I ended up having to take a CS105 entry-level computer class this semester. It's considered the equivalent of a business class that I need to have which was full, but because only this class is the equivalent, I couldn't get one of my other computer classes counted as a credit for this class. Anyway, this was the first semester that the Professor taught this class, although he teaches other classes. All of his class presentations basically consisted of him reading PowerPoint slides that came on a CD with the book. But that's not the worst thing about the class.atoga wrote:Funny, since my dad is a computer scientist. He acts like he knows this stuff, but his field of knowledge is more theoretical than practical; he knows AI, logic, and things like that, but he often has trouble doing simple stuff like installing software.
During the semester, he managed to display a very poor, working knowledge of Windows and a weak grasp of current technology. In the first or second week of the class, it took him 12 minutes -- yeah, I timed it -- to figure out how to view the contents of the CD to start the slides, even though Windows XP pops up with that little "What do you want to do with this CD" window. The next class period he had the same problem, but this time we told him what to click in order to start the slideshow. Speaking of which, he would frequently come across a slide and say something along the lines of "Oh, I don't really know anything about that" or "I haven't heard of this before." Often, it was something as basic as webcams.
From those rare occasions that I was actually paying attention (Solitaire on the PDA, reading a book, or just plain sleeping were all common diversions for me) I was able to figure out that this guy worked almost exclusively on Linux, which I had suspected. I never heard him say much about it, but my guess is that he probably tended to teach 300 or 400 level courses about specific languages. It's easy to imagine him teaching a few obscure languages that hardly anyone actually knows, which are still in use because of legacy systems, but I've had other horrible professors teaching other mainstream courses so I suspect that's mainly wishful thinking.
Whatever his deal was, this guy wasn't suited for the class. I've heard that he won't be teaching it next semester; I hope they can replace him with somebody who can at least handle the basics of an operating system designed to be user friendly!
