The CCS Feedback session was held on October 23rd 2013, starting at 3:30 PM and ending at 5:30 PM. 17 students came to give feedback on their academic experiences.
The first feedback we got from students was that CS 341 only has one section in the spring semester, which is online. Students suggested that there should be an offline version of the class as well as more sections because students are paying tuition to get a formal education. Having a class only offered online isn’t fair to students who actually want to go hands on with the course. The course also caps out at 30 students.
IT 490 is a very frustrating class because it’s an online course and there tends to be a big project. Additionally, the book they use is from 2002, so a lot of the concepts are old. One of the biggest gripes students have with the class is that even though the class is an online course, the exams are held on campus on a Saturday.
Students have complained that CS 252 needs a lab course. Students feel as though they are not given enough information during lectures. Students never code in the course. They only read through PowerPoints, so they want a lab for more hands-on work.
Students have also raised concerns that CS 407 is pointless and should not be offered to seniors. Students have not been to half the class sessions because they were cancelled, and most of the work they are assigned is just busy work. The CCS faculty said that they have been discussing the state of the course and will change this course to either a junior or sophomore level course.
Another topic that must be addressed is the fact that the CCS learning community has been taken away. This is not good for the freshman CCS students because a lot of them come into NJIT knowing very little about computers. Absence of these learning communities is doing students a disservice. The class that is supposed to be taking the place of the learning community, CS100, is not really helping the students because many students either find the course too hard or too easy and there is no middle ground.
Students in one section of CS332, a very important class, feel that they are lagging far behind the other sections and complain that they are not learning anything. This needs to be fixed.
ACM is still lacking in space, which is noticeable when midterms and finals come around and many more students come in for help. They try to accommodate these students by moving them to other rooms such as GITC 4415 and 4416. However, if those rooms are booked, nothing can be done.
Ayaz Uddin
College of Computing Sciences Senate Representative
