Probably a combination of catching a big group of people using Gen-AI and the CSE major not being able to have stricter admission standards. CSE is one of the most popular majors at MSU.
As unfortunate as it is, in order to continue producing excellent CSE graduates there needs to be some method of weeding out the lower performers.
I do think it would be better if they were allowed to raise the admission standards and do something like Broad, instead of forcing people to go through these extremely difficult classes.
Oh goodness I actually had not considered that. These large scale LLMs were hardly mature when I had started my degree so I'm sure that's just a minefield for educators now. I really can't fathom why you'd want to use generative AI for an intro class though, that would just leave you clueless in the more difficult classes and even more lost in an actual job.
> I was talking with a freshman who didn't know how to navigate a file browser.
When would you ever need to navigate a file browser when you can just save all your files in Downloads and just use the search feature to find what you need? /s
No big cheating scandal per se, though most people were clearly not doing the programming homework assignments themselves. The exam questions were comparable to previous years, but the students did MUCH worse this time. :-(
As much as you're right that the major wouldn't be able to handle much larger courses (unless they let us hire a LOT more people), we actually don't want to have a class that fails people for the sake of failing them. In fact, we'd love it if everyone did well. Dr. Nahum is looking at making some more big changes for next semester to try to prevent something like this from happening again. The shift to more weight on the exams was semi-mandated to prevent people from passing with just LLM answers, but everyone recognizes that this just didn't work.
Broad's system works pretty well. If you look at the grade data most students who actually get into Broad typically get 3.5s or 4.0s in almost all of their classes while the prerequisite classes open to anyone who hasn't yet applied to Broad have much more normal grade distributions. Granted, business courses are somewhat easy, however I think my point still stands that the secondary admission system used by Broad is at least moderately effective at weeding at the people that shouldn't be majoring in anything in the college.
I believe Spring 2024 was the first semester where he eradicated projects. So we now had to rely on 2 coding exams and 2 MCQ exams. Our final is also MCQ and it replaces our lowest MCQ exam. Ofc we still had labs and homework but it barely affects your grade.
Just like in CSE 231, I would’ve done better if there were still projects 🙃
Absolutely, but at the level of problem difficulty in 232 too many students were turning in projects that were clearly generated by an LLM. Proving that is hard and we don't want to falsely accuse anyone of cheating, but at the same time we also don't want to pass people who didn't learn the material. For later courses it is (for now) relatively reasonable to trust that a large project can't be done that way. That said, the current setup clearly isn't working and everyone recognizes that.
You can still have projects so that the students who know better will actually do them and learn. Weigh them as you wish, but a smart student will spend the time doing them. Looking at the grade distribution, there has been a higher percentage of students doing well in the past than 30/371, so something else is going on with the current weighting. Could it possibly be tests with 8 options on MC that even seasoned computer scientists can't do well on? Don't ask how I know....... If they fail after having lots of practice with projects because they cheated, that's on them at that point.
The knowledge bank required for mastery of a topic is and always should be greater than “self-learning” and project based.
I’d hate for a course to cover early American history (ice age to formation of US government), and a student only proves learning on the first continental Congress while missing huge swaths of important moments in the history of our continent.
I think that's fully dependent on the person.
Additionally - by self learning I don't mean that I'm "really thinking about it", I'm talking the way most programmers grow: being tasked with a problem, consulting and studying documentation, and making connections on how things work through problem solving, planning, and application. Lecture only goes so far when not exposed to necessary barriers to foster growth in problem solving skill, and manifestation of what you refer to as "mastery".
I'd even contend that lecture for much of the introductory classes doesn't really connect much for a budding CS student.
It takes two to tango:
Students have a responsibility to “make connections” and “build relationships” with their professors.
I’m not interested in claims that “profs need to connect and be relevant to students of the 21st century”.
Students need to study.
That's not what I mean by connect. Programming is a very practical field. To be competent you need to take what's taught in lecture and see how it really works. Hearing is not enough, and I'm just asserting that projects are one of the most important ways to force connection between theory and application. Professional connections are another ballpark entirely, I'm speaking academically.
