Final thoughts on the class

It's been an interesting ride for sure.  I have some mixed feelings I guess.

The Good
The course has a 'real-world' feel to it that isn't normally felt as much in other CS courses.  We talk about industry standards, current trends, and how stuff actually gets made and (gasp) marketed.  Being allowed to choose all of your technologies as well as the project content allows for creativity.  Ackley is a great speaker and I think we all enjoyed his lectures greatly.  Our finished product for the class gives us way more pride than getting an A on some final exam.

The Bad
Sometimes, it didn't seem like the class was teaching us anything.  It's very non-traditional; at first I really like this, but it started to wear on me after a while.  I was trying to figure out if this was a good thing still.  I think that overall, it is good, but the class could use a wee bit more structure and consistency.  Students often don't know what comes next.  Frankly, the 'grading scale' scares us; we have little clue what it is or how it works and accordingly don't feel in control of our academic success in the course.

The Ugly
I think future iterations of the class should do away with personal project ownership.  I like that everyone proposes a project and the best ones get made.  However, I don't think the owners' of them should have to do pitches to 'sell' them to their classmates.  We get plenty of practice with project pitches in the latter part of the course.  Related to this, I'm not sure that having team leaders is a good idea either - this (naturally) seems to lead to contention from some team members who feel their grade is negatively impacted (via not being positively impacted) by not being a team leader.  It also adds stress to team leaders that they didn't sign up for.  I don't think the course is more valuable for having people directly labeled as 'project lead'.


Sure was some of the tougher 3 credit hours I've earned during my time here.