This was, unfortunately, a very disappointing class. I truly love this subject matter as well so it was dejecting how poorly it went as a whole. While it is clear that this class would be better suited for a longer class period, it does not change that it seemed, Dr. Olagbemi was never prepared for each day. For example, there are specific exercises we would do after the lecture portion of the class period, however, there were many exercises that never worked or were clearly not reviewed by Dr. Olagbemi. Specifically, Setting up the Kali Linux flash drive as well as the 'Smurf' and Twitter API exercises. While I can understand setting up the flash drives I cannot understand how the mentioned exercises were not even remotely checked before class time. I know this to be the case since both o...read more

This class has the potential to be one of the most engaging and useful computer science classes at Hope College, but unfortunately it has been castrated by CIT in the wake of the data breach that happened in 2022. We were not allowed to do any sort of penetration testing, snooping, spoofing, etc. on the school network thanks to security protocols put in place by CIT or explicit instructions from Dr. Olagbemi. This resulted in an extremely dull and tiresome routine of completing the same in-class exercise repeatedly, with minor variations put in place to create the illusion of variety. You could boil down every exercise to: (1) Start up Kali Linux, (2) execute some ping commands and get information about the network, (3) run into issues with the exercise's instructions and try to work thr...read more

Everything that you could learn in this course can be found in Chuck Easttom's book titled "Computer Security Fundamentals." It's outdated in terms of understanding some (modern) aspects of computer and network security, but the underlying principles hold true.

Dr. Olagbemi is a pleasant person, but she handled this course poorly. She seldom tested the in-class exercises before handing them out to the students. There were many days that - by judging her confused facial expressions and shaky voice - it appeared obvious to me that Dr. Olagbemi knew just as little about the topic as we did. I don't blame her entirely, considering Dr. Jipping - who is notorious in the department for reusing assignments with confusing, outdated directions - dumped this onto her when he went on sabbatical. Despite this, I felt like Dr. Olagbemi's priorities were often elsewhere. I'm not paying thousands of dollars at an already overpriced institution to sit in class and watch YouTube videos.

As it currently stands, CSCI 336 is a glorified, watered-down introduction to networking. It is a relatively easy class (so take it if you have minor interest and would like to pad your schedule), but it leaves much to be desired. Don't expect to do anything "fun," as we tip-toed around things like MITM attacks and keyloggers thanks to CIT. It would be wise to sit in the back of class to get work done during lectures, since you only really need to attend class because (1) it's mandated and (2) to start the exercises.