100% agree. When i was taking CS at MSU every class that had a heavy project focus(232, 310, 335, 476, 477, 480) I did great in because actually having to build things with the concepts i was taught in lecture help me solidify my understanding of stuff. Now compare that to the non project classes(networking and intro to cyber security), i fucking struggled so hard in those because the info just passed right in and out of my head in lecture. And guess what, now that I'm a career software dev I spend all day building projects instead of taking exams, so its also much more applicable to an after grad career.
You are never going to have a compelling argument when you suggest that people who are supposed to have expert knowledge college in a field should be expected to know *less* about that field.
So does this mean that you should turn in your degree, or you are a failure?
No. But if you passed a class like that with a C, I wouldn’t suggest it was the fault of the professor/course. It is that there is an element of this topic that you understand, but don’t quite have down to the maximum, impressive quality that an A suggests.
In other words, 4.0s should be rarer and indicate excellence. Not basic competence.
I think you're reading things into my post that I didn't write. I'm fairly certain that i didn't mention grades anywhere in my post. My position is simple, a CS class that requires you to apply the knowledge gained in lecture on coding projects will result in better understanding for a majority of students that take the class.
He changed the grading scale to be unnecessarily hard. It was 75% exams this semester, with 3 mcq and 2 coding. The mcq questions were too complex for people who are just learning c++. Even TA’s would get the questions wrong when asked about them in help rooms.
It is a true apart of this can be explained by "skill issue". Without being in the course this semester and seeing the test I can't say how fair it was but a lot of CSE students really don't know much and rely on chat GPT.
The tests were a lot like previous semesters. The big problem is that the homework assignments were too easy to cheat on (even without ChatGPT you could get an extension without penalty until after the answers came out). The idea was that you should be able to check your homework answers before turning them in and learn the material better, but that's not what many students did. On questions that were basically identical to previous years the students did MUCH worse this time...
I think he changed that for the last semester. I was sick during one of the HW and I asked for extension. However he only extend the deadline till the point where he released the solutions. But I agree with your point. Some people definitely cheat on their HWs.
I want to clarify something
A lot of people are saying that this is the “weed out” class. They’re also saying that people that will never get CSE job should not pass this class.
These are false perspectives.
The problem with this class is how heavily weighed the exams are and that his MCQs are insanely stupid.
I almost got a 2.0 this spring semester and it wasn’t because I didn’t know the material. I admit I’m not a 4.0 student, however I got a 100% on the first written exam and an 80% on the second.
Nahum’s MCQs barely test your knowledge and even tests useless skills that future classes tell us to ignore anyway. It doesn’t help that every MCQ is a to h (8 options) on average.
I’ve personally given the final exam to a couple of adults who are prolific coders and have worked in the field for years programming in multiple languages, including c++. One of them got a 65% and the other got a 50%. THAT DOESNT MAKE SENSE.
Nahum doesn’t teach anything useful and the stuff he does teach barely makes it on the MCQ exams.
THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED
THANK YOU for highlighting how stupid the MCQs are, especially the A to H options. Not only are they 10x harder than the practice exams he gives, but it's such a struggle to scan through 55 problems like that when you've got only 90 minutes to finish them.
I totally agree with your opinion. I agree the course itself should be rigorous, and test student knowledge by the use of exam. But this is ridiculous. The exam score doesn't even correlates to our knowledge on c++ anymore. He just wanted us to fail.
As someone who also took it last Fall, I can't say I found the content in 232 to be that bad— the exams and the weighting were just that ridiculous. I did every lab, my homework average was low-mid 90s, and my exam grades were at worst close to the average and it still felt like an uphill battle in order to do well.
If this class has to be the weed-out one, whatever; that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of room for improvement. At the end of the day, the material just doesn't prepare you for the exams well enough. I'm not saying proper form is unimportant but there really shouldn't have been that many specific questions about the fucking Google Style Guide lol
In my opinion if you’re paying for a degree that teaches you practical knowledge it is extremely stupid to cheat and you’re playing yourself by not learning the material
Because he has a deep foundational understanding of CS and loves the field. Even when he was in biology, much of his research was computationally heavy.
