BIOE371 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/19/2024	I think this class/professor is over-hated. The exam questions come directly from the textbook/homework, if you study those it's not hard to do well on exams. He usually gives a hint to what will be on the exam as well. Also, over half of the material is a review of differential equations and calc 3. I will say I agree with other reviews that say he is not great at answering questions. He usually answers them just with a bit of rudeness, but the TAs are a great resource. Go to office hours!
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 06/04/2024	Horrible, avoid if you can. The reviews are true, he is rude, no manners. People will ask questions and he just will say it's in the notes or "what?" to the question and leave it at that. Attendance was basically mandatory due to the random assigned classworks (graded on accuracy) that he gave with only a few minutes left of the class. Homeworks were long but were completion. Teaching style is just bad, the content itself probably isn't so bad but with this class it was so difficult.
Neel Panchwagh BIOE371 Anonymous 05/15/2024	amazing, best TA ever!
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/11/2024	I will end with a good grade in this class, and I STILL think this man is the worst and most unsympathetic professor I have ever had. His teaching style absolutely sucks. 1) the textbook for this class is next to useless because it doesn't go over steps (it'll do a 15-step problem in 2 steps). He uploads additional notes to ELMS (usually a day before class), but they are usually a handwritten copy of the textbook. While these explain a bit more than the textbook, it's ultimately not that helpful. He expects you to use this textbook and his online notes to teach YOURSELF the content and complete graded assignments on that content during class the next day. We tried explaining to him that we don't understand the notes, but it didn't make a difference. 2) he's incredibly condescending when you ask questions, as other reviewers have said. I would recommend you ask them anyway, because the TAs can't always help you. Just prepare to have it insinuated that you're dumb for asking anything at all. 3) He introduced an EXTREMELY DIFFICULT final project that you could optionally do instead of the third exam but was very very unclear about the grading criteria. Be warned - if he does this again, you MUST meet with him in person and ask him specific and pointed questions on grading criteria. 4) His teaching is usually pretty unclear because he will sometimes will project his handwritten notes on the screen. On our last topic (Chapter 16), this was even worse because he barely explained his example questions. Make sure you ask him to define each problem before he starts solving it because otherwise learning this chapter is very confusing. The only positive note is that the exams are fairly similar to the homework. Because of this, I would bother the TAs for HW answers early and often. Overall, I have heard bad things about taking BIOE371 with Koh too, but at least Koh cares and will help you. Helim does not care, and will actively insult you if you try to ask questions. Good luck - you'll need it.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2024	To students: - if you would like to remain sane and not die in this class, avoid this guy - if your circumstances force you to take his class, your life depends on going to discussion and going to office hours and asking questions to your TAs + go to the review sessions - ask the professor questions only if you can take a joke - even though the HW is completion based, study the HW, understand why things are - his exams tend to be tedious, so master the content with speed and accuracy. - if the prof/the TAs say "this will be on the exam", note it down, that question/or something very similar will likely be on the exam - finally, I wish you all the best! I promise this class is doable if you work hard, you just have to put in the work and you will do great, I promise! Prof Helim. If you are reading this I have two main notes: - please do not joke with us, because we all take everything you say seriously and it takes a minute to realize you are joking. Everytime you joke around with us, we think that you are speaking low of us for asking questions or voicing our concerns to you. It definitely created a decent amount of animosity among the students against you. Please be weary of that of the future, and please say you are joking faster. - please teach the class as if we do not know anything. Many of us, were taking diffeq with this class, we did not take fluids or BIOE340. We are not familiar with diffusion and navier stokes. Please do not teach it and skip steps between the first time you show it to us. It got all of us boggled out. - Finally, please do not make the exams or projects sound worse than they are. It lead to a lot of stress among the students. I understand it is a tactic to make us all study hard BUT i think a lot of us were having mental breakdowns for this class.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2024	I wanted to give him a zero, but thats not possible. So I give him, a one. I think there are many issues with the way Helim teaches this class. First off, he assigns spontaneous classwork assignments that are graded on accuracy, and students are only given around 10 minutes to complete them without any warning and without properly being taught the content. It felt like having an exam each class period, and were very unfair since the readings would only be posted the day before, so none of the students had time to read the textbook and learn the content. It was the first time we were applying the content and those assignments were graded on accuracy, which was completely unfair since we were on a time limit (compared to the homework, where we were given a week to complete and was graded on completion). Additionally I would leave the class and always be late for my class directly after because of the classwork assignments, so my grade in my next class was affected as well because I was always late. I once tried to express the unfairness of this to Helim and he responded sarcastically "In the real world what are you gonna do when you have a problem", and then proceeded to ignore all my questions about the classwork afterwards. When it came to the exams, I think they were pretty fair given the homework but were very long so often I didn't finish. To make things worse Helim would give a condescending speech after each exam telling us how we didn't study hard enough and how the exam was supposed to be easy. A professor should be trying to help students when they are struggling not make snide remarks and accuse them of not working hard. The only reason I managed to be on track for an A is because the TA's were amazing, even though I am doing alright in the class it is most definitely not accredited to the professor. His teaching style was not very helpful as he would often just pull up a pdf of his notes, and teach using that. He would occasionally solve problems on the board, this was the only helpful part but I wished he used an ipad not a whiteboard because it was really hard to read. Last but not least, in addition to being an unhelpful professor he was also not a nice person and very irritable. He would act annoyed when people had questions on treat them like they were dumb, unless he was in the occasional good mood. A friend of mine once came to campus at 9am to meet with him for office hours, and she asked Helim a question to which he responded "What is your grade in the class". She answered that she had an A and he said "I don't believe you, there is no way you just asked the question you did and have an A". She left the office hours really upset and disheartened, and this professor seems to have it out against women in stem particularly. During the third exam he went around trying to talk to people while they were taking the exam, which was extremely distracting given how difficult the third exam was. Overall one of the worst professors I've had in BIOE, which is saying a lot because I've had some really bad professors.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting a C- Anonymous 04/16/2024	I have quite literally never had a professor as rude and unaccommodating as him. I’m not sure why people like this choose to be professors of college kids. He makes fun of students trying to answer questions in class when they get them wrong, never responds to emails, and when he does, they are incredibly disrespectful. I’m a junior and I have never written a review before but I had to for this prof. He is also just a bad teacher. Everything I learned is from the TAs and I went to every lecture.
