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What do you guys think of the ratemyprofessors website? So many of the reviewers complain about certain professors because the material on the tests was never covered in class. Should I take this website seriously?
Course: Circuits
Date: 5/31/06
I personally could not stand him. He moved throught the material way too fast and he did a horrible job teaching it. I ended up dropping my firt class ever. Also, he made the lab writeups way too long. Try to avoid at all costs.
Course: Circuits
Date: 9/5/06
He was a cool guy, and seemed like he might be fun to drink a beer with or something. But as a professor..his lab write ups are extremely long. I'm a straight A student and I now attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and I'm taking circuits here. It's much easier to understand. Good engineer, sucky professor.
Course: Calc II
Date: 1/9/07
Very difficult course and Mattson is adjunct from RPI, so he assumes students will be smart. Isn't an amazing teacher, as are few in the math areas. However, he's very smart and knows his stuff. Asking him for help or easing of a grade is just about worthless; the best way to study is to do massive practice problems.
Nice lady, but not a good teacher. She'll start a proof, spend 20 min on it, then realize that she screwed it up and must start over. Happens too often for comfort. The maddening thing is that it wouldn't happen at all if she would just prepare for class. She's a high level researcher and knows the stuff, but doesn't seem to care about class. Boo.
He is The Man. He walks into class with nothing but 2 markers, and delivers the whole lecture from memory, and he does it better than most professors do with lecture notes. I can see why an undergrad wouldn't like him b/c the level of the course is much higher than I expected, but hey this is grad school. XXXXXXXXX rocks.
yeah, you shouldn't use the site to see how much you'll like the class or how well you're going to do in it. Personally, I use it to avoid profs who speak poor english, are unpunctual, etc..
I think that the site is a joke. As someone who is both an educator and a student, I can attach names and faces to several of the reviews that people have either made about me, or about professors I am currently taking. Of those who I can identify, I can tell you that there is a direct correlation between the student's grade and his opinion of the professor. Even for some of the comments whose authors I don't know, the comments are just plain stupid.
I agree the site is used by lazy students as I also attend a community college. My chemistry and physics professors had like a 2.0 rating for ease so I got all scared that I might not do well in the classes. In my chemistry class, all I did to prepare for exams was do the HW problems and study them lightly. I ended up getting over 95% on 3 of the 4 exams. In my physics class, the professor made the exams open-book and made the exam problems EXACTLY like some of the exercises/problems and EVEN EXAMPLES in the textbook, so essentially each exam, you were pretty much guaranteed at least a 50%. Yet he still got only a 2.0 for ease.
If this as far as you need to go in math, take her. She's an easy grade. HOWEVER, if you need a good solid trig background for Calc I/II and further, take someone else. She rushes through classes and tests are easy. Don't recommend.
Mr. Xxxxx has been described as making the subject difficult, but he's just showing you what it takes to make it. He's available for help often in his office. Sometimes you have to ask him to dumb it down a bit. Good teacher if you know your stuff, if you're weak in the subject, take someone else. If you do know your stuff..he'll help you excel.
I think that the site is a joke. As someone who is both an educator and a student, I can attach names and faces to several of the reviews that people have either made about me, or about professors I am currently taking. Of those who I can identify, I can tell you that there is a direct correlation between the student's grade and his opinion of the professor. Even for some of the comments whose authors I don't know, the comments are just plain stupid.
I agree the site is used by lazy students as I also attend a community college. My chemistry and physics professors had like a 2.0 rating for ease so I got all scared that I might not do well in the classes. In my chemistry class, all I did to prepare for exams was do the HW problems and study them lightly. I ended up getting over 95% on 3 of the 4 exams. In my physics class, the professor made the exams open-book and made the exam problems EXACTLY like some of the exercises/problems and EVEN EXAMPLES in the textbook, so essentially each exam, you were pretty much guaranteed at least a 50%. Yet he still got only a 2.0 for ease.
I agree the site is used by lazy students as I also attend a community college. My chemistry and physics professors had like a 2.0 rating for ease so I got all scared that I might not do well in the classes. In my chemistry class, all I did to prepare for exams was do the HW problems and study them lightly. I ended up getting over 95% on 3 of the 4 exams. In my physics class, the professor made the exams open-book and made the exam problems EXACTLY like some of the exercises/problems and EVEN EXAMPLES in the textbook, so essentially each exam, you were pretty much guaranteed at least a 50%. Yet he still got only a 2.0 for ease.
My story is similar. Every semester I hand out an assignment sheet with a bunch of practice problems on it. I tell the students that I don't collect or grade them, but I will do any problem in class or in office hours. The students also have access to full solution manuals in the Learning Assistance Center. I tell them that despite the fact that I don't collect homework, it still behooves them to do it anyway, because I choose my exam questions verbatim from those problem sets. My exact words to each section at the start of each semester are, "If you've done the homework, then you've done the exam." I also give them a practice exam with solutions that they can take home and try to do in 1 hour. So not only do they know the pool of questions from which I'll be drawing, but they also know the exact length and format of the exam.
But it never fails: every time I give an exam there are some students who are shocked at this "curveball" that I've thrown at them. My current "ease" rating is 2.6!
Whenever a student says that I'm a hard professor, I have to pretend to take the complaint seriously. But inside I always wonder, "What is this kid's major malfunction?"
My only question is why you consider that a complaint! When a student says "That was a hard test", my response is "Thank you".Whenever a student says that I'm a hard professor, I have to pretend to take the complaint seriously. But inside I always wonder, "What is this kid's major malfunction?"
My only question is why you consider that a complaint!
When a student says "That was a hard test", my response is "Thank you".
I have had students complain that I put questions on the test that "we never covered in class". In one case, I put on the test a problem from the text that I had not assigned but was right next to one I had assigned. It was the classic problem: you are given the temperature function on a metal plate and asked to find the point where the temperature is minimum. When a student complained that we hadn't covered that, I responded that we had covered finding a minimum and done problems in class like that. His answer was, "They weren't about temperature"!
But my favorite is this: I do occasionally put problems on tests that I assigned at homework. A student complained that a problem on the test was not at all like those we had covered in class. I pointed out that that exact problem was assigned as homework, that on a question from a student, I had gone over that question in class, then showed him where he had the entire solution written in his notebook!
On the other hand if a professor has 10 reviews that complain about him not being prepared for class and constantly making mistakes to the point where you can't trust your notes (I think we've all had that guy), then I'd say that it might not be a bad idea to avoid that professor if possible.
In your life you will have to learn to take information from different sources with grain-of-salt and use it as a tool to make the best decision, not to just take eveything at face value or dismiss eveything either.
That's a great story. I'm not a professor, but I do have one in a similar vein that I'll never forget.Mathwonk said:will give a simple example that may or may not surprize you. a very good prof and teacher who predated me here used to tell his students on the first day of every class that he would ask them to write down the limit definition of a derivative on the final exam, as question one.
then he would patiently tell them the answer. in over 30 years of teaching he never had a class in which every student answered this question correctly.
the full credit answer is this: f'(a) = the limit as x-->a of [f(x)-f(a)]/(x-a).
thats all.
That's a great story. I'm not a professor, but I do have one in a similar vein that I'll never forget.