FUI's course evaluation

IN5170 - Modeller for parallellitet

Assessment:

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What is your general impression of the course? What do you think of the course's difficulty level? What do you think of the amount of work required in relation to the number of credits given? What do you think about the scope of topics that were covered in this course? How often did you participate in the lectures? What is your general impression of the quality of the lectures? How important was the teaching method or methods to your learning and understanding of the course curriculum? What is your general impression of the quality of the teaching method(s)? What do you think of the difficulty level of the assesments? How important were the assignments/assessments to your learning and understanding of the curriculum? What do you think of the amount of work involved with completing the assessment? What did you think of the difficulty level of the graded assessment? Throughout the course, how did you experience the availability of the course teachers and/or group teachers if you had questions or found something unclear? Show all Hide

Summary:

Students’ general impression of the course is mostly positive, with a majority describing it as from Somewhat good to Very good, though a few are clearly more critical. The difficulty level is mainly seen as Difficult but still largely Appropriate, and the workload is generally considered Appropriate for the credits, with a few finding it Small. The scope of topics is mostly viewed as Appropriate, though opinions range from Too small to Too large. The quality of lectures is mostly rated from Somewhat good to Very good, and additional teaching offers such as group sessions are also seen as Good and Important for learning. Mandatory assignments are perceived as having Appropriate difficulty and mostly Appropriate workload, though several find them rather Easy. The graded exam is considered Appropriate in difficulty, and the availability of teachers is largely experienced as Very good.

Students highlight the lectures, the structure of the course and the programming components as clear strengths. Specific elements such as “the thing about type rules”, “learning new programming languages” and “the programming” are appreciated, and one response emphasises that the course is “well structured and organized, good course material, good exam.” Group sessions and seminars are described as helpful for clarifying concepts in detail, and the exam is praised by one student as very well designed, clearly written and covering a broad and relevant part of the curriculum.

Well structured and organized, good course material, good exam.

At the same time, several students point to challenges with pacing, alignment and depth in parts of the content. Some experience the course as too slow‑paced in the beginning and feel that explanations of certain topics (such as different locks) are not sufficiently differentiated. Rust is repeatedly mentioned as an area where students would have liked more time, exercises and possibly a dedicated obligatory assignment, and some feel that the topic of types is hard to relate to the rest of the course. A few also find that the obligatory assignments are too few and too easy, with the hardest part being to understand what is asked rather than solving the tasks. There are remarks that some weekly exercises are much larger in scope than the exam tasks, which makes it harder to gauge the expected exam level. Individual comments also mention that slides can be too sparse for use when working on exercises, and that group sessions can sometimes feel slow if not all students are equally prepared.

It is very slow paced, especially in the beginning… More handins e.g. 5–7 which covers more of the curriculum, more exercise sessions with harder exercises, have one per week.

Students suggest several concrete improvements. Many would like all lectures to be recorded to avoid missing important information and to give better context to slides. There are repeated requests for more previous exams to help gauge scope and difficulty, and for weekly exercises that more closely reflect the exam level. Several ask for more obligatory assignments (including one focused on Rust), more and/or harder weekly exercises, and ideally more than one group session per week. Respondents also suggest involving a teaching assistant to handle hand‑ins and exercise sessions. Other proposed improvements include richer slides (with more complete definitions), more coding in runnable languages rather than pseudocode, and uploading slides and exercises to the learning platform.

About the course evaluation

The course evaluation is done by students in FUI (Fagutvalget ved Institutt for informatikk), and is based on questionnaires made at the end of each semester.