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/24/2024	Dr. Koh is such a great professor! It is clear that he truly cares about his students genuinely understanding the material and wants them to do well in the class. He is great at reading the room and will always be willing to take more time to further explain anything that causes any confusion. He is also always available for office hours or one-on-one meetings after class if you still need some help. Just be sure to come to class since he gives little participation points. Highly recommend for BIOE371!!!!
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/18/2024	I really enjoyed having Dr. Koh for this class! Just like other reviews say he often gives explanations that can be difficult to understand (I'm pretty sure due to a language barrier), but his slides completely make up for this. Some tips for the course (study a lot!): 1. I learned mostly from the slides, but they are very good slides and comprehensive. There are practice problems on the slides with steps worked out and the formulas you need to remember are clearly indicated. Memorize the formulas it makes the class easier. 2. Review your DE notes there is a lot of solving methods he breezes by b/c its a prereq course. Dif eq is a very hefty part of this course, so its super important you remember and understand how to solve DEs! 3. Complete lots of practice! He provides weekly worksheets on the content with worked out answers. I came across few incorrect answers, but typically they were arithmetic errors not wrong ways to solve the problems. The solutions sometimes contain different methods than class as a heads up (this doesn't necessarily mean the answer was incorrect). I believe Dr. Koh is just using old resources for the class. 4. Go to office hours whether it be your TA or Dr. Koh's! As you progress through the HWs they get way harder and unrelated to the slides. I had to attend TA office hours for a few of the HWs b/c the slides and the lecture weren't helpful on how to complete them. 5. Ask questions through problems! Dr. Koh doesn't explain concepts the best, so if you're confused about how to approach a problem do it through a practice problem or walk through a solution with him (or a TA). I'm also going to state I disagree with another review here as I feel like I experienced the class totally different than they did. As always take review with a grain of salt, but I'm going to try and provide a lot of info based on my experience! Here are the points I disagreed with: 1. You can do about half the HWs based off the lectures/slides and the practice problem solutions. The practice problem solutions helped me a lot more with the homework! Typically, he gives at least 1 hard question on the HW that I needed to see a TA for. 2. The first exam had a fair amount of linear algebra on it. It was all in the true/false sections of his exam. I do agree that it was mostly ODEs. (Side note: linear algebra explains using eigenvalues as solns to ODEs and is very important in theory so this is why it is taught) 3. I believe my class actually did well on the midterm and curving wasn't involved! I know I got everything correct (through remembering the problems and checking afterwards using wolfram) and made one mistake. My exam was graded accordingly and I got one point off for that mistake. If he did curve he would've added points (he didn't talk about percentage adjustments) which would've pushed me above a 100% for that exam. I found all the midterms (except the final it was very hard) to be fair and similar to in class content. He literally tells people what is going to be on the exam, but you have to attend ALL the lectures b/c he says 1 topic every other class. 4. This class has basis in EE, but people forget that bioes build prosthetics which is basically this class. The "EE" problems are control engineering problems which look like circuits and are used in circuits, but aren't exactly circuits (would take long to explain this lol). You use the linear algebra and ODE stuff you learned earlier in the course to do control engineering. The application is how to design feedback through math (system of ODEs) to make a prosthetic move a certain way. This is a form of bioe its just not pure bio which is why I think people are upset!
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/22/2023	Dr. Koh is an incredible professor. He is extremely kind and accommodating. He gives real world applications to make the class more engaging and is attuned to the general student response to new content. If he senses there is any confusion he will stay on the topic and explain it again until he feels everyone understands. He will also review concepts from previous classes if it was challenging. He is receptive to questions and genuinely wants his students to succeed. This class is challenging but with Dr. Koh's help it will be much easier to understand! Highly recommend, but do make sure to go to class (like all other classes) for the highest chance of success!
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 11/13/2023	Dr. Koh, while nice, is one of the worst professors in the BIOE department-- expect to learn NOTHING from any of his classes. His lectures are confusing, and when asked questions he makes the concept even more confusing than it was to begin with. There was one class where he tried explaining a MATLAB code, only to end the class and saying "oh sorry that's wrong." There was another where he gave out a quiz and when half the class raised their hands to ask quesitons, he gave a hint, leading to more hands to raise (he did not give a quiz again after this). Not only this, but half of his practice problems' solutions are wrong, leaving little material to study with when it comes to exams. The HWs and practice problems are semi-helpful, but ONLY if your TA is good because you won't be able to do it from just Dr. Koh's lectures. I was honestly better off teaching myself from the lecture slides on my own time, but be warned that he does in-class participation assignments very often due to the lack of students attending his class after the first few weeks (I wonder why), and missing these could definitely drop your grade. On top of all of this, Dr. Koh's currciculum COMPLETELY flies off the rails after a couple of weeks. The first midterm ONLY focused on ODEs when the first "unit" was 50% linear algebra, and then after this point he actually started giving us electrical problems more complicated than what we see in BIOE457. This is compleletly inconsistent with other professor's lectures (the semester before didn't touch on any electronics), and none of it is explained well either. The practice exams he gives to study are from ENAE301, and both these and any problems provided are not as hard as the ones on the exams at all. Even our TA felt bad after the first one. Dr. Koh says that he won't curve or change the grade distribution, but I'm convinced that he saw the results on the first midterm and bumped all our grades up by a significant amount, without saying anything because the average was way higher than what anyone expected. As someone who had him for 241 for his first semester teaching, I expected him to get better, but he's unfortunately just the worst. I don't know why they're giving him more classes to teach in the department when he has one of the worst reviews out of all of the professors in the department. Good luck though, and make sure to make friends in the class and ask the TA a lot of questions!