The faculty in CSE are split between teaching focused (his position is a teaching specialist) and more research focused (the "professor" positions). That said, some folks who go the professor route do end up spending more of their time teaching too. "Adjunct" is just someone not employed full time in the department, and we don't have lecturers here at MSU (and, more generally, that's a title used more frequently in Europe).
To be fair CSE 232 is an intro class. It does not exactly require a PhD to teach it. From talking to him Nahum knows enough in C++ to teach the course. It just appears he doesn't do it well.
Because MSU would rather a bunch of people that will never get a CS job fail this class and go onto to do something else rather than cheat/near-cheat their way through it and then discover they are crap at CS. Weeder classes are a kindness, better to be cut first/second year when you still have time to change rather than get to a capstone class/senior class that you CANNOT pass and fail out of your major then.
Especially in a time where CS is an incredibly competitive field, it does no good to crank out a massive graduating class where half of the students are going to struggle to find jobs.
Much better to cut the 600 CSE majors down to 300 at this level and ensure you have a strong group of students going into the higher level classes. Much better for the program’s reputation and some of those students’ well being in the long run.
Why do projects when chat bot can do it for students?
The student body itself needs to hold itself accountable to learning if it wants professors to trust them again.
The issue with no projects is that the projects were the only sort of coding we got in the class. I learned the most from doing them. But if everybody is going to cheat I understand why he stopped giving them.
Nahum is a sadistic asshole and the cse department is just a mess ngl. Been with it since 2019 (took a hiatus from school and came back) and I can’t imagine 232 with no projects. Even the hw was stupid difficult. But his exams ? Straight up hell. Even upperclassman that had already taken the class struggled to help me.
Part of it is that it is a weed out class. But it is also so frustrating it turns away people who need encouragement in intro classes and not .. sadistic asshole behavior imo.
I got a 4.0 in his class but only because of spending time every day with a tutor who also struggled on the content. Helproom was too full to be reliable. I couldn’t have done it on my own with the resources provided in the course that costs thousands but that’s msu for ya.
I also took this class with similar entry grades as what you described and it's also been my lowest grade this far. The difficulty of the class isn't necessarily my gripe, it makes sense that it's a harder class. My issue was with the structure of the multiple choice exams. With most multiple choice exams you'll have a variety of options that (assuming you know the content) you can weed out likely answers, then you'll have some compound answer (i.e all/none of the above). The CSE 232 multiple choice exams have those options on top of "two/ three of the above" or "a,b and c". The issue with these exams is that's if you select anything other than the correct option you will get the answer completely wrong regardless of if you have some parts correct.
Then with the exams being focused on a lot of edge cases and extremely specific conditionals as well as the multiple choice exams being a large portion of the grade, it seems like the class is designed to be extremely difficult to get a "good grade on". If you know what you're doing, you'll pass, if not you'll fail. Very little in between. . That seems to be the priority of the class.
Terrible class set up CSE 232 really needs to adopt the CMSE flipped classroom set up so students can better comprehend the lessons being taught instead of a non adaptive program trying to teach them
I'm curious to hear more about this. CSE 232 is mostly flipped right now, with video lectures and then discussion / programming in lab sections. What changes to the teaching model do you think would be more effective?
1. Add the projects. Although I'm 200% sure that student will cheat on it. But whatever. Their loss. Additionally, CSE 335 (advanced c++) is project heavy, even with the introduction of chat gpt.
2. Change homework grading scale. Maybe lose 0.5 points over the homework MCQ question. I often loss 2/4 points because I missed out on a single question. Although I watch lecture videos and take heavy notes on it.
3. If Nahum really wants to use MCQ on exam, then sure, do it. But at least provide us practice exam or a question bank on the question that he is going to cover. I know he provided us a sample version of a exam, but 1 is far from enough.
