Here it is, your moment of Zen. That or I just finished grading the first round of CS4 projects. For those of you who are familiar with the project, the first submission is usually awful, averaging somewhere around a low C or high D. Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this year makes past years look like the honor roll. So, without further ado, here we go.
To start, let me explain something. We’ve switched the project this quarter, as in the project they used for about 4 years is no longer in use. Anyone who has taken the class in the past remembers the puzzle solver, right? Well, now it is a bit harder, as it is a game position evaluator. The restrictions on the type of game make the evaluation about as simple as possible (a well-written solution for the first part of the project should be around 60 lines of actual code, total), but the concepts for this type of solver are more complex than that of a simple breadth-first search. With this project, you actually have to use (gasp!) recursion. For the interested, here’s the project page.
So, the moral of this is: I suppose we shouldn’t be too hard on these guys. The first submission is due at the end of week 4, and many people are struggling with syntax, standard libraries, and project concepts all at once. It is a bit of a tall order, and I keep reminding myself that. Unfortunately, as it stands, I’ve still lost faith in the entirety of humanity. Now, to see why.
Here is the grade breakdown and (meaningful?) statistics:
A - 2 B - 10 C - 6 D - 4 F - 18 (2 as no submission) Average: 11.78 pts, 47% (F) Standard Deviation: 9.47 pts, 38% Median: 15.50 pts, 62% (D) Mode: 0 pts, 0% (F)
…and this is why I’m now huddled in the corner of my room, in the fetal position, crying and rocking myself to sleep. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same. Please. Tell me what the appropriate response is to something like this.
Sean spent at least two full classes talking about the project. We both spent all weekend answering barrages of questions. We offered design advice and explained common pitfalls. Sean effectively gave the code for finding next moves for the first submission, and he went over the evaluator in such detailed pseudocode and explanation that the code should have been nearly 1-to-1 with what he was saying.
So I give up. I’m going to ask Sean to grade the lab this week so I can take a mental break from it. I gotta tell you, after so many quarters of grading for CS4, I’m starting to doubt the efficacy of the CS program in general.
This is my plea: for the love of god and all that is holy, somebody please restore my faith in humanity.