http://www.CourseReviews.com CourseReviews.com - Fontbonne College en-us Copyright 1997-2008 CourseReviews.com Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:03 EST http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss dylan.feed@coursereviews.com (CourseReviews.com) dylan.webmaster@dylangreene.com (Dylan Greene) hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7050/Helpfull-Business-GuyTeaches well and with clarity, always trying to help, writes too small on the board. Test can be difficult, but only if you let them be. A nice guy who seems concerned about the students.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7050/Helpfull-Business-Guy#comments2000-06-14T18:37:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7050/Helpfull-Business-Guyhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7049/Being-is-BeingTends to repeat too much, can by rather dry. Didn't clarify all subject matter, just repeated it. (Being is Being, over and over and over) Would not recommend an early morning class with him.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7049/Being-is-Being#comments2000-06-14T18:32:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7049/Being-is-Beinghttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7048/Attention-GrabberExcellent lectures and virtually no homework. Top quality lectures keep students attention while teaching us as well. Very knowledgeable, good natured, and concerned about the students.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7048/Attention-Grabber#comments2000-06-14T18:27:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review7048/Attention-Grabberhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6569/Fun-teacherVery nice, helpful, caring... Teaches from experience, knows what the real world is like, and relates this to class and the material. Doing the homework was actually fun and let us be creative in a computer class. It is too bad he is not a full time teacher.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6569/Fun-teacher#comments2000-05-22T14:48:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6569/Fun-teacherhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6568/a-splinter-could-kill-youTests are long and cover a lot of ground. Gives weird examples that you will remember and definately help you to learn the material (hospital/bathroom waiting lines, typing ladies). Cares about the students and whether or not they learn.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6568/a-splinter-could-kill-you#comments2000-05-22T14:43:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6568/a-splinter-could-kill-youhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6567/Good-person-bad-classNice teacher, but didn't really learn much of anything in this class. Weren't supposed to have a final, but she sprung one on us the last day when we thought it would be an in-class homework assignment, but it was a final that sunk my grade. My grade was supposed to go up, but instead went down because of however she graded it. Not enough points during the class.. only 200, and since she nit-picks on your grade, getting above a B+ is difficult.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6567/Good-person-bad-class#comments2000-05-22T14:38:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6567/Good-person-bad-classhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6566/Obee-KabeeTends to talk too fast or too loud. Must ask for her to slow down or give a break to catch up with the lecture.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6566/Obee-Kabee#comments2000-05-22T14:32:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6566/Obee-Kabeehttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6564/Fast-talkerTalks too fast sometimes and tends to escalate her voice too loud also. Rather get through her lecture than pay attention to students needs. But you learn the material as long as you can keep up with the endless homework and her fast-paced lectures.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6564/Fast-talker#comments2000-05-22T14:26:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6564/Fast-talkerhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6536/Knows-the-right-way-to-teach-collegeDr. Newton has to be the most experienced college professor I know. Not only does she know the subject matter intimately, and have a complete grasp of how to comfortably convey this to the student, she never looses sight of her relative relation to those taking her class. From the student’s perspective, she doesn’t care if you’re going to use the information you’re there to learn ever again. She is there simply to teach it to us. Now don’t get the idea that she is an easy teacher, or one of those teaching machines you see at a state university. Dr. Newton covers some really complex stuff, most of it I don’t even understand, even after taking the class. But, if you pay attention, you’ll understand how to do it, even if you’ve got no clue what you’re doing. That probably sounds really confusing. Let me use an analogy: Say you’re taking a photography class, taught by Dr. Newton, using an automatic camera. It’s Dr. Newton’s job to teach you how the light rays from the image get reflected, refracted, focused, flipped upside-down and burned into the film. You do this by pointing the camera and shooting. You’re graded on this by taking good photographs. So, even if you have no clue how the picture gets there, you can still produce good quality pictures, and thus, get a good grade. Does that mean that Dr. Newton didn’t teach you how the camera worked? Of course not – she did. If you never showed up for class, you’ll take bad pictures and get a bad grade. But if you didn’t get every minute detail, you can still squeak by without much of a problem. Take me, for instance. I’m a computer science major. I will most likely be writing code for a living. Writing code is not doing statistical analysis to the degree of which she is teaching. In fact, it’s a very safe bet to say that I will never use this knowledge outside class. It seems as though Dr. Newton understands this concept and organizes her classes accordingly. She will assign homework which is rough, but the tests are virtually identical to the homework, so it is very much in your best interest to do and understand it. This is a very effective method to get the students to learn. She’s also very likeable. She has the demeanor of a very, very smart friend and has no problem talking to students frankly and with ease. noemail@coursereviews.com (neuracnu)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6536/Knows-the-right-way-to-teach-college#comments2000-05-20T03:30:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6536/Knows-the-right-way-to-teach-collegehttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6535/Tough-hyper-but-smartDr. Abkemeier (AB-kah-my-er, or "Dr. A" as she prefers to be called) is a real mixed bag. She's forced to cover very tough topics (as the classes require), and can convey these concepts well about half the time. Her personality is very conductive of learning - she's very excited about teaching and tries her best to keep things interesting, or at least keep the student's awake. On her worse days, she'll just resort to raising her voice, when entered into the level of shouting more than once this previous semester, which left one classmate behind me holding her ears. Homework - it's tough and there's a lot of it. You really can't get away from that in a basic math courses, but there is a point where it goes too far. Students have other things to do each night besides practice calculus problems, and Dr. A doesn't seem to understand that. Coupled on top of group work and papers, and you get a workload worthy of two classes for the price of one. Plus, she has a nack for assigning problems that cover points which were never discussed in class. Fortunately, she does spend a few minutes before each class going over the homework, seeing if we have questions before collecting it. Tests were broken up into two parts. One is given to students to complete on their own and is due the next day, and the other is a standard in-class exam. Students typically got together and completed the take-home tests in groups, which provided fine practice for the real test, despite it quite clearly falling under the category of cheating. Her tests aren't easy, but if you know the subject matter, you'll do alright. She's fairly busy and I never felt the need, but I suppose you can meet with her out of class if you wanted to. It's a real shame that she is stuck teaching classes like Calculus. If she had an easier subject, with a more lax syllabus, she would be a really fun teacher to take. noemail@coursereviews.com (neuracnu)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6535/Tough-hyper-but-smart#comments2000-05-20T02:49:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6535/Tough-hyper-but-smarthttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6534/Nice-but-frustratingWhile it's obvious that she means well, Beth Fisher's teaching style is extremely frustrating for any student with half a brain in their head. The style that I speak of consists of having the students read something outside of class and come prepared to "discuss" the work(s). But, rather than allowing the students to engage in a full-fledged discussion of the topics, she acts as a strict moderator and translator, controlling who contributes to the discussion, extracting points that she feels are relevant and reiterating them. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if I were dealing with subjects that were difficult to grasp, I would probably like this rehashing of pertinent information. But alas, the attitude of the class was that we were being treated like children and found ourselves very, very frustrated having to put up with it. Do not be deceived, however. Though she treats students as grade-schoolers in the classroom, she expects college-quality work when you write papers. This inconsistency in teaching styles prompted me to write two poor quality papers, reflecting my attitude of the class, earning me a D and a C. This, however, is not just my own opinion. Students who did well in the class also felt the same way. The best way this teacher could improve is by adjusting her class's discussion method to allow students to speak freely and engage in relevant, un-moderated idea-sharing over related works. noemail@coursereviews.com (neuracnu)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6534/Nice-but-frustrating#comments2000-05-20T02:04:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u1274/review6534/Nice-but-frustrating