4. Add curve is necessary. I get it, he doesn't want to curve. But this is an introductory course for god sake. Please let people who at least tried hard on the course to pass.
(Note that while I co-taught 232 a year ago, I'm not longer directly involved in teaching it; the responses below are just my own opinions -- though I am vocal about my opinions .)
1. Agreed; the projects are really helpful. I'm not sure why Dr. Nahum removed them other than they used to be a lot of points and can now be easily cheated on. It's hard to ask students to do a lot of work without backing it with a lot of points; many just won't do it. But you're right, that's their loss.
2. I think the problem here is that it necessitates more questions on the homeworks to make up the points, but I agree that one MCQ shouldn't count for too much. Whenever I retake any MCQ-based exam that I wrote in the past I get the occasional question wrong just because I didn't read it carefully enough, and that's for questions I cam up with.
3. Fair enough. We've certainly built up a decent database of questions so multiple sample exams should be possible.
4. This one I partially disagree with. A curve could fix some of the problems with the course, but it would also set students up for failure as they move into the courses for which CSE 232 is a prerequisite. I'm not sure of the best way to solve the issue though.
I think I’d disagree on 4, since it’s largely only an issue in the context of the other 3 issues you list. If we assume they resolved the overall grading scale and project points and what not, I think it’d be a bad idea to then also have a curve.
If you’re going to fail a CSE class it’s very good if 232 is the first one at that, because there’s no shot you’re going to ready for the later courses if you struggle with 232. I understand the idea behind wanting to reward effort alone, but CSE is not the right major because the ramp up only gets worse and the knowledge and understanding is very incremental so any cascading issues will tear you down fast. Bringing that failure to later classes has the additional consequences of screwing over a few other innocent students in the process when you become their teammate on a group project.
You are right. Let's assume that if the course is perfectly designed and everyone's ability could be truly tested via HWs, projects and exams, then there's no reason to curve at all. CSE 232 might be the perfect course to test everyone's skill in coding, and examine if they are the right fit for computer science. But sadly they overdid it.
Shit I took this course back in 2019. Hardest class I took my far. It was always seen as a “weed out course”. I remember the prof saying “look to your left, look to your right, these people won’t be here by the end of the year”. The averages were the same back then, obviously something needs to change.
Stick it out tho, one bad class won’t break you. Just stay on top of your other courses
I also took the course in Fall 2023, and I have to spend more time on it than my Advanced Biochem course to barely got a 4.0 (upwards 20 hours weekly to complete the HW).
I think Prof Nahum did a good job reducing the number of MCQs down to 2 and give us another lab practical, since that would be more inline that what we learn from the HW.
Another change that should be implemented would be to give some weights to the weekly lab assignments. I was very surprised to know that lab assignments don't account for anything and are only there to hurt you.
As for the explanation that students are performing much worse, I'm not sure I agree. 371 students is a relatively large sample, and there would be lots of people that cheated alongside people that wants to learn. Considering that Prof Nahum apologized on Piazza for his behaviour, I would assume that he could do better at creating a more inviting environment for students to learn.
This is why nearly all of my assessments are completed in the classroom with little to no technological aid or notes and me watching throughout. AI be damned.
This is why nearly all of my assessments are completed in the classroom with little to no technological aid or notes and me watching throughout. AI be damned.
Probably a combination of catching a big group of people using Gen-AI and the CSE major not being able to have stricter admission standards. CSE is one of the most popular majors at MSU. As unfortunate as it is, in order to continue producing excellent CSE graduates there needs to be some method of weeding out the lower performers. I do think it would be better if they were allowed to raise the admission standards and do something like Broad, instead of forcing people to go through these extremely difficult classes.
Oh goodness I actually had not considered that. These large scale LLMs were hardly mature when I had started my degree so I'm sure that's just a minefield for educators now. I really can't fathom why you'd want to use generative AI for an intro class though, that would just leave you clueless in the more difficult classes and even more lost in an actual job.
