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EF 230 Fall, 2012

Computer Solution of Engineering Problems

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EF 230 Fall, 2012 Feedback

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Please take a few minutes and give us feedback on the class. Your constructive comments are invaluable to us in helping improve the class each semester. You will received extra credit for completing this form. Thanks.

Labs

Rate the overall quality of the EF 230 class.

21% (40/189) Very good (1) 51% (97/189) Good (2) 19% (35/189) Average (3) 6% (11/189) Marginal (4) 3% (6/189) Poor (5) 0% (0/189) N/A (0) Avg: 2.19, NZAvg: 2.19, sum=413, cnt=189, nzcnt=189

Comments/suggestions for improving EF 230:

2.  I think the pace was good, and the TA's did a good job explaining the information and giving and helping with examples 3.  The most difficult thing about this class was trying to work through a practice test or working through my project. I felt that if I got stuck there were limited options for me to work my way through the problem. I felt like if I got stuck I was stuck and there was really no way for me to work through the problem on my own without seeking out help. Normally I learn better when I work through a problem on my own so this frustrated me. 4.  No improvements are needed 5.  Have projects cover more concepts that we cover in class. 6.  An extra numerical hw problem. 8.  It is fun! We need to be tested over sound though. And the second test was really hard. We needed more time on test 2. 9.  Don't go as fast in some examples because some concepts are harder than others 10.  Overall, the class was very helpful in solving engineering problems with computers. 11.  slow down the pace 13.  Slow the pace down a bit 14.  Maybe explain some of the examples in the labs in a little more details. 15.  It would be helpful if help sessions could be in the upstairs computer lab rather than the lab open to all students. 16.  make labs a little more interactive with students and help students to understand hard material more 17.  post test solutions after each test 18.  More in-class help for the projects. It's not enough time to just have the help sessions. 20.  Put more information in the lab outlines. 21.  Create more help sessions, or have more than 1 TA in a help session when a project or test is upcoming 22.  NC 23.  Give better examples. The examples in the lab are nothing we ever did and are way too confusing. 24.  More in class examples 25.  None very helpful class 26.  More planning ahead will definitely improve the class (such as having labs completed so students can look ahead a few days before class rather than having them ready the night/morning of, this I think can be easily done), as well as receiving graded tests/projects at least within two weeks of the due date. 27.  help sessions should be more like ef 105. the coding is not easy at all, and it takes time to get used to it. however, when one student who 'already knows how to code' takes the class, and passes on his worked out examples to 5 of his friends, and they all score 90+ on the exams, the professors think that the other students arent 'trying hard enough'. That is not the case. If everyone had access to the solutions to e.g. the questions posted in exam review, everyone would make a 100. If those 'rare' students would not throw off the curve, then we would see the 'real curve' of the entire class. 28.  Have the TAs write more comments on the screen. 29.  SLOW DOWN 30.  Not cramming so much into each lecture. I am lost after the first 30 minutes a lot of the time and if we actually stopped to make sure I was caught up we would be there for 3 hours. 31.  Simplify some of the examples 32.  Work with the basics of functions a little more. 33.  This class should have more a an actual professor presence. Homework problems should be more like the problems that will appear on the tests. 34.  Class was taught much better than my EF 105 class. I feel like I have a much better understanding of MATLAB. 35.  Decrease the class size a little and make more sessions. 37.  n/a 38.  Not piling on exams, homework, and projects all at the same time. 40.  The second exam was too long. 41.  This class required more work than all of my other classes combined. A 2 hour class should not be like that. The projects were exponentially harder than any of the basic uses we learned in class. 42.  Not have homework over material that was not covered in class. 43.  I feel like the class as a whole moves too quickly. That the basis are not covered long enough to build up on like the class is. It is expected that we are proficient at MATLAB before coming into the class and for the majority of us, it is not true. 44.  Some of the projects require a lot of functions that aren't covered in class. Either cover more of the necessary functions in class or design the projects so that they aren't needed-having to look up one when you don't know what youre even looking for takes too much time. 45.  Credit hours should be increased to 3 or the work load decreased 47.  Either give more time for the exams or make them shorter and don't take off points for comments when you don't even have time to finish the problem. 48.  Try to get graded test and graded projects back faster. I understand it takes a long time, but a month is a little ridiculous 49.  If the first half of the syllabus was the focus of the semester, we would retain the information about using Matlab better. Everything else should be (and is) its own course. Cramming it into a short period of time does not help our understanding. And having more time on the first topics would help, too, because I feel like many people don't have a real understanding of some of the basics still. Me included. 51.  We shouldn't just listen and copy everything the TAs write down but be asked to figure things out on our own in the class and then come together and figure out what we did wrong. I feel like we don't learn as well by just copying what they put down. 53.  Make the homework tie in with the labs better. 54.  Sometimes you go too fast. 56.  Too much work for a 2 credit hour class 58.  I didn't like all the projects, I think with that much work, class should be worth more than 2 hours 59.  More details on the lab webpages so that it's easier to follow if a person misses class or needs to review. Video record labs. 60.  Maybe more detail in some labs, or more time to complete and fully learn the concepts 61.  Don't take a month to grade tests/projects. 62.  More help sessions and direction on the project. 63.  None 64.  More help sessions. 65.  Have more TA's during the help sessions. Especially when it gets closer to project due dates. 66.  This class is way too hard for a 2 hour credit class. The class had the least credit hours this semester out of all my classes, but I put way more hours into this class than the others. 67.  It started off really well but toward the middle and end the semester they just packed a whole lot of information and very different skills into a small amount of time, making it really difficult to keep up. 68.  The projects were a bit over the top making things more stressful, difficult, and time consuming than they needed to be. 69.  Not much to improve on maybe explain commands more. Examples are good, but explanations are helpful. 70.  Too much effort for something I am 98% sure that I will never, ever, use. 71.  more examples worked in class maybe quizzes or more home works that cover the material better 73.  More examples on how to do things 74.  I thought it was an interesting, useful class and I feel like every engineer should be required to take it. 75.  N/A 76.  More explanatory labs. There's a lot of explanations, but I think a little more might be good. 78.  Can't it be made little easier? 79.  Overall the class is very organized and well run and can't think of anything off the top of my head to improve it. 81.  I felt like there wasn't enough actual script writing in class. The explanations were great, but a lot of the time, rather than us writing scripts in class, the TA's just said to get the examples off of the website, but i learn best by practicing in class. 82.  More time for projects. 83.  N/A 84.  Don't make it required 85.  I would like to spend more time on learning other computer languages 87.  That middle project was unexpectedly hard, although I suppose we were warned about that one. Maybe make the first project a little harder to prepare us better. 88.  Good class and continues to show EF has the best TA's. 90.  Projects make no sense to me 93.  Provide more practice problems for various commands. Be more clear about where the TA's in-class files are. I never found these until the last week and I needed the ones for sound. 94.  The grading was a little slow on the projects providing little constructive learning from their activity. Also, having both a large final project and final exam is a little bit too much to ask for a two credit hour course in my opinion. Other than that, this course has been great and a very thorough overview for using MATLAB. 95.  More individual help, have a ta come around for questions. 96.  More examples on the ef 230 webpage. Show solutions to practice test questions 97.  The projects were quite lengthy. I feel that I got a lot out of them, but if they could be a little bit condensed, that would be great! 98.  It's a two hour credit class so it should be treated like one. The workload is more like a 3 or 4 hour credit class. 99.  There were times when I felt like I fell behind in the class and struggled to catch up. I also felt like this class required a lot of outside study and research. The labs did not always cover all of the necessary material. Especially for a 2 hour class it was pretty complex and requuired a lot of time 100.  I understand there are a lot of subjects that need to be covered in the class but on some of the more difficult material I feel like it would be very helpful to maybe spend a little more time covering them in class. Also some of the projects were very long and confusing and involved not only mastery of the required skills but also a complete and understanding of the project was actually looking for which I feel was harder than knowing how to use the MatLab skills. 101.  None really 102.  Felt as though coming to class did not provide me with an advantage, preferred learning on my own using the site. 103.  I can't really think of anything. 104.  Explain everything better 105.  Certain advanced topics, such as ODE45, could be their own complete lectures, to help people better understand them. 108.  Nothing. The TA's did very well, the material was always explained clearly, and none of the assignments were beyond our scope of learning. 109.  Less time consuming projects. 113.  Getting grades up faster. Some things could be more in depth, sometimes felt like i had to figure things out myself. 114.  getting grades back faster; go a little more in depth with some of the more confusing matlab functions. 115.  More little assignments, break up first two projects into smaller pieces like project three. 116.  Some people get it slower than others. Don't make them feel dumb for asking a question. 117.  Homework was a bit hard 118.  A little bit slower. Some classes just jump into some practice without a great intro and I got lost. 120.  Go over examples more in class and in more depth. 121.  Why is this a class? If you're truly interested in giving UT engineering students some useful programming experience, why not have a class on a language like visual basic or python? If it's really all about licensing, then you are NOT actually primarily interested in the educational progress of your students. Also, why not make this an online class or simply a supplement to one of the other EF classes? This class is too easy and based so much on just looking up terms online that making it a standalone class doesn't make sense. 122.  Make it an online class. TAs go through the code too fast, and I typically stop paying attention about 20-30 minutes into the class. I could ask questions, but I am so terrible at programming, I'd slow the class down. If the course were online, I could pause it and think about it at my own pace. In EF 105, Professor Schleter recorded himself working out a practice final exam with commentary, and I learned more from those videos than I did the entire semester. I would have loved to have that in EF 230. 123.  Great class 124.  Make the projects shorter and more relevant...they were incredibly time consuming though did contribute greatly to y understanding of the material. 126.  none 127.  more group activities 128.  None 129.  A period of class time (~last 20 min) were the homework for that class would unlock and students could ask for assistance or more in depth explanations of difficult problems, would prove beneficial. 132.  Some of the homework was a bit tough and the projects just consumed a large amount of time but satisfying when completed. 134.  Where do I start! I feel like the projects were neat, but they were WAYYY too much. By that I mean, there were parts of the projects that we never learned in class. Granted there's plenty of online resources that can teach us how to do the things needed, but that should be provided by the course,, I pay for the course... There needs to be more extra help.. The discussion board is great, but when I set aside a specific time to work on matlab, then I get stuck and need an immediate answer, I have to wait to finish, and allocate another time to continue while I wait for an answer on the discussion board.. Two sessions at 5:30 at night, with one TA for 30 people doesn't cut it, especially with overly difficult projects where key concepts need to be taught in order to be able to write the code.. That takes time.. I also disagree with the format of the testing. I don't believe that coding is something that should be timed. Good, solid working code cannot be made in a matter of 75 minutes. I've worked over 50 some hours on the second project, then we're expected to write 3-4 programs in an hour and 15 mins? That just shows who can memorize things better, and who are better cheaters in my opinion. A multiple choice, or paper fill in the blank type test would be a better display of knowledge of the content, NOT writing programs.. Leave the writing of the programs to the project, and the testing of knowledge to the testing, combining just misses the mark in my opinion. I would love a text book, and better examples. There were things in this last test, that I never could find a good enough example to make work. Coding is something that is learned by trial and error, and being able to take snippets of code that work can make an exponential difference in success. Lastly, being a person who is a transfer student, I never took EF 105.. I took a different programming class, so a lot of the assumed things, like how to properly comment code was out of my range of knowledge.. I missed like 9 points on the first test due to firstly hearing the TA wrong, and mostly just not knowing that commenting to the extend needed was all that important. I know that now! 135.  Projects were great, maybe just less time consuming, or better explain the expectations in class. 136.  TAs just answer your questions with more questions. That does nothing but intimidate the students to ask more questions regarding material that is challenging and confusing, and they make you feel like idiots when you work up the courage to ask them. Then they don't help you. 137.  I really liked the final project theme of creating tools to use in my specific field of engineering. I'm much more motivated to produce a better project if I can tell that it has some value in my work. I would have enjoy having the entire class be this way. All project were at least geared toward applications in my specific field. 138.  I think if the lectures were more interactive, students would excel more. There were days where the lectures got pretty boring and following along was hard to do. 142.  would love to be able to see our old tests now that finals are coming up. for next year students, could the questions be posted with "word and see answers" like has been done for practice tests. should have thought about cutting and pasting the questions to text file during test but didn't. 143.  See below comments on Grading rubric and time commitment. 144.  None. 145.  None 146.  Test the material to be taught on the Estabrook computers prior to class, and if something doesn't work, revise the lesson accordingly. Sound was an important thing to learn, but it was a very messy lesson since the app server MATLAB on every computer wasn't allowed to access the sound drivers. 147.  As much as I don't want to admit it, I enjoyed the class. I am not good at it, so I complained about it a lot, but I learned a ton. 149.  It's not a two hour class. Stop pretending like it is or make it a two hour class. Get rid of it. 151.  I think the class moved too fast in the beginning. It was really intimidating being in a programming class, having never programmed before, I think the class structure was set up in assuming the students had some experience level, but that isn't always the case. 152.  Make projects more useful (department specific). In class examples are over complicated and useless, make abridged versions that actually apply to material. 153.  The TAs were very helpful, but the grading of projects and exams should not take as long as it has been taking. 154.  a lot less homework/project. way too much work for a 2 hour class 156.  I have learned so much more about Matlab than I did in EF 105 and am also starting to use it in other classes. 157.  Class is very well structured. Expectations are clearly presented at the beginning of the semester. Grading is fair. Material is covered thoroughly and efficiently. 158.  Easier exams or more time to take exams. 160.  The website is very helpful. 161.  Switch to teaching programming concepts and not a scripting language. I suggest teaching C or C++ instead. Increase number of hours to course. 162.  The class is well structured and good at teaching the subject. Very few engineering students like EF 230 and many distain it. Its true coding’s not very fun but its somewhat 'rude' the way the engineering dpt. delivers this class to students. I feel this is mainly due to it only being 2 credits while being very time consuming. The required attendance is, to me, condescending. I'll do the work (which is a lot), don't punish me for not doing it on my own time. That being said I love how its some what of an introduction to coding and programming and I feel more computer science content should be added to the class. 164.  Two things that would help with this class is to have more TAs at help sessions before project due dates and to have grading done faster. It would be better if students didn't wait until the last minute to do projects but that will most likely never happen. 165.  Nothing much, really. I enjoyed learning how to think of problems in ways that I could code to solve them. 166.  I felt like the online material was very good at the beginning of the semester and it dropped off halfway through. I didn't feel like it was very helpful without the nice explanations that were provided for the earlier ones. The matlab website was often references, but it was often giving a too in depth explanation to understand without having a previous grasp on the material. 167.  ran out of time on the last test. 170.  Project is little to hard. hope we had little easier project. 171.  Don't go so slow on basic stuff; it gets old fast. The projects were a pain to finish. They were always ambiguously worded and contained few helpful tips. We were forced to spend a lot of time asking the TA's for help. 172.  The class is well run. No suggestions (and not for lack of thought on the matter). 173.  xcvsVsd 174.  None 175.  Offer Extra credit incentives for completing homework early. 176.  I think that more focus needs to be made for the later sections, I got a little more confused towards the end and how to use each function and subfunctions i.e fmincon 177.  I think that labs should not be mainly oral lectures. The lab should have more time to practice examples on MatLab to prep for exams. 179.  Should be taught by Professor Schleter. We should be required to take notes and there should be no computers in the classroom. 180.  More extra credit opportunities 181.  Was great. Had a lot of fun. 184.  Get project grades back faster, also some projects (mainly project 2) seemed a tad too long 185.  I would suggest having more helpful homework problems in order to study for exams more efficiently. 186.  Some of the transition from the lecture to the homework was confusing. If you get behind in a lecture it is difficult to simply catch up by reading the lab for the day. 188.  easier, simpler example codes that are loaded onto the labs for us to look at after the lab is done. 189.  EF 230 has way too much work for a 2 credit hour class. The second project had a ton of work.

