Is there any way we can see our grade online?

Guess I gotta write a program that takes my grades and computes the average.  Now to sift through my emails to find the grades..

Come to think of it, that really is quite a problem. A lot of us would not know we'll have to retake classes until it is already full, so we would fall behind by 2 terms. And for something like cs201, it hits us hard because it is a prerequisite for a lot of the CS classes. Is there something the CS department can do? Like perhaps open some extra spaces?

I remember speaking to the Math department head, Dr. Fraser. He suggested for the students to request for an extra class, and if there is enough requests, they will open another section.

Maybe there is some sort of extra credit we can do if we are behind?

I just wish we went over each lab exercise in depth

I wished the class was did not rely so heavily on Udacity. I would rather have the professor lecture and have the video be a supplement in case we need more explanation on a certain subject. I felt like I was just thrown in a programming class and had to figure everything out on my own. Rather than picking students to present their homework, the professor should have explained in depth on how to solve some of the homework problems. Also during presentation, the same students would go up over and over again to present their code. Half the class probably had no idea what was going on. Some lab questions seemed a bit ridiculous to finish in the amount of time given considering programming is brand new to most of us. I wished more time given to complete the lab over the weekend. It would allow us more time to apply ourselves to the lab problems.

I felt like the homework was really rushed as well. Given on Thursday. Due on Tuesday. It only left us with Friday or Monday to meet up with our professors and try to resolve any problems we had.

I wished we weren't the guinea pigs for this introduction to programming since future classes will be built up on the basic skills we learned in this class. 

 The final and the project was ridiculous. Just saying.

 They gave us a little tip on how to do both but it was seriously useless.The people who actually knew programming was able to figure it out probably. But for other people who just came out from cs 120/122/101 they probably had no idea what they were doing throughout the whole course/ final/ and the project.

As an anonymous posting, there was so much plagiarism in this class that the instructors didn't even catch. I didn't plagiarize because i was bound to retake this class no matter what. Alas, for the connect four project I saw literally everyone copying off each other, emailing each other the codes, and working on it together (copying together) even though it was a individual project.

Do you know why this happened?
This is because the course was too difficult and the students had no time to do these programming codes at such a intense fast pace. The Project was just too much. If we were at USC or something i can understand but this is CSULA for crying out loud. 

For the most part on the final, that was ridiculous too. Was the professor serious when he assigned this? Did he really think about the REGULAR students before making us take it? This excludes people who knows programming but for regular students i bet most are hating CS now. 

We all know why CS 201 was hard this year, it was because they had to toss aside all the people who weren't serious enough for a major like CS. The method did work, I'm changing my major after this course although i really liked CS until i took this class. It's good to be strict on the students, but you have to know kindness and forgiveness to churn out good students.

This course should have stayed the way it was like in prior to FALL 2013. The final/project was unnecessarily hard and should be voided from our overall grade and our grades should only base off labs at this point. 
OR, we can have this failpalooza which is bound to happen.

HELLO, ANY PROFESSOR CARE TO RESPOND?!

I hope they won't receive more hints or have an easier programming final than we did as a result of this post.

Also, are all programming finals for the three classes different? Or are the questions the same throughout?

Before I post, I'm just going to clear up the fact that I AM NOT KEENAN himself that is trying to make himself look good.

I'm a student from Keenan Knaur's class and I have to say that the first six weeks of how he taught was the best method. 
He would go over the homework after the student's present (which was serious waste of time considering he would just go over it).

The best part about his class though is the fact that he actually lectured and taught the class instead of just relying on the horrendous UDACITY videos. <--- (These videos made me fall asleep every single time. Who actually liked this anyways)
Keenan would seriously lecture and help the students out, this is probably because he's young and understands the student's point of view that videos itself wouldn't help. He eventually changed his method after the midterm though because he said the midterm scores were lower than the other classes. (Who cares if we're lower? As long as we're learning that's all that matters..)

Then just like Abbot's class he became reliant on the Udacity videos and started spamming us the "watch Udacity and study the book" Look, anyone can just watch Udacity and study the book. We are paying money to get lectured from the professor, not to make us watch UDACITY videos. 

Keenan also explicitly stated "MY CLASS AND TESTS WILL NOT BE CURVED!" this means anyone in this class don't even hope for a curve on the final. This is the reason why I didn't even try my best on the final. As soon as i saw the questions, I wrote out the starting program and just submitted that. Which probably would only grant me like 10 points MAX.

Honestly Keenan, you were good til the midterm. After that you became like Abbot and tried too hard to fit in.. 

Let us do like a take-home final or don't even count the final Keenan. Or you're probably going to see so much negative reviews on RateMyProfessor and other college rating sites just like what will happen to the other professors.

I have a question for those of you who are saying the class was too hard. Why didn't you ask more questions on this forum? You are clearly capable of using it. Yet there were hardly any questions from people who were having trouble. That would lead the instructors to think that you are all doing fine.

I think that's a legitimate point you bring up, Professor Abbott. But I also believe that when close to 50% (or more) of a class is failing a few flags should be raised. It seems that even from the viewpoint of some of the more 'experienced' students the workload was a bit excessive, either in quantity or difficulty. I could understand the workload coupled with the difficulty if it were an upper-division course, but an intro course? The fundamentals need to be firmly in place before that sort of load is put upon the students (in my opinion anyway). How would students be expected to perform adequately in a 300 level programming course if they were struggling to keep their heads above water in the 200 course simply to keep up with the points? Not only does it minimize the learning process  but it promotes dishonesty and plagiarism as was noted previously.