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 07/07/2023	took it over summer. passing, but was a horrible experience. he is the least personable person ive met at college.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 07/06/2023	Took it over summer. This guy is the least personable person I've met in college. He is rude and comes across as having a massive superiority complex. He regards everything he does as being easy, when it's the students' first time learning it. First exam was not bad (average was an 80), second was made horribly and average was a 50. He didn't space the lectures out correctly so he crammed the third exam in a week after the second exam (two lectures), leaving us to self teach most of the content. His pop quizzes were made to be very difficult, but you can get points back. First exam was an hour long. Second exam took us two hours (an hour overtime). The third took 3 hours (2 hours overtime). That's class from 12:30pm to 2:30, then exam from 2:30 to 5:30. The highest grade in the class is a B, and 90% of the class has a C. There is no curve. If you are not confident with diffeq, taking this over summer will tank your gpa, unless you make sure to grind 5 hours per day.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 06/13/2023	I spent so long every week working on this class. I went to office hours every week,did the homework in advance, went to every class and discussion, and tried my best and barely passed with a C. I have never struggled in a class like I did in this one. The exams are tricky and it his goal is to confuse you, the in class "extra credit" was my 13th reason, and his teaching style just really sucks. Doing the homework and fully understanding it really really heps so make sure you do that. Half the class is doing awful in the class and half the class seemed to be doing amazing so he doesn't curve, but he really should. He is really funny at times, but this is balanced out by how mean he can come across at other times. I like him as a person but certainly not as a professor.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 06/05/2023	I usually never review professors or classes because I never really leave the class with strong opinions on anything ngl. But Helim is the exception. Helim is genuinely one of the worst, most unsympathetic, most uncaring professors I’ve ever had the displeasures of taking. He does not care about his students at all. During class he “teaches us” by rambling/mumbling/muttering through a pdf of his chicken scratch handwritten notes (copied straight from the textbook, often littered with mistakes) in a quiet monotone near-whisper. When asked to provide more examples or explain his work he just says go to the TA’s office hours or there are examples in the textbook. Some of the materials provided by the TA’s literally have disclaimers that their work may have mistakes/ be incorrect. (The textbook is also awful, there are no steps written out for the examples, barely any explanations, and the homework is so disconnected from the chapter. He does not curve, he only gives small amounts of random extra credit. He consistently contradicts the textbook, the TA’s, and himself in class. He gives random in class quizzes based on the material he taught in the same lesson. nHe does no care about his students well being at all. My grandfather passed away during the beginning of finals and I was not doing well. I wrote him an email explaining my situation and asked him If I could take the last midterm in a couple days because I was grieving. HE NEVER EVEN REPLIED TO THE EMAIL EVEN THOUGH HE SAW IT. I went to talk to him after class about my email and he cut me off and just said “there’s nothing I can do for you”, no sorry no nothing. I was genuinely appalled. He is rude to students who ask questions and does not care about anything really. Being near this man actually makes me want to peel my skin off. Ngl I would take him for bioe371 because the other option is Koh. But just be aware of his ‘teaching’ style ig and lack of basic human empathy.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 06/02/2023	He is extremely rude to most students. If I could I would give him a 0/5 because he does not care about students succeeding in his class whatsoever. He gave us extra credit which did help, but some of the extra credit was really hard, and hardly anyone got credit for it. He used the extra credit as an excuse to not curve the class so that he does not have to do extra work at the end. A lot of students were scared to ask him questions because he always responded weirdly or was rude. Whenever someone did ask him questions, he would tell that person to ask the TA which is weird because he is literally the professor that's getting paid...... TAs were extremely helpful in this class because he just did not wanna answer any questions and disliked the class for some reason. Overall: one of the worst classes I have taken because he was so awful at teaching and genuinely did not care about the students succeeding in the class.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/15/2023	Helim was not a good professor for this class. He would display and read a PDF of his written notes for the entire class and only wrote out steps to an example once per class. It was very hard to learn concepts when all you got in class are sped-up verbal instructions and a PDF that was equally as confusing. He is also an extremely degrading individual who makes anyone who doesn't understand feel stupid for not understanding. When people asked questions in class that seemed simple, he would say things like "oh, you should know this already" or "have you not been paying attention?" I went to his 1 on 1 office hours because I was still confused about the concepts we were learning, and I asked to go over 1 problem step by step. He responded with "we went over examples of this in class, you still don't get it? I'm not going to go step by step because we already did that." The concepts aren't too difficult, but the way they are taught is not the best. The TA discussion and office hours are what helped me the most so defiantly go to those. Homework is based on completion, but they are super long. The exam questions were reasonable but time was a huge issue because the problems were lengthy. He also give graded classwork about topics that were covered in that class so be prepared.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/14/2023	Horrible experience. He is a rude and inconsiderate person. The homeworks are difficult, the exams are borderline impossible, and he gives very little extra credit on exams (the exam averages were consistently in the low 60s, and he does not curve). This class humbled me deeply and has to be the hardest I've taken thus far (harder than orgo and diffeq). I was kinda hoping this guy would be fired at some point during the semester because his grumpy ass should not be teaching if he's out to fail us all.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/10/2023	He makes the easiest concepts, hard. His "notes" are the same as the book just in his own handwriting. The textbook isn't great either. He makes homework based on completion, but his grading is honestly horrible. There's barely any partial credit given for exams. The final is optional, but most people are taking it because the class midterms were OKAY. The average was around the 60-70s every time. Feel so bad for us BIOE, I thought DiffEq was meh, but this doesn't compare. He just makes it harder because he doesn't know how to explain or teach. Seems like a cool guy, but he's rude. Each lecture the class is always so quiet because we're all just trying to process what's going on set aside a few.