Greetings to Members of the 308-208 Feedback Team

As you have heard the instructors of 308-208 - "Computers in Engineering" are interested in improving this course for students in any way feasible. In case you did not know, Prof. Ratzer applied for two grants last Spring (and also this year):-
  1. Royal Bank Award for Teaching Innovation
  2. Faculty of Engineering Course Development Award
Both of these applications were funded and two students worked away over the summer.
Together we produced:-
  1. A new 305 page textbook
  2. A new course diskette with
  3. Fifty programs in FORTRAN 90
  4. Over forty programs in "C"
  5. Some 200 quiz questions on the course material
  6. An ftp site has been established for items 2 to 5 above.
  7. An WWW site has been established for access to items 2 to 6 above.
  8. A set of graphic demonstrations of the algorithm section of the course.
At the same time the Engineering Microcomputer Facility was upgraded with Pentium computers (funded by the Dean and EUS) and a new FORTRAN 90 compiler was installed, explicitly for 308-208 (funded by Computer Science - not Engineering (the EUS has been asked to assist)).

The normal practice in McGill courses is to do a course evaluation during the penultimate class (or close to it). This is okay for a historical perspective on the course, the instructors, the TAs, etc, but does little to improve the course while it is in progress.

Once your other mid-terms are over, we would appreciate if you could spend some 10 minutes of your time to respond to the 12 questions below and more importantly provide us with any feedback that would help to improve this course for you and your fellow students during the second half of the term.

I have some suggestions, but I would like to hear yours.
Mine include:-

  1. Having the TAs come to the EMF for their office hours.
  2. Have the instructors complete access to the EMF and student files so that they could browse, edit and run student assignments from their office. (We working on this, but it may not happen this term).
  3. If the TAs stay in their office, have them take out the SOCS portable PC laptop, which has Turbo C, so students can have their last three assignments inspected and corrected by TAs. Students would have to bring their assignments on diskette.
If you have a colleague who is not on the "208 Feedback Team", but would like to be, please feel free to tell s/he this web address.
Please remember that this activity is entirely optional, but we would encourage you to participate. However, since it is being conducted by E-Mail your identity can be traced (we do not plan to do this in any explicit way). Also we realize that this is not a complete nor random sample, so no great decisions will be made on any statistical summary. Regards,
Prof. Gerald Ratzer

Questions


Your Name
E-Mail

IMPORTANT: Please press ENTER to split lines in your answers.

1. What can be done to improve the course textbook?

2. What can be done to improve the course material on diskette?

3. What can be done to improve the course assignments?

4. What can be done to improve the course lectures?

5. What can be done to improve the course in general?

6. Do you have any specific comments on the instructors?

7. Do you have any specific comments on the TAs?

8. Do you have any specific comments on the mid-term?

9. Do you have any specific comments on the EMF lab?

10. Have you used the ftp site ? Any comments on it?

11. Have you used the WWW site ? Any comments on it?

12. Have you learnt much in the course so far and have you enjoyed it?


Back to course material.