Quality of Lecturers at TCD

fh041205

Is it just me or has anyone else been dissapointed by this. I'm in 2nd year maths now and I must say that there are some really bad lecturers in my end of the college. Attending the best college in the country I would have expected more. Particularly this year, I've been shocked at some of the things going on in the maths department. I had to go to them 3 times during Oct/Nov just to sort out my courses. I wasn't changing any just making sure I was registered for all the right ones. And despite this, I'm still not registered for Computer Science and thus cannot submit any assignments (although it seems to be all the maths students who are in this situation and not just me).

Anyway, back to the point... I'm not sure if I should mention any names so I won't for the time being, but I had two terrible lecturers last year (out of 5) and I have 1 hopeless lecturer this year. And on top of that, we've been thrown in with the engineers to do C++ programming, which we've never done, and which they've been doing for the last year. So we're also expected to TEACH OURSELVES programming (we were actually told this). This is surely ludicrous, particularly for a university like Trinity which is supposidly the best in the country.

Jonathan

I'm an engineer..


You must be one of the gang that sit down the front in that class then? :P

Boston

No one goes to trinity to work as a "lecturer". These people are generally researchers of some kind who do lecturing s a side job to supplement their income. Some are required to do due to the terms of their employment. Its not like they're teachers hired for that sole role.

EACH OURSELVES programming (we were actually told this).

Welcome to the real world. Omg they expect you to learn things on your own? Bastards. No one can teach you how to program, you have to teach yourself, that's the bottom line. They might be able to convey some high level concepts but its up to you to actually sit there and figure out what the fundamentals are. You seem to think being the best implies the most hand holding, it doesn't.

LiamD

I know a lot of people doing the second year Eng C++ course who did C++ last year and most of them haven't got a clue what's going on. The lecturer changed this year as the guy who did it last year seems to have left the college / taken a step back. I did the same course last year with the previous lecturer and loved it - he made it so easy to understand and the course structure made it really easy to practice the concepts we were thought in class.

Welcome to the real world. Omg they expect you to learn things on your own? Bastards. No one can teach you how to program, you have to teach yourself, that's the bottom line. They might be able to convey some high level concepts but its up to you to actually sit there and figure out what the fundamentals are. You seem to think being the best implies the most hand holding, it doesn't.

I think in this case the course is a little unfair - from what I've heard and seen (mates asking me for help with their labs) the lecturer isn't strictly teaching C++ like the previous years. It seems to be a mix of pseudo code, C++ and others. You would imagine this is quite hard to follow for students who have only had a basic introduction to C++ and no experience of any other languages.

I believe the engineer's class reps have already contacted a number of people about the concerns the students have about this course.

Colli_Flower86

(a friend's reply)

I'm in 3rd year TP and I've had a few issues with the school of Maths before. First thing to note: The admin in maths is absolutely abominable. Every other school that deals with them says so. I took 2E3/262 a couple of years ago and had the same problem. The issue was the maths dept not passing on the student information to computer science. Just keep following up with the secretaries on that one I'd say.

Regarding not being taught C++ before... Didn't you do 161 last year? There's really not that big a jump from C to C++ on a numerical programming level. You're really simplifying your grammar a bit between the two. The engineers have had an extra year alright but at a slower pace, if the 2E3 lecturer is still giving out the notes on the moodle stick with those and work on your tutorials and that should tide you over nicely.

Jonathan

Colli_Flower86 wrote: »

Regarding not being taught C++ before... Didn't you do 161 last year? There's really not that big a jump from C to C++ on a numerical programming level. You're really simplifying your grammar a bit between the two. The engineers have had an extra year alright but at a slower pace, if the 2E3 lecturer is still giving out the notes on the moodle stick with those and work on your tutorials and that should tide you over nicely.

Different lecturer.

Colli_Flower86

jmccrohan wrote: »

Different lecturer.

Does not mean new notes... question not answered.

LiamD

The notes that Steve Collins gave for 2E3 last year are not being given out this year. As I said in my above post, the lecturer is not teaching the same material

Jonathan

Those notes are no longer available. They wouldnt be much use anyway. Totally different material is being thought.

