Sameer Khaja

Mr. Khaja holds great potential for being an excellent instructor – unfortunately, he needs to smooth out a number of “rough edges”. At the present time, he is far away from being at his potential.

TEXTBOOK “COMPUTER NETWORKS – A SYSTEMS APPROACH” , 2nd Edition, by Peterson, Larry & Davie, Bruce, Copyright 2000, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, ISBN #: 1-558-60514-2 (cloth), or 1-558-60577-0 (paper). A solid textbook that explained computer network concepts quite well. Detailed and thorough, yet easy to read and understand. Mr. Khaja voiced his opinion that this textbook is excellent; I concur.

SYLLABUS

Bare-boned, as it only really had a listing of chapters in the textbook that he wanted to cover, and a description of how the grade was to be determined. Unfortunately, given the length of the summer semester (11 weeks instead of the regular 16), his syllabus was overly aggressive/ambitious. He had originally planned to cover all 9 chapters (we only covered the first 5) and instead of two midterms, a project and a Final Exam, we only had one midterm, the Final, and the option of the project

CLASS ATTENDANCE

Essential , since he does present material that is in the textbook, and is also there to answer questions, clarify topics, etc. However, he did NOT take attendance as a regular matter of course. Interestingly enough, Mr. Khaja himself missed the class the week after the Midterm results were to have been given to us. I wonder why he missed that class, I don’t recall him giving an explanation for his absence. (Summer vacation, anyone?)

CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION

Weak overall, although this is understandable, given the fact that this is his first semester teaching. Mr. Khaja works at Sears Roebuck in Hoffman Estates, and is an IT Manager there. As he told us, he “heads a team that provides total IT solutions at Sears Roebuck.” He is a graduate of Northeastern, which is a plus. Unfortunately, Mr. Khaja has a long road to travel before he can hold himself up as a competent and effective instructor. Mr. Khaja teaches by lecturing and using the blackboard to sketch out concepts. One criticism of his teaching style is that he sometimes recites material that he wants students to learn; the students just write down what he says verbatim. Why not just provide handouts or set up a webpage with notes?? Are we in grammar school that we have to write down what teacher says, verbatim?

He did not manage the pace of the delivery of the material in class. Thus, another criticism is that, early on in the semester, the pace was slow, and toward the end of the semester, the pace sped up, with a LOT of new material rushed through.

Mr. Khaja does speak clearly and has good verbal delivery. He exudes confidence and is likeable. Another fault is that he can appear to be arbitrary. For example, he asked us how we wanted the 3+ hour, once-a-week class structured. Although we had settled on one hour of classroom instruction followed by a 10-minute break, he lectured straight for half the class, and then gave a 15-minute break that stretched to plus-20 minutes. When asked about this, he replied that he could set the rules any way he liked. (Not too inspiring, if you ask me.)

EXAMS

One Midterm and one Final, both open note & open book, 5 questions each. Having open note & open book exams may seem good to students, but there are two pitfalls. The first is that there is no real incentive to STUDY the material well enough to internalize it; rather, just bring the notes and textbook to the exams and spew back everything therein. Where’s the learning there? ALSO, such open exams still leave students vulnerable to an instructor who decides to establish a bell-curve of resulting grades by making it almost impossible for any student to completely cover all possible bases in an answer.

It would have been better to have had multiple-choice question exams, as (a) students really would have had to study and (b) there would have been no chance for any “arbitrariness” in grading. (I am definitely NOT accusing Mr. Khaja of the latter; I am simply pointing out the faults inherent in “open note & open book” exams.)

Final Exam questions: (1) Describe crossbar switches and knockout switches in detail. (2) Describe the spanning tree algorithm. (3) Describe TPC protocol on detail. (4) Describe IP protocol in detail. (5) Describe RPC in detail.

Personally, when I saw the Final Exam questions, and knowing full well that it was “open note & open book”, I just crapped out answers to the questions (two Blue Book pages at most for each answer) and then I walked right out of the class. To me, the Final Exam was a joke, and it did not take me long to finish.

CLASS PROJECT

We were supposed to take a topic related to Computer Networks that was NOT going to be covered on class and write a paper on it, and, originally, give a presentation. As the semester wore on, though, the Project did NOT have to be presented and eventually, the Project wasn’t even a requirement. The whole idea of a Project detracted from learning the material. It put an undue burden on those who DID do it, compared to those who finally figured out that it was going to be practically optional, for all intents and purposes. GRADING

Per the Syllabus, he was going to give us two Midterms, a Final and a Project. He was going to take the highest three out of the four and grade us on a straight scale, where an A was 91% to 100%, etc. By the end of the semester, however, we dropped to one Midterm, the Final and the Project, IF we wanted to do the Project. He also mentioned in class that, if we were confident enough, we could SKIP THE FINAL and rely solely on the Midterm and the Project.

BOTTOM LINE

Mr. Khaja is a likeable person who is, I believe, well-intentioned and who holds great promise for the future. He told the class on numerous occasions that he wanted us to “learn the material”, that he wanted us to “carry the concepts forward” with us, rather than get bogged down in minutiae. However, he needs to become better organized in presenting the material and also the quantity of material. Also, instead of reciting material/notes for us to copy down word-for-word, to have prepared notes on a website.

He should move away from silly tests that are open note & open book and also away from “open-ended” questions such as “Describe IP Protocol in detail”, etc. He should also not waste time on a Project that is time-wasting and useless. Please consider relying on multiple-choice exams and quizzes, which will accomplish the goal of getting people to study and focus on “learning the material” better than just letting people re-gurgitate their notes and the class text material. Why bother studying when all you have to do is bring your notes and text to the exams????

I believe that more “on-the-job” experience will allow Mr. Khaja to better manage the classroom learning experience and also to better gauge if and how well his students are learning. THERE IS GREAT PROMISE HERE, BUT ONLY TIME WILL TELL IF IT IS ACTUALIZED.