Evaluation Comments
Course:Object-Oriented Software Development
            (SE-450-306)

Quarter:Spring 01/02
Time: W 17:45 - 21:00
Location: Loop Campus
James Riely PhD

Associate Professor
jriely@cs.depaul.edu
Instructor homepage

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What are the major strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?


1.   Major weaknesses: consistently late for class, and consistently late in posting notes for the class.Major strengths: enthusiastic about subject, and current with the Java world.
2.   assignment specs not specific enough
3.   Strength:The instructor has a very good understanding of the course material.Weakness:Needs to spend some more time to plan ahead for the class. (more organization needed)
4.   Good knowledge , too fast ,I guess he thinks students have pretty good knowledge of prereqs which might not be the case
5.   The instructor is always explaining with his smile and in some funny ways.Somehow, some students will not appreciate that. And the lecture/slide is put online in the thirty mins before class.
6.   He knows the matter too well but he spends more time on explaining stuff that we should have already known before taking up this course.
7.   Dr. Reily is very good communicator and creates a excellent environment for teaching. I would like if Prof. Reily takes more interest in guiding students while looking at vast area of interest on the course releated subject, particulary the way he guided during his 5/22 class. He guided student to look at particular section of reading material and how that might helpful. and skim through rest of the materials.
8.   He teaches very effectively and provides a lot of resources to look at.
9.   His knowledge of the subject is very impressive, and the enthusiasm and humor he puts into his lectures is very much appreciated. He is very good at explaining the material, although sometimes the tangents and jumping around between topics make it hard to follow.
11.   He don't have patient dealing with people that have problem speaking English,i.e. foreign student. FYI, we pay a lot of $$ to the school.
12.   Interesting adlibbed presentations.Poor overall planning for the course. Lack of focus on objectives.Course was to cover primarrily design patterns, by midterm we had covered perhaps three patterns. Labs are unchallenging nad final project was poorly presented, classes as a whole have not adequetly prepared us as a class to aproach the sophostication that is required for the final project. Final project is very open ended and poorly concieved
13.   Lecture notes should be available earlier.
14.   The major strengths of the instructor were he was very fair, has extensive knowledge of the subject.
15.   Funny and nice. Have to say he is fair with grading. Lack alot of preparation.Seems like he just didn't plan for his lessons at all and just pop into class expecting to run through the notes. seems like teaching is not his primary concern if a concern at all.I have to say i like the guy though, not as an instructor.
16.   His expectations are very high but his output in the class is very poor compared to his expectations.For an instance, he used to post the assignments very late but the sumission should be on time.

What aspects of this course were most beneficial to you?


2.   learning about patterns
3.   The sections on software patterns
4.   OO concepts
5.   Know more effective ways to write code.
6.   Design Patterns
7.   Helpful in learning latest trend in Java and OO techniques/Patterns. Also, quite helpful to learn different sources of information on the subject.
10.   It presented me to the subject of patterns, which I haven't heard before, and I think it formed a good foundation to explore those topics.
12.   So far I have not learned anything new except ANT and Junit
14.   The most beneficial aspects of this course were the patterns used in the designing of object orientation.
15.   know what patterns are.

What do you suggest to improve this course?


1.   The required text for this course needs to be supplemented or replaced by more up-to-date, more understandable texts that related material to the programming language used in class. Also, UML notation used in class needs to agree with UML notation learned in SE430! After spending much time learning UML in SE430, SE450 instructor literally rewrote a considerable portion of UML rules. The school of CTI needs to collaborate much more in establishing standards on items such as UML. Although many text authors notate differently, CTI standardization may be based directly from the current UML version according to the official OMG specification. One more thing: it was my assumption in registering for this required core course that introductory Java should already be understood...unfortunately, Java taught in this class was very basic and not advanced enough for a supposed graduate course.
2.   none
3.   More discussion of patterns is essential.
4.   More coding
5.   N/A
7.   It would be more helpful if we get summary of what we learned at the end of each lecture.
8.   More assignments on design patterns.
9.   Put more effort into organization. Post the lecture notes at least ahead of time. Post the homeworks at least a week before they are due (remember that a lot of us are juggling work, other classes and other commitments ... it's not fair to wait until Sunday to post homework). It would have been helpful if the final project guidelines were posted right after the midterm and if we discussed the MVC architecture before our project proposals were due. Also, I think that if lectures had been more organized we might have covered the patterns on the Core Exam more thoroughly by now ... instead, I feel like we're being left to read and learn about too many of them on our own.
10.   I think the instructor should spend more time in teaching the different patterns and shoing more concrete examples on how they are used in real life.
12.   Better thought out and more chalenging projectsA text that is more focused on presenting Design Stratagies and less of a catalog of designs Less on line reading (I spent a small fortune on printing out on line reading assignments this term)Less of a focus on UML and more focus on designIndividual class sesions were not very productive, we could have covered much more in each class
14.   none
15.   This course needs to be seriously redesign or much better well plan the next time around.
17.   The coure starts from basics of Object orientation. It would have lot more useful if the course deals with patterns even more eloborately.

Comment on the grading procedures and exams


2.   great
3.   the grading was very fair
4.   Good
5.   N/A
7.   Some portion of exam was some what more focused on Java details (e.g inner class) instead of oo principles (e.g. when to use interface vs. class) atleast to my opinion. It was fair/balanced overall though.
12.   GRading seemed fair, but most projects and the exam were not difficult at all
14.   They were impartial and fair.
15.   the exams are fair though.

Other comments?


2.   none
5.   N/A
6.   The home assignments should have been challenging.
12.   Labs were unchallenging and poorly thought out. Lectures seemed slapped together at the last minute and by the time we got to the final project, we have not covered enough matterial to make the project approachable and there is not enough time to complete the assignment the way I would like to. We did not finalize projects until week 7!Overall this was the least challenging poorest planned course I have taken @ Depaul with the possible exception of ect272(?) Client Side Web programming.With a per course cost of over $2,000, I really expect, and generally recieve much more.