http://www.CourseReviews.com CourseReviews.com - Eastern Kentucky University en-us Copyright 1997-2008 CourseReviews.com Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:41 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/u884/review43492/Excelent-TeacherNina is a wonderful instructor. She goes out of her way to help her students succeed. She has a true passion for the classes that she teaches and for her students. She will take the time to help a student understand the mateiral and answer any questions no matter how "stupid" some people might think the question is.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review43492/Excelent-Teacher#comments2006-01-25T17:49:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review43492/Excelent-Teacherhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review40192/Nice-guy-but-not-a-great-instructorDr. Wong tries very hard, amd seems to be a nice guy, but this class, much like his others, was quite an ordeal. First, he decides that this class will be split into 2 sections: J2EE and .NET. Despite the fact that this should be a database class, I'm okay with this decision, because I want to learn more about both technologies. Next, he brings in Sam, a guest speaker. Sam is a J2EE expert. I mean, he was just extremely sharp and a nice guy. The problem is that he had no clue how to teach. He'd start writing code about a complex subject with absolutely no explanation. Finally, Russ, a teacher at Morehead State, reached his frustation level and asked for an overview, Sam replied that "J2EE is too complex for an overview." When Russ, correctly, thought that was a ridiculous answer, Dr. Wong backed Sam up on the statement. Because I had about a year of J2EE experience I was fine, but lots of people dropped the class and many were fuming. Next, Dr. Wong started teaching .NET. Since I am currently a C# developer, I was excited. Unfortunately, Dr. Wong spent more time criticizing Microsoft for being an unethical company that he did teaching the technology. Where he gave tough J2EE assignments, he breezed over .NET assignments and gave out easy stuff. I had trouble understanding what he was saying because of his thick accent. He never gave papers back--not ONE. Class is now over and grades will be given out in less than a week, but I didn't receive one paper back. The only indication that I will get an A is that my mid-term grade was an A, and Dr. Wong made several comments to let me know I was ahead in the class. A little over halfway through the class, I just quit attending. The lecture was useless! I feel sorry for all the guys getting their first exposure to these technologies. Dr. Wong failed in a couple of areas: 1. First, he passed his unreasonable anti-Microsoft bias off to his students. He clearly didn't understand the whole Microsoft development model, or even simple stuff, like ADO. 2. He confused the heck out of them with his (and Sam's) poor J2EE lectures. The only redeeming comments I can make is that Sam tried very hard to help with my J2EE problems, Dr. Wong seemed like a nice guy, and projects/homework were pertinent and useful.noemail@coursereviews.com (ProgrammerGuy)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review40192/Nice-guy-but-not-a-great-instructor#comments2003-12-15T21:59:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review40192/Nice-guy-but-not-a-great-instructorhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review11712/Needs-some-work-but-an-okay-professorDr. Janeway seems to be a nice guy. He didn't know Oracle very good, but he scored points for explaining that he only teaches it yearly. I know how it is when you only get occasional experience with a product. He gave better examples at the beginning of the class, when we were talking about SQL, but as the class went on, his gave fewer examples. Near the end, we never saw examples. I relied on the book for most things. He tended to give a lot of homework, but his tests were relatively easy. Not to say he was a bad teacher, because the test material was relevant. He took a stance that since he could not remember everything about Oracle, he didn't require us to, either, and thus we had open book exams. He scored more points with this! As a programmer in the real world, I know this viewpoint makes sense. Programmers don't have to have the greatest memory--they just need to know how to use their tools. We had a long summer class (2.75 hours a day), and he tended to have "labs" almost every night. After 30 minutes-1.5 hours, he'd call a lab and people could go home if they wanted (I always did). It was nice to go home early, but a tremendous waste of teaching time. Dr. Janeway is a very pleasant professor, and I enjoyed the class. He was a bit cranky at times, but I still admired the guy. I didn't get all that I would have liked to out of the class, unfortunately. Better examples and more in-class time would have been useful.noemail@coursereviews.com (Anonymous Student)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review11712/Needs-some-work-but-an-okay-professor#comments2001-08-09T15:45:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review11712/Needs-some-work-but-an-okay-professorhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review10663/AVOID-Poor-Communication-and-Unrealistic-Final-ExamI began this class optimistic and eager to learn. As the course went by, I became discouraged and tired. I will never take Dr. Wong for another class unless absolutely necessary for my degree. Here are the major problems I encountered over the duration of this course: 1. First, Dr. Wong is unresponsive to emails. This course was online, and communication is very important for online courses. After several unreturned emails, I began marking my emails return receipt, and I saw that he was reading them, but he did not respond. Finally, in frustration, I emailed him and reminded him that communication is crucial in an online course, and asked that he respond. He did, and agreed that he would respond in the future. He sometimes did or didn't--depending on the question and his mood, I suppose. 