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Subject: MIDSEMESTER COURSE EVALUATION SUMMARY
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Thank you for your comments on the midsemester course evaluation.
I received 59 responses (out of a possible 95 or so), so please take
expressions like "some", "most", or "many", below, with a grain of salt.

If others would like to add their comments, please feel free.
Here are my responses to what you've told me.

Recitations:
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1.
As I might have expected, you were about evenly split between those of
you who found recitations useful (despite some problems with them) and
those who found them a waste of time.  In particular, about a third of
you liked reviewing the HWs and the examples that are done in recitation.

The idea behind a recitation is to break a large, primarily-lecture
class into smaller groups where there can be more discussion and more
practice with examples.  Don't forget, a typical secondary-school class
meets 5 times a week for about 3-4 hours total per week; a typical
college class meets only 2 or 3 times a week for only 2.5 hours total
per week.  Adding a recitation gives you one more meeting and brings
the "contact" hours a bit closer to the secondary-school standard.
Of course, one of the main differences between high school and college
is that in college you're expected to do a lot more of the learning
yourself.  Happily, from your responses, it appears that many of you
are aware of this.

2.
While I'm on the topic of recitations in general, let me also address a
couple of issues over which we have no control:  The time that the
recitations meet and the starting date:  The university assigns the
recitation times, and TAs are often not assigned to courses till the
second week of classes.

3.
Other "paradoxical" reactions to the recitations in general include
that you'd like to have fewer quizzes and you'd like to have more
quizzes (you'll have more :-)--they'll make up for low HW grades).

Several of you were unhappy about the fact that the quizzes are
unannounced; the reason that they are unannounced is to determine what
you have really learned, as opposed to what you specifically prepare
for (and perhaps later forget).  

And, I'll be honest with you, yet another reason is to ensure that you
have a motivation to attend recitation.  Now, I can already hear the
reply:  Why should attendance be required?  Well, why not?  A lot of
you already don't attend (and your midterm exam grades show it!).  If
you don't attend classes and rely only on the textbook (or lecture),
you're missing out on part of what you're paying for in tuition, as
well as giving up an opportunity to ask questions and learn more.

4.
Most of you like the fact that old HWs are reviewed and tips are given
for the next week's HW.

5.
One of you urged that the recitations be made "more relevant to the
needs of the students".  There's only one way for that to happen (in any
class you take):  YOU need to ask more questions, so that the TA (or
instructor) will answer them, thus making the class more relevant to
you.

(There's a rule of thumb in teaching:  For every student who asks a
question, there is at least one more--and usually several more--who had
the exact same question but were too shy to ask it.  So every student
who asks a question makes the class that much more relevant to several
students at once.)

6.
With only a few exceptions, most of you seem happy with your TAs'
knowledge of the subject and willingness to help.  Some issues you
raised are TA-specific, and I won't discuss them here.  But I
will review your comments with the TAs, and I will try to help them a
bit more with their teaching (including observing them teach a
recitation again, so don't be surprised if you see me there sometime
soon).  

Don't be too harsh with your TAs (in any course!) if they seem nervous,
unsure of themselves, or seem to have a bad attitude; imagine if I asked
*you* to teach a class when you may never have taught before!  (One of
you said that they weren't as good at teaching as I am.  That's to be
expected: in general, TAs have only had a year or two *at most* at
teaching one section per week; I've been teaching since before most of
you were born (so I've had lots of practice)!) And don't be too harsh on
the TAs if they make a mistake; we all do that.

For what it's worth, the TAs are not working in a vacuum:  I meet with
them weekly to review what's going on in recitation, I suggest things
for them to cover, and I help them with their "lesson plans".  I will
try to make sure that there is a bit more communication between the TAs
and me than some of you have perceived.

