CSSE service courses

:: Department Data

By: John Clements

(EDIT: images updated with 2174 data.)

Here’s a picture of (lecture, non-supervisory) sections taught by CSSE faculty since Fall 2008:

Because the number of sections taught has gone up rather dramatically, here’s the same data, normalized by sections per year, to show the fraction of classes taught in each category:

There are many caveats and things to explain about these pictures.

First, the x axis is labeled using Cal Poly’s goofy but customary numbering scheme, where 2158 represents fall of 2014 and 2148 represents Fall of 2014.

Second, the data for partial years can pretty broken; in particular, if it only includes data for the Fall and Winter quarters, the final numbers for the year will be approximately 3/2 times that high in the top graph. For the same reason, you should disregard (or underweight) partial-year data in the lower graph as well.

Third, as I mentioned before, I’ve stripped out all labs and supervisory courses. This is because supervisory courses aren’t scheduled by the department, and because labs are typically associated with a lecture section.

Next, what the heck are the categories?

  • First-year : 123, 101, 102, 103, 202, 203
  • All-req : required by CPE, SE, and CSC: 141, 357, 348
  • CPE-CSC-req : required by CPE and CSC but not SE: 453, 315
  • SE-CSC-req : required by SE and CSC but not CPE: 225, 300, 349, 430
  • SE-track : SE classes. 305, 307, 308, 309, 402, 405, 406
  • half-TE : classes required by one program but often taken as nechnical electives by the rest. 431, 445, 464
  • Tech Elects : 300-, 400-, and 500-level classes eligible as technical electives.
  • Other : everything else. This is where all of the service courses live.

The interesting thing is the degree to which our “other” category has declined: in Fall 2008, it was about 23% of our sections. Now, it’s just over 10%.

Thoughts?