End of June Survey

Yes, I'd love your input on the course, please! Don't worry that the title is "End of June Survey" – that's just when I posted this survey. THANKS!

I'm working on designing a new CS1 (first CS) class, an alternative to CS1321. We're calling it Introduction to Media Computation. The main ideas of the course are:

All media are going digital.
Digital media are manipulated via software.
Knowing to program is then a communications skill.

The idea is for the course to focus on projects like synthesizing and manipulating sounds, doing Photoshop-like filters on images, and doing video effects (like putting a movie of yourself on the moon). The motivation is that 3-10 lines of code could do something that you want done, in order to make a point, cheaper and easier than buying and learning a high-end video/sound/image tool. I'm hoping that the assignments can be more open-ended and allow for more creative expression than traditional CS1. Along the way, we can introduce CS ideas while building and manipulating real media.

I'm aiming this class at non-CS majors, and maybe CS majors who are turned off by CS1321. It's probably not even a class for Engineers who strongly want a MATLAB and number-crunching focus in CS1. I hope it's a good fit for Ivan Allen College (e.g., LCC) students, Management, and Science students.

I'm trying to get feedback on the idea, and on the language for the course. I'm mostly interested in getting feedback from the kinds of students who might take such a course.

IF YOU ARE NOT A CS MAJOR, AND YOU ARE A 1st or 2nd year student, would you be willing to participate in this survey?

TO VISITORS OF THIS PAGE

Thanks for participating! You're welcome to answer everything anonymously, or nothing at all. Feel free to contact me at guzdial@cc.gatech.edu with any questions.

Type in an answer and hit "Add to this page" BEFORE going on to the next question, please.

P.S. I'd like to be able to share your comments on this page with others interested in the design of an alternative CS1 class. If you don't want me to share your comments, please just say so next to your comment and I won't.

The curriculum for the new course is now available on the Curriculum page.

I'd be interested in your comments on several issues.

Workload

Too high? About right? What do you think about the mix of kinds of homework/projects, pre-quizzes/quizzes, projects, and exams?

The workload is just right for the current CS1321 course. I think that the current course is well-developed. Since collaboration is allowed, I see no problem with the amount of work that we are given. Collaboration aids in cutting down the amount of time it would take to complete a given homework/project assignment.

I think that there sould not be mandatory graded homework assignments. There are too many of them, and they are too long.

Ridiculously too high, not enough help and feedback on homeworks.

Please note that I'm asking about the new class. I do hope to provide enough feedback on homework in the new class!

Topics

The topics are aimed at teaching interesting and useful media-focused computation, while also teaching computer science concepts. These include:

How to manipulate sounds, images, and movies
How to manipulate files
How to get external programs (like GIMP and Gnuplot) to do work for you
Why programs get slow, and how to make them faster
How to get programs written more quickly
How to debug programs.

Does it sound like the right topics? Too many? More than you'd like to see?

This sounds like the right topics and just the right amount.

I like the topics suggested. They sound much more useful than the irrelevant topics covered in the current CS1321 course. Especially why programs get slow, and how to make them faster.

This sounds like the right topics and time

Development environment

We are building the development (programming) environment for the class: Jython Environment for Students (JES). You can take a look at it at JES GUI Screenshots, with a description of the requirements for the environment at JES plans.

Does it sound useful? Too much? Too little? Other features you'd like to see?

Because I have not had the chance to work with this programming environment, I cannot really give helpful feedback. However, with the given information, it sounds very useful.

I am a math major, and I don't like Cs 1321 now. This will be a neat thing to do because I don't know much about computers and CS 1321 was too hard for me.

Anything than Scheme or Java should be better. As long as it's logical and not ridiculously sensitive, we should be good to go.

Thanks very much for your feedback!

Link to this Page

Development Pages last edited on 1 March 2005 at 9:37 am by guzdial-pb.cc.gatech.edu