Course feedback — Autumn 2025 (summary & follow-ups)

[feamster]

Summary of student course feedback for Autumn 2025 (CMSC 30350 / CAPP 30350 / CMSC 23206 — Security, Privacy, and Consumer Protection). 67 enrolled, 19 responses. Tracking issue for improvements.

Overall

Very strong: recommend course 4.71/5, useful takeaways 4.62/5, free expression 4.86/5. Repeated praise for engaging lectures, real-world examples, keeping current with cybersecurity/AI developments, reasonable expectations, debates as independent deep-dives, hands-on labs, and an explicit AI-use policy. ("GOAT", "best bang for your buck".)

Constructive themes (roughly by frequency)

1. Feedback on graded work — lowest-rated course item (4.15). "Grading by TAs was slow and we only received a number grade with no feedback." (Exams were returned promptly — this is specifically about assignments.)
2. Responsiveness & communication — lowest-rated faculty item (2 students disagreed/strongly disagreed). "Super unresponsive to questions outside of class." "Staff should pay more attention to Slack — homework questions went unnoticed for days."
3. Slides & organization — "Lectures sometimes disorganized / sidetracked." "Better slides and more emphasis on them — important material seemed vague." "More specific notes." "Use Canvas more fluidly." (Posting the agenda was praised.)
4. Class timing/structure — The 3-hour once-weekly block (4:30–7:20) is hard to sustain. Multiple requests to split into two 1.5-hour sessions/week, or shorten debates (e.g., 50-min lecture + 25–30-min debate). Note: debates are 35% of grade but "everyone got full marks."
5. AI in exam generation — "Wish professor used less AI in exam generation — questions either too easy or confusingly written. Write manually or revise more."
6. Assignment depth — "Felt surface-level; could go deeper — e.g., how to actually interpret Wireshark output."
7. Assignment release timing — "Released late, just a few days before the deadline."
8. Coverage — One student felt the course "covered slightly less material than expected."

Status

• Assignment: Tracking Investigation with Web Traces #1 + #6 — Added up-front rubrics to all five labs, per-assignment LLM grader keys, assignment depth, and a Wireshark interpretation guide. (Shipped — commit 98381ab, docs/assignments/.)
• Bring back the Gemfile #2 — Added a "Communication and Response Times" section to the syllabus: public channel is the fastest route and peers are expected to help answer; one-business-day target for public questions; no response-time expectation on DMs. (Shipped — commit 4e0db49, docs/syllabus.md.)
• Cheat sheet #3 — Improve slide clarity; lean on Canvas more.
• Updated submission requirements #4 (debate grading) — Added a 100-point debate rubric in debates/format.md (preparation, argument quality, rebuttal, evidence, delivery, teamwork; not scored on who "wins"), linked from the syllabus. (Shipped — commit 4e0db49.)
• Updated submission requirements #4 (class timing) — Still open: revisit the 3-hour weekly block (two 1.5-hour sessions/week?) and debate length within the meeting.
• Course feedback — Autumn 2025 (summary & follow-ups) #5 — Author/revise exam questions manually; reduce reliance on AI generation.
• Exam logistics (aids policy + past-exam access) — Pinned a single permitted-materials policy (one 8.5x11-inch double-sided handwritten note sheet; no books/printouts; no electronic devices), stated byte-for-byte identically in the syllabus, the homepage, both 2025 exam instructions.tex, the feamster.sty title block, and both exam-generation templates; built and published student PDFs for the 2024/2025 midterms and finals and linked all past exams from the homepage. (Shipped — commit 465f112. Proactive standardization; distinct from Course feedback — Autumn 2025 (summary & follow-ups) #5 above, which remains open.)
• #7 — Syllabus now states all assignment release and due dates are published on the schedule on day one and adhered to. (Shipped — commit 4e0db49, docs/syllabus.md.)
• #8 — Review overall coverage/pacing.