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<h2 align="center"><font color="navy">Comments on our Bespoke Survey</font></h2>

<p>
  I'm very pleased to see that all but two of the enrolled students
  completed the survey (bribing with a t-shirt may have helped ;-)
  This certainly provides valuable feedback.
</p>

<h3>General comments</h3>

<p>
  The results mostly speak for themselves. The course seems to be in good
  shape, overall satisfaction remains very high, some critical comments
  notwithstanding.
</p>

<p>
  We are grateful for all the positive and encouraging comments, I
  won't discuss them, but be assured they are well received by the
  team! Let's look at the critical comments that address issues under
  our control (and changing which would not obviously be at odds with
  the overall objectives for the course). Also, I'm skipping comments
  that are already addressed in
  the <a href="../surveys/comment-myexp-24.shtml">myExperience response</a>.
</p>

<p class=blue>
  Blue font indicates concrete action items.
</p>


<h3>Q1: Quick evaluation</h3>

<p>
  It's great to see the strong approval scores for all people involved
  (individual lecturers as well as the class of tutors), with
  "excellent" clearly dominating. It's pleasing to see that their commitment
  is appreciated.
</p>



<h3>Q5: Content Balance</h3>

<p>
  The vast majority thinks the balance is right, and the
  too-much/too-little also are pretty balanced, so it looks good.
</p>


<h3>Q7: Worst Things</h3>

<p>
  Workload, forum and lab load came up in the myExperience survey and
  are <a href="comment-myexp-25.shtml">addressed</a> in that
  context. Others are discussed below.
</p>

<dl>
  <dt>
    Tutors being unprofessional?
  </dt>

  <dd>
    This is a single complaint, more than balanced by many strongly
    positive comments about the tutors. I see no evidence that this is
    a real issue.
  </dd>

  <dt>
    Limited relevance of lectures to the project after Week 3
  </dt>

  <dd>
    Well, the course is Advanced Operating Systems, and it's more than
    just the project. It aims to provide more depth in a number of
    directions we consider important (an obviously biased view, no
    apologies!) And the vast majority of students found all lectures
    relevant (Q11). Furthermore, answers to the question about the
    most useful material (Q13) covered pretty much everything, and
    there was few comments at all about what to exclude (Q15).<br/>

    In summary, I see no reason to drop any particular topic. 
  </dd>

  <dt>
    Exam not enjoyable
  </dt>

  <dd>
    There clearly are widespread opinions about this, some people like
    it, some don't. I like it for the exact reason several students
    stated: it's a different way to assess, which is a match for the
    different kind of course AOS is. It really tests understanding,
    rather than rote learning. 
  </dd>

  <dt>
    More practice for exam, point to papers students expect to have
    read and discuss in class
  </dt>

  <dd>
    This is related to the previous pont. I've tried that in the past,
    but almost no-one reads the papers as long as there are no marks
    involved, so it's pointless. But we do list papers for almost
    every lecture, and critically reading those is the best
    preparation for the exam (beyond actively attending lectures).
    <br/>

    I can only repeat: <strong class=blue>Actively participating in lectures,
    including asking and answering questions, is the best way to
    acquire the insights the exam tests.</strong> The second best
    preparation is reading the papers listed.
  </dd>

  <dt>
    Odroid reliability
  </dt>

  <dd>
    While this was clearly less of an issue than last year (following
    improvements we had made to the infrastructure), the comment still
    came up multiple times, and we're taking it seriously.
    <br/>

    <strong class=blue>ACTION:</strong> <i>We've got one student of
    the 25T3 class employed on doing a significant upgrade of the
    cluster management infrastructure. Hopefully this will fix the problem.</i>
  </dd>

  <dt>
    Make M8 due Mon of W11?
  </dt>

  <dd>
    I thought this would run foul of UNSW rules, but upon checking it
    seems we can get away with it.
    <br/>

    <strong class=blue>ACTION:</strong> M8 deadline will move to 9am Monday
    of Week 11.
  </dd>

  <dt>
    Windows and Mac support
  </dt>

  <dd>
    This was a single complaint (while common the previous year), so
    I assume it's mostly under control, but we'll keep ensuring that
    the environment is well supported on non-Linux systems. There are
    plenty of people in the TS lab doing seL4 work on Macs, so the
    support is generally there, within the limits posed by CSE's level
    of support for non-Linux machines.
  </dd>

  <dt>
    No multicore etc?
  </dt>

  <dd>
    Do you really think the project should be even harder???
  </dd>

</dl>



<h3>Q14: What should be added?</h3>

<dl>
  <dt>
    More on formal methods in the seL4 context
  </dt>

  <dd>
    I used to do this in the past, but it was one of the less popular
    topics, so I dropped it.
  </dd>

  <dt>
    Asynchronous APIs like epoll, io_uring, kqueue
  </dt>

  <dd>
    Good suggestion, and fits well with coverage of LionsOS.
    <br>
    <strong class=blue>ACTION:</strong> Cover Linux asynchronous I/O
    together with LionsOS.
  </dd>

  <dt>
    More on other microkernels and their implementation
  </dt>

  <dd>
    I'm not really the expert on other microkernels. But they all have
    in common that they are slower, less micro, and (except for some
    research toys) not verified, so what's the point?<br/> We had some
    more <a href="https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs9242/05/lectures/05-uk.pdf">detailled
    coverage of Mach</a> (and its many deficiencies) in the past, but
    it seemed too much like bragging. But some of it is on
    the <a href="https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3231/extlectures.php">EOS</a>
    Microkernel lecture, although the coverage isn't that extensive.
  </dd>

  <dt>
    Unikernels
  </dt>

  <dd>
    They are really a fancy name for library OSes (there's a whole lecture
    in <a href="https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3231/extlectures.php">EOS</a>
    on this). But I guess mentioning the library OS concept is reasonable.<br/>

    <strong class=blue>ACTION:</strong> Mention library OSes.
  </dd>
</dl>

<h3>Q15: What should be scaled back?</h3>

<p>
  Only a few comments here, and generally about things others really
  liked.
</p>

<p>
  I take the point re the Apple lecture, I was annoyed too.
</p>
    


<h3>Q21, Q22: Quality</h3>

<p>
  Looks it's generally pretty good.
</p>

<h3>Q24: GDB</h3>

<p>
    A number of comments about GDB breakage and poor support for
    multi-tasking. Part of this may be documentation rather than software.
</p>

<p>
    <strong class=blue>ACTION:</strong> <i> We'll see what we can
    do, after the cluster infrastructure work is done.</i>
</p>


<h3>Q26&ndash;29: Partner Issues</h3>

<p>
  While to a degree unavoidable, and less of an issue than the
  previous year, it remains a significant issue.
</p>

<p>
    <strong class=blue>ACTION:</strong> We'll try to provide more
    support for partnering &ndash; see
    the <a href="../current/checklist.shtml">startup checklist</a>!
  </p>

<h3>Final</h3>

<p>Thanks for the feedback, and your participation in the course!</p>

<p>Gernot</p>


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