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Events

Here are some comments from students in some of my previous classes. Of course, your mileage may vary.

EECE 229 Human-Computer Interface, Spring, 2004

Albin Laga:

Thank you for preventing me from dropping your course. It was hard but valuable; many times I felt like an ant trying to follow an elephant. I think I have profited a lot.

Shameem Ahmed:

I have learned a lot from this class. It has exceeded my expectation. I really want to take another course from you which would be suitable for me. Also I will suggest other people to take at least one course of yours.

Valerie Tsukamoto:

I will say this about the kick-off event for work that has been taking place this week: There have been probably 20 presentations that I have listened to since Monday morning. I would have to say that about 90% of those presentations say to listen to your user, involve your user, and if you do, there will be better buy-in. [My employer] is attempting to implement SAP globally for all aspects of the business, HR, FIN, PLM, CRM, etc., basically every module of SAP. This means a change - globally and company wide - of people's job functions. At the end of the semester, I can clearly see how important (not that I didn't already know) HCI really is and how important the focus of your user has to be.

Pankaj Bhaskar:

I would like to thank you for a interesting and thought-provoking class.

EECE 229 Web Site Design, several offerings

Several months after his hiring at Medtronics, Sheng Wang wrote (May 2003)

Dear Dr. Corliss,

Sorry for not contacting you for quite a long time. Actually, I just came to Minneapolis and started my work last week due to the long waiting of the OPT and certain arrangement by the company. Now I am in the middle of all kinds of training sessions. They are full of new knowledge, especially in the medical field. It will be an interesting challenge to me.

However, because of your Web Design class and many seminars hosted by you, I didn't feel it is hard to complete the transition from school to work. That class has a lot of similar things to what really happens in a real corporation. Thank you, sir!

From an international student (Fall 2002):

"I feel so exciting about the score and the progress I have made in this semester. Retrospect, I almost gave up this course at the beginning, it is so hard for me to catch up with other classmates, while your encouragement really gave me a confidence to continue my effort in your class. Finally, I get the price I paid. This enriches my experience and it would help me in my future study and work."

Corliss comment: This student struggled mightily with communications issues, but she worked on them and gave a very good part of the final presentation. She grew a lot this term.

From a Fall 2001 student who was marked down for difficulties communicating with BUAD partners:

I think I should have communicated more effectively. I also believe that due to my work commitments, I was not able to perform as well as I should have. I really think that this class has been very useful in helping me understand team work in a more in depth manner. I really did enjoy the class and I hope to lear from my previous mistakes and work better on communication. Look forward to taking more computing classes in the future. Happy Holidays.

From: John Steger, BUAD 244 student, Manager, eBusiness Development at Manpower Inc. December, 2001:

I would also like to say that the arrangement that you and Dr. Corliss have with the combined project was the most relevant, applicable and progressive class that I have taken at Marquette to date.

I believe that the dynamics and environment that is created from having the two classes work together is the best representation of industry that I have come across yet. I would strongly recommend this class to other MBA students.

From: David Brekke, BUAD 244 student, October, 2001:

282 group,

After thoroughly reviewing the Requirements and Spec memo dated 10/16, here are my comments............

I have a semester remaining with the MBA program, and I have had over a dozen group projects. This was the most refreshing communication piece to date.

I believe that after the meetings we have had, the project needs were clearly understood. EXCELLENT!

From: Chunhua Zhao, October, 2001:

Dear Dr. Corliss:

I really appreciate your instruction and help during my study at MSCS. I miss Marquette very much.

As you know, I moved to LA and started my job search after I obtained my Master degree in May. Until now, I got a job offer from L.A Care as a programmer analyst II. Your web design course and the volunteer teaching assistance work provide me with valuable experience. I learned the business logic from this course.

Next Monday, I will start my new career. I am very happy to get this job. It will allow me to really use my skills to make a contribution. (It requires Java, DBMS, OO design, Oracle, HTML, VB6.0).

Best regards,
Chunhua Zhao

From: Rich Vanden Boogard, May 2001:

Of course I will keep in touch!

Again, it was a great course...one of the best I've ever taken...so thank you!

