Database Management Systems

Quantitative Evaluation:

1. Lectures:
• Clarity of lectures: 5.22
• Organization of material: 5.44
• Willingness to help:7.8
2. Recitations:
• Clarity of recitations: 6.0
• Organization of material: 5.4
• Willingness to help: 7.0
3. Teaching Assistants:
4. Michael S Allen
• Clarity of TA explanations: 7.11
• TA patience: 7.22
• TA willingness to help: 7.44
5. Dimitri Kountourogiannis
• Clarity of TA explanations: 6.8
• TA patience: 6.8
• TA willingness to help: 7.22
6. Overall course:
• Overall course rigor and challenge: 5.5
• Course organization and design: 5.1
• Clear relationship to curriculum: 7.33
7. Administration:
• Administrative friendliness: 7.8

Qualitative Evaluation:
For most of the students, this month was hampered by the lack of a good text and a clear course structure. However, the students liked the idea of doing a combination of problems from the text and some hands-on project.

The students were asked to evaluate not only on the program content but also the faculty and staff with whom they interacted. The following summary is based on 10 student responses out of a class of 34.

Lectures (Ravi Jasuja):

As regards the lectures and teaching style, most of the students appreciated Ravi's good intentions and honesty. However, the course definitely needed a clearer structure and organization in terms of schedule, late policy and grading policy.

Recitations (Christopher Holleman):

While some students found the few recitations to be useful, others did not find the recitations to be useful at all.

Problem Sets:

The students found the problem sets from the text to be overall fine.

Books/Texts:

The majority of the students found the \"Database Management Systems\" book by Raghu Ramakrishna to be poorly written and disappointing. As one student commented \"The class text looked good at first glance, but afterwards was found to be lacking in practical applications, i.e., sections on SQL triggers and other syntax could have been fleshed out a bit more\".

Future changes to the course:

Use of a more clearly written book.

Clearer course structure.