Feedback

I agree with what Laura has already posted, but I will evaluate the course from view of someone who perhaps does not use computational science as a core component of her research but would benefit greatly from knowledge of these methods and their casual use. I am in the biochem program and have done some programming in the past, but some of the earlier topics in class may have been a bit too advanced for me. That said, because of my inexperience, the class provided an opportunity to learn a great deal. Lectures on XML, databases, Python, and visualization were especially informative. I spoke with many students who later stopped coming to class citing that the information was too advanced for them even though they had a background in a language like C or Matlab. The wealth of information provided may be more useful to advanced students, but can become intimidating to others.

I would have liked to have seen more demonstrations. It is all fine and dandy to describe the power of these programs and languages, but sometimes without explicit instruction on operation, forays into program use can quickly die. Perhaps a clearly defined set of practice assignments with some constructive feedback might be helpful in getting students started.