Genuinely not meant for first year students and should not be a requirement for those majoring in biology. There should be an easier, more introductory course for those in STEM who do not wish to pursue a career in computer/technological sciences.

Useful up until R Programming. Found it entirely unnecessary. Excel was decent, although I had to teach myself.

Avoid Onoise Gerald Kio at all costs. He is geniunely one of the worst (if not the absolute worst) professor teaching at York and it baffles me that he is still employed. Would stand there, read slides and not EXPLAIN topics, class would blink and then there would be a demo on the board. He would randomly go silent and do things on excel/R without teaching us. He also slipped up that he was more familiar with MatLab, and that he was unfamiliar with R Programming which is something you should not say to a room of 100+ students that are supposed to learn the program from you. Hope he gets fired. Could not tell you one thing I learned from him. There are no pros from Kio.

Go for Andy Mirzaian instead. Only reason why I'm barely passing is due to his recorded lectures.

So this course has a reputation of being extremely difficult, which is the most outlandish thing I've ever heard. Not only are all the lecture slides and recordings put on eclass, but the assignments are given basically 2 weeks out, and can be done in as little as an hour to maybe 4-5 max. And even then, the tests are all multiple choice and 100% based off the lecture material and given practice. There are no surprises. The assignments also almost weigh as much as the tests (~30% for 8 assignments, ~30% split between 2 tests), which is so much better than the 20% per test formula most other courses use. I don't think I'll be finishing with an A+, but the amount of kine/future med school students I hear who hate not only the course but the prof just because they didn't get an A+ is s...read more

It tackles history of computing, forms of representing numbers and text with binary and whatnot, as well as some basic excel, word and HTML stuff. Not very helpful, which is a shame because the word and excel are helpful but not perfectly executed.

The professor is great. Posts all the lectures, recordings, isn't boring (even if the content is) but isn't a storyteller either. Responds to emails quickly, and makes the tests based off the material. Not much I can complain about.

Please don't take this course for granted, or go into it thinking it's this demon course and that you're destined to fail. It's a normal course and it just so happens that people hate it that it's just different. Be open minded to study harder or unconventionally. Spamming flash cards and using strategies that may have worked for you in other courses will not help with the math/algorithm stuff (ex. Binary to Decimal).

This course was NOT meant for first year students. I guess the only kind of useful thing was how to use excel but that's it. The course content is very very boring and offers very little use towards my degree.

Every week there is a very time consuming assignment with unclear instructions, if you put you put in the effort its easy to get 100% on them, however, the midterms and exam were brutal, multiple choice with options a-f. Expect to memorize a lot.

No one could understand him. Super thick accent. As a person he is kind and willing to help you though.

Despite getting 100% on nearly every assignment I didn't get the final mark I wanted because of the heavily weighted exam and two midterms. If you want to do well focus on the lecture material and memorize!

This is supposedly a first year course and I took it as a second year and still had a very hard time. Computer science is not my strong suit, but even after studying, attending every lecture, and making notes I still got just a passing grade. Oh and the assignments are unclear and incoherent. You might be better off not attending class and learning it on your own, I wish I had did that. most of the time class was empty and the prof was just teaching like 8-12 students.

Way too much information, you don't even know what to study, plus as a introductory course you should help student learn and understand concepts, that definitely did not happen. One good thing is that the tests were multiple choice of 25 questions.

The professor was nice and taught well, but he gave too much information, and made the material confusing on what to study.

Take it if you actually enjoy and want to learn or already know about computer science. You might be better off not attending class and learning it on your own, I wish I had did that.

Ridiculously hard for a beginner computer course.

Word docs use and excel use. Not useful for my degree.

Very difficult to understand his words. Has a heavy accent.

If you don’t have to take this, don’t.