And yes i did do 1e3 last year.

Boston

LiamD wrote: »

I know a lot of people doing the second year Eng C++ course who did C++ last year and most of them haven't got a clue what's going on. The lecturer changed this year as the guy who did it last year seems to have left the college / taken a step back. I did the same course last year with the previous lecturer and loved it - he made it so easy to understand and the course structure made it really easy to practice the concepts we were thought in class.

He had a completely different angle to it, he also wanted to lecture the engineers.

I think in this case the course is a little unfair - from what I've heard and seen (mates asking me for help with their labs) the lecturer isn't strictly teaching C++ like the previous years. It seems to be a mix of pseudo code, C++ and others. You would imagine this is quite hard to follow for students who have only had a basic introduction to C++ and no experience of any other languages.

I've seen the assignment, they're a muddled mess of concepts. One based on designing a linked list was just nonsensical.

I believe the engineer's class reps have already contacted a number of people about the concerns the students have about this course.

Good luck.

A bit far ahead and I'm sure your class reps are on it but if a course changes you're entitled to a sample paper from the lecturer. I think it's 8 weeks before the exam or something like that.

Jonathan

Boston wrote: »

I've seen the assignment, they're a muddled mess of concepts. One based on designing a linked list was just nonsensical.

Has boston gone 360 and now agrees with us????

Man i was pissed off when i realised that all those stacks, linked lists etc are already available as libraries...

Mark200

I have one lecturer that I think is somewhat hopeless. It's not a question of him knowing the stuff, but he's just not all that good at teaching it. I know and understand that the lecturers do research in trinity and usually lecturing isn't their number 1 priority, but this guy just literally reads line by line from the notes he shows on the projector.

If he just gave us all a copy of the notes, there'd actually be no need for him.

Boston

yep, the stl.

LiamD

Boston wrote: »

I've seen the assignment, they're a muddled mess of concepts. One based on designing a linked list was just nonsensical.

Yeah, I sat down with my mate, my notes from last year, and my linked list lab from last year and we couldn't work out what this new guy wanted from this linked list.

Also, my mate was adamant that they were never taught what pointers were - how they were expected to do that lab and also the nodes lab without knowing what pointers were is beyond me!

Jonathan

Boston wrote: »

yep, the stl.

I wonder how many people next year are going to try to write a stack from scratch when we need to use one...


I only realised from my own study..

Boston

He wanted a linked hashmap of some kind. A hashmap where each element is a linked list. It was just wrong to try and bring in key value pairs and "sentential nodes" while trying to illustrate a simple linked list.

rjt

fh041205 wrote: »

Is it just me or has anyone else been dissapointed by this. I'm in 2nd year maths now and I must say that there are some really bad lecturers in my end of the college. Attending the best college in the country I would have expected more. Particularly this year, I've been shocked at some of the things going on in the maths department. I had to go to them 3 times during Oct/Nov just to sort out my courses. I wasn't changing any just making sure I was registered for all the right ones. And despite this, I'm still not registered for Computer Science and thus cannot submit any assignments (although it seems to be all the maths students who are in this situation and not just me).

Anyway, back to the point... I'm not sure if I should mention any names so I won't for the time being, but I had two terrible lecturers last year (out of 5) and I have 1 hopeless lecturer this year. And on top of that, we've been thrown in with the engineers to do C++ programming, which we've never done, and which they've been doing for the last year. So we're also expected to TEACH OURSELVES programming (we were actually told this). This is surely ludicrous, particularly for a university like Trinity which is supposidly the best in the country.

About the Computer Science, it certainly is a joke. In most years, very few people take 262 (because people don't like 161 mostly). IIRC, last year no maths students took it. But as we have more choice this year, and the same number of subjects to choose from more or less, more people have been pushed into it. On top of this, Waldron (the 262 lecturer) hasn't done this course before, and he misjudged how much (little :P) the maths students and the engineers covered last year. To be honest, I really don't think the problem is with his lecturing - I think he's covering the theory quite well. He has some trouble keeping control of the class though (there's a small minority that just won't shut up). I'm not really used to large class sizes, so maybe this isn't unusual.