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 03/15/2023	This guy is trash but I'm giving him 2 stars instead of 1 because there isn't a better option than him (as of 2023). About the professor: - He is incredibly rude to his students and really doesn't seem to care about them either. For example, when we asked when the homework answer keys will be posted, he responded with "when you see them on elms." Or someone will ask for him to go over an example and he says, "no... there are examples in the textbook." It's almost comedic how disconnected he is with his students. About his teaching: -This man pulls out a pdf of hand-written notes (riddled with mistakes) from whenever he started teaching this course and mumbles through this pdf the entire class. He says "this goes here and then you do this and then you have the answer... moving on" all while scrolling through this confusing pdf of notes and very rarely writing things on the board. This goes back to him not giving a flying f*ck about his students because he's too lazy to write out the examples on the white board. Although, when he does muster up the energy to go through something on the board, it makes sense and is easy to follow. - He also gives pop quizzes on the same material covered in class that day. You can just see the panic and confusion in most people's faces when he gives these pop quizzes... he calls them "independent classwork." - The homework is incredibly difficult and you need to go to the TAs office hours AND discussion sections in order to complete it. On the bright side, it's graded for completion. - The exams are brutal and he does not give that much partial credit. It's not even the concepts that are difficult, he just finds a way to make "easy" material very difficult by making the algebra for most questions incredibly long and tedious (time crunch). He does not curve the exams but he does give out extra credit (in the form of confusing pop-quizzes). The other teacher for this class, Dr. Koh, is even worse so I would take Espinoza but just beware and make sure you prioritize it if you want a good grade. Both teachers are awful but at least Espinoza makes the final optional. Good luck, you'll need it for this class :)
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Anonymous 01/25/2023	Blames students for not understanding the material when the whole class is struggling to pass. Much harder than previous lecturers for the class. Exams are lengthy, challenging, and not curved. Lectures were impossible to follow, he even once did a whole lecture with a dry erase marker that wouldn't write. Mostly reads off of slides, but the examples on the slides are always significantly easier than the problems on the exam. Even the TAs felt bad for the students in this course.
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/07/2023	Let's begin this review with a personal anecdote in regards to the last homework we had for the semester. I showed one of my electrical engineering friends one of the questions, which NO ONE had figured out (I asked 13 classmates), and my EE friend responded that this was a question that was straight out of the class material for ENEE222. ENEE222 is a weed-out electrical engineering course, "Discrete Signal Analysis". That alone should tell you how astronomically difficult this course was, and how useless Dr. Koh was as an instructor. I have to admit, he is a really nice guy. I honestly felt bad for him at first -- maybe it's his first time teaching, maybe he's never taught linear algebra in general. But my sympathy for him dissipated quickly when I realized he had no sympathy for his students either: for starters, he refused to curve. Not sure if this is because he planned to curve the final exam (somehow the average was an 83.9 and I got an 83, which boggles my mind), but the idea of not having any extra credit or cushioning from homework after performing poorly on midterms was mentally stressful for the entire class. Dr. Koh was assigned with teaching linear algebra in BIOE371. NOT controls, or discrete signals, or anything RELATED to block diagrams. I had shown previous BIOE371 students the material we were learning (those who had Esperanza), and NONE of them could recognize it. Forget everything you learn about linear algebra for the first 2 months of the class, because the second 2 turn this class into an electrical engineering elective. It's literally just controller designs all day long, that never get fully explained. Yes, he has examples in his lecture slides. Yes, he also tries to articulate the conceptual meaning behind them, but none of that matters if you have NOTHING pertaining to the level of content one might find on the homework, or on midterms. If you did not go to the TA directly and get homework help, you were screwed. Prepare for many sleepless nights scrambling with your friends to find other friends who might have an idea where to start, if you don't go to the TA. And guess what? The TAs don't have a SINGLE clue what to do until they look at the answer key, because THAT'S how foreign the material for this class was. Had Dr. Koh stuck to the content covered by Esperanza, we'd have no real excuse to complain other than the fact that this is an already difficult class. But by putting his own twists and spending an entire half of the semester on material that had NOTHING to do with matrices, eigenvectors, eigenvalues, and normal linear algebra, he destined the entire class for failure. I cannot even begin to express how thankful, no, how grateful I feel for having passed this class, knowing that half of the class either (1) withdrew midsemester or (2) failed the final and had to retake it. You can tell how many students failed this time around because next semester's BIOE371 is already booked to the brim for BOTH sections. There's even a waitlist for one of them! I don't think I could ever handle this class ever again. My deepest condolences to my fallen brethren. Please mentally prepare yourself for an ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING elective, NOT a BIOENGINEERING LINEAR SYSTEMS class. I'll end this review with a direct quote from one of the TA's, when I had asked where on the internet I may find extra resources to practice controller systems before the final exam: "I have no idea, in fact, I tried looking for myself, and couldn't find anything."
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Anonymous 12/13/2022	This guy absolutely makes zero sense in lecture. HWs are extremely hard and exams are terrible.
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Anonymous 12/12/2022	So bad. I mean BIOE371 is not easy but it should not be this painful. This guy just points at the board and doesn't explain shit. He just points at letters and expects us to understand. "this guy then goes here and then that happens" like bruh, don't teach the class if you can't explain the material well. Also apparently Helim sucks too but he makes the final optional??? Koh does not
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Anonymous 12/08/2022	Awful teacher for 371. Nice guy
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Anonymous 12/06/2022	Omfg the whole class is screwed for the final
