Bad Lecturers (1 Viewer)

Tenka

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poloktim said:
I do think Neil is an awesome lecturer, however when I took CSCI213 it was in the 40.HOPE and he always turned the lights off. The chairs were comfortable, which meant I would nap. I think I slept through most lectures.
hehe, no such comfort for me .. we're stuck in 14.g01.

I'm getting the impression they've started reserving 40.HOPE for 1st year subjects only :( .. I miss the Hope Theatre.
 

dawso

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14g01 is awesome, just drink hot chocolate and coffee the whole time, picasso is teh shiz!
 

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Born Dancer said:
yes pol121 is particularly bad. not only does she hate us all, but she mumbles an awful lot, and talks in a way that assumes everyone is at a particular level of knowledge when that is clearly not the case.

i havent spoken to one single person that understands this course. i dont even get what we are meant to be learning as such.

yes and i'd be one of those hundreds who don't have the foggiest what's going on.. Monday wk 5 (yesterday) was a really bad lecture, and it was a guest lecturer too, but it just seemed to be a really random topic, just stuck in there so we could all sit for an hour being bored. I had to laugh when she asked if the notes were put on webCT and there was the very loud reply of "NOOO!!!!!!!!". Ugh politics. hate it hate it. :burn: Susan Engel doesn't make it any better, probably worse. Steer clear if you can.

And generally POL121 is just a really bad subject. Too much info, too much reading, a very vague and hard to understand textbook, and when the lecturer is not helpful at all .... i don't think i'll be the only one scraping thru in this subject!

Another bad tutor (i don't know what he's like as a lecturer) is Mark McClelland. Really, he's not that bad, but pretty quickly i got bored of him mentioning that he has a PhD and went to Cambridge. This happened every tute, but usually multiple times. ugh.
 

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Ahh the chick who has taken over from John Hawke (I don't even know her name) sucks ass.
All she does for the class is show us videos on art... which would be cool if say, we were an ART class. But three hours of art videos when it should be Wrtiting theory... no. I've stopped going to class, there's no point spending so long feeling so bored. Going to have to start going again though, damn attendance requirements.
I'm thinking of complaining, just because she really has no idea what she should be doing, she's not right for the job.
 

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MATH121: Discrete Mathematics
Peter Nickolas - Average - Peter was all right. He obviously knows the stuff well. But he speaks in monotone all the time, lectures were held on wednesdays/thursdays 1730-1930 didn't help either. I felt asleep from time to time.

Ben Chad - Good - I had Ben for both lecturer and tutor. He is always helpful. When I started this subject, I thought I was gonna fail. But Ben helped me out a lot and spent time to go through the assignment with me outside of class. He is also very keen to reply email. He marked assignments by how much you attempted, not just how many correct answers you got.

STAT131: Exploring Variation and Uncertainty in Data (EDITED)
Chandra Gulati - Good - While he is still pretty bad at lecturing. He is exceptionally helpful when it comes to assignments. I've been sending him emails asking for help on the assignments. Not only he points out where to look at in the lab manual, he also provides some of the answers in the reply. Chandra always has the patience and is very willing to help.

Ian Piper was bad in 204. He wrote on the board in 14.G01. But the lights down the front were off. The colour of his marker was very fade. So unless you were sitting directly in front of him, otherwise it is impossible to read clearly. During the time when he was lecturing C, he ALWAYS went on and on about the Obfuscated C Code Contest and his friends in Harvard and Cambridge.
He didn't even bother writting assignments/lab tasks for his part of course.

I had Eric Rayner in CSCI103, CSCI203 and CSCI212. This guy is a f**king moron. He doesn't know how to teach. In CSCI212, he just stood there and read straight out from the lecture notes (which he claimed he wrote them himself). I found it was excurciating to see him labouring his way through the notes. The last time I turned up to his lecture was the end of week 3. Then in CSCI103, I was in his tutorial. This subject was delivered very poorly. He kept contradicting what Anne Fuller said in the lecture. When we had questions, he just asked us to google it.
Not to mention the assignments, me and other friends spent quite a while to figure out what he was asking for. Remember CSCI212 assignment 1 and 4 anyone? The exam questions were stupid too. 8 essay questions, he didn't even put effort to write them.

How could this guy get into the PhD course? Anyone can be a better lecturer than him.

Maybe we should make this thread sticky and change the title to 'Subject selection guide for UOW'? ;)
 
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Born Dancer

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beccabum said:
yes and i'd be one of those hundreds who don't have the foggiest what's going on.. Monday wk 5 (yesterday) was a really bad lecture, and it was a guest lecturer too, but it just seemed to be a really random topic, just stuck in there so we could all sit for an hour being bored. I had to laugh when she asked if the notes were put on webCT and there was the very loud reply of "NOOO!!!!!!!!". Ugh politics. hate it hate it. :burn: Susan Engel doesn't make it any better, probably worse. Steer clear if you can.

And generally POL121 is just a really bad subject. Too much info, too much reading, a very vague and hard to understand textbook, and when the lecturer is not helpful at all .... i don't think i'll be the only one scraping thru in this subject!

Another bad tutor (i don't know what he's like as a lecturer) is Mark McClelland. Really, he's not that bad, but pretty quickly i got bored of him mentioning that he has a PhD and went to Cambridge. This happened every tute, but usually multiple times. ugh.
haha i wouldnt know.. i skipped monday's lecture :uhoh:
everyone who did this subject last semester raved about it! but susan is awful.
 

