Emil Ong

CS302, Assignment 13

1. What overall grade would you give the course?

A.  This was a very enjoyable course and certainly one of the most educational of those that I've taken at Berkeley.

2. To what extent have your expectations about and attitudes toward teaching changed as a result of CS302? Please explain.

I never really gave much thought to course design before and this course really opened my eyes to the amount of creative work and research that is necessary above and beyond the normal course preparation.  I've also become interested in researching education and I feel like I have a good starting point into the field with the papers we read this semester.  I'm curious about experimental methods in education as well (how to measure effectiveness, selecting control groups, etc.)

3. Which assignments were especially good?  Which were the worst?  Please explain.

I felt that all of the assignments were quite necessary and pertinent, so which ones I judge good or bad will probably only reflect which parts of course design I enjoy or don't.  My favorite assignments were researching text books and finding similar existing courses.  These exercises were fun because they let me see what's going on in the world of security education.  My least favorite assignments were the ones involving creating tests and homework assignments.  I found it difficult to design exercises that fit into the given categories.  I also had a hard time judging the difficulty of questions.

4. How much work would remain for you to teach the course you designed?  Should an assignment have addressed this?

I think I would have a lot more work to do in codifying everything.  Lecture plans would definitely require a lot of work.  These points though are mainly work that would have to be done in any course.  As far as design goes, I would say that during this course, I was able to get about 70% of a design laid out.  I'm nor sure how an assignment could have addressed this issue.

5. Generally in class we discussed the assignments.  To what extent was this a good thing, and to what extent should we have used class periods for other purposes?  Please provide examples.

I was very happy with the format of the class.  I thought that with each student presenting a prepared assignment, we were able to have well thought out discussions.  There's certainly room for discussing other things though.  For example, I could imagine using the last 30 minutes of every class discussing and introducing material for the next class.

6. Having each participant design his or her own course reduces the opportunity to work together.  Do you care?

I don't think that this was a big problem.  If the class were significantly larger, it could be a nice option for two people to work on designing a co-taught course.  I think the in class critiques were able to provide much of the benefits of group work.

7. What should I change in next year's CS302?

I think a section on designing lectures would be very useful.  This is one area which still seems very difficult to me.  Maybe one week have students design one lecture at the beginning of his or her course and the next week, design a lecture in the middle.