CS 575 Supercomputing Group Work Experience May 13, 1998 Please be frank in your response. Name (Optional) : _____________________________________ These questions will help us understand your experience in this course. Feel free to write any comments below the statements. Attitudes toward group communication. For each of the following statements, check the response that best represent how much you agree or disagree with each statement. 1. I enjoy working in groups? a_1__ Strongly disagree b_5__ Mildly disagree c_3__ Undecided d_11_ Mildly agree e_10_ Strongly agree 2. I often work in groups. a_1__ Strongly disagree b_6_ Mildly disagree c_2_ Undecided d_12_ Mildly agree e_9_ Strongly agree 3. Group decision-making is important to societies and organizations. a_1__ Strongly disagree b_0__ Mildly disagree c_0__ Undecided d_10__ Mildly agree e_18_ Strongly agree 4. I prefer to work alone rather than in groups. a_2__ Strongly disagree b_9__ Mildly disagree v_6__ Undecided d 10_ Mildly agree e_2__ Strongly agree 5. I am comfortable in leadership roles. a_3__ Strongly disagree b_4__ Mildly disagree c_4__ Undecided d_15_ Mildly agree e_4__ Strongly agree 6. When I am working in a group, I usually participate actively. a_0__ Strongly disagree b_1__ Mildly disagree c_0__ Undecided d_14__ Mildly agree e_15__ Strongly agree 7. When I have to work in a group, I do my share but not more. a_9__ Strongly disagree b_8__ Mildly disagree c_4__ Undecided d_7__ Mildly agree e_2__ Strongly agree 8. I dislike being evaluated based on group work. a_6__ Strongly disagree b_4__ Mildly disagree c_7__ Undecided d_10_ Mildly agree e_3__ Strongly agree 9. I am a good judge of other people. a_1__ Strongly disagree b_1__ Mildly disagree c_13__ Undecided d_10__ Mildly agree e_5__ Strongly agree 10. I am good at reading (interpreting) other people. a_1__ Strongly disagree b_2__ Mildly disagree c_9__ Undecided d_14__ Mildly agree e__4_ Strongly agree 11. I feel that I have important things to say when I work in groups. a_1__ Strongly disagree b_2__ Mildly disagree c_8__ Undecided d_8__ Mildly agree e_11__ Strongly agree 12. I feel that my contribution to group work is valued by the other members of the group. a_0__ Strongly disagree b_1__ Mildly disagree c_7__ Undecided d_12__ Mildly agree e_10__ Strongly agree 13. How long did it take you to feel comfortable working with a group? a_9__ 1 week b_9__ 2-3 weeks c_11__ still working on this d_1__ never 14. Was your learning experience in this class different from other courses? a_26__ yes b_4__ no *The answers to these questions were taken precisely from student survey sheets as written by the students. Was it better or worse than other courses? Please explain briefly.* * It was very different. I didn't enjoy it very much because it took longer to understand how the work was going to be done. * Yes, it was better than other course by learning group experience such as sharing each others, participation, contribution, leadership, and friendly. * Yes, I like the interactive way we have been encouraged to explore the computational experience. I don't like classes that are purely text based as much. * No, as with group work there is additional overhead re: coordinating and compromising with a distributed workload. I always miss out on getting the whole length and breadth of the material. * It was better because I have known more about the vector machine. * I still don't understand much about this course * I think it is better because I have to work hard. * I'm undecided. I did feel a lot more pressure working with a group because I like to rely on myself. And have no control over someone else's work that is going to affect my grade. * Yes, I now know what volunteering means. It means that you get the whole grade by volunteering to do the work and give some other members easy tasks and give them 0%. * In fact, I took Math 541 and Math 542 from Dr. Stewart; I know how to solve the problem such an foxes and rabbit population. However, I didn't know how the error and accuracy in computation on rohan or T90. Now after this class I have experience on each platform. * Worse: Not very useful as for as a CS class people taking upper division "super computing in the sciences" are more interested in learning about computing. Although, speech giving is useful . . . that's why you take oral communications. * A good course. I like the whole experience of working in groups and having no final exam! * Better, I learn experiments and skills from the other- I have more chance to exchange knowledge- and learn other. * Because when I took this class I had opportunity working group together than other class, and learned some experience from some member of my group. * I have participated in groups in many other courses when a group member did not hold up her share, the consequences were predefined and enforced. * Group work is a part of life, no only in academia, but in most workplaces as well. Some groups work well, others are difficult. Part of the problem is that no one in the group has authority. Some team members are not motivated to perform well under these circumstances. In the real world a marginal team player has a . . . monitoring performance. In a group of students this does not occur. It's very difficult to motivate some students. There is too, the problem of differing standards. Some students are happy just to pass a course, while others strive for A's. Resolving conflicts between different performance standards is a problem. My experience in working within groups has been that self-selected groups work best. * Better. I've worked in groups before, but we never had "milestones" to accomplish such as intermediate reports, presentations, etc. Assigning these intermediate tasks gives us a solid timeline to work with. * It is better, because I concentrate the problem very much to be clear understand it. It's help not only understand on scientific, but also on performance. * Different- This was my first/only course where writing was important. I think I am a pretty good writer, technical and otherwise, so the writing part came easily. The group dynamics were different. I tend to be strongly opinionated and function well in groups with like member. To encourage good group dynamics I had to tone down to get the others to participate. * It is different because of writing 5 test-page report. Somehow, it is hard for me. 15. Do you feel you learned more in the beginning of semester working on your first computational experiment (done as an individual) or on the second and third computational experiments (working in a group)? Pick best learning situation: a_12__ Individual effort on first assignment b_17__ Group effort on second and third assignments 1 undecided Please give a brief description.