And to the person who said 'This is CSULA not USC..." grow up and have some pride. If that's your reasoning for wanting an easier course: give up, drop out, and get a s****y fast food job. That's a bull***t excuse and it insults everyone. I know people from Caltech, USC, UCLA, UCSB... and from what I've noticed the classes at this level are fairly similar. It's the work ethic that tends to be different (not to mention the tuition). If a course is hard because it sets unrealistic goals for the students, so be it. We can have a legitimate discussion. But if a course is hard because **YOU*** think the institution should have a low quality by its very nature, YOU are the problem.

That being said, I'm doing fairly well in 201. Yet I found this course to be waaaay more difficult than I had imagined it to be. Namely due to time constraints with our projects/homework, etc. And some of the material seems like it should have been more geared for an object-oriented class, not an intro to programming class.

Anonymous wrote:

It seems like professors were (not to offend) but lazy when it came to this intro class. It may be that the instructors were more preoccupied with other projects/upper division courses. It's unfair if that is the case since, as it was states earlier, the intro class is suppose to teach us the fundamental principles of programming of which we can apply in later courses. I honestly started this class with almost no knowledge of programming and was super excited yet as the weeks passed and saw the apathy in teacher's willingness to teach as well as the tight deadlines and difficult hw, I became more concerned with passing rather than learning. It would be impossible to learn at the rate we were going. My feedback to instructors is to slow it down and make sure the fundamentals are thoroughly covered. And please no more hw presentations!!! What a waste of time! Now the only thing to do is wait until grades are posted and pray that I get a C so I can move on (even though I will probably suffer even more in 202, which by the way, I hope is not structured the same).  Please post grades. Everyone needs to move on or see what we can do to try and  add CS201 again   We need to lrearrange our schedule. So please help us now. 

I'm assuming you didn't read the first doge post in this thread? CS 201 is full next quarter. If you fail you need to try and add the class on the first day of class meeting, which will be difficult with the amount of kids who also failed. 
Don't bother trying to get CS201 next quarter, just get a GE class instead and wait til Spring.
If they open another section that will be great but it'll also fill up instantaneously as well.

Final isn't curved,Project isn't curved, and  overall grades aren't curved. What's the point of having a hope in this class of passing if you know you F'ed up.. I didn't try on the final like the other anon said and I don't regret it, I mind as well retake this class if I dont fully understand instead of moving onto CS 202 and fail there. If they all of a sudden change their minds and curve the final even though they said it numerous times they won't, I'll be pretty annoyed and would demand a retake of the final.
BTW i agree 100% on your post. I didn't bother trying to learn after the 5th week. I just wanted to pass and this made me work with my peers way too often relying on them for every help.

I'm curious about the complaint about homework presentations. Did you find them uninformative? Did everyone find the homework so easy that there was no point in going over it? If that's the case, I'm confused about the complaints that the course was too hard. Or was the course too hard and the homework not representative of the course content?  Would someone explain. Thanks.

Thanks for your reply.  There are a number of reasons to ask students to explain the homework.

1. It's good practice. As you said, students are nervous talking in front of people. That's to be expected. Explaining homework is a way to start getting used to doing that. This is an important skill. The only way to learn it is to do it. One of the objectives in all our courses is to help students improve their presentation skills.
2. If it's clear that you will be asked to explain the homework, I would have hoped that this would discourage simply copying someone else's answer without understanding.  Looking foolish because someone does't understand work that he/she submitted should be an incentive to try to understand it. And if someone is having a hard time understanding it, s/he should have asked questions on the forum. At some point, it really is up to students to take responsibility for themselves.
3. It provides an opportunity to go over the problem. In my class I made sure that the problem was explained thoroughly, either by the student or by me if the student's explanation wasn't complete enough. I would be very surprised if the other instructors didn't do the same thing.

This is for my fellow classmates:

i agree with everything you guys say and my question what do you want to achieve? I feel the best thing that can happen  is they fix this for all CS201,202 etc and learn from this. I hope many of you stay with computer science and give it another shot IF they switch the teaching style because seriously, it was ridiculous. 

Merry Xmas everyone and happy holidays. I want to add to this thread because I hope it gets noticed. This is feedback gold for instructors. Please take note to what is being said here. This is the reality. I am not done with CS. I am determined to keep going but please be aware that the strategy used in the past was of little success. It's a shame bc it is a great subject. Please instructors, don't get so upset when asked questions. I mean we are students and were here to learn. Don't make us afraid to ask. Also, as noted many times, stop with those presentations. They are a ridiculous time Waster. I'd much rather be reading the book or practicing than having to listen to students nervously present. It doesn't help and would be much more beneficial to have some time to work on things that we can actually get help on. The labs are not sufficient, they are like programming tests. I would want to ask questions but the instructor would always turn me away. What the hell is that? Seriously, I want to learn but when doing these labs/hw I would feel compelled to finish rather than attain the programming skills we were supposively practicing. Please change it. The new quarter is coming up. Grades have been posted. CS instructors have yet to respond to this. Seriously, believe us, instead of questioning what were saying, come up with solutions. That's what programming is about, right? Solutions. Let's make it happen people. Let this new year be the start of a new and efficient year for cs teachers and students alike. Thank you.