GTAs

Rate the overall quality of the Ryan Graham's in presenting and explaining the material. Use N/A if he never presented the lab in your section.

31% (58/189) Very good (1) 26% (50/189) Good (2) 3% (6/189) Average (3) 1% (2/189) Marginal (4) 0% (0/189) Poor (5) 39% (73/189) N/A (0) Avg: 0.97, NZAvg: 1.59, sum=184, cnt=189, nzcnt=116

Rate the overall quality of the Morgan Helton's in presenting and explaining the material. Use N/A if he never presented the lab in your section.

46% (86/189) Very good (1) 22% (41/189) Good (2) 5% (9/189) Average (3) 1% (1/189) Marginal (4) 0% (0/189) Poor (5) 28% (52/189) N/A (0) Avg: 1.05, NZAvg: 1.45, sum=199, cnt=189, nzcnt=137

Rate the overall quality of the Taylor Morris's in presenting and explaining the material. Use N/A if he never presented the lab in your section.

34% (64/189) Very good (1) 23% (43/189) Good (2) 2% (3/189) Average (3) 1% (1/189) Marginal (4) 0% (0/189) Poor (5) 41% (78/189) N/A (0) Avg: 0.86, NZAvg: 1.47, sum=163, cnt=189, nzcnt=111

Rate the overall quality of the Everett Stiles's in presenting and explaining the material. Use N/A if he never presented the lab in your section.

32% (61/189) Very good (1) 26% (49/189) Good (2) 8% (16/189) Average (3) 5% (9/189) Marginal (4) 2% (4/189) Poor (5) 26% (50/189) N/A (0) Avg: 1.39, NZAvg: 1.89, sum=263, cnt=189, nzcnt=139

General comments/suggestions on GTAs:

1.  none 2.  MORGAN WAS AWESOME PAY HIM TOP DOLLA'S And everett was good also. different teaching styles so they went well together. 3.  The TA's were mostly friendly and helpful. 4.  Both Everett and Morgan were great GTAs who explained the material well and gave good examples in class. Taylor was not my GTA but she was extremely helpful during the Wednesday help sessions. 7.  Morgan gave very good explanations and helped in any way he could. Everett knew the material extremely well but did not help much when needed. 8.  Great TAs. VERY HELPFUL 10.  Most everything was great! The only thing is getting the grades of projects and tests back to the students a little quicker. 11.  Some get aggravated when students cannot keep up. 13.  Have a few more office hours. 14.  Great! 15.  I enjoyed the TAs from my session and found them helpful. 16.  they did good in helping with material 17.  none 18.  Morgan was the most helpful. He would offer solutions to problems with helpful examples he'd make up to fit the case of what you were working on. He really knows his stuff! Ryan was helpful too, though sometimes he wouldn't explain things simply enough to understand. 21.  The GTAs were helpful and good at explaining the labs 22.  NC 23.  The GTAs were always prepared for the lab but didn't always know how to answer questions. 24.  Both my GTA's made learning the material simple 25.  All are extremely smart and willing to help 26.  Excellent GTA's, explain everything very well and have no complaints about them. 28.  none. 29.  Pretty gooooood 30.  Sometimes they don't go in depth into examples. 31.  Morgan is a cool dude 33.  Overall, they are usually helpful. Morgan is very energetic, which helps make lecture more interesting. Sometimes the GTAs are difficult to talk to about graded items. 34.  GTAs were great. 35.  The GTAs made the class fairly enjoyable because they were goofy. 37.  n/a 38.  My TAs were good. 39.  GTAs were fun and helpful 40.  The GTAs were great. They helped with both homework and projects. 41.  Don't have only one GTA at a help session. They get overwhelmed and few people are able to get help 42.  They are great! 43.  Once again, I feel like the GTAs expected us to know the answers to each problem and know how to work MATLAB completely. 44.  Very helpful 47.  Both were pretty good but I think Taylor explained things better. 48.  They were really good 49.  GTAs are good at explaining. Class participation, though, is not very responsive. Help sessions need more GTAs. 50.  Knowledgeable, professional, overall good TAs. 52.  I think that the GTAs are pretty good at explaining the material and they seem like they really care if we learn or not 53.  Everett knows what he is talking about, he's just conceited and snobby in presenting it and helping with it. 54.  none 56.  n/a 58.  Everett is the man 60.  They all were very helpful and were able to teach well. 61.  When having 1 on 1 help, I understand having the TA ask you a stimulating question, but asking "what do you think you should do?" Isn't stimulating and simply frustrates the student. Something that has occurred numerous times throughout the semester. 62.  All did very well. At times they went a bit tooo fast while programming in matlab, but I was always able to catch up if I asked them. 63.  Speak up some times it can be hard to hear you because of the AC units 64.  Be nicer and more helpful, i.e. most TA's are doing a great job. 65.  They all knew MATLAB really well. 66.  The GTA's are good and know what they're talking about. They're generally pretty helpful. 67.  Sometimes it was difficult to hear the TAs when they were teaching, but overall they really cared about their job and tried to help as much as possible. 68.  The TA's were always willing to help and assist but I along with some other neighboring students all agreeed that Everett's help was sometimes more degrading then helpful. 69.  They were extremely helpful and I loved asking questions to them. 70.  The TA's were fine 71.  they went a little too fast i certainly learned a lot, but it was when it didn't count 73.  They were helpful 74.  They both knew what they were talking about but at times Everett wasn't as helpful in explaining the material as Morgan was. 75.  Really smart and knew what they were talking about. 76.  They were good at answering questions 78.  They were all okay as far as they helped, but they need to slow down a little. 79.  All of the GTAs were very knowledgable, helpful, and friendly. Best group of GTAs I've had for any class. 81.  SLOW DOWN MORGAN. Its a class, not a race. i love how interested you clearly are in matlab, but that doesnt do me any good when you speak 100 miles an hour. 82.  Pretty good. 83.  N/A 84.  Keep on keeping on 87.  They are awesome. 88.  Enthusiastic and helpful. Great at getting to the point and showing how things work in MatLab. 89.  decent, tried to help 90.  The TAs are very helpful. Whenever I have a question they always know how to answer and help me understand a little better 92.  none 93.  They were good at having us solve our own problems and participating with us in class as opposed to a lecture. Everett's strong suit is lecturing. Taylor's strong suit is her one-on-one help. 94.  GTA's did rather well, Everett was always very vocal and presentable. 95.  everett did a good job explaining but wasnt as helpful when asking questions and taylor didnt do as good of a job at explaining but tried a little harder when answering individual questions. 96.  they all work hard and do a good job 97.  The GTA's were very familiar with the material of the class, and had no problem helping out where needed on labs, projects, and homework. I enjoyed working with them. 99.  The TA's were good 100.  Ryan and Taylor were awesome and very helpful to the course. 101.  They are all VERY helpful. 102.  Sometimes speak too quietly. 103.  Great! 105.  Please just speak up a bit. It's harder to hear from the back. 106.  N/A 108.  They were all excellent! 109.  None 111.  Very helpful when you asked them direct questions 113.  All GTAs were solid. 114.  the GTA's were all helpful and did there best to get students to admit when they were having trouble 115.  Overall satisfied with GTA's performance. 116.  Being condescending isn't cool. 117.  none 118.  Great job. 120.  GTAs were good at what they do. 121.  They didn't seem to have ANY experience or introductory instruction on actual teaching (as opposed to just computer science experience). They tried to emphasize and require things like pseudocode and group activities for extremely trivial and useless beginner assignments. Please, at least give your GTAs an introductory lesson into teaching before unleashing them on us to the detriments of our educations. Everett seemed annoyed and almost offended that I could understand the material simply from reading the labs and preferred to work ahead while trying to reach an understanding and competence level in the material beyond the minimum required. 122.  Good TAs. Professor Schleter is such a good teacher though... He should teach too. 123.  None 124.  They were all very helpful and really helped me to understand the material! Class was great! 125.  more effort 126.  none 127.  Very knowledgeable and helpful on many topics. 128.  None 129.  All very supportive and caring. I would truly want to have them again. 130.  N/A 131.  Try and keep the students engaged but don't ask them to do too much in class. 132.  Overall a job well done. 133.  Very helpful. Students didn't ask many questions but that is not the TAs' fault. 134.  Loved my TA's.. They were knowledgable when I have questions, but just not available enough.. When I emailed they would email back, but usually would ask me to post on the discussion board, which I understand, but I usually need an immediate answer.. I found the other TA's somewhat arrogant sometimes, and difficult and times, but Taylor and Ryan were awesome :) 135.  n/a 136.  None. 137.  Great job. 138.  TAs were informative 139.  Both Morgan and Everett were very good. 142.  Everett & Morgan did a great job tag-teaming our lectures. Both were always prepared, went over and above necessary examples and always answered questions. Really enjoyed their teaching style. 143.  Both Ryan and Morgan are great GTAs, but Morgan is extremely bubbly and excited about MatLab and really helpful. Ryan seems sometimes like he doesn't want to be in class. 144.  They were very knowledgable and gave extra help to students when needed. 145.  none 146.  Both Morgan and Everett were excellent TAs. Morgan rarely struggled with answering questions. Everett was absolutely fantastic; he knows coding extremely well and served as a capable teacher. Everett was able to answer any question I asked regarding MATLAB (or coding in general). 147.  I was in T1, so Morgan and Everett were my TAs. Morgan always did a really good job of explaining things and when we had trouble with our code, he would always sit and work it out with us. Everett is great at the front of the classroom and he knows his stuff for sure. I did feel like sometimes he could make students feel silly if they didn't get it right away, but I know that it must be frustrating when you explain something to someone and they don't understand. 149.  They are good at helping with the projects. 151.  The TA's who I interacted with were all very helpful and were interested in actually teaching us the material and not just spitting code at us. And the extra help sessions from the TAs were a blessing and extremely informative. 152.  Very helpful, understanding, and friendly. 153.  Morgan was very fair and was great at responding to emails promptly and answering questions. 155.  GTAs were absolutely wonderful. The only one I didn't like was Everett since he had sort of an attitude. However, don't take my judgement too seriously since I've only talked to him like twice. 156.  Everett and Rachel are both very helpful and have very good knowledge of matlab. The only con I will have to say is against Morgan. In one of the help sessions he was running he spent 50 minutes helping one guy while others were needing help as well, he was also helping him with something that wasn't due for over a week while others had stuff that was due soon. 158.  great! 160.  They are always willing to help. Whenever I've had questions about my projects, they have been very approachable and helpful. 161.  They are all pretty helpful and know what they are talking about. Ryan and Morgan are great TAs and seem to work well with each other. 164.  This was a good group of GTAs because they all knew what they were doing with Matlab. 165.  Morgan and Ryan were absolutely wonderful GTAs. Very helpful. 167.  You could always give them some hints about what's going to be on the tests. 168.  I love all the TAs this semester. They are always willing to help and patient when answering questions. A+!!! (: 170.  I was in T5 and I liked my all GTAs. Thank you so much 171.  I thought the TA's did a great job. They had good examples and were easy to approach. 172.  Morgan Helton was surprisingly energetic about the class. Both Morgan and Everett was always well prepared. 173.  SCSDV 174.  Very helpful during class and in help sessions. 175.  I didn't have Ryan, but Morgan and Everett were very helpful and knowledgeable about MatLab and computer programming. Taylor wasn't my GTA but she offered great help with projects, during help sessions, and also private sessions. I don't know if I could have completed this class without her. 176.  I think more examples would help or more examples uploaded on the labs.Just for us to look over and see how it works. 177.  I did not know Everett. Ryan knew the material well, but sometimes he would say somethings were easy and move over them quickly. Morgan was great! He would help me with homework and helped me to prepare for the 3rd exam. Taylor is the greatest GTA ever! She helped with both of my projects and she met with me MULTIPLE times to review for exams and she had so much patience with all of us. If she decides to quit engineering, I hope she goes into teaching! 179.  Don't answer my question with another question. 180.  They were very knowledgeable about the material and were very willing to help with any questions. 181.  They were all great. 182.  GTAs were very helpful and answered any questions asked exceptionally. 184.  They did a good job 186.  Good. 188.  they were all pretty good. some more helpful than other. 189.  Taylor was very helpful at helping with projects.