Kyung Koh BIOE371 Anonymous 11/29/2022	I really gave this guy many chances. He is probably one of the worst professors I’ve had yet. The WHOLE CLASS never understands what he’s talking about and the TAs are even like “wtf are you learning?” Let’s get this class clear. This is not linear algebra—it is a controls class written IN linear algebra. Linear algebra is not a pre req. Taking linear algebra won’t really help you much in the grand scheme of things. The second week, he told us “i hope you guys have taken linear algebra” and that the reason we don’t understand the content is because we’re not Ivy League students. He seems like a sweet guy but he really can’t teach! He reads the slides and mumbles nonsense. At one point I kid you not only 6 people attended class. That changed when he made attendance mandatory…. Going to class is a waste of time. The only way people learn is from the TAs going over how to do the hw from the answer key. Exams are ridiculously hard.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/02/2022	Although Helim can be a bit soft spoken in class and does go really fast some days, he will listen if you tell him to speak up and is pretty accommodating. I still thought he was a great professor and taught diff eq way better than my actual diff eq prof. He is also funny and relates things to actual bio and engineering concepts if you listen carefully. He’s also great in office hours. To get a good grade, go to every discussion and every class. It’s ok if you miss some class days, but definitely don’t miss discussion. The TAs go over HW problems due that week and will help with any example you ask. Both Helim and the TAs also will basically tell you exactly how the exam will be set up and what each question is going to be (it’s category). Helim also gives a practice exam the lecture before every exam and the TAs hold an exam review after this answering the whole thing. The practice exam is usually exactly like the actual exam (represents each category of question that will be asked). Extra credit is also great. Does give classwork “quizzes” in class but will help you so that you solve the problem correctly, just ask. Overall great class and great prof! Not an easy A but definitely doable.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 05/18/2022	His lectures are terrible. The hw is terrible. The exams are okay. Help from the TAs were the only thing that made this class bearable. Do not take this professor if you have any other choice. His notes arent very helpful and his class is not engaging AT ALL. One of the worst
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 03/30/2022	He simply has copy-pasted the textbook for his lecture slides...how is this not plagiarism? His handwritten notes leave much to be deserved in terms of understandability and legibility. He speaks so quiet sometimes you don't even know he is in the room. He randomly assigns "classwork" giving you 5 minutes to submit something hastily handwritten at the end of class. The only good thing is that he grades homework for completion so you can actually check the answers and learn without panicking. This is where you will actually learn the material. The exams, contrary to what people are posting below, are not simply practice homework problems. You should look at examples from the textbook he mentions to "Study" in class as well. Apparently he also doesn't allow examples on reference sheets for exams? Strange.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/29/2021	I am not sure why everyone rates Helim so low, but his class was very fair and I felt that I learned a lot. Forst, it was an 8 AM class which did make it difficult to focus, and his lectures are basically him going through the textbook in his own handwriting. However, I thought he made more sense than the textbook, and he skipped over things in the text that you wouldn't have known if you didn't go to lecture. The homework was very long (6 + pages), and was only graded for completion. However, the reason I rate this class so highly was that our exams always had only problems from the homework, discussion, or class with minor modifications. So basically, if you show up to class, discussion, and at least go over the homework answers (which he posts), you should do extremely well on the exams. On top of that, he gave many opportunities for extra credit on each exam, and the discussion was a great tool to teach you how to solve specific problems that would almost always show up on the exam. TL;DR Go to class, do the homework, and go to discussions and there is no reason you shouldn't get at least an A-
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/20/2021	Yes, lecture is pretty much repeating the textbook. I thought he made more sense than the text and if he didn't you could just ask questions in class, so you don't have to open the text if you go to class. He also hints at what questions will and won't be tested. Homework is completion. Classwork is graded, but collaborative and you can ask him or TAs for help. Exams were very fair. Questions taken straight from hw or lecture notes or were very similar. Allowed equation sheet. Lowest two non-exam grades were dropped. Lots of opportunity for extra credit applied to exam grades. Final is optional, don't count on taking the final. TAs were very useful. We worked on hw in discussions. They led review sessions leading up to every test. Overall, I felt like he wanted us to succeed and was accommodating. He even tried new teaching style of working out problems and taking questions/problems from students during class, but the class voted to return to his old lecture style.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/21/2019	Avoid if you can. He made 371 harder and more difficult than it's supposed to be. He has ridiculously high standards and he claims he is not curving. Gives extra credit as a "curve" but he usually picks the most difficult questions for extra cred, making it nearly impossible to get. It doesn't even boost your grade. We had a take-home exam due the day before finals that was extremely difficult and took up so much time. if there was a 0-star rating I would give him that.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 03/25/2019	If I can give him less than a star, I would. He doesn't teach. His notes (which he reads off of) are straight from the textbook so there's no point in going to class. Even when he tries to do examples of problems, he only focuses on the ones already in the book. The way the grading system work is really messed up. Quizzes are 25% of your grade, and the lowest one isn't dropped. This is very frustrating because the class is at 9am and the quizzes are given the first 10 minutes of class. So if you miss one, you're screwed. Only way I can probably pass this class is if he curves.
Jose Aranda-Espinoza BIOE371 Anonymous 03/18/2019	Absolutely the worst professor in the world I can assure you. Never take him because you will end up learning nothing from him. He may be a nice person, but he cannot teach. He has zero passion for teaching and if you take his class he has ridiculous standards for every student. Unless if you're phenomenally good at math, you will struggle if he's the professor for 371. Avoid at all costs. I am not even a bad student but the semester I took his class affected my grades, solely because he was the professor for 371. He doesn't teach, he just reads the textbook to us, and even when he attempts to teach, he never really explains anything and assumes we all understand. Even when you go to his office hours he is frustrating to talk to. I would never advise my worst enemy to take his class, that's how horrible he is as a professor.
Benjamin Shapiro BIOE371 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/03/2016	He's a great professor and knows his stuff (he likes giving examples based on cars and cruise control). His quizzes can be crazy at times and i had 2 or 3 quizzes with zeros but I still ended up with a B+ in the class. His exams are standard and this is were you need to pick up and slack from quizzes so as long as you pay attention in class, study and understand his notes you can easily get a perfect score. He cares about students understanding material so he will ask multiple times before moving on if you understand so if you don't just say you don't.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
11/19/2024