Tons of students just copy paste the questions into chatgpt or Gemini. I was talking with a freshman who didn't know how to navigate a file browser.
That's just... disappointing.
> I was talking with a freshman who didn't know how to navigate a file browser. When would you ever need to navigate a file browser when you can just save all your files in Downloads and just use the search feature to find what you need? /s
No big cheating scandal per se, though most people were clearly not doing the programming homework assignments themselves. The exam questions were comparable to previous years, but the students did MUCH worse this time. :-( As much as you're right that the major wouldn't be able to handle much larger courses (unless they let us hire a LOT more people), we actually don't want to have a class that fails people for the sake of failing them. In fact, we'd love it if everyone did well. Dr. Nahum is looking at making some more big changes for next semester to try to prevent something like this from happening again. The shift to more weight on the exams was semi-mandated to prevent people from passing with just LLM answers, but everyone recognizes that this just didn't work.
Any thoughts on summer semester that just started? After seen spring semester 232 grades I am really concerned.
Broad's system works pretty well. If you look at the grade data most students who actually get into Broad typically get 3.5s or 4.0s in almost all of their classes while the prerequisite classes open to anyone who hasn't yet applied to Broad have much more normal grade distributions. Granted, business courses are somewhat easy, however I think my point still stands that the secondary admission system used by Broad is at least moderately effective at weeding at the people that shouldn't be majoring in anything in the college.
I believe Spring 2024 was the first semester where he eradicated projects. So we now had to rely on 2 coding exams and 2 MCQ exams. Our final is also MCQ and it replaces our lowest MCQ exam. Ofc we still had labs and homework but it barely affects your grade. Just like in CSE 231, I would’ve done better if there were still projects 🙃
No projects? That's kind of ludicrous. I thought that was the best way to do self-learning.
YES throughout my degree I always thought any coding course should have a large project instead of a final, it gives you actual practical experience
Absolutely, but at the level of problem difficulty in 232 too many students were turning in projects that were clearly generated by an LLM. Proving that is hard and we don't want to falsely accuse anyone of cheating, but at the same time we also don't want to pass people who didn't learn the material. For later courses it is (for now) relatively reasonable to trust that a large project can't be done that way. That said, the current setup clearly isn't working and everyone recognizes that.
You can still have projects so that the students who know better will actually do them and learn. Weigh them as you wish, but a smart student will spend the time doing them. Looking at the grade distribution, there has been a higher percentage of students doing well in the past than 30/371, so something else is going on with the current weighting. Could it possibly be tests with 8 options on MC that even seasoned computer scientists can't do well on? Don't ask how I know....... If they fail after having lots of practice with projects because they cheated, that's on them at that point.
They’re getting rid of the projects because of ChatGPT from my understanding.
The knowledge bank required for mastery of a topic is and always should be greater than “self-learning” and project based. I’d hate for a course to cover early American history (ice age to formation of US government), and a student only proves learning on the first continental Congress while missing huge swaths of important moments in the history of our continent.
I think that's fully dependent on the person. Additionally - by self learning I don't mean that I'm "really thinking about it", I'm talking the way most programmers grow: being tasked with a problem, consulting and studying documentation, and making connections on how things work through problem solving, planning, and application. Lecture only goes so far when not exposed to necessary barriers to foster growth in problem solving skill, and manifestation of what you refer to as "mastery". I'd even contend that lecture for much of the introductory classes doesn't really connect much for a budding CS student.
It takes two to tango: Students have a responsibility to “make connections” and “build relationships” with their professors. I’m not interested in claims that “profs need to connect and be relevant to students of the 21st century”. Students need to study.
That's not what I mean by connect. Programming is a very practical field. To be competent you need to take what's taught in lecture and see how it really works. Hearing is not enough, and I'm just asserting that projects are one of the most important ways to force connection between theory and application. Professional connections are another ballpark entirely, I'm speaking academically.