Resources

Rate the overall quality of the EF 230 web site.

56% (106/189) Very good (1) 39% (74/189) Good (2) 4% (8/189) Average (3) 1% (1/189) Marginal (4) 0% (0/189) Poor (5) 0% (0/189) N/A (0) Avg: 1.49, NZAvg: 1.49, sum=282, cnt=189, nzcnt=189

General comments/suggestions on web site:

1.  it is organized and simple which is good 2.  Best website on utk 3.  The web site was set up and worked well. 4.  The website is well organized and the announcement page was always updated. The discussion board was very useful when it came to the homework and projects. 7.  Help Session were too small without enough help. 8.  Sometimes when you login, the site doesn't remember your credentials and you have to login EVER SINGLE TIME you click on something. 9.  The availability to be used on exams was good, and it was very clear where everything was 10.  The website is well done. 11.  none 13.  N/a 14.  Very helpful! 15.  I didn't run into any problems with the website while using it. 16.  needed more help on homeworks; could've had more discussion board help 17.  make more examples on the site 18.  I wish there were more filters on the discussion board. 20.  Put more information in the lab outlines. 21.  When you don't log in to the website via the "login" button, you have to log in every time you click on a different page 22.  NC 23.  none 24.  Really like how easy the website makes the class 25.  None 26.  The website in itself has no issues, it is nice to also have all the extra resources available on the site. 27.  the website is really good. 28.  Very easy to use website. 31.  It's fine 32.  The homeworks showed a different due date when you clicked on them. 33.  none 34.  I like that things are easy to find on the website. It is the most useful website that I have to use for my studies. 35.  Extend the time you stay logged in. Half the time I would still be working on an assignment/project and would get logged out. 37.  n/a 38.  Everything is there. 39.  Website is usually easily navigable 40.  The discussion board is a bit difficult to search but a good feature, nonetheless. 41.  Website was good 42.  Nothing I can think of at the moment. 43.  I really like the website's organization! I wish more explanation would be provided for each lab and function. 46.  Best site i work with. 47.  Website was perfect. 48.  none 49.  There are not enough "wordy" explanations for someone trying to understand the concepts outside of class. Also, some of the examples on the site are not very intuitive/not commented enough. 52.  very straightforward and easy to navigate 53.  EF website still has the best online UI I've used here at the University. 54.  none 56.  n/a 58.  Helpful for sure 59.  This is the best website at UTK. I'm very proud to be a part of this program simply because of the excellence of the EF website. 60.  The website works well and is easy to use. 61.  N/A 62.  Good as usual. 63.  A few bugs, went down once during the year, other than that, its fine 64.  Good website. 65.  Easy to refer back to. 66.  The Engineering Fundamentals website is the most helpful and organized site of all sites I have been to for the university or other classes. 68.  The website was helpful and allowed for a good resource to check material. 69.  It's well set up and intuitive. 70.  good website 71.  none 73.  it's set up pretty good 74.  It had everything I needed. The only problem I have with the website is when I was doing the homework and using my laptop trackpad, I accidentally hit the wrong answer when I wasn't trying to answer a question, lowering my homework grade a little. Otherwise, very good. 75.  N/A 76.  When you click on a link it opens in the same window and when you don't remember you did that and you close the whole ef site. 78.  need to improve the labs and make them more understandable and also helpful. 79.  Organized and very helpful 81.  the website is good, though the explanations on labs towards the end of the semester seemed a little less detailed. 82.  More discussion board help would be welcome. 83.  N/A 84.  Everything is easily accessible 87.  Nothing, really. 88.  I like it. 89.  great resource 90.  it's ok. the help files are so general that they don't always make sense 92.  none 93.  I like the improvements to the discussion board. 94.  It is clear to use and good, but sometimes I get frustrated with the assignments. 95.  easy access, wish it had a longer time limit on logging off 96.  More examples 97.  It was very organized and well put-together. The homework is easy to find, and I especially liked the help provided by the discussion board. 99.  I have always been very impressed with the EF website 100.  Good overall website 101.  None 102.  Very helpful. 103.  I think it would be cool if you had a picture background like myutk's site. Also, it would be cool if we could view each others profiles. 105.  It's very well put-together. 106.  N/A 108.  I don't feel like it needs any improvement. Possibly a visual calendar detailing when things are due? 109.  Discussion board is great. Some of the tolerances for problems could be better. 113.  sometimes could've have benefited from better examples. 114.  love the discussion board for hw. 115.  Overall satisfied with website. 116.  Its good 117.  Discussionboard could be a bit more organized. 118.  Website is great and easy to use. 120.  Website looks good. 121.  I didn't like the fact that you could click on the displayed questions/answers to submit an answer to a question. At least require a secondary user verification to input. Inadvertent mouse clicks led to wrong answers (which meant a %25 loss of points each click). I have a hard time believing this website was even tested before being released because the downside of this function is immediately obvious and bad design. 122.  I wish every class had a website this well-made. Please find the programmers for the masteringphysics website, slap them with a programming book, and teach them how it's done. 123.  None 124.  Overall it was good. But some things could be updated more often (like the announcements page or the calendar). It is easily navigable. 125.  excellent 126.  none 128.  None 129.  none 130.  I like the website setup. 131.  Continue to post in-class examples. 132.  I like the website and the set up with the homework, labs, discussion, ect being split and dated and being titled. 133.  I would have liked to get emails when announcements were posted. 134.  Easy to navigate 135.  n/a 136.  None. 137.  Prof. Schleter did a pretty good job on it. My only complaint is that there are some minor typos here and there in the labs. 138.  web site provided very good examples. the information needed for multiple choice homework questions was difficult to find at times. 140.  Very well organized. 141.  it is good 142.  very well organized & many helpful examples. 143.  Website is great and easy to use. 144.  Nothing in particular. The website is clear-cut. 145.  Clearer deadlines 146.  The web site is laid out well. My main criticism is the multiple choice homework interface. The system will count a click on an answer choice as a selection and a submission; this is terrible interface. Rather, I should have to click an option, be able to make sure I've selected the answer I wish to submit, then click a separate button to submit my answer (similar to the non-multiple choice problems with the thumbs up/down button). I have lost points on numerous occasions due to mis-clicking. 147.  very organized and manageable. The workload was fine and all the hw's were doable and not hard to operate. 149.  Its adequate. 151.  The website is well organized. There are great links and resources on the site. 152.  Make discussion board more divided with sections for each topic. 153.  For the example problems given within the lecture make the code a little easier to follow. Learning from following a code is a good way to learn in this class but the given examples were complicated and way too over the top to be useful to the students. 155.  Nothing. It's awesome. 156.  website is very useful and easy to navigate. 160.  Some of the examples use things that we haven't learned. 161.  One of the better organized school sites I've used. 162.  looks good, works good. 164.  It's a good style that everyone is familiar with since they (usually) went through EF 151, 152, and 105. 165.  There's nothing wrong with it really. Annoying to have to sign in every time you try to access your homework or grades but I understand the security reasons. 166.  Add more explanations to the second half of the labs. 167.  Best website at UT. 168.  I like the website because it is very easy to navigate. I haven't really had problems with it. However, it think that for one of the homework assignments it listed the homework as being due at two different times (one time on the assignment list and another time when the homework page was opened). 170.  N/A 171.  Improve the discussion board. It's just one giant mixture of everything; it is nearly impossible to read. 172.  The website is an excellent idea and very well run. Other classes and institutions could learn a lot by taking heed of the example. Good organization is one of the bedrock principles to maintaining fairness in class and opportunity for students. 173.  sdFvsf 174.  Great website and easy to navigate. 176.  I think that the website is fine, it allows me to do what I need to do. 177.  Some of the more difficult problems like optimization were more detailed. 179.  Good 180.  Easy to use and navigate. 181.  Needs more comprehensive lab walkthroughs 182.  Website is very easy to navigate and everything is nicely organized. 184.  Very good. Would be nice if some useful links were easier to find. 185.  Easiest website I've used so far for any classes in college. 186.  Good as well 188.  everything is well done on the website

What are your feelings on a textbook for this class?

