I just finished moments ago with the first of my four exams this semester (I’m a slacker and a procrastinator and won’t do them until absolutely the last minute!). I decided that one by one as I finish exams, I’ll review the classes. Hopefully, should anyone else be attending Greenville Tech and need some advice on courses in the Programming or Networking departments, I’ll be of some help.
This will be an ongoing post, and I’m hoping that aggregators will realize when it’s been updated, but it’s probably a good idea to check back and see manually a couple of times through the end of the week, just to be safe.
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CPT 234 – C++ Programming I
Instructor: Bob Whaite-
Overall Impression:
Overall, this was probably the class I enjoyed the most. I suppose programming is really my biggest passion, if for no other reason than the fact that my existing knowledge centers more in this area. I always hate it when I’m in a class I don’t know anything about. Every computer class I’ve ever taken, I’ve known varying degrees about already. In BASIC programming in highschool, I was already more fluent in it than the teacher was.Thankfully, PHP is heavily based on C++. Even though I’ve never done any actual application programming before, the simple similarities in loop structures, etc. was incredibly helpful. Unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword. I’ve decided that I MUCH prefer PHP to C++, mainly because of it’s simplicity. I absolutely despise variable types! For some reason, in what little bit of experimenting I’ve done, I seem to prefer C# over C++… Don’t ask me why.
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Pros:
Fun course. I’m a big fan of learning by doing. Having weekly (or somewhere close) coding assignments was great. Some of the assignments got a little long (7 programs is a bit much, even if they’re simple), but that goes along with the subject matter of the chapter we were covering at the time, so the instructor really isn’t to blame I suppose.One absolutely excellent thing about the instructor’s teaching method: Evaluate your own work. I love it. Every time we’d submit a coding exercise, the next day, we’d have the opportunity to review our own code, compare it against the instructor’s working code, and see what we did wrong, how we could have improved, etc. This is an absolutely brilliant method of teaching, if you ask me. Forgive me if this has been done before somewhere (everywhere?), this is my first programming class that hasn’t been taught by a total idiot.
To focus more on the instructor, Bob was great in what little communication I had directly with him. I think he’s got a good thing going here (Did I mention the evaluate your own code thing? Wow!). When he made a mistake on the dates our final exam were available (2004 instead of 2005), he was appreciative and sent me a reply to my email, even though I’m sure other people noticed it before I did. I like that. Gives the student a sense of comfort, familiarity, and communication with the instructor. I just wish some tech support / customer service centers would adopt this policy more often.
Also, Bob’s teaching method were quite effective. We didn’t waste a ton of time reviewing what variables were and what data types there were at the beginning of class. Instead, we just had to use them in our weekly code assignments to prove we understood them. I love this. Most of the time, I absolutely hate the boring intro crap classes focus on for weeks before actually hitting any real material.
I admit I didn’t read the syllabus, so this may have been covered, but Monday when I realized that he’d had a dozen or so chapter quizzes available with no ending date, I dropped him an email. I asked him if they were required, since there was no end date, and if I could have until the end of the exam to wrap them up. Thankfully, he emailed me right back and let me know that he was considering them practice for the few unit tests we’d had. I think this is great. There’s no need to over-test. It shouldn’t take much to realize whether someone knows the material or not, particularly in a programming class.
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Cons:
Truly and honestly, I can’t think of a single downside to this course. As I mentioned, I dislike C++ in general, but that’s certainly not a reflection upon the course or the instructor, which were both absolutely excellent in my opinion. -
Exam:
32 Questions – Multiple Choice, True / False, Coding
Time Allowed: 150 minutes
Time Required: 67 minutes -
Overall Score:
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Overall Impression:
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CPT 247 – Linux Installation and Administration
Instructor: Beau Sanders-
Overall Impression:
All-in-all, this was probably the easiest of my classes this semester. Not only was the teacher very reasonable (at least for the most part. I’ll get to the exception later…), but the assignments were always short and to the point. They obviously made you think and prove that you knew the material, but didn’t jump into the realm of simple memorization and recalling random facts. -
Pros:
Not only was the teacher very reasonable (at least for the most part. I’ll get to the exception later…), but the assignments were always short and to the point. They obviously made you think and prove that you knew the material, but didn’t jump into the realm of simple memorization and recalling random facts.Teacher also runs a website (beausanders.com) to provide easy access to school resources, class information and material, as well as news links and other useful tools. Through this website, he provides free Linux shell accounts and Apache web hosting for any students in the department that can’t provide their own machines. Very nice, even if I don’t need either.
