CST 499 Week 8

Week 8

I have finally made it to the end! It's been a journey but I'm so glad I've done it. The last week of this course is really only three days so there's not much of an update on our project. I made some final changes to the readme with setup details and that was about it.

There were some small assignments for the week to take a survey about the program, upload our project files, and finish adding files to our ILP website (you can see mine at ladymozzarella.weebly.com). We also had to finish our video for our online presentation. My team's video is below.

The very last step of the course that we have is to present our project at our online Capstone Festival this weekend. I expect that it will go well and I'm looking forward to having a relaxing Sunday with my family.

CST 499 Week 7

Week 7

This past week has been so incredibly busy. My team has put in an insane amount of work on our project, with each member working every single night to get our project up to speed. In the end, I think we did very well. I focused a lot on getting our task kanban board working with drag and drop functionality to change task statuses and cleaning up the visual appearance of the application. Because we are presenting our applications this week, we all wanted to have something ready to present for this week.

In addition to getting our project ready for presentation, we have been working very hard to complete the final pages (~10 pages worth) of our final paper and clean up the formatting as well. A draft presentation was also due this week, making our week super duper busy.

I believe everyone is looking forward to next week and getting this final course wrapped up, like me. I have really enjoyed working with my team and getting to learn a new technology stack (Angular2 and Firebase) but can't wait to relax a bit after work and maybe even make dinner!

CST 499 ETS Major Field Test Reflection

ETS Major Field Test: Computer Science Reflection

The following prompts were provided by CSUMB to guide me in my reflection on the ETS Major Field Test.

1. What have you learned from your ETS test results?

There is a lot of me to review. Many of the topics were familiar but I couldn't exactly answer them based on my memory of how to solve them. I probably need to focus on computer memory and computer architecture topics in the future.

2. What are your strengths and your weak spots shown from the test results?

As stated in the previous response, I struggled with the questions related to computer memory and computer architecture. They were familiar but I couldn't remember exactly how to solve them. There were also a few questions that I didn't recognize from any of my previous courses. My strengths were in the software design and algorithm questions. However, it's difficult to say because I didn't get a detailed breakdown of where I did or didn't do well.

3. What is your plan to leverage your strength in your career?  What is your plan to remedy your weak spots?

I will pay careful attention when solving problems related to computer memory addressing. I know that these issues will come up in my line of work and it would be beneficial to understand it to the best of my ability. I can use my strengths when problems arise with something I'm working on or my coworkers are working that are related to what I do already know.

4. Do you think the test is valuable? How should the CS Online program be revised so the test results of our graduates will continue to rise?

I believe that this test is more valuable for the institutions that use the data than for myself. Without a detailed breakdown of areas for improvement, it's difficult to know where to focus my future studies in particular. However, the administering institution can use to gauge what they should focus on, assuming they get more information.

Many of the questions were focused on topics that I learned in courses taken outside of this particular program. It's difficult to place any responsibility on CSUMB for those topics since I didn't complete those courses through this program. However, providing pre-tests and required study materials for the exam may be helpful prior to students taking the exam itself. Personally, I struggled with the limited amount of time to answer the questions and found that I frequently ran out of time, which required me to simply guess on the remaining questions. I believe that preparing students for this aspect of the exam may be helpful.

CST 499 Week 6

Week 6

My team has been working extremely hard this week to get our project back on track. I'm very happy with the progress we have made and believe that we can get something presentable this week. We're still behind but I think we've really picked up the pace. After spending so much time working with forms in Angular2, the Firebase database, and Firebase authentication, I'm confident that I can get much further on the project this week.

We also took the Major Field Test exam for computer science this week. It was proctored online and very challenging. It was very surprising how difficult it was but I think I could have done decently with preparation. The online proctoring was pretty strict and very interesting to participate in. I found that I ran out of time and had to guess at the end. It was pretty overwhelming. With more time, I could have done much better.

My score was very average. Based on the questions I struggled with, I think my memory management skills could be improved and some topics (like computer architecture) reviewed. However, I think I did well with the software design questions, database management, and data structures questions. After graduation, I may take a break from actively learning outside of work but will definitely continue to at least teach myself new topics in the computer science field later on.

We're in the homestretch! Just a few more major assignments to take care of and we're good. I'll be back next week with an update on how that is going.