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Muddy Card Evaluation


On September 11 a muddy card evaluation was held, where the students anonymously gave written feedback about what is good and what needs to be improved in the course. The muddy card evaluation is held during the course, so that we can react and improve the course according to some of the suggestions.

Report for TDDC88 and TDDC93

Date performed: 2012-09-11
Number of cards: 32(TDDC93) 39 (TDDC88)
Number of students (ARLA): 122( TDDC93) 113 (TDDC88)

Comments

The comments are categorized and summarized below. The number after each comment is the number of students that answered this (or similar) statement.

General

  • + Well-organized and interesting course (14)
  • - Unclear what to learn for the exam (3)
  • - Too much workload, esp. Ht1 (2)
  • - Theory without practice (TDDC93) is boring (2)
  • -/+ The course is OK (2)
  • - Too much recommeded literature for 4 hp (1)
  • + Good homepage (1)
  • - Bad tables in C4 (1)

Lectures

  • - Lectures are too slow (6)
  • + Good lectures and slides (5)
  • - Stay more on the central topic of the lectures avoid jokes and larger perspective (4)
  • - Better English at lectures (3)
  • - Handout sent a bit earlier before the lecture (2)
  • + Good that microphones are used (1)
  • - The slides and lectures do not contain enough information (1)
  • - The course is overlapping with other courses (1)
  • - Interactive lectures are boring (1)
  • - More focus on the developers perspective (1)
  • - Wake us up using the whiteboard (1)
  • - More coupling of theory and instrial cases (1)

Lecture exercises and seminars

  • + Good lecture exercises (13)
  • - Unclear specification of lecture exercises (7)
  • - Bad or too long seminars (5)
  • - Faster feed-back on the lecture exercises (5)
  • + Good seminar (2)
  • - Too large exercises (2)

Labs

  • + Good labs and instructions (1)
  • - Too verbose lab instructions (1)

Project

  • + Good and interesting project (8)
  • - Confusing start-up of company (5)
  • - Difficult to develop for iOS (2)
  • - Theory should be before project (1)
  • - Too much trial and error in projects - need more experience (1)
  • - Want a good work place with equipment (1)
  • - Use the pubished article about the course for motivating project work. (1)

Teachers' response to muddy-cards

Thanks for the muddy-cards and other feedback. My interpretation is that the course is ok for the majority of the students. Below you will find our response to the most frequently occurring comments.

In general, several students seem happy with the organization of the course. Some students state that it is heavy workload. Last year we improved on this point and one step were that we reduced the number of lecture exercises from 9 to 5. Of course, if you have the role of project leader or analyst, you do much of the project work in Ht1.

The students seem generally satisfied with the lectures and the lecture material (e.g., slides). I'm are happy with this response and I will try to do my best also in the coming lectures. I will of course speed up the lectures if you can follow, my intention with a slower pace was that you will become well grounded in the most basic principles. Software Engineering is a lot about finding the right balance between benefits and draw-backs of different ways of working, which means that you have to learn to analyze and argue. For the written exam, I intend to go through an earlier exam carefully, so I hope things are becoming a bit clearer by then. I will not remove the wholistic perspective, which means there will be "deviations" from the topic.

Our interpretation is that the lecture exercises and seminars are so far appreciated. Some students thought that the specifications were unclear. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to send us an email. Many of you ask for clarification, and I answer these mails before answering any other. When I received many questions on the implementation view, I published a hint. If you are OK, we can try to shorten the seminar, and start with the topic of the week before the break. The feed-back time of exercises has improved from last year, and Jeremia found a way to cut it down with yet a day. Earlier we had multiple choice questions, but these do not prepare students for a large part of the written exam.

Concerning the project, several students reported that they think that it is an interesting project and that they think they will learn a lot from it. However, several students also think that it is confusing now in the beginning. It is probably too early to do any evaluation of the project at this stage, so we hope that you will give us more feedback during the rest of the course.

I will file a complaint about the tables in C4, and I will forward you request for project room.

I speak English since I want this course to be available for a broad audience. According to native speakers, I am perfectly understood, even though there are some "Swenglish".

Good luck with your continued studies.

Kristian

Page responsible: Kristian Sandahl
Last updated: 2012-09-19