CS 2100

Overall, I walked out of this course feeling like I actually learned something. Out of the courses I took, this one was one of my favorites. Prof. Morrison is great and good at explaining many tough concepts to grasp. The course itself was challenging, but you're given a lot of opportunity for extra credit to ensure that A. Personally, this was my introduction to Java and data structures, and I was still able to end with an A.
If you're like me and are new to Java, I'd recommend learning and practicing Java outside of the classroom. Otherwise, the beginning of the class might feel a little fast.
Great course and I'd recommend it if you need to fulfill a requirement. I do not think it is worth taking "just for fun".

#tCFS25

I hate this material and the way it is taught. She seems nice enough but the lack of actual code in class makes it really annoying to do the homeworks.

I took this course with Prof Xi but it does not matter as she only teaches lecture. Professor Morrison runs the entire course. Best advice is collect as many points as you can by doing Extra Credits.

This class was okay. To do well in this course, I highly recommend doing the extra credit as much as possible. The quizzes were a mixed bag of questions. I recommend to always try to take a look at the presentation slides that Professor Morrison goes over. This is the foundation to other CS classes so it's always good to practice coding in Java on quiz content to do well on the quizzes.

I wouldn't take this class unless you had to. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't fun and was extremely frustrating at times. Professor Morrison is knowledgeable about cs, but she was honestly very passive aggressive, and sometimes just rude. DO THE EXTRA CREDIT (there are so many opportunities) and practice outside of class. The TAs are very helpful, some nicer than others, but overall made the class more bearable. There is another lecturer as well, but Morrison is in charge of everything. Weekly coding homework assignments (extra credit if you finish early, last 4 points for going to office hours and getting quizzed on it), weekly labs, 5 quizzes/tests, 2 retakes as the final, some bonus labs for extra credit. #tCFfall25

This class will teach you everything you need to know about DSA1, but it will not teach you how to program it. All of the homework is basically handed to you, besides changing a couple of lines or filling out some blank space, which is awesome since every quiz you take is 30% of FRQ, not open-note. If you have a syntax error and your program does not compile in the auto-grader during a quiz, you get the ENTIRE question wrong; there is no partial credit. The quizzes are not take-home anymore like they used to be last semester; they are now composed of five in-person quizzes that you have to take during your lab slot.

The class, however, is not hard to get an A in, because Morrison gives SO much extra credit. If you do all the extra credit possible, it's like an additional 6% to your overall grade.

Morrison is also such a careless person, yes, she is the professor who told everyone the Shannon shooting wasn't real and to still come to DSA Lab (this was my lab slot too). She sometimes makes fun of students who do not know the right answer in lecture. I remember one day a first-year student asked a genuine question, and she basically responded like "no, are you stupid?"

Expect to talk more to the TAs and your friends about the class because Morrison does not help at all.

Morrison is genuinely the most evil professor to ever exist. She has absolutely no care or remorse for her students, from telling us all to go to lab during a active shooting threat, to simply treating students with no respect and consistently talking down to us. You don't interact with Morrison much because her TAs run lab, quizzes and office hours, but the policies she has in place and the way she runs class is horrible. We had a snow day during our final quiz of the year so instead she made it part of our final and changed our final to be three short quizzes with one coding question worth 30% of our grade. This dropped the final quiz average to a 55% and not a single person getting a 100%, tanking everyones grade as the final assignment of the semester.

You have to go to TA office hours every week to get your code "checked off" otherwise you lose 4 points per homework. Lectures are kind of useless because Morrison is such a horrible teacher. If you have experience in Java the coursework itself isnt horrible just kind of annoying, theres alot of extra credit opportunities if you submit assignments early so you can average 70s on the 5 quizzes and still end with an A.

DSA1 was a fun course where I learned a lot. I think it was very well managed this semester, with an active Ed forum and TAs who were readily available during office hours. I also appreciated Professor Morrison’s humor, which kept lectures interesting and light.

There are 13 homework assignments and 9 labs throughout the semester—if you put in the effort, these are basically free points. There are also 5 quizzes that require studying (multiple choice and coding). The course offers 6.3% extra credit and two quiz retakes as well. Overall, it’s a pretty easy A if you’re willing to put in some effort.

Grade components (Fall 2025): Quizzes – 50%, Weekly HW – 40.8%, Weekly Labs – 8.0%, Syllabus Quiz – 1.2%.

Professor Morrison's lectures are not very helpful. I tended to find she oversimplified things and rushed through important concepts. I taught myself pretty much all the content the entire semester. I did enjoy the class though. I think the content is interesting, the weekly coding homework were enjoyable and minimally challenging. I think you need to average around 80's on all 5 quizzes to get an A which is very doable if you study and learn the material well. You really need to know how to code otherwise you are going to fail the coding section of the quizzes worth 30% of each quiz. You also get extra credit if you submit your homework early, take advantage of that! There are a few other extra credit opportunities as well. You have to get your coding homework "checked off" (about 4 questions quizzing you on how your code works) in TA office hours in order to receive 4 of the 34 points in the coding assignment, which is slightly annoying.

Professor Morrison is very sweet, but not the best instructor in my opinion. The content isn't extremely difficult, especially with prior Java knowledge. Lecture is not required and honestly not that helpful, just watch some YouTube videos and go through the slides that are posted. Do the homework on your own, not only will it prepare you for the coding questions on the quizzes, but many people get caught cheating throughout the semester because they are copying other people's homework / using LLMs.