8% (16/189) I would purchase a textbook if required (0) 13% (25/189) I would purchase a textbook if recommended (1) 78% (148/189) I don't think a textbook is needed (2) Avg: 1.70, NZAvg: 1.86, sum=321, cnt=189, nzcnt=173

Are there any other resources that you think might be useful as a formal part of this class?

1.  none 2.  That matlab website helps 3.  More practice problems with the code or an answer key attached. 4.  I don't think any other resources are needed. I typically used the Mathworks website if I needed extra help. 7.  More practice with solutions in class. 8.  More M-file examples 9.  More help sessions available, or more TA's in the help sessions so more questions get answered in a reasonable amount of time. 10.  I can't think of any other resources for this class. 11.  none 13.  N/a 14.  I found videos on YouTube explaining different MatLab functions to be very helpful 15.  None. The notes from lab were generally pretty complete. Where it seemed lacking the help file and matlab website were sufficient. 16.  A required review session once a week to help struggling students with material 17.  i had all the resources i needed 18.  No 19.  No 20.  Not off the top of my head. 21.  Links to other websites or databases showing how to complete problems 22.  Text book would more helpful in this class 23.  none 24.  MATLAB help box 25.  None 26.  None; many, if not all things can be found out from the help file or the EF website that pertain to this class. 28.  no 29.  nah 31.  The help file is more than enough 33.  none 34.  No 36.  None 37.  n/a 38.  No. 39.  Nope - the current resources seem sufficient 40.  No 41.  No 42.  The example files that are not used in class would be useful if they were commented out. Most of then time I have no clue what they are supposed to do and why they work. 43.  Video tutorials we can watch on our own. Or even videos of the class that we can watch later. 44.  Put up more detailed documents explaining common,confusing functions like ode45 46.  No, this class is very well structured 47.  I think we had everything we needed. 48.  none 49.  Even more class time/credit hours would help. Doing the bare minimum in this class is enough to pass, but not enough to really learn Matlab. Maybe Matlab integration into EF 151/152? As long as we are trying to prepare the next generation of engineers, why not? Throw in some data collection/real world situations, and THAT would be a real weekly lab session. 50.  Not really, between the help files, help sessions, and the massive amount of help on google, I think any other material would just be more money without much value back. 51.  No. The mathworks website and google are enough in my opinion 53.  N/A. 54.  nope 56.  n/a 58.  Google 59.  For people interested in learning more and widening their range of skills to increase their effectiveness in the work force, make a list of recommended learning materials and programs for things like C++, Java, Visual Basic, etc. For the class itself, video record the labs. 60.  None other than the internet/website. 61.  NA 62.  n/a 63.  no 64.  NO. 65.  none 66.  Require that students have the most updated version of Matlab on their computers because you really do need it on your computer. It is very frustrating when functions (like fsolve and fmincon) don't work because you think it has to do with the code you wrote. 68.  Nothing in particular comes to mind. 69.  Not really if you have a recommended textbook 70.  no 71.  none 73.  nope, just the internet is help enough 74.  I really like that there is no text book. It makes costs a little cheaper and I'm not sure a text book would be necessary. I like that everything needed can be found on the website or Matlab. 75.  N/A 76.  No 78.  while the TA's are doing the examples in class they need to know that everybody cant see what they are writing on the board and need to kind of slow down while writing the codes. 79.  I learned Visual Basic in high school through a textbook and I much prefer using the website to a textbook for a class like this. 80.  Matlab Demystified 81.  Not really. 82.  no. 83.  Matlab site, help files and ef230 website are sufficient. 84.  google 87.  None. 89.  no 90.  not that i know of 91.  If anything, a workbook type of thing would be helpful 92.  no 93.  I found some videos on the mathworks site that were pretty useful for out of class instruction. 94.  No. As long as you are able to download MATLAB on your own computer is essential, though. 95.  not that i know of? 96.  No 97.  If we could spend a little bit more time familiarizing the class with the MathWorks website, I feel that that would be very beneficial. 99.  Not that I can think of 100.  Textbook might make it easier to follow along in the class in addition to the website giving another perspective. 101.  None. 103.  The practice tests (submit to matlab) were extremely helpful. Maybe using more of those types of sample problems vs. the unsolved problems. 105.  Nope. This class is a very hands-on class. 106.  N/A 108.  I cannot answer this well, since I never really made use of the already available resources outside of the website. 109.  Nope 113.  No. 114.  matlab's website 115.  None I can think of. 116.  nope 117.  none 118.  No. 120.  The actual Matlab website. 121.  The internet 122.  Nope 123.  No 124.  Maybe show us how to better navigate other online resources than the matlab documentation website. 125.  Texbook 126.  none 128.  No 129.  More entertaining sub-projects like the graphing homework. 130.  Maybe more simple examples of how to use a function. 131.  Using the matlab website for some commands might be helpful in fulling understanding the purpose and usage of commands. 132.  An area with a breakdown of matlab functions in some sort of grouping as the labs go on and description and example. This is much like how the matlab site does it but in an area on the ef.engr website that is more specific to the class 133.  Nope 134.  A well written text book with clear concise examples. Start compiling questions from the discussion board and start writing! 135.  A borrowed textbook from a student at another university was my saving grace. 137.  No. 138.  no 141.  include the matlab help site on the website itself 142.  current website, lab notes and matlab help is all thats needed. thanks for not requiring purchase of book! 143.  Need a MatLab for Dummies book! 144.  None. 145.  No 146.  Not really. The student license along will all of the toolboxes and the help file is more than enough. A textbook or some other physical thing required for the course would just become a somewhat useless burden to the students. I am a strong advocate for the "learning by doing" model in regards to coding. I wouldn't learn anything about coding from a textbook. I believe the model employed right now is quite good: a website outlining what material should be learned with explanations and examples that can be easily tinkered with in MATLAB. 147.  No, I like the fact that the class is self-sufficient. It forces us to use the help file and do our own outside research when we need help instead of working from a textbook with a probable solutions manual. Which is what we will be doing in real life. 148.  I don't think we take full advantage of the tutorials, etc. that are available on the mathworks website. 149.  Formal learning in the innovative engineering fundamentals program? Never. 151.  no 152.  No 153.  No 155.  Not really. 156.  none that i remember 157.  Having the labs easily accessed online is a great feature of the class! 159.  I feel like the ef230 website and the mathworks website provide more than enough information foe this class. 160.  No. The website is an excellent resource. 161.  Email reminders about homework due dates 164.  I think it was all covered pretty well and nothing else is needed. 165.  The Mathworks site is helpful enough when it comes to needing function syntax examples. I can't think of any real physical resource that would help this class. An actual textbook that you would force students to buy would be unnecessary. 167.  I pretty much just used the Mathworks site and this site. 168.  I cannot think of any. 169.  No, there are not. 170.  mathworks 172.  I am not familiar enough with MATLAB or programming in general to offer any suggestions. 173.  asvsfv 174.  None 176.  Not necessarily, the class is more computer based. 177.  The MathWorks website should be recommended for frequent use! 179.  Professors 180.  I can't think of anything. There were plenty of websites that were available to help. 181.  No. The class was fine on resources. 182.  Nothing I can think of 183.  More programming languages! 184.  More utilization of the Mathworks site 186.  More interaction with the mathworks website 188.  no

Suggestions

From your viewpoint, what was good about this class?