I think this class/professor is over-hated. The exam questions come directly from the textbook/homework, if you study those it's not hard to do well on exams. He usually gives a hint to what will be on the exam as well. Also, over half of the material is a review of differential equations and calc 3. I will say I agree with other reviews that say he is not great at answering questions. He usually answers them just with a bit of rudeness, but the TAs are a great resource. Go to office hours!

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
06/04/2024

Horrible, avoid if you can. The reviews are true, he is rude, no manners. People will ask questions and he just will say it's in the notes or "what?" to the question and leave it at that. Attendance was basically mandatory due to the random assigned classworks (graded on accuracy) that he gave with only a few minutes left of the class. Homeworks were long but were completion. Teaching style is just bad, the content itself probably isn't so bad but with this class it was so difficult.

Neel Panchwagh
BIOE371

Anonymous
05/15/2024

amazing, best TA ever!

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/11/2024

I will end with a good grade in this class, and I STILL think this man is the worst and most unsympathetic professor I have ever had. His teaching style absolutely sucks. 1) the textbook for this class is next to useless because it doesn't go over steps (it'll do a 15-step problem in 2 steps). He uploads additional notes to ELMS (usually a day before class), but they are usually a handwritten copy of the textbook. While these explain a bit more than the textbook, it's ultimately not that helpful. He expects you to use this textbook and his online notes to teach YOURSELF the content and complete graded assignments on that content during class the next day. We tried explaining to him that we don't understand the notes, but it didn't make a difference. 2) he's incredibly condescending when you ask questions, as other reviewers have said. I would recommend you ask them anyway, because the TAs can't always help you. Just prepare to have it insinuated that you're dumb for asking anything at all. 3) He introduced an EXTREMELY DIFFICULT final project that you could optionally do instead of the third exam but was very very unclear about the grading criteria. Be warned - if he does this again, you MUST meet with him in person and ask him specific and pointed questions on grading criteria. 4) His teaching is usually pretty unclear because he will sometimes will project his handwritten notes on the screen. On our last topic (Chapter 16), this was even worse because he barely explained his example questions. Make sure you ask him to define each problem before he starts solving it because otherwise learning this chapter is very confusing. The only positive note is that the exams are fairly similar to the homework. Because of this, I would bother the TAs for HW answers early and often. Overall, I have heard bad things about taking BIOE371 with Koh too, but at least Koh cares and will help you. Helim does not care, and will actively insult you if you try to ask questions. Good luck - you'll need it.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/09/2024

To students: - if you would like to remain sane and not die in this class, avoid this guy - if your circumstances force you to take his class, your life depends on going to discussion and going to office hours and asking questions to your TAs + go to the review sessions - ask the professor questions only if you can take a joke - even though the HW is completion based, study the HW, understand why things are - his exams tend to be tedious, so master the content with speed and accuracy. - if the prof/the TAs say "this will be on the exam", note it down, that question/or something very similar will likely be on the exam - finally, I wish you all the best! I promise this class is doable if you work hard, you just have to put in the work and you will do great, I promise! Prof Helim. If you are reading this I have two main notes: - please do not joke with us, because we all take everything you say seriously and it takes a minute to realize you are joking. Everytime you joke around with us, we think that you are speaking low of us for asking questions or voicing our concerns to you. It definitely created a decent amount of animosity among the students against you. Please be weary of that of the future, and please say you are joking faster. - please teach the class as if we do not know anything. Many of us, were taking diffeq with this class, we did not take fluids or BIOE340. We are not familiar with diffusion and navier stokes. Please do not teach it and skip steps between the first time you show it to us. It got all of us boggled out. - Finally, please do not make the exams or projects sound worse than they are. It lead to a lot of stress among the students. I understand it is a tactic to make us all study hard BUT i think a lot of us were having mental breakdowns for this class.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/09/2024

I wanted to give him a zero, but thats not possible. So I give him, a one. I think there are many issues with the way Helim teaches this class. First off, he assigns spontaneous classwork assignments that are graded on accuracy, and students are only given around 10 minutes to complete them without any warning and without properly being taught the content. It felt like having an exam each class period, and were very unfair since the readings would only be posted the day before, so none of the students had time to read the textbook and learn the content. It was the first time we were applying the content and those assignments were graded on accuracy, which was completely unfair since we were on a time limit (compared to the homework, where we were given a week to complete and was graded on completion). Additionally I would leave the class and always be late for my class directly after because of the classwork assignments, so my grade in my next class was affected as well because I was always late. I once tried to express the unfairness of this to Helim and he responded sarcastically "In the real world what are you gonna do when you have a problem", and then proceeded to ignore all my questions about the classwork afterwards. When it came to the exams, I think they were pretty fair given the homework but were very long so often I didn't finish. To make things worse Helim would give a condescending speech after each exam telling us how we didn't study hard enough and how the exam was supposed to be easy. A professor should be trying to help students when they are struggling not make snide remarks and accuse them of not working hard. The only reason I managed to be on track for an A is because the TA's were amazing, even though I am doing alright in the class it is most definitely not accredited to the professor. His teaching style was not very helpful as he would often just pull up a pdf of his notes, and teach using that. He would occasionally solve problems on the board, this was the only helpful part but I wished he used an ipad not a whiteboard because it was really hard to read. Last but not least, in addition to being an unhelpful professor he was also not a nice person and very irritable. He would act annoyed when people had questions on treat them like they were dumb, unless he was in the occasional good mood. A friend of mine once came to campus at 9am to meet with him for office hours, and she asked Helim a question to which he responded "What is your grade in the class". She answered that she had an A and he said "I don't believe you, there is no way you just asked the question you did and have an A". She left the office hours really upset and disheartened, and this professor seems to have it out against women in stem particularly. During the third exam he went around trying to talk to people while they were taking the exam, which was extremely distracting given how difficult the third exam was. Overall one of the worst professors I've had in BIOE, which is saying a lot because I've had some really bad professors.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
04/16/2024

I have quite literally never had a professor as rude and unaccommodating as him. I’m not sure why people like this choose to be professors of college kids. He makes fun of students trying to answer questions in class when they get them wrong, never responds to emails, and when he does, they are incredibly disrespectful. I’m a junior and I have never written a review before but I had to for this prof. He is also just a bad teacher. Everything I learned is from the TAs and I went to every lecture.

