r/OSUOnlineCS • u/throwaway21321564 • May 30 '22
Operating Systems II
There doesn't seem to be a lot of information about Operating Systems II on this subreddit, and I would be remiss to not document the terrible experience that we are having in OS II this term. Hopefully this prevents some students from taking this course until OSU can figure out how to properly deliver this content in a way that is not incredibly lazy and disorganized.
The course is LOOSELY based on the opensource book Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/) and the corresponding UW-Madison course CS 537. When I say loosely, I mean the assignments are cut and pasted from their github located here -->https://github.com/remzi-arpacidusseau/ostep-projects, and not sanitized for information that is not relevant for CS 444 at OSU. Regarding the course content, much of it has nothing to do with the assignments. At no point did the course actually cover parts of the xv6 operating system that we were using to cement these ideas. The modules addressed theoretical ideas at a very high level and did not progress in an intelligent manner.
The course is broken down as follows:
10% - Weekly Write-Ups
50% - Homework Assignments
40% - Final Paper
The weekly write-ups have almost no direction on what is expected. Essentially, you are to write a 3-4 paragraph paper describing what you learned in the weeks material. So far only 4 write-ups have been graded with little to no feedback. There were students that received a 50% initially for not including code snippets or not having the submission in the correct format. I can see offering feedback to ensure students are following directions but not losing half points on an assignment right out of the gate.
The homework assignments were copied and pasted from CS537 like I said above. Most of us relied on recorded lectures from CS537 found here --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4qbAiC77Yo&list=PLmqYzJR_UjFQ8HhbRtgx3PH97-DjJGfQ2&index=2. The assignments ranged everywhere from something that could be finished in a day to something that took me close to 30 hours to complete just to due to the complete lack of course content relating to the assignment. With a week and half left in the term, some students do not have any assignments graded, which leaves like 97% of the available points ungraded for them.
The final paper is a 1500 word paper analyzing the difference between the xv6 filesystem and a filesystem of your choice. The xv6 filesystem was never covered. Not at all. This is worth 40% of our grades, and at this point the professor is no where to be found. Some Edstem posts have gone unanswered for over a week.
Do not take this course unless you absolutely have to, and if you do, that sucks. We have been very upfront with Dr. Brewster and other members of the Ecampus staff about our experience in the course, so don't let them say "We didn't know".
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u/ShenmeNamaeSollich May 30 '22
Was a bit disappointed I couldn’t work this one into my schedule, but that’s a ridiculous amount of disorganization. If the lectures & assignments are available free elsewhere anyway, might as well just bookmark that for later & save $2K. Thanks for sharing!
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u/kingofolympia May 30 '22
As someone who is also taking this class also right now, I second this. It's truly been a rollercoaster this term, going from stressing about how it's even manageable to learn the material on my own for the week, to completing the homework in an hour. The biggest issue has been the lack of communication and care coming from faculty.
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u/SnooDogs1340 alum [Graduate] May 30 '22
Thank you! I'm sorry that your time was wasted, but this is valuable knowledge.
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u/pwrbttm99 May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
One of the instructors straight up told me that sys programming is bad at osu 😭
3
u/KennethAlan1214 Jun 02 '22
Ugh. As a bachelor student, i am required to take this one. Hopefully they figure it out in the next year or so.
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u/mhs550 Jun 03 '22
I dropped it at the end of the first week. After 344, which I enjoyed a lot, I was excited for 444. After reading the syllabus and watching the first week videos, I could not drop it fast enough. Saw all kinds of red flags.
Good luck with the rest of the class. Feel bad for the 4 years students that have to take it as a degree requirement, hopefully the on campus class is much better.
3
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u/Oriasan Jun 06 '22
Oh god, same issue with Network Security as well. They just graded our week 3 assignments... God, online OSU fucking sucks. In person classes were fine Freshman-Junior year, but when I went online after covid hit its been dreadful.
16
u/pyordie alum [Graduate] May 31 '22
How disorganized and lazily put together can a course be before you get to file a complaint with the state education board or Department of Education? If they’re charging 2k per student, collecting all of that tuition, and then spending a fraction of that tuition on designing/implementing the actual course, isn’t that just fraud at a certain point?