1.  the online homework was a good grade booster 2.  helping with problem solving. 3.  This class was good because it was challenging and rewarding when I did solve a problem on my own. 4.  The class lecture itself was very useful. I liked how the GTAs would explain the material and let us try out a practice problem by ourselves. 5.  It moves slower than EF 105 6.  Projects really helped me learn. 7.  The homework assignments were helpful. 8.  The different uses of MatLab. I will be able to use it the rest of my college career. 9.  The class was good, and I learned a lot of things 10.  The TA's covered the material very well and the website is very helpful on the homework, projects, and tests. 11.  all of the help sessions and Morgan was very helpful outside of class. 12.  In depth examples of each topic really helped understanding of the material. Examples on the lab pages and search files really helped. 13.  Improving my understanding of MATLAB 14.  This class was challenging, and helped me learn a lot more about MatLab and programming logic in general. Because the projects were so detailed and difficult, they forced me to really understand how to use MatLab and really understand the logic a lot better. 15.  The time frame around assignments was helpful when some code took longer/shorter than expected. 16.  learning some about computer programming 17.  the format of the labs and homework 18.  I think this final project is a really good point. I like that we are able to make apps that are useful to us. 19.  TA's were knowledgeable. 20.  It's almost over. 21.  The set up was good on how to complete the class 22.  Learning Matlab. 23.  I think it is well-organized. I like how I can find when everything is due and see what exactly we are going to cover. 24.  the website helped make it easy to find help if you get stuck 25.  Help sessions and examples in class 26.  Excellent explanations given by the GTA's. 27.  website is awesome, TA's are awesome. 28.  All of the examples that were presented in lecture were helpful. 29.  i learned the value of starting projects early 30.  There is a lot taught. 31.  It helped develop more critical thinking skills 32.  Learning about computer programming in general. 33.  Help was available when needed. 34.  The explanations and diversity of material covered was really good. 35.  The class made me appreciate the usefulness of Matlab, even though it isn't my favorite thing. 36.  The projects. 37.  The projects required us to actually think through the ideas. 38.  Homework was pretty helpful. 39.  Examples and fun assignments like the create-a-picture homework assignment 40.  The class introduced a new option to utilize when solving engineering and mathematical problems. It could be a useful tool in the future. 41.  Introduced me to the world of computer programming 42.  Practice Problems for exams were the best things ever. 43.  Learning how to program. 44.  lots of good information about matlab/programing 45.  This class covers a fair amount of material over Matlab. The crash course is a great stepping stone for future use. The exams were also fair. 46.  The amount of useful information i learned 47.  Projects, labs, and homework were all good. 48.  I liked how we put engineering knowledge into it 49.  Getting a better feel for Matlab. 50.  I have taken the class before and although it is harder overall I thought it was better. The projects seemed to be more difficult and took a very long time, specifically the 2nd project took me over 20 hours and might have been a little long, but at least we had time and could go to the help sessions. The tests have been more relevant to actually learning matlab and not just looking up answers in google or help sessions from when they were mostly multiple choice. 51.  Examples, homework helped 52.  the examples are usually good and we go over a lot of them. The TAs are also good and I am getting a little more familiar with matlab. 53.  It helped finish out EF 105's presentation of MATLAB, as EF 105 left something to be desired. 54.  The class examples of topics 55.  There are a lot of resources that allow for help when you need it. 56.  matlab 57.  the exams and homeworks are fair 58.  I liked how helpful the TA's were 59.  Friendly TA's. Excellent webpage. Applicable skills. MATLAB! 60.  It taught many aspects of matlab in an organized manner. 61.  Being bombarded with so much material that you either had to learn it or fail 62.  team work and problem solving was good. lectures and homework helped a lot on the exams. 63.  It was fairly easy to understand what was required and what was going on 64.  Everything was good except the projects. 65.  Learning how to work math related problems on the computer. 66.  The tests were pretty well outlined, but the grading was too strict. 67.  I liked learning the different things I could do in Matlab and thought most of the information was well presented on the website. 68.  Understanding of a foreign program was very helpful and interesting. 69.  It was extremely informative on Matlab. I learned more in the first 2 weeks of class then I did throughout EF 105's section on Matlab. 70.  I was exposed to the basics of programming 71.  none 72.  the homework is helpful in understanding the material 73.  learned about matlab and it was pretty interesting 74.  I learned a lot about programming and many useful things for using a computer and using Matlab. 75.  The labs were really informative and the homework was manageable. 76.  Learning a new way of thinking 77.  How much we learned. 78.  The only good thing was open notes exams and the in class examples link. 79.  This class has taught me how to use matlab enough to where I can actually use it for other classes/purposes if I need to. 80.  It helped develop problem solving skills related to engineering problems. 81.  The open availability of documented examples was phenomenal 82.  The multiple choice homework. 83.  Consistent, help was available when needed. 84.  Not much is good about matlab 85.  Discussion board is awesome. 86.  material made easy through labs 87.  I learned a general way of programming, which is helpful and rather fun. 88.  The class is surrounded in the topic, and there are many places to go to get help on work or your understanding. The website is awesome for practice and for looking up things that you feel like you missed. 89.  the practice problems for tests and hw to practice concepts 90.  learning how to do homework in other classes in Matlab was good. Matlab is very useful 91.  Ability to receive help outside of lab (ie help sessions, discussion board, quick response to emails) 92.  How to successfully utilize matlab functions. 93.  Lots of out of class help. I leanred a lot about the basics of coding, and it made me think differently about how computers work. 94.  It was a great overview of learning MATLAB, but, as with most classes, we never really covered how to use it to solve actual problems except in the projects. 95.  They did a much better job explaining exactly what to do in different scenarios than ef 105. I had much better grasp on matlab than before. 96.  I learned a lot about Matlab in this class 97.  The material covered in general was excellent, and I feel a hundred times more comfortable using Matlab after taking this class. 98.  The labs at the beginning of the semester were very helpful and explanatory. 99.  I really liked the organization and clearity of everthing that is expected(website is very clear). I thought the tests were reasonable, and the TA's and professor Schleter were willing to offer outside help when it was needed 100.  The class exposes students to MatLab and shows how it can be used in a variety of ways 101.  The TA's made the complicated program very easy. 102.  Multiple opportunities to meet with TA's for help. 103.  I came out with a thorough knowledge of programming in MATLAB. 104.  Some easy points to be had 105.  The hands-on approach was appreciated, and the homeworks that helped with practicing the skills taught were helpful. 106.  It made you have to think different ways in order to solve the problems. 107.  I like programming, so it's an easier version of programming and kind of fun. 108.  I learned how to use matlab effectively enough to create code independently without constantly referring to a guide to a degree that greatly improved the efficiency of my homework in many classes. 109.  Helpful TA's, discussion board, help sessions, practice tests that accurately reflect test content 110.  I like that all EF courses have help sessions. 111.  Got you thinking on how programs are formatted and helped me understand what I needed to input 112.  It was a good way to be introduced to matlab and basic programming 113.  The pace of learning the materials. 114.  the pacing of the class was pretty good. the outline-style of the labs online really help for reviewing material that I was shaky on. 115.  Lectures. 116.  There is no busy work if you understand the topics 117.  Lots of help and examples. 118.  The exams were well done. Tested me very well on my knowledge of MATLAB. 119.  how thorough the class was in covering what was on the homeworks and tests. 120.  The class was laid back but still was very informative. Also liked that the classes weren't large. 121.  Helped me learn how to code in matlab 122.  It's a good intro to programming. 123.  Everything 124.  I learned how to use an incredibly useful engineering tool and can apply it to everyday coursework. 125.  Homework 126.  the TAs where friendly 127.  Learning a variety of techniques that matlab can be used to perform. 128.  The chance to learn more about matlab. 129.  Teaching was good, but at times seemed mundane and tedious. Occasional entertaining examples may help, I learned more about the sound section than all of the color. 130.  The setup and way matlab was taught. 131.  The variety of help/time available was very good. 132.  I learned about how to tackle problems and problem solving abilities. 133.  Examples were very helpful. 134.  I like the versatility of matlab, however, speaking to people in my field of study that are part of the work force have laughed at my mention of taking a matlab course.. I understand that I will use it during my time here at UT, but wouldn't it be more advantageous to be learning a programming language that would be more useful out in the real world? I would LOVE to learn how to program my TI89 calculator, that I will most definately be using when I'm finished here at UT. 135.  The homework gave a great overview of what the expectations were for the exams. 136.  The extra help sessions. 137.  The work was reasonable, the TAs were nice and encouraging and I have a much better appreciation for MATLAB. 138.  The practice exams provided a good idea of what was going to be on the exam most of the time. 139.  We were encouraged to use Mathworks website. Which I found very helpful. 140.  I thought this class taught matlab very well. 141.  I retained the information well throughout the class. 142.  well organized, material covered in detail 143.  Learning Matlab is very beneficial and the new computers are awesome! 144.  The structure of the class; it is a good idea to have two TA's teach. 145.  everything 146.  I was given much more autonomy in this class in EF 105. In EF 105 I felt like I was being steered into doing things a very specific way, leading me to not really learn much. In EF 230, with the open-ended projects, I was able to do things how I wanted rather than how I was told. Its a very good feeling when you're doing homework for another class and think, "Hmmm, this would be easier in MATLAB," then be able to fire it up and quickly write a program that accomplishes the goal. This class helps prepare students to have this mentality (except for the large portion of students with the predisposition that coding is terrible and impossible to learn). 147.  I loved the organization and the homework was manageable. 148.  We learned how to use programming to do things that are useful/relevant. Also, learning other programming languages is less intimidating now. 149.  Good, nothing was good. Some things were okay. TA's are good and understanding. Some of the content wasn't bad at first. 150.  I feel as though I know more than ever will be absolutely neccessary in order to do just about anything in matlab. 151.  After familiarizing myself with Matlab, programming became a somewhat enjoyable activity for me. I think the material is at a good level because it was challenging yet not impossible to figure out. 152.  The GTA's were great. 153.  I thought the class moved at a reasonable pace. 154.  helps you understand and get used to matlab 155.  GTAs were extremely helpful in explaining the material, as well as answering questions one on one. Morgan is the best. 156.  I learned so much more about Matlab and actually enjoy using it now(sometimes) 157.  Structure of the class! Knowledgable and nice TAs. 158.  The class was great. Great ta's and material. 159.  The new computers are very helpful. 160.  I learned many ways that I can use matlab to help me with my homework. 161.  The organization of the class is great. I enjoy the programming assignments and their difficulty is appropriate for the learning pace of the class. TAs and PRofessor are usually pretty enthusiastic about teaching. 162.  How well organized it was. 163.  learned a lot about matlab and had the right ammount of time to do so 164.  I liked the all of the practice problems before the test. It helped me a whole lot when the real questions were presented. 165.  I learned how to solve problems with a matlab program. I feel that it's a pretty good skill to have to be able to change how you think about a problem so you can solve it with some programming. 166.  The website, and having TA's teach it. In my experience TAs can more easily relate material because they aren't as far removed from when they learned it themselves. 167.  I occasionally use matlab in other classes to simplify work. 168.  I think it is great to have another resource to help figure out how to calculate different types of problems. I have actually found myself enjoying using Matlab. (: Also, the TAs were really awesome!! :D 169.  The instruction and general material were good. 170.  compared to EF105, I learn way more material about matlab 171.  The homeworks really solidified my understanding of the material. I learned the most from figuring them out. 172.  The class was very well organized and having predictable deadlines and guidelines to adhere to, make the course much easier (compared to other classes). 173.  pOEFBkj 174.  Starting form the basics of matlab was great and it helped me fully understand a lot of how matlab can help in future classes and even my career. 175.  This class went at a pretty good pace, and we learned a lot of material that will be useful to me in the rest of my time as an engineering student. 176.  It allows me to use some of the topics as a normal every day life activities such as solving equations etc. 177.  We covered A LOT of MatLab and it was taught well so I learned a significant amount. 178.  The TA's made it very easy to ask questions and were very approachable. 179.  The projects 180.  In class examples and homework that tested what we learned in class. 181.  Helpful TAs 182.  I like the projects they were a lot of fun and very intuitive and gave a great sense of accomplishment once completed. 183.  This class really expanded my knowledge of Matlab and its abilities. 184.  Enjoyed the material and TA's 185.  In general, I enjoyed most of the material dealing with the basics such as writing functions and solving simple problems. 186.  Learned a lot about Matlab and had plenty of opportunity to work on my own to figure out problems. 187.  I really liked having the TA's in charge most of the time. It makes the class seem more relaxed and stress free. 188.  learned some interesting things and the usefulness about matlab 189.  The labs were nice.

From your viewpoint, what was wrong with this class??