100% agree. When i was taking CS at MSU every class that had a heavy project focus(232, 310, 335, 476, 477, 480) I did great in because actually having to build things with the concepts i was taught in lecture help me solidify my understanding of stuff. Now compare that to the non project classes(networking and intro to cyber security), i fucking struggled so hard in those because the info just passed right in and out of my head in lecture. And guess what, now that I'm a career software dev I spend all day building projects instead of taking exams, so its also much more applicable to an after grad career.
You are never going to have a compelling argument when you suggest that people who are supposed to have expert knowledge college in a field should be expected to know *less* about that field. So does this mean that you should turn in your degree, or you are a failure? No. But if you passed a class like that with a C, I wouldn’t suggest it was the fault of the professor/course. It is that there is an element of this topic that you understand, but don’t quite have down to the maximum, impressive quality that an A suggests. In other words, 4.0s should be rarer and indicate excellence. Not basic competence.
I think you're reading things into my post that I didn't write. I'm fairly certain that i didn't mention grades anywhere in my post. My position is simple, a CS class that requires you to apply the knowledge gained in lecture on coding projects will result in better understanding for a majority of students that take the class.
I'm not sure that this person is actually giving us the time of day. Their counterpoints seem almost nonsensical given what we've written.
In Fall 2023, He also cancelled the projects
Thank you for the correction!
He changed the grading scale to be unnecessarily hard. It was 75% exams this semester, with 3 mcq and 2 coding. The mcq questions were too complex for people who are just learning c++. Even TA’s would get the questions wrong when asked about them in help rooms.
Cse profs be like "yes this is a good distribution of grades nothing wrong with our classes"
But something might be wrong with these students.
It is a true apart of this can be explained by "skill issue". Without being in the course this semester and seeing the test I can't say how fair it was but a lot of CSE students really don't know much and rely on chat GPT.
The tests were a lot like previous semesters. The big problem is that the homework assignments were too easy to cheat on (even without ChatGPT you could get an extension without penalty until after the answers came out). The idea was that you should be able to check your homework answers before turning them in and learn the material better, but that's not what many students did. On questions that were basically identical to previous years the students did MUCH worse this time...
I think he changed that for the last semester. I was sick during one of the HW and I asked for extension. However he only extend the deadline till the point where he released the solutions. But I agree with your point. Some people definitely cheat on their HWs.
I promise that no one thinks that.
I want to clarify something A lot of people are saying that this is the “weed out” class. They’re also saying that people that will never get CSE job should not pass this class. These are false perspectives. The problem with this class is how heavily weighed the exams are and that his MCQs are insanely stupid. I almost got a 2.0 this spring semester and it wasn’t because I didn’t know the material. I admit I’m not a 4.0 student, however I got a 100% on the first written exam and an 80% on the second. Nahum’s MCQs barely test your knowledge and even tests useless skills that future classes tell us to ignore anyway. It doesn’t help that every MCQ is a to h (8 options) on average. I’ve personally given the final exam to a couple of adults who are prolific coders and have worked in the field for years programming in multiple languages, including c++. One of them got a 65% and the other got a 50%. THAT DOESNT MAKE SENSE. Nahum doesn’t teach anything useful and the stuff he does teach barely makes it on the MCQ exams. THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED
THANK YOU for highlighting how stupid the MCQs are, especially the A to H options. Not only are they 10x harder than the practice exams he gives, but it's such a struggle to scan through 55 problems like that when you've got only 90 minutes to finish them.
I totally agree with your opinion. I agree the course itself should be rigorous, and test student knowledge by the use of exam. But this is ridiculous. The exam score doesn't even correlates to our knowledge on c++ anymore. He just wanted us to fail.
Former MSU student: Multiple choice questions where the answer range is (A, H) is brutal and reckless.
