Well now the course is coming to a close. Most of the code is written, and only a few assignments remain. It almost sounds like the beginning of a Christmas book. And given the timing, it might be. But now is a good time to review the course. The good, the bad, and the ugly. More professionally known as the SWOT analysis.
Strengths
One of the biggest strengths of this course is the opportunity to create a project that will look good in a portfolio. Hence the title of the course, I suppose. But this is different from the portfolio projects of previous courses. Those are usually small and only show off a handful of skills. This is a chance to put together a project that shows off all the skills that were learned in the Computer Science program. The result at the end of the course is something that should impress many potential employers, rather than something where they say “Neat.” and move on.
Another big strength of this course is the opportunity to keep learning new things. In my case, I did not have the opportunity to take the mobile development course. Which is a shame, because I have heard many reviews about that course saying that is one of the better courses in the program. Then I saw the Ocean Change/Fisherman’s app. It aligned with many of the things I want to do in the future, but it wanted some mobile development and GIS skills. I had the GIS skills, but I did not have the mobile development skills. So, I thought to myself, “I could choose this project and challenge myself, or I could choose something else.” And I chose to challenge myself. I’m glad that I did because as the course is coming to an end, I feel much more familiar with dart/flutter and firebase.
Weaknesses
This is a section that I struggle to fill out. I feel like most weaknesses are opportunities when viewed at a different angle. Which, I know sounds very cliche, but lets look at the weaknesses I noticed.
- Project descriptions – I know that most of the project descriptions are meant to be open ended for students to develop something unique. But I found myself deterred from choosing these projects, as it was unclear what the expectations were for the final product.
- Blog posts – What a topical subject. But I found the blog posts as a bit of an afterthought. I understand wanting to develop the skill of writing blog posts, especially in the tech industry. A lot of valuable information is shared this way. But I expected more than just three posts, where one is an introduction and one is a review.
Opportunities
So now that we’ve looked at the weaknesses, let’s see how they are also an opportunity to improve the course.
- Project descriptions – Improving the expectations of what should be completed for each project would give a “wider” choice of project for students. In a real world scenario, there would be a conversation back and forth with the client on what they are expecting. And for the most part the projects with outside mentors/partners appear to have these filled out. But for a three month course, I think the students would prefer to have more information up front. For a non-outside partner project, I think the “RV Co-Pilot” app is a good example of listing objectives. But when looking at the “Mobile Treasure Hunt” description, it seems a little unclear what the specifics should be.
- Blog Posts – As I said above, I see the importance of developing the skill of writing a blog post, but it seems like they were only an afterthought. I think that making the discussion posts a blog post instead would help improve this. It would mean ensuring that each blog post has a comment section, and tracking for grading purposes would be a bit harder. But it seems like this would improve the function of having blogs as an assignment in the first place.
Threats
I haven’t noticed any true threats to the integrity of the course. To me it seems like it is working as intended, at least from my point of view. One point of concern would be for projects with outside partners. In some cases the best solution for the partner would be a subscription service, or something that would cost money. I saw in one of the ed discussion posts that students are allocated a small amount for certain uses. This makes sense for one time fees, but when trying to create something that is scalable for an outside partner, I think there could be improved communication on this potential dilemma. Again, this is not a true threat to the course, but it is something that could cause issues in the future.
And that’s it, the final blog post for the course. I think blogging about my personal projects in the future could be interesting. It would be a good way to receive feedback on my thought process if I share it to social media, or a way to improve visibility on an open source project. But alas, that is all for this course.
Thanks!
Leave a Reply