1.  the lectures were way too fast and very hard to keep up with 2.  the smell. 3.  I spent 25 hours on the second project and didnt even get it done. This frustrated me quite a bit because I feel like if I am willing to put in that kind of time and effort I should be rewarded. 4.  There was nothing wrong with this class. 5.  Projects were much more challenging than material covered in class. 6.  Homework was not very helpful except as a grade boost. 7.  The lectures were boring 8.  Not much. Just small stuff that has little value. 9.  Some things weren't explained well, and sometimes project objectives were too unclear when it comes to how to save things and upload them 10.  I can't think of anything that is wrong with the class. 11.  The projects require information that is not taught in class. 12.  The projects are lengthy and require a lot of time in comparison to the fact that it is a 2 hour credit, but they reinforce the material the best. 13.  It moved too fast. Too much work for just a 2 credit hour class as well. 14.  Some of the ideas and projects were vaguely described, but that actually forced me to figure out a lot on my own which was good; however, a little more detail would have been helpful in project outlines. 15.  Some project requirements seemed to more advanced that where we were in the class. 16.  very difficult, hard to understand material and projects. Without much help, this class would be near impossible, because there is no book and occasionally the labs don't really understand 17.  i don't know how much i learned will apply to what i need to do, if i ever need to use it. 18.  The lectures were okay, but they were sometimes hard to follow because I couldn't type fast enough or had typed one error while following. 19.  The class is a 2 hour credit. I have a 3 hour credit (circuit -ECE 301) that is just as long on Tuesday and Thursday. I also have another 2 hour credit (ME 202) that is for 50 minutes on monday and wednesday. This isn't a 2 hour course at all. I put more work into this class than my 3 hour course and yet it meets more than my other 2 hour credit and just as much as my 3 hour course. How in the world does this make any sense? 20.  The lack of details in the lab outlines. 21.  Not too much, the projects required too much time for a 2 hour class, I feel 22.  Not many examples. The class needs more examples on the materials learned. 23.  I think that the lab examples are not helpful in doing the homework problems or studying for the tests. 24.  some things were hard to keep track of and follow 25.  Nothing 26.  Tests and projects take a long time to get graded (It's almost been an entire month for this second project), and labs generally posted very late, especially when starting a new module. 27.  the really wrong thing is, that we are asked to do problems on the quizzes, that have nothing in similar to the problems we just went over in the lab. 28.  Sometimes the pace of the lectures was too fast. More time was used on unnecessary comments on how the code could work in other ways rather than the actual material. 29.  really fast when explaining 30.  I never knew how to do any of the examples for exams. 31.  Sometimes I feel more examples should have been available and some of the available examples should have been simpler 32.  Too much material is presented. 33.  The GTAs are basically completely in charge of the class. Although they are qualified, they don't have the same professional level as a professor would. 34.  Nothing 35.  The projects seemed quite disconnected from what we covered in class, and I'm not sure that I actually learned that much from all the googling. 36.  The setup of the homework was sometimes confusing. 37.  Students were able to essentially feed code to others for certain problems. 38.  help sessions were mostly useless because there would be one TA and 40 students. Exams were a little more difficult than they could have been also. 39.  Projects were a little too time-intensive sometimes but perhaps that's the whole point. 40.  The exams tended to be a bit too long. Understanding the material is one thing; however, coding quickly should not be a requirement. 41.  A 2 hour class should not take this much time. I have no problem with the homework, and the exams were difficult but for the most part fair. The projects were much too difficult. If a TA can't do the project then neither should the student. 42.  Homework problems with answers that are spelled wrong. I would miss points because the correct answer was spelled incorrectly so I thought it could not be the correct answer. 43.  The pace of the class. Learning how to do too much too quickly and expected to retain all of it. 44.  There's too much work for a 2 hour class 45.  There is A LOT of material (I know this class doesn't even touch the amount of material in programming) on top of projects and exams. I would've liked more projects and fewer exams (maybe two tests and a final). I learned the most from projects, not exams. 46.  More help sessions with more TA's 47.  Exams were too long for the time period given. I worked practice exams for the 2nd and third exams and my grade did not even closely resemble the stats given for people who worked the practice time. With 20 to 30 more minutes I feel my exam grade would have greatly improved. 48.  The last module didn't flow. It was a bunch of random topics that didn't seem to fit in the class 49.  The learning of Matlab (or any other language) is not deep enough. See above for more details, but concepts are not stressed. Anybody can guess on multiple choice questions to get the "concept" questions right. 50.  I wish there was some way to get partial credit on the hw when you're close, but I realize that is pretty difficult. Other than that maybe look into a new 2nd project or cut out the script part. 51.  Too much material in one class for most of it towards the end. Projects need to be explained better, there were a lot of questions to be answered after reading the prompt. 52.  I think that it is a lot of material in a really short time. I think its more going over lots of specific examples rather than learning how to approach problems to figure out how to solve them. 53.  For only having two credit hours, it was a lot of work. 54.  Sometimes lecture was too fast paced 55.  this class should be worth more than two hours for the amount of work required to make a satisfactory grade. 56.  too much work 57.  the exams are graded too harshly 58.  Projects. We didn't learn a lot of the things used in the projects in class. 59.  Lack of thoroughness on the lab webpages, difficult to review. 60.  Some of the labs/hw's were too challenging and were hard to complet on my own. 61.  It required way too much time for a 2 hour class. I have to put in more study time for this class than I did for my 4 hour physics course. 62.  not much, as stated earlier, slow it down a bit and have more instructor direction on the projects. 63.  not a whole lot, just confusing for someone who doesn't like to do programming 64.  The projects are way to vague and long for a two-credit hour course. I spent more time on projects in this two hour course then I did in my three and four hour courses (projects, labs, homeworks, etc). 65.  Covering topics that weren't on the exam. Most people just saw it and erased it from their mind. 66.  The amount of work this class requires. 67.  The examples done in class and on the website did not provide enough information for the homework at times, and the questions on the test made it hard to finish within the allotted time. 68.  The projects were just the main burden. 69.  Well it turned into the hardest 2 hour class I've ever taken. But it was a good challenge. I wouldn't necessarily says that the time factor was wrong. Just unexpected. 70.  There is a difference between exposing non-computer programming majors to the basics of computer programming, and consuming their lives with projects. The tests were difficult, but fair, I thought. But I feel that those projects, especially the second one, in no way furthered my useful academic knowledge. I considered Religion 101 to be more useful. 71.  in any basic language course, you learn vocabulary, conjugations, adjectives, etc. what helps you learn is breaking it up and having quizzes and home work i feel like this class had a lot of material we'd never seen before crammed into one semester. Also, the help file is like an ancient Egyptian encyclopedia a basic language course took about two years to get a good feel for it. 72.  attendance is not neccessary for those familiar with the material, it should not be a grade 73.  the projects are pretty time consuming 74.  Can't think of anything really. Sometimes the projects are very time consuming but that's usually how projects go.. 75.  N/A 76.  I think we should be taught how to load stuff before we get projects that we have to load stuff for. 77.  The projects were ridiculously hard. 78.  I felt like this class was a lot harder for me to understand and keep up with. There was a lot to do and memorize. Also in the link "In class examples" when I tried to refer to it for some help, it was not useful as all the codes were not written properly or even complete. 79.  Too much emphasis on headers and comments!! 80.  I will probably have to use Excel more in my future career. 81.  There wasnt really a ton of coding on the homework. I personally benefit from practice, and on some topics, i feel like i didnt get a ton of practice. 82.  The help sessions were not very dandy. 83.  Some classes were somewhat dry and boring. 84.  it uses matlab 85.  Projects and tests were not graded in a timely manner. 86.  nothing 87.  Nothing, really. 88.  Not much. 89.  nothing 90.  Matlab is just a tough concept to grasp for people, like myself, who don't have a background in programming. I understand the basic ideas but the specifics are so tricky. the exams are moderate but the projects, no matter how early i start, are stressful and time consuming and i don't typically do well on them it seems. 91.  I have met no one that is a professional in engineering that uses Matlab. I think this will be a useless course, except for assisting me with other classwork. Professionals I have met usually don't know what Matlab is and prefer CAD or C++ training, and as a BME, this is not incorporated into my coursework. Instead I have to supplement my ECE course with this EF course to gain credit. 92.  nothing 93.  The projects were very long, and sometimes unclear. 94.  We never really learned how to solve actual engineering problems, rather we just did assignments, but in my opinion you need a strong basis of a program before you learn how to solve problems in it. 95.  I needed more individual attention 96.  Some labs were rushed, and the material did not sink in well 97.  The pace of the material covered was a bit fast, but I guess we have to move this fast in order to cover all of the material by the end of the semester. 98.  Too much work in too little time. A project or a test every two weeks with homework due twice a week is a lot on top of other engineering classes. 99.  I just think that it went too fast for a two hour class. I added this to my schedule that was already pretty full, and completely underestimated the time this class would require. There were also times when I felt like I didn't have time to really focus and understand some of the material. 100.  Sometimes I feel like there is too much material at a far too accelerated pace. 101.  Nothing I can think of. 102.  Took forever to receive grades on tests/projects. 103.  I honestly have nothing to say. 104.  The in-class examples and lab examples rarely related to the homework and exams or made sense 105.  The timed tests really put pressure on people to code quickly, which stifles originality and makes it hard to prepare for said tests. 106.  It went waaaaaaaaaay too fast. At some points I was struggling to keep up with the lecturers during class. 107.  Things discussed in lecture often didn't correlate well with projects. 108.  In many of the labs, the TA's would ask for class input on extremely trivila things, such as the name of a variable, and most of the class wouldn't say anything. Despite this, instead of just making something up, they waited for someone to speak up, wasting class time. In some cases, I would agree with encouraging class participation to this degree, but I felt that this was a bit excessive. That is my only complaint, and I otherwise greatly enjoyed the class. 109.  Not much enthusiasm or participation. It seems like most people feel that this class does not apply to their major since very few majors use this program after graduating. 110.  It was VERY difficult to keep up! 111.  students don't pay attention in class 112.  Some of the projects and labs were not completely clear about concepts 113.  Help sessions were awful, due to one TA having to try and help a ton of students. 114.  Help sessions probably need more TAs or a signup sheet. something to make them way less cluttered. 115.  Inadequate feedback on homework, projects, and tests. For determining where our error(s) lie. 116.  It is graded harshly at times. 117.  It's all good baby. 118.  The projects were sometimes confusing, but help was around if it was needed. 119.  the projects were a little tougher than I thought they should be, and the material was not covered as thorough as the stuff on tests and homeworks. 120.  Maybe a little more informative when explaining things. 121.  Helped me learn how to code in MATLAB(???!!!!!) useful language please???????!!! 122.  From my viewpoint? I very strongly dislike matlab and everything to do with programming. 123.  Nothing 124.  Tests were rather ambiguously graded and too much emphasis was placed on commenting. 125.  Lectures too dull not enough info 126.  too much material and not enough time to learn it all 127.  The timeline of the projects. 128.  None 129.  Same as above. 130.  I felt I wasn't really taught how to use every MATLAB function we were supposed to know. For example the first project I wasnt sure how to save to files. 131.  I had a lot of trouble staying interesting in the class and the material. 132.  N/A 133.  The projects were too open ended. And the tests were not hard enough when you had so much material to look at while taking it. 134.  See the above about improvements.. There are leagues that need to be done here... 135.  For someone who is not computer oriented, the projects were far more complicated and time consuming than perhaps understood by the instructor. 136.  The general way it is taught. 137.  Taking attendance. I do not think that class should be mandatory. I would have appreciated a more one on one with the TAs to work on the problems on my own time and then come to class with the issues I could not solve. I think this would have been a much better way to utilize the TAs expertise. 138.  I found it to be a little fast paced at times. I also thought the projects were very difficult especially because some of the necessary codes weren't taught until a few days before/after the project was due, if at all. I didn't think the extra help sessions were as good as they could be (see below) 139.  The first two projects seemed very structured, at times overly structured, and the last does not seem to have much structure at all. This seems inconsistent. 140.  Nothing 141.  the projects were so time intensive that it takes the graders a long time to grade them. 142.  nothing teaching-wise. see below for suggestion on projects. 143.  Grading and time commitment. This is only a 2 credit class and to get all the projects and homework done took way more time that it should. Also on the exams most were too long to finish in time. With grading I think it is to harsh. Very few students actually are really good at Matlab. If comments were not worth so much of the grade it would be better. If a project code or exam code functions, comments (or lack of) should not count against the grade. If the code does not function correctly then it should have comments explaining what they tried etc. 144.  The projects; they were very extensive and it was difficult to get help when I wasn't sure of what questions to ask. 145.  nothing 146.  I understand that this is a class that everyone in engineering needs to take and one might not know how good they'll be at MATLAB until they get into it (I know I was afraid of the program before taking the class; now I enjoy using MATLAB.), but I do feel there was an uncomfortably large disparity in programming skill within the class's participants. The course, for the most part, aimed at those who weren't very competent with MATLAB but had a vague idea of what was going on. This made the class, at times, quite boring for me. I don't know how this problem would be solved though. 147.  I thought the projects were over stuff that was a little too hard to manage when it was stuff we haven't covered in class. 148.  It was kind of disorganized at times, especially with regards to the projects. Not knowing when they were going to be graded was frustrating, and also the "project" page got really confusing when things were being updated frequently. It would be good to put everything up at one time. 149.  A TA told me this class isn't to teach us to program it is to teach us how to solve engineering problems. Well I took two classes on how to solve engineering problems so I think this class is entirely unnecessary or at least the premise is flawed. If the program works perfectly why do I need to comment out lines, except for what a function does. Also from what I learned is that the class difficulty has been increased in the past years? why? What is the point of this class is I want to know. What is the ultimate goal. To me this class is a giant waste of time. Matlab may be used in other classes but I can learn the functionality of what those classes want to use it for very quickly. Just like I can learn some calculus and easily apply it to engineering. 150.  On certain aspects of specifically the second project, I felt as though it wasn't very clear as to what kind of checklist you would go through when grading. 151.  Again, the only thing I can complain about is the fact that I think the class is based on the assumption that all students have programming experience. In the introduction, start slow. 152.  The overall class did not seem to teach me any specific application of matlab, but instead seemed to encourage a "how many function names can you google within the test period." Making the class a rush for sources and strategy more than applicable matlab knowledge. 153.  The projects required material that we had not really learned in class. I suggest rethinking the projects that must be done. 154.  teaches you a lot of pointless command s you will never use-- makes it confusing on what is important and what is not. 155.  The help sessions were usually scheduled at times I couldn't attend, so I had to figure out things almost on my own three fourths of the time. 156.  Sometimes the help session TA would help someone for too long. 157.  Nothing is wrong. The class is fairly time consuming, wish it would be worth more credit hours. 158.  The exams were too hard sometimes. Being not in a computer based engineering it seemed too advanced. 159.  The projects take a lot of time outside of class. I feel like spending around 30 hours on a project is a little too intensive. 160.  The first 2 projects required too much work. On many of the homework multiple choice questions covered things that we didn't cover or covered in the next class. 161.  Teaching a specific scripting language like Matlab isn't very helpful outside of academia and doesn't teach major concepts related to programming. 162.  The required attendance, the size of the projects, and how long it took to grade the tests and projects. (next class is the last class and I still don't know my 3rd exam grade or 2nd project grade) 163.  for the first project, we had to load and save things, and we learned it 2 days before it was due, which was not enough time. 164.  The grading is taking far too long for us to get feedback. 165.  Nothing really. It was fun to be in. 166.  Explanations for the second half of the semester's labs. 167.  the tests were very different from the homework. 168.  On the last exam, it seemed that there was one problem that had material that was not covered (or at least not really emphasized) in class. It was a little discouraging to study hard and feel prepared for the exam, then to go into the exam and find requirements that seemed to be a bit above what we should know. Other than that, I think that the class is very well-organized and worthwhile. 169.  I feel that MATLAB is not an optimal tool to be teaching students to use. It has its uses, but is overall a rather clumsy language and platform for programming. 170.  Nothing is wrong 171.  The projects were terrible. They weren't very well structured. I spent most of my time figuring out what the project even want us to do. 172.  The material is difficult, especially for those without a programming background. But that is a problem inherent with the material and not the class. I cannot attest to whether the amount of material covered is more or less than it "should" be, but the work can add up quickly for those less adept at programming. 173.  iajnsckja 174.  None 175.  Nothing really. 176.  I just think more time could have been used to explain the latter part of the class and again I have more difficulty with this area. 177.  Nothing that I can think of. 178.  It moved way to fast in my opinion. It was to east to get lost and it takes a very long time to catch up on your own. 179.  The lecture setup. We stare at a computer screen and try to follow what the TA's are doing. That's not a good way to learn. 180.  The biggest thing I would say is the slow turn around on grades, but I understand that it takes a long time to work through lots of code. 181.  Not enough online info 182.  I think the stuff at the end of class after exam 3 was not needed, except for the GUI stuff. 183.  Granted, this was a Matlab oriented class, but I wish we could have gone into more detail about other programming languages such as Basic. 184.  Projects were often long. I spent almost 15-20+ hours on project 2. Also what was exactly expected in projects was not very clear, it felt like the parameters shifted too often, and sometimes i had already finished the project when almost at random a new "mandatory" format would appear. 185.  For some reason, I always felt rushed in the exams. Probably was my fault for not being prepared enough, but I would have preferred the exams to be like the final, where you can see if you get the right answer. 186.  Tests and projects took a long time to get graded. However, I understand that all computer code has to be read through, and it is a tedious task. 187.  My section had a much lower average on every test and project than the other sections; maybe the TA's are to blame or maybe my section is just full of slackers, who knows. 188.  it seemed like we could have spent more time on some topics rather than some easier ones. for instance, spend more time on loops, interpolations, and imaging rather than some other topics. plus, the examples on the website are half the time too complex to see how they worked, i.e. there were functions on examples that we never learned and didn't know what they did 189.  The projects had way too much work to do for them.