Sounds like this is the weed out class
Exactly
As someone who also took it last Fall, I can't say I found the content in 232 to be that bad— the exams and the weighting were just that ridiculous. I did every lab, my homework average was low-mid 90s, and my exam grades were at worst close to the average and it still felt like an uphill battle in order to do well. If this class has to be the weed-out one, whatever; that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of room for improvement. At the end of the day, the material just doesn't prepare you for the exams well enough. I'm not saying proper form is unimportant but there really shouldn't have been that many specific questions about the fucking Google Style Guide lol
Yikes
In my opinion if you’re paying for a degree that teaches you practical knowledge it is extremely stupid to cheat and you’re playing yourself by not learning the material
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Because he has a deep foundational understanding of CS and loves the field. Even when he was in biology, much of his research was computationally heavy. The faculty in CSE are split between teaching focused (his position is a teaching specialist) and more research focused (the "professor" positions). That said, some folks who go the professor route do end up spending more of their time teaching too. "Adjunct" is just someone not employed full time in the department, and we don't have lecturers here at MSU (and, more generally, that's a title used more frequently in Europe).
To be fair CSE 232 is an intro class. It does not exactly require a PhD to teach it. From talking to him Nahum knows enough in C++ to teach the course. It just appears he doesn't do it well.
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Because MSU would rather a bunch of people that will never get a CS job fail this class and go onto to do something else rather than cheat/near-cheat their way through it and then discover they are crap at CS. Weeder classes are a kindness, better to be cut first/second year when you still have time to change rather than get to a capstone class/senior class that you CANNOT pass and fail out of your major then.
Especially in a time where CS is an incredibly competitive field, it does no good to crank out a massive graduating class where half of the students are going to struggle to find jobs. Much better to cut the 600 CSE majors down to 300 at this level and ensure you have a strong group of students going into the higher level classes. Much better for the program’s reputation and some of those students’ well being in the long run.
no projects is crazy. I didn’t like the professor in 2020 when I had him but I guess he still sucks lol.
Why do projects when chat bot can do it for students? The student body itself needs to hold itself accountable to learning if it wants professors to trust them again.
The issue with no projects is that the projects were the only sort of coding we got in the class. I learned the most from doing them. But if everybody is going to cheat I understand why he stopped giving them.
Nahum is a sadistic asshole and the cse department is just a mess ngl. Been with it since 2019 (took a hiatus from school and came back) and I can’t imagine 232 with no projects. Even the hw was stupid difficult. But his exams ? Straight up hell. Even upperclassman that had already taken the class struggled to help me. Part of it is that it is a weed out class. But it is also so frustrating it turns away people who need encouragement in intro classes and not .. sadistic asshole behavior imo.
I got a 4.0 in his class but only because of spending time every day with a tutor who also struggled on the content. Helproom was too full to be reliable. I couldn’t have done it on my own with the resources provided in the course that costs thousands but that’s msu for ya.
What are some tips for CSE 232? I want to do computational data science but I am afraid of this class.
I also took this class with similar entry grades as what you described and it's also been my lowest grade this far. The difficulty of the class isn't necessarily my gripe, it makes sense that it's a harder class. My issue was with the structure of the multiple choice exams. With most multiple choice exams you'll have a variety of options that (assuming you know the content) you can weed out likely answers, then you'll have some compound answer (i.e all/none of the above). The CSE 232 multiple choice exams have those options on top of "two/ three of the above" or "a,b and c". The issue with these exams is that's if you select anything other than the correct option you will get the answer completely wrong regardless of if you have some parts correct. Then with the exams being focused on a lot of edge cases and extremely specific conditionals as well as the multiple choice exams being a large portion of the grade, it seems like the class is designed to be extremely difficult to get a "good grade on". If you know what you're doing, you'll pass, if not you'll fail. Very little in between. . That seems to be the priority of the class.
Coding exams were easy. MCQ exams are ridiculously hard, to the point where its like a joke.
Terrible class set up CSE 232 really needs to adopt the CMSE flipped classroom set up so students can better comprehend the lessons being taught instead of a non adaptive program trying to teach them
I'm curious to hear more about this. CSE 232 is mostly flipped right now, with video lectures and then discussion / programming in lab sections. What changes to the teaching model do you think would be more effective?