From: Marty Bruck

At even a more general level, I find the academic atmosphere and enthusiasm that both you and Dr. Harris provide to be very energizing. It's all to easy to just go to work every day and get involved with the day-to-day problems of work without trying to pull your head up and look at the big picture and see how things can be done better, and what direction(s) our profession trying to move towards, and to be a part of making it happen. That's a recipe for burn-out and obsolescence, and I see examples of both all the time.

One other thing that has been very useful for me in this class is that I have had a chance to be the technical "point" person. I am at the phase in my career where I am on the cusp of being considered a senior architect. I have been involved at the senior level of projects for a while now, but am trying to get to the point where I can provide technical direction at the highest level. This class has given me a "safe" environment to spread my wings in this respect. I've really been able (with some mentoring from yourself) to do that.

I'm sure you've told more than one student that you get out of a class what you put into it. This class has been a lot of work, but it's been well worth it.

Here are some comments from students in the Fall 2000 class:

From: Qi (Angela) Zheng

Dr Corliss,

First, I would like to thank you for this wonderful course. For beginners like me, it's a great opportunity to "explore" the computer world, and get some taste of "real-world" web development.

Then, I would say, showing positive attitude and always having alternative plan are the most important lessons I've learned from you personally, definitely these will play important roles in my career later. And you've been such a wonderful instructor in guiding us learning, letting us do the "discovery" instead of stuffing us.

I've recommended several of my friends taking this course next term, and telling them all the benefits they will have. I would think for our 282 students, a little bit more technical speaking from industrial people would be beneficial, for instance, topics like "how the web site is developed", and small tricks in web developing would be very helpful too.

Finally, wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. :-)

Angela from team J

From: Chunlei Yang

Dr. George Corliss:

Thanks for all your lectures and guidance to our project. I think I learned a lot from the course. As you told us, this is not a technical course. However, every topic you gave us let you must spend a lot of time to learn technology related. I especially appreciate your manner to invite practitioners to give us lectures. We Chinese students here have few chances to communicate with the outside world, so you manner broaden our eyesight and let us know what is happening in the IT world outside.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Chunlei Yang

From: Sheng Gu

Hi, Dr. Corliss:

With regard to the web design course, I think that it is a very good and useful course for future web development work, especially for Chinese students, because most of them do not have good English writing skills. I can say that almost none of them have any idea about web proposal, requirement, specification and design before they took the course. However, if students have some knowledge of web languages (for instance: html, asp, javascript, jsp and servlets), they can do much better job in the course.

Doug Fowler, 1stLt AFPC/DPSARA (COSC major, 1998) writes:

Sir,

I was just about to send you a note recommending that you include some ASP (using VB Script) and JavaScript in future Web Site Design classes, but I see from your MSCS 282 calendar that you have done so already. I use these technologies every day in my new job as an Internet Applications Developer for the Air Force Personnel Center. Our goal is to take about 280 different Personnel Center functions and replace them with 180 internet applications. This will allow members to down/upload their personnel information 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world. This is far better than the current system of waiting in line on the other side of base only to find out that you have filled out the wrong form. It will make about 1,200 jobs obsolete.

I used MS FrontPage for the last year and grew to like it, but it generates terrible code that is almost impossible to edit by hand. We now write all of our HTML by hand which is absolutely necessary for the effective inclusion of JavaScript and ASP. We also use Cascading Style Sheets. These mimic some of the functionality of FrontPage (I would imagine that FrontPage actually mimics CSSs) and make the maintenance of large sites possible.

I have also discovered (the hard way) the need for referencing both Netscape and IE during site construction. Actually, we have found that a site that works in Netscape will almost always work in IE, but not necessarily the other way around. I hate to admit that MS has a robust product, but it really does handle exceptions well.

Everything else is going well for me. I'm trying to get into a month long DoD Chinese immersion program that actually takes place in China! It won't happen until next fall, though.

Douglas J. Fowler, 1Lt, USAF
vMPF System Engineer
AFPC/DPSARA
Randolph AFB, TX
DSN: 665-1830; CMCL: (210) 565-1830
Douglas.Fowler@afpc.randolph.af.mil