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Cons:
The single complaint I have against the course came up just Monday afternoon. I was sick, and I logged in to see if there was anything I needed to make-up for the class before our exams. Well, ordinarily I log in every 2 days or so and look to see if there’s a “x assignments / quizzes due soon” notice under a class. If there is, I go and take the quiz or do the assignment. I know, probably not the smartest approach, but it’s the simplest and quickest method available. So I log in and see 12 quizzes are due soon. Apparently, the instructor had created short quizzes to go along with each chapter and hadn’t bothered to set due dates to go along with the material. As a result, I didn’t know about them until the day they were due. Since each was an hour long, I didn’t have anywhere near enough time to complete them all, much less take my time.Suspecting a reasonable person, I emailed my instructor and explained the situation, just as I did here. I told him that since I’d done extraordinarily well on the unit tests (all As, 2 of which were 100+), it was obvious I knew the material, and I simply needed more time to complete these assignments, since they’d snuck up on me here at the very end. I told him that I had no problem completing them, I simply needed another day or two to do it in. I was met with a rather rude response that I’d had 15 weeks to complete them in, and that they were due at the end of the day. Not the best move, and for that you lose a point. I understand rules and regulations that are in place and come from over your head, but let’s be a little reasonable here. I saw nothing unreasonable about my request, and no reason it couldn’t have been granted.
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Exam:
67 Questions – Multiple Choice, True / False, Matching, Fill-in-the-Blank
Time Allowed: 100 minutes
Time Required: 47 minutes -
Overall Score:
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Overall Impression:
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CPT 267 – Computer User Support
Instructor: Cheryl Gaines-
Overall Impression:
This was the most boring computer-related class I think I have ever taken. The entire jist of it was “be nice to customers, that’s why you’re employed”. Ok, so maybe it was a little more detailed than that, but honestly, an entire class about this was probably excessive. -
Pros:
If you can find one, I’d love to have it pointed out… -
Cons:
Absolutely boring. Uses a lot of “buzz words” in the text (which is NOT a Thomson publication like most of the other great textbooks I’ve used). The nature of the material makes it inherently repetitive and memorization-focused. Unfortunately, this isn’t nearly as easy as you’d think, because of all the buzz words that are similar. I have a feeling a better textbook (if one exists) would probably help a great deal with this. -
Exam:
160 Questions – Multiple Choice, True / False
Time Allowed: 140 minutes
Time Required: 65 minutes -
Overall Score:
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Overall Impression:
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IST 220 – Data Communications (Network+)
Instructor: Cheryl Gaines-
Overall Impression:
Very informative course. I hope I never see the OSI Model ever EVER again… Who needs to rehash that kind of data on a daily basis anyway? Do big-business networking guys actually go around randomly talking about the differences between the Physical and the Data Link layers of the OSI Model? If they do, there’s medication to help fix that…In all seriousness though, it was a very informative course. I can definitely see how it would get you prepared for any number of networking certifications or jobs, and from what I’ve been told by friends, it basically clears you for the first half of the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator) certification test.
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Pros:
As I said, informative. Aside from the OSI Model, it was fairly interesting as well. The textbook (which IS a Thomson publication), contained some very helpful charts. I think I’m going to actually keep this textbook for future reference, rather than selling it back to the school. From charts about T# / DS# speeds to the different classifications of 802.x numbers in IEEE standards, it was very helpful for my daily life as well as my school work. -
Cons:
OSI Model, OSI Model, OSI Model. Aside from that, not much. Just like the last class, since there’s nothing you can really *do* in the class, it’s inherently memorization-intensive, which is a big down side for any supposedly educational program. The tests and homework assignments reflected this, if a bit excessively (I think a dozen questions about which layer of the OSI model things fit in to is a bit excessive). -
Exam:
115 Questions – Multiple Choice, True / False
Time Allowed: 120 minutes
Time Required: 73 minutes -
Overall Score:
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Overall Impression:
Chris, I was actually thinking of taking some Networking stuff there, Linux in particular. I can look it up but you may know, is the course you reference the continuing education course or is this one that is part of a degree program only? I spent forever as a student after I got out of undergrad getting my MBA , then taking the continuing ed courses w/ Computer Science – I don’t think I could stomach any prereq courses unless they were relevant to the subject matter and I could use them – usually continuing ed you can circumvent that sort of stuff- you know
The courses I was taking are in their Computer Science degree program, and yes, they do require some insanely stupid prereq’s. Honestly, if you’re going into Computer Science, you should know how to use Word…
Now, knowing them, the course may be exactly identical (and probably is), but simply be counted as continuing education. I can’t see why there’d be much difference. You teach the class to people who have supposedly met these prereq courses and have a certain level of knowledge, or you teach the class to people who are continuing their education and supposedly already have experience in the industry and a certain level of knowedge… Either way, looks like you’re teaching on the same level to me…
Honestly, I’d much rather be taking a couple of certification courses and get a couple certs (A+, MCSE, CCNE… something), but unfortunately my Life scholarship doesn’t pay for certifications, only degrees… Oh woe is me…