Hello all, I am planning on taking one of these courses online upcoming summer. Both are 10-week summer sessions. Which one should I take online this summer, and which one would be best to take in lecture in the fall? Thanks.

5/3/2011 8:49:44 AM

and also, how are the online classes for these two courses? brief description of what the exams/projects are like? thanks.

5/3/2011 8:51:27 AM

I took both online this semester. They both work fine as online classes, but I know a lot of people have problems with 236 so I might go with the lecture for that one. The lectures for 246 are kinda boring (to me, at least), so having the flexibility to watch them when I want helps out a bit.

As for the exams and projects, for 236 the exams are all multiple choice, open book and open notes, and you're provided with the past five years or so of exams with answer keys. There are 8 small homework assignments, a few smaller programming assignments, and three programming projects. Everything is graded automatically on your computer and you can redo it as much as you want, so there's really no excuse for getting less than 100 on anything if you spend some time on it. There's also a shitload of extra credit--any programming project can be turned in one class early for 10 bonus points, meaning you can really get up to 110 points on the big assignments. Like I said, though, some people have a hard time with the class. The subject matter is very foreign and it can take some time to wrap your brain around it. For that reason alone I would recommend taking it in the fall rather than the summer.

There aren't any projects for 246, but the homeworks are fairly time consuming. I think three or four of them each count for 10% of your final grade. There's a very small amount of actual programming done in the class, but I found the last couple of programming assignments to be pretty tricky to get exactly right. Most of the homework is just writing about concepts rather than actually implementing and creating something. I thought the tests were pretty hard, but, again, they're more about writing than coding, so some people might find the possibility of BSing a bonus. If I had to take it again, I'd definitely go in the summer to get it over with faster, since I just personally didn't find the subject matter that interesting.

5/4/2011 1:18:25 PM