Lecture (& course in general):
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1.
The largest number of comments were to the effect that you liked
my lectures (including my use of the blackboard instead of PowerPoint
slides and my use of email--though some of you think I send too much of
it), and some of you explicitly thought that the course was good.
Great! Thanks!  (I hope that it does not follow that the rest of you
think that the course is bad!  I prefer to think that the rest of you
just didn't say how much you liked the course ;-)

2.
Some of you think that the place is too slow; others think the the pace
is too fast.

I'm right on track with the timing of topics as predicted in the
syllabus at the beginning of the semester, and I see no reason why I
shouldn't be able to cover most of what I had originally planned.
There's no engraved-in-stone set of topics for this course, and there's
no sequel being taught by someone else who will be expecting me to get
to a certain point by the end of the semester.  So I'm somewhat free to
go at a pace that seems right to me.

Before the semester began, I polled my faculty colleagues to ask them
which topics from 191 they thought were most important.  For each
topic, there was at least one professor who thought it was important
(now there's a nice proposition to represent in FOL!); however, the
topics that got the strongest support were logic, sets, functions,
relations, and recursion.  So, if that's all I get to do, most of us
will be happy.  You'll see graphs and trees again in various
programming and data structure courses (but I do expect to cover them;
I'm not dropping them from the syllabus).

There's another issue, which holds true for pretty much any
introductory course:  Should the emphasis be on breadth:  covering as
many topics as possible so that the students get a good overview of the
subject?  Or should the emphasis be on depth:  covering a few important
topics in enough detail or with enough practice that the students can
master them, and then they will have the appropriate skills for
learning the other material on their own on an as-needed basis?
Although some middle-ground approach is probably best, if I'm going to
err, I'd rather err on the side of giving you the basic skills and
foundational material you'll need in order to learn the other
material.  You've learned (or begun to learn) a formal language, not
unlike a programming language, for expressing (and proving)
mathematical & computational propositions as precisely as possible, and
we are about to begin learning about the main data type: sets, in
terms of which all other mathematical and computational objects can be
defined.  Later, we're going to use that language and those objects to
enable us to go fairly efficiently through the remaining topics.

3.
The thing you seem to dislike the most is my grading scheme.  The
biggest complaint seems to be that it is too hard to get an A.  Thanks;
I consider that a compliment :-)  It *should* be hard to get an A.  
An A grade means that you have pretty much fully understood the 
material.  Given the way I grade individual problems, you get full
credit on any individual problem iff you pretty much fully understand
it.  Otherwise, you get less than full credit.  

However, I can tell you that although very few of you got a grade of A
on the midterm exam (4%), about three times that many got A or A- (13%).
And, factoring in the recitation grade (based on HWs, quizzes, and
attendance), 11% got a midsemester grade estimate of A, with 19% getting
a midsemester grade estimate of A or A-.  If those estimates hold, then
the percentage of students getting grades of A (or A-) at the end of
the semester will be quite reasonable.

For more information on my grading method, read "How I Grade" at

        http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/howigrade.html

or read a draft of a paper I'm writing on the subject, at

        http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/grading.pdf

I'd be happy to discuss these matters further, either by email or in
person.

4.
Another thing some of you dislike is that I don't post my lecture notes.
That's partly because it's too hard to do--I write them by hand in my
unreadable handwriting--and in part to ensure that you have a reason to
attend lecture and take notes.

5.
The things you like include:
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* The course website and the UBLearns email.  (Well, some of you think I
  send out too much email.  But in fact much of the email I send
  constitute lecture notes, such as the posting about proof strategies
  and the posts about translation into FOL).  I welcome more discussion
  about the course material via UBLearns email.

* The examples given in lecture, the historical topics, and the discussions
  of how discrete math is relevant to CS.

* How I lecture and answer questions (thanks).

        One of you liked my lectures so much that you said you learned
        all the material from them.  Thanks, but fair warning:  I don't
        cover everything in lectures that you need to know.  I do
        expect you to be reading, studying, and practicing the material
        in the Rosen text and making use of the copious online material
        at its website.  Some material that is important and that will
        appear on HWs and potentially on the final exam may come from
        the text and **not** from lecture.   My job is to supplement
        the text, not to supplant it.  (And the text's job is to
        supplement my lectures; so, you won't get the complete course
        if you only pay attention to the text XOR me.  That's another
	reason I don't post lecture notes; most of what I say that's
	important is in the text.)

6.
I would appreciate any feedback from you on this, either in
person during office hours, one-on-one via email, or broadcast to
everyone via UBLearns email.