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/24/2024

Dr. Koh is such a great professor! It is clear that he truly cares about his students genuinely understanding the material and wants them to do well in the class. He is great at reading the room and will always be willing to take more time to further explain anything that causes any confusion. He is also always available for office hours or one-on-one meetings after class if you still need some help. Just be sure to come to class since he gives little participation points. Highly recommend for BIOE371!!!!

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/18/2024

I really enjoyed having Dr. Koh for this class! Just like other reviews say he often gives explanations that can be difficult to understand (I'm pretty sure due to a language barrier), but his slides completely make up for this. Some tips for the course (study a lot!): 1. I learned mostly from the slides, but they are very good slides and comprehensive. There are practice problems on the slides with steps worked out and the formulas you need to remember are clearly indicated. Memorize the formulas it makes the class easier. 2. Review your DE notes there is a lot of solving methods he breezes by b/c its a prereq course. Dif eq is a very hefty part of this course, so its super important you remember and understand how to solve DEs! 3. Complete lots of practice! He provides weekly worksheets on the content with worked out answers. I came across few incorrect answers, but typically they were arithmetic errors not wrong ways to solve the problems. The solutions sometimes contain different methods than class as a heads up (this doesn't necessarily mean the answer was incorrect). I believe Dr. Koh is just using old resources for the class. 4. Go to office hours whether it be your TA or Dr. Koh's! As you progress through the HWs they get way harder and unrelated to the slides. I had to attend TA office hours for a few of the HWs b/c the slides and the lecture weren't helpful on how to complete them. 5. Ask questions through problems! Dr. Koh doesn't explain concepts the best, so if you're confused about how to approach a problem do it through a practice problem or walk through a solution with him (or a TA). I'm also going to state I disagree with another review here as I feel like I experienced the class totally different than they did. As always take review with a grain of salt, but I'm going to try and provide a lot of info based on my experience! Here are the points I disagreed with: 1. You can do about half the HWs based off the lectures/slides and the practice problem solutions. The practice problem solutions helped me a lot more with the homework! Typically, he gives at least 1 hard question on the HW that I needed to see a TA for. 2. The first exam had a fair amount of linear algebra on it. It was all in the true/false sections of his exam. I do agree that it was mostly ODEs. (Side note: linear algebra explains using eigenvalues as solns to ODEs and is very important in theory so this is why it is taught) 3. I believe my class actually did well on the midterm and curving wasn't involved! I know I got everything correct (through remembering the problems and checking afterwards using wolfram) and made one mistake. My exam was graded accordingly and I got one point off for that mistake. If he did curve he would've added points (he didn't talk about percentage adjustments) which would've pushed me above a 100% for that exam. I found all the midterms (except the final it was very hard) to be fair and similar to in class content. He literally tells people what is going to be on the exam, but you have to attend ALL the lectures b/c he says 1 topic every other class. 4. This class has basis in EE, but people forget that bioes build prosthetics which is basically this class. The "EE" problems are control engineering problems which look like circuits and are used in circuits, but aren't exactly circuits (would take long to explain this lol). You use the linear algebra and ODE stuff you learned earlier in the course to do control engineering. The application is how to design feedback through math (system of ODEs) to make a prosthetic move a certain way. This is a form of bioe its just not pure bio which is why I think people are upset!

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
11/22/2023

Dr. Koh is an incredible professor. He is extremely kind and accommodating. He gives real world applications to make the class more engaging and is attuned to the general student response to new content. If he senses there is any confusion he will stay on the topic and explain it again until he feels everyone understands. He will also review concepts from previous classes if it was challenging. He is receptive to questions and genuinely wants his students to succeed. This class is challenging but with Dr. Koh's help it will be much easier to understand! Highly recommend, but do make sure to go to class (like all other classes) for the highest chance of success!

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
11/13/2023

Dr. Koh, while nice, is one of the worst professors in the BIOE department-- expect to learn NOTHING from any of his classes. His lectures are confusing, and when asked questions he makes the concept even more confusing than it was to begin with. There was one class where he tried explaining a MATLAB code, only to end the class and saying "oh sorry that's wrong." There was another where he gave out a quiz and when half the class raised their hands to ask quesitons, he gave a hint, leading to more hands to raise (he did not give a quiz again after this). Not only this, but half of his practice problems' solutions are wrong, leaving little material to study with when it comes to exams. The HWs and practice problems are semi-helpful, but ONLY if your TA is good because you won't be able to do it from just Dr. Koh's lectures. I was honestly better off teaching myself from the lecture slides on my own time, but be warned that he does in-class participation assignments very often due to the lack of students attending his class after the first few weeks (I wonder why), and missing these could definitely drop your grade. On top of all of this, Dr. Koh's currciculum COMPLETELY flies off the rails after a couple of weeks. The first midterm ONLY focused on ODEs when the first "unit" was 50% linear algebra, and then after this point he actually started giving us electrical problems more complicated than what we see in BIOE457. This is compleletly inconsistent with other professor's lectures (the semester before didn't touch on any electronics), and none of it is explained well either. The practice exams he gives to study are from ENAE301, and both these and any problems provided are not as hard as the ones on the exams at all. Even our TA felt bad after the first one. Dr. Koh says that he won't curve or change the grade distribution, but I'm convinced that he saw the results on the first midterm and bumped all our grades up by a significant amount, without saying anything because the average was way higher than what anyone expected. As someone who had him for 241 for his first semester teaching, I expected him to get better, but he's unfortunately just the worst. I don't know why they're giving him more classes to teach in the department when he has one of the worst reviews out of all of the professors in the department. Good luck though, and make sure to make friends in the class and ask the TA a lot of questions!

