Week Seven

This is the seventh week of class, as well as the start of the group project and the first test. With regards to the group project, he allowed the students to organize ourselves into groups. To sum up how that is going, well only 6 of the 8 groups for our class have actually been created. Granted my own group is not helping in that regard since we have seven people as opposed to the required six, an issue I hope is being taken care of because so far I have not been informed of what the deal is.

Anyways, the week leading up to the test went fine. We learned new material on Monday, had a review session on Wednesday, took the test on Thursday, and then had Friday off. This was a pretty good design, because the Monday helped to get us through material he put on the study guide to study for the test. And rather than continue new material on Wednesday, he decided to do a review and put off the material till after the test. I think this was really helpful, because it let us ask him specific questions that may have come up while studying and it did lead to a few hints as to what he wanted us to focus on for the test, seems it really does pay to attend class, but I’ve said that before. The test itself was not too bad, but it was definitely one where attendance paid off a lot, because the readings and the projects can only take you so far and actually having someone teach you the material as well as be able to answer any questions you have is fairly useful when learning computer science, or anything really. And the free day came in handy because my group used it to meet up, because we knew we would all be free during that time, since it was our scheduled class time anyways. It does make me wonder if that was his subtle way of trying to get groups to meet up.

Finally, the policy I adopted in my previous Elements courses with Professor Mitra, has been further reinforced as a good idea for classes where the professor cares about attendance, which I have said many times that Professor Downing does. And that is that if you are going to be absent and know ahead of time that you are, it is probably a good idea to let your professor know, either in person or via email ahead of time. At the very least it is just polite and respectful, especially with a professor who cares about his students fully understanding the material like Professor Downing.