Professor
Maged Elaasar
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - Overall, the class is not terrible but I wouldn't say I had a great experience. Most grades came out pretty late. We got the final grade on the deadline for submitting grades, which is fine, but over half of the individual grades (participation, parts of the project, final exam, and hw, if I remember correctly) were not shown, so there wasn't really any way for us to verify anything. A few days after grades were submitted, they were released (on myUCLA and the project grade breakdown on gradescope). However, for some things, such as participation and final exam, we weren't able to really see the breakdown. LECTURE Lectures are mandatory and professor enforces this by having Google Forms quizzes, usually 2-4 per lecture. I thought that the lectures were very helpful and the professor's slides were very detailed. He also has examples, which were really nice. I think that for many students, the material and concepts are rather new, which is what makes it difficult. But overall, I thought lectures were relatively clear and understandable. DISCUSSION Discussion sections are mandatory as well (supposedly), but I'm not sure how TAs took attendance, since they never explicitly did anything or asked us to fill out anything. However, section is usually just us getting into breakout rooms with our project groups and working on the projects. TA will go to every breakout room to answer any questions we may have. PROJECT We have do create an application w/ 5 other students and this is a quarter-long project. Besides the actual application, there are also 4 reports/things that we have to submit: project proposal, project design/description (basically, how you will implement your application, using concepts learned in class), final project report (what changes did you make since your previous report, etc.), recorded presentation video. I think that given that we worked in a team of 6, the project was pretty manageable, if you have good teammates. The rubrics for the reports were also very clear, so if you use what you learn in class and hit all the points, it shouldn't be a big issue. HOMEWORK We had four homeworks and they were pretty long. However, I think it was good practice, since it's pretty much the only practice you will get for the exams (in addition to the quiz problems during lecture. Those are helpful too!!!). Homework answer keys are released after the submission deadline, so you can review what you missed to study. EXAMS We had one midterm and one final. I would say that the exams are fair, but NOT EASY. There were a lot of questions, given the time limit, and so it was pretty stressful. I don't remember if it was open-internet, but it was at least open-book and open-notes for sure. However, you probably won't have time to flip through everything so I recommend really understanding the concepts + the homework/in-class quizzes to prepare for the exam. Overall, I think the class was okay. I think the fact that our grades were held back for so long and the lack of statistics and details for the final exam and the last part of the project and participation probably upset a lot of people, but Professor Elaasar is very experienced in terms of software engineering so he's not a bad lecturer.
Winter 2021 - Overall, the class is not terrible but I wouldn't say I had a great experience. Most grades came out pretty late. We got the final grade on the deadline for submitting grades, which is fine, but over half of the individual grades (participation, parts of the project, final exam, and hw, if I remember correctly) were not shown, so there wasn't really any way for us to verify anything. A few days after grades were submitted, they were released (on myUCLA and the project grade breakdown on gradescope). However, for some things, such as participation and final exam, we weren't able to really see the breakdown. LECTURE Lectures are mandatory and professor enforces this by having Google Forms quizzes, usually 2-4 per lecture. I thought that the lectures were very helpful and the professor's slides were very detailed. He also has examples, which were really nice. I think that for many students, the material and concepts are rather new, which is what makes it difficult. But overall, I thought lectures were relatively clear and understandable. DISCUSSION Discussion sections are mandatory as well (supposedly), but I'm not sure how TAs took attendance, since they never explicitly did anything or asked us to fill out anything. However, section is usually just us getting into breakout rooms with our project groups and working on the projects. TA will go to every breakout room to answer any questions we may have. PROJECT We have do create an application w/ 5 other students and this is a quarter-long project. Besides the actual application, there are also 4 reports/things that we have to submit: project proposal, project design/description (basically, how you will implement your application, using concepts learned in class), final project report (what changes did you make since your previous report, etc.), recorded presentation video. I think that given that we worked in a team of 6, the project was pretty manageable, if you have good teammates. The rubrics for the reports were also very clear, so if you use what you learn in class and hit all the points, it shouldn't be a big issue. HOMEWORK We had four homeworks and they were pretty long. However, I think it was good practice, since it's pretty much the only practice you will get for the exams (in addition to the quiz problems during lecture. Those are helpful too!!!). Homework answer keys are released after the submission deadline, so you can review what you missed to study. EXAMS We had one midterm and one final. I would say that the exams are fair, but NOT EASY. There were a lot of questions, given the time limit, and so it was pretty stressful. I don't remember if it was open-internet, but it was at least open-book and open-notes for sure. However, you probably won't have time to flip through everything so I recommend really understanding the concepts + the homework/in-class quizzes to prepare for the exam. Overall, I think the class was okay. I think the fact that our grades were held back for so long and the lack of statistics and details for the final exam and the last part of the project and participation probably upset a lot of people, but Professor Elaasar is very experienced in terms of software engineering so he's not a bad lecturer.
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