The real issue is that he assumed everyone had the background to turn the theory into code. Unfortunately the guy in charge of labs and the new C++ tutorials sets the most stupid assignments (every assignment so far has had serious design issues; it amazes me how a post-grad can design a *linked list* badly).

Welcome to the real world. Omg they expect you to learn things on your own? Bastards. No one can teach you how to program, you have to teach yourself, that's the bottom line. They might be able to convey some high level concepts but its up to you to actually sit there and figure out what the fundamentals are. You seem to think being the best implies the most hand holding, it doesn't.

Basic tutorials on OO concepts would help a lot though (even a once off, "this is basically what an object is" sort of thing). People don't know where to start. From last year people have a basic understanding of procedural programming (and there was certainly no hand-holding there!). And then suddenly, in the first tutorial, people were asked to design a class.

Besides, even those that are doing a lot of work by themselves (and are grasping the relevent ideas) can't do the assigments because they make no sense! To hell with hand-holding, all most people are asking for is an actual tutorial (ie. an actual tutor).

Brian

jmccrohan wrote: »

I wonder how many people next year are going to try to write a stack from scratch when we need to use one...


I only realised from my own study..

Spill.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

jmccrohan wrote: »

Man i was pissed off when i realised that all those stacks, linked lists etc are already available as libraries...

Were you just as pissed off when you discovered that all your engineering and maths assignments were all solved problems too?

Or maybe you have some novel idea of how to teach basic computer programming in C++ without setting problems that have been done before by someone, somewhere?

Jonathan

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI wrote: »

Were you just as pissed off when you discovered that all your engineering and maths assignments were all solved problems too?

Or maybe you have some novel idea of how to teach basic computer programming in C++ without setting problems that have been done before by someone, somewhere?

The point was that we havent even been thought the functions of the basic libraries...


The issue wasnt the unoriginality of the labs..

rjt

jmccrohan wrote: »

The point was that we havent even been thought the functions of the basic libraries...

Isn't the STL a bit advanced though? Once people understand objects properly then sure, but to introduce it now means you'd have to cover templates in some form also, not to mention that even instantiating an object is beyond a lot of people at this point. And besides, there's no harm in making people implement a few of these basic data structures once or twice - it is the name of the course after all. (But once people have done so, I agree completely we should just use what's provided in the STL).

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

I spend a reasonable chunk of the time I am paid for as a C++ programmer, working on some apps that are used by 100 - 150 people and are fairly critical to the business they are used in. That's just my background; a good friend of mine is in 2nd year Engineering and asked me for some help understanding her labs for 2E3.

Another friend of mine was taking 2E3 last year and his C++ labs were easy to follow, just the right difficulty (as far as I could make out) and reasonably enjoyable. The labs my friend has been assigned this year iun 2E3 are atrocious. They are incredibly vague and ill-defined. I sat down to try and help her with one but I just kept on asking "what did the lecturer mean by this?" expecting him to have expanded on the assignment in class.

I guess my point is that, to all you people taking this course: "it's not you, it's him."

But, consider this a valuable lesson in software development - vague requirements are tremendously hard to fulfill and incredibly easy to come by. Argue with this lecturer, argue with your TAs, argue with anybody who will listen until you are given well defined requirements. Not vague waffle about ListNodes and function names and how many rectangles the user should be asked for.

As regards having to do a bit of learning by yourself... well, get used to it and get as good at it as you possibly can. It's the most valuable skill you'll acquire from college.

Finally, http://stackoverflow.com/ is a relatively new programming Q&A site launched by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, it's been out since ~July and is a fantastic place to get some help with your assignments - but, if you want help from the community then be upfront that it's homework and make damn sure you've shown that you've put some effort into the assignment and are genuinely at the point where your own research can take you no further.

sternn

jmccrohan wrote: »

I'm an engineer..


You must be one of the gang that sit down the front in that class then? :P

Actually that would be the majority of my class (MSISS). Some of us refuse to do what they do and sit in a "normal" seat!