1.My programming skills have greatly improved.
I 100% agree with the statement above. Coming into this ITM 352 class, I had no prior programming skills and was frightened by the idea of programming. Considering that I had no prior skills, it honestly isn’t hard to agree that my skills have improved. I have learned so much in the past couple of weeks and feel comfortable doing some coding and even more so, googling for coding! I now know what an html document is, JavaScript, .JS files,. JSON, arrays, objects, etc. I am able to connect why we insert code in certain places, how to not make lame mistakes (in my case, I am a semi-colon forgetter) and a lot smaller but equally important skills. It is because of all these things, that I can confidently say my skills have greatly improved.
2.I am enthusiastic about programming.
Again, I do agree with this statement. Although extremely frustrating at times, creating and finishing a working product is one of the most rewarding feelings! For example, during the semester when we were assigned the Browser History assignments, I was having a hard time. I would get so frustrated not being able to complete the tasks and would spend time calling my sister-in-law (who is a software engineer) to ask for help. However, on multiple occasions while I was on the phone with her asking for help, I was able to (miraculously) find my mistake and would be screaming with joy! She would always tell me, “isn’t that the best feeling?!” She is always right… The feeling of future accomplishment is what keeps me enthusiastic about programming!
3.I can do the practice WODs without looking at the screencast solutions.
I would like to truthfully agree to this statement, but sadly, I cannot. When doing the WOD’s, I usually used the screen cast to get me started on the task. Once I get started, I attempt to do as much of the task as I possibly can without looking at the screen cast. Then, when I would get stuck, I would skip to that part of the screencast, get help to get past the part, then close the screencast and continue to try the WOD on my own. That became my routine while doing the WOD’s. Personally, I enjoyed once the WOD’s were not assigned with a screencast because it really forced me to think and work harder. When the screencast was given to us, I think I used it too frequently and didn’t have enough self-discipline to not use it. In the beginning, I definitely think that the screencast is needed for the students.
4.The labs have helped me to learn and I am able to complete them with confidence.
I do believe that the labs help us learn a lot, I just think we could be completing them in a more efficient way. The labs are a good introduction to each concept that we need to learn and doing it in class with Professor Port gives us great guidance. However, it seems that we take a lot longer to complete the labs than we need to. Sometimes I think we get stuck on parts that the class doesn’t have questions on. Port will talk a lot about a specific aspect of the lab, and it seems like the class will “zone out”. Then, the parts that we should take more time to go over we blaze by and the class is left very confused. In the last 5 minutes of class we speed by about 2 or 3 exercises of the lab and everyone’s work is not working, or we are confused. Then, we end up not finishing the lab and we get told to finish it at home, but we don’t understand what happened in class or what to do at home. In conclusion, I agree the labs have helped me learn a tremendous amount but again, I think we can complete them better in class.
5.I feel ready to move to the next stage of complexity in programming (building small web applications).
I feel that I am ready to move to the next stage of complexity in programming. Although Assignment 1 was hard, I was able to complete it early. I did need some guidance, but I thought that it was fun to do and that I understood what I was doing and needed to do to complete the assignment. Don’t get me wrong, I think that I will 100% struggle in the next stage of programming, and I will get tremendously frustrated, but I feel confident that what I have learned in the beginning of this semester has built me a strong foundation to continue.
6.I think the class can be improved to help my learning.
Like I mentioned in question #4, I think one of the main things that I would want to improve for this ITM class is time efficiency in class. Another thing that I think would help improve this class is assigning and starting the Assignments a little earlier in the semester. To me, it seems a little crazy that we have 4 assignments due in the last 4 weeks of school. Considering how complicated each assignment is going to be, I would hope to have more time to complete each assignment, more time to go into office hours to meet with the Professors or seek help in other ways. Other than that, I do think that the content and information that we have learned this semester does build a very solid foundation for programming. The small quizzes that we take before each lab gives a great introduction to what we will go over in that section and will force us to do the readings and get to know the content.
7.There are things that work really well my learning in this class.
I believe that the way that this class is structured worked really well for me. For me, the guidance with Professor Port with the labs, although somewhat flawed, was a great way to learn the material. I also appreciated the fact that there were no “tests” that forced us to memorize the material rather than learn and take time to understand what we were doing. For this type of work, I think that it would be silly to force students to memorize the material because in the “real-world” or in the workforce we will always be able to use our resources like the internet or our co-workers for guidance. Having the labs ask us questions to explain what we are doing for each exercise is also a great way to make sure we are listening to why we are doing what we are doing. I think it is important to continue to remind the students to understand the reasoning over the actual code. A student can memorize the code, but if they do not understand when and why to use it, memorizing it would be useless.