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Christa Wood tends to be a bit boring but it's not her fault, she's from Austria so she was born with it, other than that she's great, very willing to explains things and really nice. Plus she doesn't make unfunny jokes followed by great laughter like one John Burgess does, he shits me to tears.
 

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I would like to nominate Catherine Schieve as the nuimber 1 worst lecturer...
she's a visual artist... teaching writing theory. She took over from John Hawke, who was amazing.
She has no idea what she's meant to be teaching and I haven't learnt a thing all semester. All she does is play us videos about art. Writing theory ismeant to be intense and full on, butinteresting and informative. We've learnt nothing this year, which means we're now fucked for next years theory classes. I've contacted the dean about her becauseI just don't know what to do about it. There's no point even going to class anymore.
 

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agreed i love susie as a tutor, because she is very amicable to my excuses.
and i genuinely think she is a nice person and dont tell anyone but she REALLY reminds me of my mum
<333333333 susie

but yes her lecturing is a bit......... lack luster
 

maskd

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Daniel Saffioti....

I don't actually go to the Uni (yet), but I went to the Discovery Day.... boy.... wow.....

The man is obsessed with macs and ipods, the first thing he asked us all is whether we like macs and own ipods.....

My mate sort of screwed up his little test thing we had going on regarding "packet sniffing". I was amazed that people, and even Daniel himself couldn't see why the password, etc wasnt working. Regardless to say, the man looks very funny when getting angry.

*sigh* There's a good chance I'll have him for one of my courses...
 
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Scanorama

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maskd said:
Daniel Saffioti....

I don't actually go to the Uni (yet), but I went to the Discovery Day.... boy.... wow.....

The man is obsessed with macs and ipods, the first thing he asked us all is whether we like macs and own ipods.....

My mate sort of screwed up his little test thing we had going on regarding "packet sniffing". I was amazed that people, and even Daniel himself couldn't see why the password, etc wasnt working. Regardless to say, the man looks very funny when getting angry.

*sigh* There's a good chance I'll have him for one of my courses...
I never had Daniel as a lecturer, but I really doubt he is bad. Are you doing Computer Science next year? If so, you will get to meet a lot more (tons more) shit lecturers in the department. You may realise Daniel Saffioti is NOT bad after all. There are so many shit lecturers in SITACS, some of them are just simply shit. This session I've been relatively lucky, I only met 2 shit lecturers. One in CSCI222 and one in CSCI205.
 
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Raiks

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CSCI lecturers are notorious for being shite. John Rodgers in Econ is a slave driver, I've never seen a lecturer give out so much work in one semester and he does it to all his subjects.
 
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Scanorama said:
I never had Daniel as a lecturer, but I really doubt he is bad. Are you doing Computer Science next year? If so, you will get to meet a lot more (tons more) shit lecturers in the department. You may realise Daniel Saffioti is NOT bad after all. There are so many shit lecturers in SITACS, some of them are just simply shit. This session I've been relatively lucky, I only met 2 shit lecturers. One in CSCI222 and one in CSCI205.
Two schools of thought on the matter, some people ride around on his nutsack and the rest think he's a cockhead.
 
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maskd said:
Daniel Saffioti....

I don't actually go to the Uni (yet), but I went to the Discovery Day.... boy.... wow.....

The man is obsessed with macs and ipods, the first thing he asked us all is whether we like macs and own ipods.....

My mate sort of screwed up his little test thing we had going on regarding "packet sniffing". I was amazed that people, and even Daniel himself couldn't see why the password, etc wasnt working. Regardless to say, the man looks very funny when getting angry.

*sigh* There's a good chance I'll have him for one of my courses...
Look - Daniel isn't bad at all. The fact that he admitted that he couldn't work it out is quite good - I've had tutors (in CSCI), when they couldn't work out something, they told me to google it.

Yes he is obsessed with macs - but most people who likes macs are. Yes he does like to get under of the skins of peoples who don't like pcs.

Don't worry - there is nearly no chance you will get him for any first year courses. He does presently take a second year subject, but things do change over a year.

In terms in comp sci lecturers he is good. He tries to make assignments and lectures interesting and can speak understandable english and he will make time to answer your questions. That is a rarity is sitacs.
 

poloktim

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maskd said:
Daniel Saffioti....

I don't actually go to the Uni (yet), but I went to the Discovery Day.... boy.... wow.....

The man is obsessed with macs and ipods, the first thing he asked us all is whether we like macs and own ipods.....

My mate sort of screwed up his little test thing we had going on regarding "packet sniffing". I was amazed that people, and even Daniel himself couldn't see why the password, etc wasnt working. Regardless to say, the man looks very funny when getting angry.

*sigh* There's a good chance I'll have him for one of my courses...
I think you're just trying to be intellectual without having a clue about what it is you're talking about. But in any case, I guess it's a bad thing he runs the network (quite well) at the nuclear reactor then, isn't it? Or pretty successfully taught high school kids everything about packet sniffing for several weeks this year? See, in big people uni, not many fun things are done... especially first year.

Lecturers don't care about discovery days at all. The only thing the lecturers care about in the discovery day is getting you all out ASAP so they can get back to doing real work (preparing for the semester's classes, or working up at the nuclear reactor). Besides, If you think you'll go to uni and do the shit you did in a discovery day, you're quite the fool. Also, as stated, he is not among the worst in SITACS.

ogmzergrush said:
Two schools of thought on the matter, some people ride around on his nutsack and the rest think he's a cockhead.
I think that's probably the thing to it (though I wouldn't use those words). However, those who think he's a cockhead at least have decent grounds to base it on (as in, studied in his classes for more than an hour in a playtime class for high school kids). ;)
 
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