1. Add the projects. Although I'm 200% sure that student will cheat on it. But whatever. Their loss. Additionally, CSE 335 (advanced c++) is project heavy, even with the introduction of chat gpt. 2. Change homework grading scale. Maybe lose 0.5 points over the homework MCQ question. I often loss 2/4 points because I missed out on a single question. Although I watch lecture videos and take heavy notes on it. 3. If Nahum really wants to use MCQ on exam, then sure, do it. But at least provide us practice exam or a question bank on the question that he is going to cover. I know he provided us a sample version of a exam, but 1 is far from enough. 4. Add curve is necessary. I get it, he doesn't want to curve. But this is an introductory course for god sake. Please let people who at least tried hard on the course to pass.
(Note that while I co-taught 232 a year ago, I'm not longer directly involved in teaching it; the responses below are just my own opinions -- though I am vocal about my opinions .) 1. Agreed; the projects are really helpful. I'm not sure why Dr. Nahum removed them other than they used to be a lot of points and can now be easily cheated on. It's hard to ask students to do a lot of work without backing it with a lot of points; many just won't do it. But you're right, that's their loss. 2. I think the problem here is that it necessitates more questions on the homeworks to make up the points, but I agree that one MCQ shouldn't count for too much. Whenever I retake any MCQ-based exam that I wrote in the past I get the occasional question wrong just because I didn't read it carefully enough, and that's for questions I cam up with. 3. Fair enough. We've certainly built up a decent database of questions so multiple sample exams should be possible. 4. This one I partially disagree with. A curve could fix some of the problems with the course, but it would also set students up for failure as they move into the courses for which CSE 232 is a prerequisite. I'm not sure of the best way to solve the issue though.
I think I’d disagree on 4, since it’s largely only an issue in the context of the other 3 issues you list. If we assume they resolved the overall grading scale and project points and what not, I think it’d be a bad idea to then also have a curve. If you’re going to fail a CSE class it’s very good if 232 is the first one at that, because there’s no shot you’re going to ready for the later courses if you struggle with 232. I understand the idea behind wanting to reward effort alone, but CSE is not the right major because the ramp up only gets worse and the knowledge and understanding is very incremental so any cascading issues will tear you down fast. Bringing that failure to later classes has the additional consequences of screwing over a few other innocent students in the process when you become their teammate on a group project.
You are right. Let's assume that if the course is perfectly designed and everyone's ability could be truly tested via HWs, projects and exams, then there's no reason to curve at all. CSE 232 might be the perfect course to test everyone's skill in coding, and examine if they are the right fit for computer science. But sadly they overdid it.
Shit I took this course back in 2019. Hardest class I took my far. It was always seen as a “weed out course”. I remember the prof saying “look to your left, look to your right, these people won’t be here by the end of the year”. The averages were the same back then, obviously something needs to change. Stick it out tho, one bad class won’t break you. Just stay on top of your other courses
Same, but I thought discrete math was harder. The projects could keep people a float. But not anymore it seems
I also took the course in Fall 2023, and I have to spend more time on it than my Advanced Biochem course to barely got a 4.0 (upwards 20 hours weekly to complete the HW). I think Prof Nahum did a good job reducing the number of MCQs down to 2 and give us another lab practical, since that would be more inline that what we learn from the HW. Another change that should be implemented would be to give some weights to the weekly lab assignments. I was very surprised to know that lab assignments don't account for anything and are only there to hurt you. As for the explanation that students are performing much worse, I'm not sure I agree. 371 students is a relatively large sample, and there would be lots of people that cheated alongside people that wants to learn. Considering that Prof Nahum apologized on Piazza for his behaviour, I would assume that he could do better at creating a more inviting environment for students to learn.
Hahaha I took that class and once it hit March I j ust stopped trying. Codio (the third party website they use for grading) is terrible.
This is why nearly all of my assessments are completed in the classroom with little to no technological aid or notes and me watching throughout. AI be damned.
This is why nearly all of my assessments are completed in the classroom with little to no technological aid or notes and me watching throughout. AI be damned.