Make at least one constructive suggestion on how this class might be improved. 'Free food' or 'Cancel the class' are not constructive.

1.  I feel that too many topics were addressed in this class, and therefore it was difficult to master them 2.  Less projects, I think they ended up being harder than any of the tests. 3.  The biggest suggestion I have would be to have more example problems with the code already done. This way if I get stuck working on the problem I have somewhere to look and I can get through the problem without outside help. I felt this class was impossible for me without a lot of outside help and I do not learn well that way. 4.  If anything could be changed, I would have the GTAs outline the projects for part of the class to guide the students in the right direction. 5.  Have projects cover more concepts that we cover in class. 6.  More graded numerical practice. It helps me learn because it is graded. 7.  More examples with solutions in class. 8.  Free food and cancel the class. JUST KIDDING. We need to include some kind of alternate programming to give perspective on how easy Matlab code is. (C++, or JAVA for example) and I think it would be cool if we could code apps for the Android market. Also, more than one TA needs to be at the help session before projects are due. 9.  More help sessions 10.  When giving projects, be clearer about what is expected, such as the format of the script of the project or the name of the function of the project. 11.  Only grade on information taught in class. 12.  Maybe not quite as long of projects, in regard to time it takes to complete. 13.  Try to get it to be a 3 hour course. Slow the pace just a bit in the rougher sections. 14.  Maybe show the class some practical examples of the usage of some of the ideas we learn about in lab. 15.  It would be cool if during the last few labs (the ones between the final and the last in-class exam) covered how to take the tools and techniques we learned and adapt them to other programing languages. 16.  I believe having a book and/or a required review session per week would help future students with help in the subject 17.  make practice quizzes a grade 18.  It'd be nice for the TA's to upload what they did in class so that we could access it. I'd like to have their examples along with the ones that are with each lab on the website. 19.  Don't use MATLAB code in examples that you haven't taught us how to do. 20.  Make the tests a little easier. I thought the image problem on the last test was way too difficult and worth way too many points. 21.  Just as there was on the final project, there could be a form you fill out to make sure students don't procrastinate on the projects. Also, it helps the grades 22.  Provide simple examples about each of the materials. 23.  The projects are a lot more difficult than anything we cover in class and I don't understand how you expect us to know what all we need to do. Plus the project descriptions are always very vague. 24.  More detailed examples in class 25.  Make it to where we would maybe do a more engineering problem or simulation to see how that would really work. Like a bridge, reactor, etc. 26.  I feel like this class runs on a different standard compared to the other EF classes. For example, in 151 and 152, the Teachers and GTA's were able to go through and get ~400ish tests graded within 1-2 days, and also had every lecture and HW assignment prepared well in advance. I feel like this class always seems to be playing catch-up when it comes to getting labs prepared as well as getting tests and projects graded. Because of this, it becomes much more difficult to take the class as seriously when it seems like this class is put on the back burner compared to the other EF classes taught. 27.  please please please provide the solutions to the practice problems from now on to others. then you can modify the questions and see what happens. its not that easy that 'even a monkey could do it', i beg to differ. but because we have solutions to the practice problems, one still has to know what they are doing, they cant just copy/paste the exact code, they have to know what the code is trying to do, and how it is trying to do it. if that was to happen, the scales would be 'even', and you would see a high average for this class. or else, this will continue from semester to semester, the people that know how to code, they know it without even taking this class, they share the solutions to 5-9 of their friends, throw off the curve, and everyone else has to blindly suffer. i really do hope that this message is read with care because it was written with sincerity. thanks. 28.  Spend more time going over the basics of the example or concept before changing the code to be specific exceptions that could appear. 29.  Less material in a lab maybe. Or just slow down a tad 30.  Have sessions where TA's go through all the exam review questions. It does me no good to have them and not be able to do them for the exam. 31.  Make simpler examples and more of them 32.  Work with the basics of functions and really the basics of Matlab in general a little more at first. 33.  This class could be improved by better preparing the students for the exams. 34.  I would like more time to work on projects in class. 35.  Change the homework to be more code based and less multiple choice questions. The multiple choice questions have yet to help me in any other part of the course. 36.  Maybe go over some commands that would be used in the next project before the last lecture before the project is due. 37.  I believe a bit more individual requirements for projects would help prevent feeding code. 38.  Have more TAs at help sessions 39.  Emphasize more open-ended projects that allow for more creativity/fun in writing the project code 40.  Maybe make project instructions a bit more detailed. For the majority of the time, we end up needing more details from the GTAs anyway. 41.  Only have two projects. One halfway through the semester and one at the end of the semester 42.  When the TAs do examples in class, sometimes they show something that is working and then alter it to show a different way. I would be helpful if they saved each example instead of only having the last example. It would be easy to fix by TA's simply copy and pasting what they want to edit into a new file. 43.  Pace a little bit better. I would rather learn and retain a smaller amount of information rather than not retaining much information while covering a lot more material. 44.  make the projects shorter 45.  Increasing projects while lowering amount of exams. Also, the time spent in class after lecture for us to practice on our own was not that helpful. I would prefer to see a bunch of demonstrations on how to use it, then go home and apply it. 46.  More help sessions with more TA's 47.  I think more help should be available outside of class. I had a chemistry lab from 3:30 to 6:30 on wednesday night and AICHE engineering meetings tuesday nights so I had to sacrifice if I needed help. 48.  On the homework, I believe there should be more coding type problems and less multiple choice problems. 49.  Maybe compare and contrast Matlab with other coding languages. I don't know anything about other languages, so I don't know the benefits of Matlab and when it is the best option and when it is not. If coding is so important to modern engineering, then just an "overview" of the subject is not sufficient. People I have talked to say that they really learn and understand Matlab when they take other courses, like ME 391 Numerical Analysis, instead of after taking this course. A lot of people don't take the course seriously enough. 50.  I thought it was run pretty well. Maybe add a few more help sessions, I usually have to work in the afternoons and the times are hard for me to make(I realize this may be impossible with TAs having their own classes and everything). 51.  Explicitly lay out projects so it's not so open ended and we don't really know what is being asked 52.  I think the class would be better if there was a little less material. I have problems retaining what we learned with all the stuff we go over. And instead of so many specific examples go over how you know when to use each thing. 53.  Cut down on the projects. Either make them slightly less difficult or only have 2 per semester. Also, make sure everything we need for them is presented in class. 54.  Less project work time in class, and more time going over the examples at a slower pace 55.  Allow for the projects to be more in the time period of what we are learning. (It is hard to have motivation to start a project early when 90% of stuff we have not learned until a week or two before the project is due) 56.  less work 57.  grading should be easier 58.  easier projects 59.  Video record labs. Make lab webpages more thorough. Free water? 60.  I think that more examples that the class works on together would create a better understanding of some of the concepts. 61.  Somehow find an easier way to grade important things like tests and projects. It should not take 5 times as long for the master of the subject to grade something than it did for the apprentice of the subject to complete. 62.  weekend pizza party study sessions 63.  perhaps slow it down a bit, or break the modules into a few different sets. module 1 was really a review of ef 105 matlab stuff, but then module 2 was really challenging, and then module 3 was really basic again. maybe break some of module 2 into the other modules, or into 2 modules, so that it is a more even line of difficulty across instead of a spike in module 2, relative to 1 and 3 64.  More help sessions, I could not attend the wed help sessions because I had a class during it but I always attended the Tuesday help session. I would of gone to any other help session in the evening. Say Monday or Thursday evening or both. 65.  Have more practice problems for exams. 66.  The projects should be group projects because there's no way anyone can figure out that stuff on their own. 67.  Give more involved examples, especially about images. That was a very difficult concept and it wasn't covered very completely. 68.  Perhaps allowing more group work on projects would be helpful so people could talk things out and help each other understand things. 69.  Maybe one more Study Session time because when a lot of people came to the sessions your questions could rarely be answered in the 2 hour time slot. 70.  easier projects 71.  divide this course into two semesters 72.  get rid of the attendance grade 73.  Give more examples on how to do things instead of just one example and then a homework question that is a lot different then what we did in class and it is hard to figure out 74.  It would be cool to learn how to make real standalone apps or programs that didn't need Matlab but there's probably entire classes on that 75.  Examples for every single type of new learned lesson. 76.  maybe more help sessions because not everyone can make the times. but there are already two. So that's enough. 77.  Move it into the Min Kao building. 78.  There should be an easy to understand explanation done by TA's and the labs/notes on the website should be more descriptive and easy to understand as well. Also the projects are made a lot harder. 79.  I don't know how it could be done but somehow make the class more interactive. 80.  Take class suggestions for help session times 81.  Have more days where we do drop box examples of code that we are learning 82.  Better help sessions. 83.  In-class quizzes/interactive exercises may help students feel more involved and learn the material better. 84.  review sessions before tests not just help sessions 85.  I feel like tests and projects should be graded within 1 to 2 weeks of the date we had to submit them. 86.  none 87.  More of the engineering day things where, yes, class is canceled but more importantly the time that is ordinarily used for class is used for personal assistance. Maybe more like the sound one, then, where class was only about twenty minutes and the rest was project help. 88.  I'd like to see some of the files for each in class lab posted on the lab page. Work we do in lab seems to be more in depth than the lab itself, so being able to go back to that would help. This is mainly because I have trouble accessing my Matlab files from home. 89.  more interesting hw problems 90.  make it easier to understand 91.  Less demanding projects; sometimes it felt as if there were multiple projects jam packed into one, like our first project. Often times we were using functions and commands that we never even touched on in class, which makes the project very stressful for students. 92.  More desriptive examples 93.  Making sure all students have the proper toolboxes before the class begins. Talking about the projects in class so that we don't have so many questions. 94.  I think that there should be more projects but that the projects should not be as long or severe. The place where I actually learned to use MATLAB and put together the program's pieces occurred in my construction of the three projects. 95.  more individual attention, possibly three gtas per lab 96.  Add a "recitation" period once a week to go over questions and work on projects 97.  If a way could be found to spread out the material over more classes, I believe that could help a lot. If this class met 3 times a week, this could meet the above suggestion. 98.  