* * Because I did everything from A to Z for group assignment, we divide each person responsible for one subtask. Therefore, there are some parts that I really don't understand. * I think that being able to communicate with one of the members in the group and being able to exchange points of view gave us both chance to learn more. * Learn each other's experience and idea. * I had to go through everything and though I was late and some parts were weak it was a pretty thorough coverage. There are benefits from working in a group, but my biggest problem has always been when the individuals in the group have very different skill levels or abilities to devote more/less time to project. * I can learn more from the second and third assignment. It gave me a chance to correct my mistake from the first assignment. * I can learn better alone. * I actually went through the whole process of the report myself and felt the responsibility myself. Where as a group I didn't think I had a chance to understand the whole project because we split up the tasks. * Get more information from another the people. * The individual effort was more instructive. * Yes, since I did most of the work. * We shared information and experience in computation and the work we did on rohan. * When joining the group to work on the assignments, I learned more new ideas from my group members, more understandable the problem. * Group work dismounts load of work from me. * Working groups push me working together with one member in my group and learned from them some experience. * I did learn more from 2 and 3. * I was able to give new light to subjects and questions not seen by the other group members, as well as learn from their findings. * Both, because I can learn other way to improve my knowledge and to understand some on the computing science on different fields. 16. Briefly describe your two best experiences in this course.* * Writing a report, learning about evaluating and analyzing * 1. I really liked going to the supercomputer center. 2. I really enjoyed work with Adam on the final report and presentation. * Group work, participation, contribution, Idea, cultural learning * The first one and the third one. * The first and the second. * One and three. * I really enjoyed talking and learning about RISC technology and processor scheduling, although briefly. * Able to work as a group and the field trip to UCSD. * Group work * 1) Working together as a team, 2) Learning what other individuals were doing with the experiment. * doing the programs * My best experience is on the project * Know how to compute the accuracy and performance * 1 * Working with cray. Group work works! * Work and Accuracy- help me evaluate between cost (work) and accuracy when do these experiment. * Practice for writing report. Learn in group work. * I learned how to write report, and process rohan. * Education, group work, learn more in Supercomputer * Logging on to the Cray * Finding out how rohan handles . . . point numbers on "real" problems. And discovering the wonderful capabilities of the Cray. * Analyzing problem - right at beginning with a group. * My best experiences in that course is the first and last report. Because I love to do individual and groups to improve my experience, such as modifier code, get data, concentrate on the problem and so on. 17. Briefly describe the two worst experiences in this course.* * It is time consuming * Counting on the other two members of the group and finding out too late that it was a mistake. * Conflict idea. * The first one and the report of the second one. * The final project is the worst. Probably I don't understand the course very well. * One and two. * Working on the final project, and creating an oral presentation with three other people, whose schedules might be conflicting enough to not be able to do everything on time. * The grade our group got on second assignment, and the grading scale. Every assignment is based on 10 point scale. That's a small scale. Should be based on 100 point scale. For example, it took off one point of your assignment that's 10%. That's too much. * none * Difficult to coordinate group after classes and wanted to meet other members more face to face, rather than through E-mail. * Division of work (mainly group problem) * On the first and second one we still had some mistake. * I don't have any * Sometimes the class (lecture) is not informative enough. * I learned to write report and process rohan. * Not much time to get things done, too many members in a group. * Working in a group that has members who do not participate, and not having enough instructor intervention (in terms of policy) to prevent the above experience from occurring. * Learning html, and coordinating communication and work efforts with the group. * Getting together outside of class was a bit difficult to coordinate between four people. * Write report and speaking because my English is not very good to communicate with others. * 18. What do you think can be improved in the organization of this course for the next time it is offered? (briefly explain)* * I think you should explain more in details what you expect to see in the report. * I think that group work was a very good experience in this class. But I feel there should be some kind of review process of the groups in order to be able to divide groups when it is apparent that there are great disparities among the contributions of the group members. * I think it would also be an improvement if more topics from the text were covered and some of the emphasis on the group work was removed. * The process of this course is wonderful. If the students need more interesting things, instructor should let the students investigate the code by themselves. * I really don't know. But when assigning the group you should check the background of students first. What I am saying is that my group has four people doesn't speak English well enough we know what are we doing, but when it aims to presentation no one has a gut to do it just because English is our second language and bad pronunciation. * Everybody should do the assignment alone, group work only effective if this is a real world because in school work, everybody can get credit while only one really does the job. In real world, if you don't do your share in group you get fired. In here, you OK! * Maybe just grading each individual based upon their efforts, and a little more on RISC technologies from the technical aspect. Architecture, processing memory management. * More opportunities for each member of the group to practice speaking in front of the class earlier in the semester. * More time to experiment. * I invest more time for this project, I check the reference on the web, share experience with my group members. * Eliminate conflicting info. Syllabus vs. what you say in class . It gets very confusing. And less class time devoted to writing skills, more about the supercomputing and sciences. * The first experiment was a terrible experience. I hope there is more explanation what needed to be done for the first computational experiment. * Strongly recommend 2-3 people in a group is more better. * Strictly enforces consequences for lack of group participation. * Let students select their own group. * This course was very well organized * It helps me on the scientific and performance problems.