CPS506 Course Petition

To whom this may concern,

As we approach this point in the semester, a day where we finally receive our first marks returned to us due to school policy forcing our professor to work, I regretfully must write this letter in hopes someone of higher power may bring upon reasonable action. The intent of this letter is to petition the structure, and professor, responsible for CPS506 in the Fall 2017 semester.
Beginning with the lectures and the slides provided. Dr. Mason has created a lecture series that is both useless to attend class for and incomprehensible when reviewing the lecture notes after. In his lectures he spends a great deal of time describing the history of all the languages he attempts to teach rather then their uses and delicate intricacies. It is on a regular basis to which we walk out of class both confused and helpless, where we must turn to google and attempt to unmask the languages on our own. As these languages are all functional, comparative languages, their structure is very different from any languages we have been taught so far. This greatly increases the learning curve. Upon reviewing the lecture notes, one ends up being shown paragraphs of code with no apparent results or explanations as to what is occurring.
Being taught four different languages in this manner proves to be both complex and challenging to any individual.

From here we move on to the assignments. First of all, I would like to mention that we were given the task, in all 4 assignments, one for each language, to develop the game of Tetris. The languages we are being taught; SmallTalk, Elixir, Haskell, and Rust, are languages whose designs are not ideal for game development to say the least. It would be hugely beneficial to develop something with practicality for the languages we are being taught. As well, as stated before it is impossible to complete the assignments given to us using the material we have learnt from the lectures.

The first assignment was given to the class on the third week of class. We were given 2 weeks to complete the assignment and the lectures were speaking of SmallTalk, the language used in the assignment, in parallel. The assignment though was extended until October 10th. This was mainly due to his reluctance to use D2L and use his own personal site. He was unable to set up fossil repositories for the class for the longest period of time. An extent which felt as though he didn’t even attempt to resolve the issues until the assignment was due. Furthermore, a section of our assignment dealt with creating test cases and including the test cases he was to provide in another fossil repository. As a result, the class had to constantly monitor the assignment deadlines. Then, once the repositories were finally set up, every student had to return to completing their assignment. By this time, the second assignment had already been given to us and was overlapping with the first one.

The second assignment came with its own set of issues. The largest issue I believe was the fact that assignments were overlapping. Being that they had the same requirements and required us to make the exact same game, without the return of our marks or any feedback, it was hard, to say the least, to know if our work was even correct. If someone were to do poorly on the first assignment, the second would be equally as bad because the student would make the exact same game. Of course though, this assignment had to be extended past the original due date once again, and the language, simply glossed over in the lectures.

When it comes to the midterm, I need not repeat myself when it comes to the lecture notes as a way of studying. Being unable to effectively study the required languages or understand as to what would the class be tested on in the first place, we arrived at the midterm on time. Unfortunately, Dr. Mason was not prepared for his own midterm on time. The midterm was scheduled for 50 minutes, but as the professor took extra time to set up, we were seated and began the midterm with only 40 minutes available to complete 20 multiple choice questions and 4 programming questions. The 40 minutes provided to us were insufficient to complete this midterm as the questions provided were overly complex compared to the information given within lectures and the scope of the assignments. Furthermore, there were 3 incidents; at the beginning, middle, and end of the midterm, in which Dr. Mason was yelling at the class aggressively. I, and many other students, were shocked, scared, and placed under more stress. This resulted in more time being consumed from our already limited time and the stress causing me to be unable to think clearly.

The marking scheme that was given to us for the midterm involved a peer evaluation portion worth 40% of the midterm. As we have been informed only on November 16th that we would be unable to complete a peer evaluation and that he would modify the marking scheme. This, from student investigation, was due to the Chair of Computer Science, Dr. Harley, forcing Dr. Mason to complete his marking before the school’s final course drop date. Dr. Harley has sped up the marking process significantly, but I am afraid it was too late and against school policies. As well, we have only been given the midterm mark, and not the marks of the two assignments which were due prior to the midterm. The marking scheme change was not approved by student as most had expected to receive 40% without problem. The average for the midterm ended up being close to 50%. Only the multiple-choice question were counted and all programming questions were disregarded.

As the Chair of the Computer Science department has had to step in, it is clearly evident that there have been wrong doings in the administering of this course, its learning material, and the marks given to us. It has reached a point where the entire course has been removed from our co-op acceptance criteria. Although if we continue with this course and receive terrible grades we will still be left with the issue of it appearing on our transcripts as is. This will effect our co-op chances regardless as employers will want to see our transcripts. The third and fourth assignments were made to be stripped down versions of the game Tetris, with core functionalities removed, and then the fourth assignment was changed to a completely different game of Snakes and Ladders. The disruption in this course is incomprehensible and student are left dumbfounded, worried, struggling, and flat out dropping this course regardless of the consequences.

The final is approaching, and it is currently worth up to a whopping 66% of our course mark. Plenty of student are speaking of the stress this is causing them because of a lack of confidence in the material and the reasonability of the questions to be administered to us. Most are uncertain in their future grades or even a passing value.

We must be compensated in some matter, and the rest of the material for this course must be monitored closely by someone other than Dr. Mason as he appears to be incompetent. I am relying on the signatures of all the student and the authoritative powers that Ryerson can provide to right this great wrongdoing.

Sincerely,
The following signatures of the students of CPS506 who stand by this letter.