COSC 122 Computer Fluency

Fall (Winter Term 1) 2013 - University of British Columbia Okanagan

Overview

The eighth offering of COSC 122 was one of the best ever. The course content is very exciting to students with a variety of backgrounds and gives the opportunity to be creative and understand how everyday technology works. New content was added on JavaScript to allow practice programming with online tools such as Codecademy.

This course goes beyond Microsoft Office and teaches about computer hardware, some programming, and other topics in a broader introduction to Computer Science. Students did some basic programming in HTML and JavaScript. Many students really liked the HTML. The JavaScript was a little harder as it is exposes some of the difficult issues with programming.

On-line Resources

Student Performance

Of the 110 registered students who started the course, 99 (90%) received a D or higher and 97 (88%) received a C- or higher. The average GPA was 3.06 or a B. Charts showing the mark breakdown are below. This was the best offering ever for overall student performance including numerous A+ students!

Mark Breakdown Percentage Mark Breakdown

Comments

The instructor rating was 4.90 (highest ever). The course rating was 4.70 (highest ever). The course remains moderately challenging (3.50) and more students noted that it was important (4.2). Students learn to appreciate programming as "creative problem solving", although it may be challenging at first.

The labs were very good with excellent TAs. Some labs are easy (Lab 1, Word, PowerPoint) and other labs (programming labs 6-8) are considerably harder and the TAs cannot keep up with the questions.

The course will always be challenging to teach as it is considered an "easy science credit". However, there is no reason that it cannot be inspirational, fun, and allow students to learn a lot about technology that will be extremely valuable to them. The goal for this course is to grow it considerably so more students have the opportunity to truly understand the technology they use everyday.

Strengths of the Course

Weakness of the Course

Most Enjoyable Part of the Course


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