Make the labs toward the end of the semester more like the ones at the beginning. In the last module, there was virtually no way to learn the material and it could be very frustrating. In the first module, everything was explained very well in labs. 99.  I think this is a good class and it does a lot of things right. Probably a lot of my frustration with this class comes from my own ineptness. I do think it would be helpful to slow it down just a little, and really drive home and understand the basics 100.  I feel like simplified projects that still show mastery of MatLab skills but have instruction that are easier to understand would help the overall objective of the class. 101.  More help sessions 102.  Make project assignments more reasonable. I feel as though all the projects far exceeded my abilities and the materiel covered in the class. 103.  Allow us to open our email before the test, but have it closed during the test. It is hard to load new MATLAB files to the H drive from my computer before class. 104.  Make the actual class time more helpful. Not everyone can make it to help sessions. 105.  Maybe instead of having timed in-class tests, have take-home tests that allow people to code at their own pace. This will allow for better performances overall. 106.  Free food. Also, going more in depth with each function wouldn't hurt. For example, the fsolve and ode45 functions were very shaky explanations leading to me only being able to utilize a format which I would make before the test. 107.  Focus on making the projects and exam questions clearer and easier to understand. The way they are written often make it difficult to understand what is wanted/required. 108.  ̶C̶a̶n̶c̶e̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶a̶s̶s̶ Eliminate the parts of the labs where we were placed into groups and tasked with generating pseudocode or devising a solution to a problem. These were all given 15 or so minutes to complete, when they normally took around 2 or 3. It just seemed like they were unnecessary and wasted time. 109.  More help sessions. 110.  Don't try and cram so much into each lecture. Also, the exams are extremely difficult. 111.  hints on the homework! 112.  Provide clearer examples for labs and projects 113.  I think having more TAs to help individual students at help sessions would be a great improvement to EF230. 114.  Try toning it down on the heater/AC b/c sometimes it is sweltering in that room. Also, have more TAs available at the help sessions. 115.  Provide explanations of why one answer is right over the other that is accessible to students after submission of homework. 116.  Grade slightly easier on tests/ make the questions shorted to take less time. 117.  Videos of someone doing matlab would help a lot. 118.  Naturally on the tests my brain focuses on making sure I get the right answer, but yall seem to want us to focus more on comments. So on exams I would naturally spend most of my time trying to find an answer to a problem and forget that comments come off as more important. So I was confused when I would have to stop trying to find an answer just to write down what I am doing. I thought the focus on comments was excessive.Less focus on comments please. 119.  make more of an effort to cover the stuff that will be used in the projects in class. 120.  Have Schleter teach the class some. 121.  License something other than matlab, you cheap motherf$%##$$^#@@s 122.  Make a "simple English" version of the labs. I don't know who writes them, but they're not written in a way most people can understand........... 123.  Less emphasis on projects 124.  Increase help session hours and have them on more days prior to tests and project due dates. 125.  try harder 126.  more practice problems related to tests and projects 127.  In EF 105 videos were posted that show a step by step process of working through some problems. These would be very helpful in learning how to go about some of the tasks for this course as well. 128.  More detailed examples 129.  More reasons to attend help sessions. The help sessions are seen by a lot of students as a last resort due to Estabrooks location. 130.  More help with some of the functions that we have to use in MATLAB. 131.  Offer bonus attendance points to those who participate in class. I know this was done once and I think it would greatly contribute to active learning in the classroom. 132.  Have even easier and really small examples throughout the lab then one large example broken down covering all the lab material in one file 133.  Make the tests harder or do not let students use resources on tests. 134.  A more interactive interface during classtime might be helpful. Watching the TA's type code on a projection screen simply doesn't work.. If there were an interactive aspect, I think I would learn more by HAVING to be involved.. Lets use these expensive computers we just bought!! 135.  Grade assignments quicker to allow access for reference. 136.  Go over the homeworks the classes following the due date. 137.  Video examples and explanations and using the class period for one on one help from the TAs for problems you can't figure out. 138.  more interactive lectures like in 151,152 lectures. Have a review day the class before an exam, if not in class then outside of class where the TAs would go over the main topics that would be on the exam(like a help session but with a set lecture type thing) 139.  More challenging projects. 140.  I thought the differential equation solvers could be taught more clearly. 141.  make the projects less time intensive. 142.  the few times I've went to help sessions the lab is so packed that I couldn't get a seat and left ... would it be possible to divide help session between 2 rooms or have in larger room? The "project time" at the end of these last few lab/class sessions aren't really enough to get everything out and make any progress before class is over. Would love a class or two with nothing but lab walk-throughs with TAs handy full hour+ to answer questions. I understand that time is likely meant for us to ask specific questions but don't always have them ready to ask and prepared when walking in for class. 143.  More in class time to work on projects. 144.  Put multiple choice questions back on the exams. 145.  Do more group activities. Real world assignments are done commonly in teams 146.  The big thing I'm taking from this class is the ability to use MATLAB to aid me in my endeavors in other classes. So, I would suggest presenting even more useful features that MATLAB has throughout the semester. Also, some things we did just seemed like filling out a template rather than actually thinking about coding (ode45, fmincon, fsolve), and these things occupied more class time than they should had. I know that those functions are remarkably useful and that a template is nice, but it's not helpful when there is an error and I have to attempt to figure out what went wrong. 147.  I would be more cool with having many smaller projects if they were over things we had done in class with a few things to stretch us. 148.  It would be really fantastic if you could post a rubric when you post the project description so that we can see what is expected. It would also be kind of cool to have pre-lab homework so that we could get experience learning stuff on our own, and then the actual lab could focus on more advanced applications (not doubling the homework load, maybe splitting it into two problems - 1 easy-ish pre-lab and 1 hard one post-lab) 149.  Make it an actual two hour class. Less work, less formal, more just experimenting with programming. Like the last couple of labs have been. Not giving hard projects that one needs to go to the TA every step of the way for help to do. 150.  Make sure that instructions (specifically with projects) are clear and concise. Big wordy explanations are scary and often not very clear. 151.  Start off slow. 152.  Online attendance would be very useful 153.  Make more comprehensible example programs available for the students to learn from. 154.  less homework 155.  More direction when it comes to the final project. What is the specific purpose of the final project (what is the grader looking for) More homework where we have to program, rather than know facts about the information 156.  I really don't have a suggestion. Class is really well done. Just fix the help session thing I stated before. 157.  Keep the tests at 3 problems. I could not finish the 4 part test in time. 158.  Group projects in groups of 3 or 4 may be more helpful. That way you are not struggling on your own, you can learn from others and discuss ideas. 159.  More problems on the homework instead of multiple choice. 160.  Cover information about loading data earlier in the class. The hardest parts of the projects were the first few steps where you were supposed to load data and format it a certain way. For the first 2 projects, some of the information vital to the project was not covered until the class before the project was due. 161.  It needs to become a more generic engineering programming and drafting course. It should teach major programming concepts such as classes and algorithms. 162.  Lighten up on the work load, maybe add more computer science content. drop required attendance 163.  either go over saving and loading earlier or change the first project where that isnt required 164.  It would be great if the "submit to matlab" worked well enough for it to grade and be reviewed within a few days to get feedback to the students. 165.  Maybe instead of three projects and a bunch of weekly homeworks, have one expansive, detailed project that you work on throughout the semester with the homeworks. Then it would feel less like you're scrambling to do so much for the class and you'd be learning how to tackle a large daunting project in small sections (since most problems in engineering are really large, seemingly impossible projects). 166.  more explanations outside of the matlab files. I often found the commenting done within the files hard to understand if I hadn't read an explanation outside of the file on the website. 167.  don't focus on comment headers so much. lots of people lost points from projects and tests mainly cause their comments weren't good enough. 168.  I would appreciate it if the help sessions were a little bit longer or if there were two TAs working at each one, at least at the ones before exams and before projects are due. It can be a little difficult to get help because there are so many students trying to get help. 169.  Switch the focus from MATLAB to a programming language that engineering students are likely to actually interact with, like C++ or Python. 170.  I wish they explained more about loops and functions. I think understanding those two concept will help a lot on project. 171.  I could care less about some of the toolboxes, specific features, or random functions. Those are easy to look up as I need them. Focus more on algorithm development. How do I get from point A to point B using Matlab? I had a friend admit to me they still weren't comfortable with subfunctions. Knowing how to translate regular thoughts into computer code is far better than knowing what the uicontrol, sound, or other functions do. I've also taken Comp Sci 102. In there we kept coming back to the same recurring themes: for, while, and do while loops; if-else and switch statements; data storage; and functions. CS 102 taught me much better than EF 230. 172.  The projects could be very time-consuming. However, I cannot make any sensible suggestions without watering-down the material. Possibly more homework & quizzes & tests, as opposed to projects. Homework, et al, is less-time consuming, but also not as intensive of a learning tool. So, a bit of a trade-off. 173.  jlas clja 174.  Whenever the announcement page is updated, it would be nice to receive an email about it. 175.  I think extra credit for finishing homework early would be good. 176.  More examples whether online or in class to help with each lab would be nice. 177.  The homework should have extra credit as an incentive like in EF 151 and 152. 178.  I would make the classes smaller so it could be easier to work with your TA during class. 179.  Remove TA's and computers, replace with professors and pencil and paper. Then we can go home on our own computers and come back the next day with questions. 180.  Find a way to maybe help students remember and understand what different commands do. Maybe like command quizzes or something so that students have to learn and understand the commands and then can also earn extra points for it. 181.  More online notes/lab walthroughs which contain closer info to the lecture 182.  I like the projects and maybe more projects would really help learning. 183.  Include a bit more detail on other programming languages. 184.  -Make what is exactly expected of projects clear -Try to make sure the projects aren't substantially longer than expected. 185.  I would suggest improving the homework problems, or the problems posed in the lab sections. I felt like for the most part, they were too complicated and didn't really go along with the questions on the exams. 186.  If possible, quicker return times on grades 187.  I honestly think that making homework due sooner would help everyone. With it being due 2 or even 3 classes after we go over that material I usually forget everything or forget to do it at all. 188.  i really liked the app project, so for the other projects, let them be more like the app project as in it felt like we had more of free reign to explore what we wanted to do. 189.  The projects had way too much work to do for them.