2. We had a similar problem in the discussion board. He also said he would participate, but never did. When we had a problem, we initially turned to the messageboard for help, thinking that fellow students and Dr. Wong would be participating. Some students were, but Dr. Wong never responded to a single post. We found that repeated emails had the best chance for getting a response. This also ties into the "broken links" problem below. 3. Our course projects and assignments were posted online. We found that several times project links were broken. They apparently had never been tested. When we posted this discovery on the messageboard to Dr. Wong, there was no response. The first time we found an assignment that had a broken link, we repeatedly posted messages asking him to fix the link, as the deadline was approaching. Finally, several of us emailed him and he did fix the link a couple of days before the project was due. He was forced to move the entire class timeline back several days, causing us to cover less material. 4. You enjoy getting your projects back and seeing what you did right/wrong? Forget about it. As of the midterm, I had received exactly ONE project back. I complained repeatedly, and finally ended up getting most of them back a week before the final. Don't expect much feedback on your code. 5. He also posted sample code, which most of the time did not work. When I tested his code and discovered this, I politely emailed him (I hadn't gotten totally frustrated at this point). He responded that he had tested it and knows it works. We went back and forth with this dialogue, and I sent him error message output, but in the end I was left to fix the problems on my own. They were all just syntax problems, with the exception of a linked list clear() function, which had a logic problem instead. 6. The worst disappointment of this class was the final. I walked into the final with a low A, fully expecting to get an A for the class. I had studied fairly heavily, but because I'd done so well on my projects, I felt that typical programming problems like "write a function to delete a node from a linked list" would be no problem. Surprise, surprise. There were 22 pages in the final, and even with that, there was nowhere near enough room to write the answers. We had been told ahead of time IN WRITING that the final would be "mostly short answer, with one or two long answer". This was not true. Most questions were long answer, with only a few short answer. The long answer questions were totally unbelieveable. For example: #14 asked us to write the implementation for one of our projects, and #15 asked us to write all the member functions for the same project. Combine those two questions, and he's asking us to write our ENTIRE project on this exam... and that was only two questions!! This trend repeated, and I believe we ended up writing at least 3 separate projects on the final. I don't know about you, but I don't write entire projects purely from memory, especially when learning. I use books for reference on syntax, and I find myself looking stuff up in the book when writing a large project. I really screwed the pooch on the final, and was happy as hell when I received a B for the course. In short, I feel that Dr. Wong does not communicate well, and does not prepare the student thoroughly (if that's possible, considering his final). I can do just about anything that was assigned in the class--I am planning on taking the Brainbench exam. However, I feel that I probably got a D on the final. His expectations were totally unrealistic.noemail@coursereviews.com (ProgrammerGuy)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review10663/AVOID-Poor-Communication-and-Unrealistic-Final-Exam#comments2001-05-08T21:22:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review10663/AVOID-Poor-Communication-and-Unrealistic-Final-Examhttp://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review6298/quotAn-awesome-teacherquotJulie has got to be the best teacher I've ever had as far as the above requirements. Many classes have you doing boring, useless assignments not at all related to the field in which you're going. Julie's class involves _practical_ experience that you will use in teaching art and experience in FINDING a job when you graduate! If we needed any kind of material, she would bend over backwards to make sure we got it. If there were any criticisms about our performance, they were never negative and always helpful and constructive. Even after class was over, she still keeps in touch and is always available to write kind, fair recommendations to make sure her students get a job.noemail@coursereviews.com (worf33)http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review6298/quotAn-awesome-teacherquot#comments2000-05-11T13:08:00-05:00http://www.CourseReviews.com/u884/review6298/quotAn-awesome-teacherquot