This was my first OMSCS course. I am an older student, here for the fun of learning. I would consider myself non-CS background. I took this course because (a) reading the reviews and discussion on reddit, it seemed like a good first course to get me acclimated to the program, (b) I was looking for a foundational course to earn a "B" (I got an "A"), and (c) I was looking for a noncoding course while I took the "remedial python seminar".

This course has been revamped for this semester, so you should know the reviews from previous semesters are "out of date". Below is my take on the course.

Organization- Excellent. At the start of the course, we received a schedule for the entire course that broke down the semester by weeks, and what were the assignments/ deliverables for each week.

Lectures- informative and pretty good.

Readings- Some were good, some were bad. At the start of the course, the readings reinforced what was taught in the lectures. Towards the end of the course, it seemed as if the readings had nothing to do with the lectures, but were more of current research in the field, with very dense articles.

The grading is based on:

1. Homework (20%)- there were four assignments for the course, reinforcing the concepts learned in the lectures. I believe that these were good exercises, making me think (I believe that in previous semesters there were 8+ such assignments).
2. Quizzes (20%)- This is apparently a major addition for this semester. There were 4 quizzes throughout the semester. Each consisted of five short essay questions- four from the lectures, and one from the readings. These were meant to measure how well we learned concepts (possibly the types of questions one might receive on an interview). I felt that they were fair. The quizzes were proctored closed book/notes/internet.
3. Tests (20%)- two tests for the course. Each was comprised of 150 T/F questions, grouped in fives. The tests were "open everything".
4. Individual Project (15%)- A project where we applied what we learned in lectures to design an interface. I learned a lot from this. My major problem with this was it seemed that the deliverables we were expected to give did not match what we had learned in lecture (e.g. check-in #2 was supposed to have an evaluation plan, but that lecture was not scheduled to be viewed until the week after the due date for that check in). I am told that they hope to rectify this in the future.
5. Team Project (15%)- this was my least favorite part of the course. I did not feel as if I learned anything new, and it felt very rushed. My team members were great, which helped.
6. Participation points (10%)- We are expected to peer review our classmates' homework/projects. At times, this was actually helpful. I did get some good feedback on my progress (or lack thereof) on my individual project. When I read others' work, I got a sense of where I stood vis a vis my classmates. The easiest and cheapest way to earn points is to fill out surveys from the other students in the class. (I maxxed out on participation points at about week 12-13.)

In short, proctored quizzes/tests are 40% of the grade- the rest is done "at one's leisure".

The middle of the course felt very intensive. In a two week span, there seemed to be a homework, quiz, test, and the due date for the individual project. After that hump, things were pretty good, except for the rushed feeling of the team project.

Did I learn something from the class- yes. Was it material that I was interested in- sometimes yes, sometimes no. Did it meet my three objectives for taking the course- yes.

DO NOT take this class unless you have to for specialization. If you can write code in any capacity avoid the HCI specialty just to avoid this trash course. This is the worst class I have ever taken at any institution ever. I have learned absolutely nothing in this course and the material is ridiculous.

For what it's worth I ended this course with a relatively high A.

Below is a breakdown of some of the aspects that make this course terrible.

Quizzes:

For this semester, they decided to try adding "quizzes". The quizzes are closed note 2 hour free-response. They have 5 questions with many sub parts. Four of the questions are from lecture and one is from the readings. The readings are absolutely horrendous. They are very long and use many words to say absolutely nothing. After you get your grade you can't see your answers or the quiz questions presumably because they want to recycle them. This makes regrade requests nearly impossible.

Individual/Group Project:

This project has so many requirements that must be completed in a short amount of time. These requirements do not help with design but rather get in the way of any actual thinking. The project grading is completely up to which TA you get and they are VERY inconsistent.

Homework:

The homeworks are just busy work and they are subject to the same RNG grading as everything else. Homework 4 was especially lazy and terrible because they ran out of material to ask about.

Grading:

I started to mention this in the project section, but the grading has absolutely 0 consistency. You might as well roll dice to predict your grade. No matter how much effort you put in the grade is up to the TA's mood that day. There is no coding in this class so practically everything except the tests are subjectively assigned points.

Tests:

This is just a ctrl+f fest. Absolutely useless. Don't need to study it is just a waste of your time. Make sure your ctrl and f keys work before you take the test and you can get 90+ easily.

Regrades:

These are designed to actively discourage students from contesting grades. It it never worth it because they will do their absolute best to give you minimal to no points back. In some cases your grade will go down. The TAs might as well be bots because they cannot be reasoned with. They will ignore your regrades for weeks. They try to stall to the end of the semester because the regrade won't change your final grade and they don't need to do any work.

Teaching Assistants (TA):

This is perhaps the worst aspect of the course. These TAs can't read. I am not exaggerating when I say this. They legitimately lack basic reading comprehension skills. They will say the same thing again and again like a bot no matter what you say in your posts.

Participation:

This isn't actually that bad, although it is easily gameable. Just do 200 surveys in the first 2 weeks and you don't need to worry about it for the rest of the semester.

Overall, you will learn nothing useful and have to write a lot for this course. This course and the HCI specialization are a stain on OMSCS. The program should be CS focused not whatever this garbage is. If you can code at all just take a real specialization do not go by the reviews saying HCI is the easiest specialization. You will not only learn nothing, but will suffer the whole time.