Please have support for other source control, I feel like Git is something which most people know, and if they don't then it's time they learnt. Perhaps still keep svn around as a basic template for people to use. 14: n/a 15: Please release assignment 2 early and have deadlines on a Monday morning than a Friday morning 16: More help on how to start assignment 2 code-wise would be helpful, given it was a lot more open ended than assignment 1. Possibly a video covering how to start the code for assignment 2. Also, slightly more time for assignment 2 and a list of relevant userland programs (like the one provided for assignment 3) would be helpful. 17: Very appropriate 18: Maybe more hints? It was hard to get started for the last 2. Would be nice to get nudged in the right direction. 19: Assignment 2 is easy,and some requirement just repeat same thing 20: Would like more explanations on assignment 2 --> took me and my partner a long time to start because we had absolutely no idea 21: not really