The 2016 edition of The Art of Computing has concluded. So what did students say in the Official ANU Student Survey ?
All subject matter covered in the course was interesting, and never once boring. Being able to explore the fundamentals of programming was a real joy to learn, and the way in which we learned concepts then applied them to real life situations in our labs was just fantastic. Really enjoyed every second of this course!
Content was interesting and covered relatively well.
It covered a wide variety of topics.
The diversity of the content, and the topics are very interesting - particularly the guest lectures. The lab assignment provided by this course is really interesting, since Professor Xie makes her researches in machine learning, some topics she gives us are from this area, which are really interesting. I cannot imagine that machine learning can be such close to our life, it is fantastic. At the beginning of this course, I couldn’t have understood why this course teach us such a simple programme language, SNAP!, which is not powerful enough like Java, Python, etc. But in the end of this semester, I finally understand. This language is very suitable to us who have never programmed before. And the thinking of programme is conveyed to me in a simple way by using “SNAP!” . In the future programme, I can understand other language very fast since I have got the thinking of programming and computing. It is really a good course.
The tutors were all really helpful and were clear in their explanations when the lecture material wasn’t quite straightforward.
Very interesting assignment
The learning curve really was steep around the middle of the semester as was explained. I would personally prefer just a gradual climb in difficulty.
Having the entire course be 90% dependent on weekly assignments don’t really give the students a lot of incentive to improve their skills, wherein getting mediocre marks early on due to minor errors can affect motivation and drive once the course material gradually becomes more difficult.
Lecture recording was very poor. If I attended another lecture at the same time, the lecture recording is relatively useless because I can’t see what the lecturer is doing.
I think there is nothing wrong in this course.