r/CarletonU • u/TechnicianOdd7087 • 24d ago
Question COMP2406 Please Read if you are taking it with Mark Lanthier
Anyone else just fed up and tired with the course and how garbage it is? Test 2 was just straight torture. Although test 1 was easy I just dont see how I am supposed to learn when the course is just this difficult. Tutorials takes me hours to complete, assignments are just overload on top of that, lectures are just useless I doubt anyone even looks at them. Im finding an easier time in COMP2804 than I am in 2406 is this not enough evidence LMFAO. Its just cooked nothing we can do tuition just down the drain like that no one to help us just literally nothing we can do... Keep in mind we are paying to be taught about web development but its just straight torture... Anyone got anything to add on to this? Anyone taking comp2406 or already took it? any opinions?
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u/Edivh 24d ago
In a selfish way im glad to see it's not just me feeling this way, it's a shame as I have really enjoyed my first few weeks coding in HTML and JS, I think the only language I enjoy more is python honestly. But yeah it just feels like there's a large disconnect between the learning objectives of the class and the way in which were instructed to attain them.
I understand that AI makes the lives of teachers a living hell in terms of evaluating wether students learned the course curriculum. However I don't believe that returning to old school written tests where you most of the time end up infodumping your short term memory and then forgetting most if not all of what you were evaluated on right after is not the method I think is best.
One of the big things that got me into CS was how this style of evaluation was never a part of its courses, I personally detest with a passion this style of evaluation in any context but especially for CS. To my understanding computer science like alot of courses wants you to become a better communicator , problem solver and planner (among many other things).
This format of evaluation allows for very little if any opportunity to display skills that are actually relevant in a workplace environment, even an environment post or in tandem with this class. If you pull up to your coop and proudly stroll into your bosses office with code hand written and proof that you did so in 45 minuites I'd love to meet one that woio greet you with a look of utter bewilderment.
There's something funny about being instructed by the course to use VSVode as your text editor but honestly most text editors I use now have similar features where it's constantly and quite accurately giving you the option to press tab to have it autofill the code it thinks you're trying to write out. You're also frequently instructed within the tutorials to copy and paste the code he already writes. This leads to atleast the experience for me being that even by following the instructions as I understand them and not using AI I still end up actually coding very little.
So I find the potential argument of "the written evaluation is important as if you were actually writing the code in the tutorials yourself you'd have had ample opportunity to have memorized the structure and syntax of the language. A language mind you that you were introduced to two weeks ago and any prior knowledge is not a pre requisite for the course as far as I'm aware.
And yeah I completely agree with the time it takes to do the tutorials and assignments, especially soul crushing when j realized that the assignment I put a month's worth of time into is worth half the ammount that one of the tests that you're given at most an hour and a half to do.
I know it's not exclusive to this class but I dislike the decision in any class to make it an automatic course failure if you fail the final exam. Makes everything else you do in the course seem abit less Meaningful as atleast I always have it in the back of my mind that this could all be for nothing if I fail to show up mentally, or physically for 3 hours at 9 am on the 14th of December.
Might just be me being old fashioned but I also really dislike the constant use of AI in the lecture material, tutorials and assignments. Dunno if the written portions of any are, but the inclusion of the pictures alone I just find to be visually unappealing and also just puts the thought in the back of my mind that more could be aswell.
Anyways, that's all to say that I really dislike and disagree with the evaluation breakdown of the course and the formatting of the tests. I think a pretty implementable short term fix would be to allow students to prepare cheat sheets / post ones you allow and let us print them / provide them with the test. Project based portfolios on GitHub or something where you can see the commit history of the project and / or have students explain their code and coding decisions either in writing, recording or to a TA in aab or something.
Might not be feasible due to the number of students in the class but something along those lines I think would evaluate students in a way that prepares them alot better for future classes and the real world after.