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
07/07/2023

took it over summer. passing, but was a horrible experience. he is the least personable person ive met at college.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
07/06/2023

Took it over summer. This guy is the least personable person I've met in college. He is rude and comes across as having a massive superiority complex. He regards everything he does as being easy, when it's the students' first time learning it. First exam was not bad (average was an 80), second was made horribly and average was a 50. He didn't space the lectures out correctly so he crammed the third exam in a week after the second exam (two lectures), leaving us to self teach most of the content. His pop quizzes were made to be very difficult, but you can get points back. First exam was an hour long. Second exam took us two hours (an hour overtime). The third took 3 hours (2 hours overtime). That's class from 12:30pm to 2:30, then exam from 2:30 to 5:30. The highest grade in the class is a B, and 90% of the class has a C. There is no curve. If you are not confident with diffeq, taking this over summer will tank your gpa, unless you make sure to grind 5 hours per day.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
06/13/2023

I spent so long every week working on this class. I went to office hours every week,did the homework in advance, went to every class and discussion, and tried my best and barely passed with a C. I have never struggled in a class like I did in this one. The exams are tricky and it his goal is to confuse you, the in class "extra credit" was my 13th reason, and his teaching style just really sucks. Doing the homework and fully understanding it really really heps so make sure you do that. Half the class is doing awful in the class and half the class seemed to be doing amazing so he doesn't curve, but he really should. He is really funny at times, but this is balanced out by how mean he can come across at other times. I like him as a person but certainly not as a professor.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
06/05/2023

I usually never review professors or classes because I never really leave the class with strong opinions on anything ngl. But Helim is the exception. Helim is genuinely one of the worst, most unsympathetic, most uncaring professors I’ve ever had the displeasures of taking. He does not care about his students at all. During class he “teaches us” by rambling/mumbling/muttering through a pdf of his chicken scratch handwritten notes (copied straight from the textbook, often littered with mistakes) in a quiet monotone near-whisper. When asked to provide more examples or explain his work he just says go to the TA’s office hours or there are examples in the textbook. Some of the materials provided by the TA’s literally have disclaimers that their work may have mistakes/ be incorrect. (The textbook is also awful, there are no steps written out for the examples, barely any explanations, and the homework is so disconnected from the chapter. He does not curve, he only gives small amounts of random extra credit. He consistently contradicts the textbook, the TA’s, and himself in class. He gives random in class quizzes based on the material he taught in the same lesson. nHe does no care about his students well being at all. My grandfather passed away during the beginning of finals and I was not doing well. I wrote him an email explaining my situation and asked him If I could take the last midterm in a couple days because I was grieving. HE NEVER EVEN REPLIED TO THE EMAIL EVEN THOUGH HE SAW IT. I went to talk to him after class about my email and he cut me off and just said “there’s nothing I can do for you”, no sorry no nothing. I was genuinely appalled. He is rude to students who ask questions and does not care about anything really. Being near this man actually makes me want to peel my skin off. Ngl I would take him for bioe371 because the other option is Koh. But just be aware of his ‘teaching’ style ig and lack of basic human empathy.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
06/02/2023

He is extremely rude to most students. If I could I would give him a 0/5 because he does not care about students succeeding in his class whatsoever. He gave us extra credit which did help, but some of the extra credit was really hard, and hardly anyone got credit for it. He used the extra credit as an excuse to not curve the class so that he does not have to do extra work at the end. A lot of students were scared to ask him questions because he always responded weirdly or was rude. Whenever someone did ask him questions, he would tell that person to ask the TA which is weird because he is literally the professor that's getting paid...... TAs were extremely helpful in this class because he just did not wanna answer any questions and disliked the class for some reason. Overall: one of the worst classes I have taken because he was so awful at teaching and genuinely did not care about the students succeeding in the class.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
05/15/2023

Helim was not a good professor for this class. He would display and read a PDF of his written notes for the entire class and only wrote out steps to an example once per class. It was very hard to learn concepts when all you got in class are sped-up verbal instructions and a PDF that was equally as confusing. He is also an extremely degrading individual who makes anyone who doesn't understand feel stupid for not understanding. When people asked questions in class that seemed simple, he would say things like "oh, you should know this already" or "have you not been paying attention?" I went to his 1 on 1 office hours because I was still confused about the concepts we were learning, and I asked to go over 1 problem step by step. He responded with "we went over examples of this in class, you still don't get it? I'm not going to go step by step because we already did that." The concepts aren't too difficult, but the way they are taught is not the best. The TA discussion and office hours are what helped me the most so defiantly go to those. Homework is based on completion, but they are super long. The exam questions were reasonable but time was a huge issue because the problems were lengthy. He also give graded classwork about topics that were covered in that class so be prepared.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/14/2023

Horrible experience. He is a rude and inconsiderate person. The homeworks are difficult, the exams are borderline impossible, and he gives very little extra credit on exams (the exam averages were consistently in the low 60s, and he does not curve). This class humbled me deeply and has to be the hardest I've taken thus far (harder than orgo and diffeq). I was kinda hoping this guy would be fired at some point during the semester because his grumpy ass should not be teaching if he's out to fail us all.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting a C
Anonymous
05/10/2023

He makes the easiest concepts, hard. His "notes" are the same as the book just in his own handwriting. The textbook isn't great either. He makes homework based on completion, but his grading is honestly horrible. There's barely any partial credit given for exams. The final is optional, but most people are taking it because the class midterms were OKAY. The average was around the 60-70s every time. Feel so bad for us BIOE, I thought DiffEq was meh, but this doesn't compare. He just makes it harder because he doesn't know how to explain or teach. Seems like a cool guy, but he's rude. Each lecture the class is always so quiet because we're all just trying to process what's going on set aside a few.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
03/15/2023

This guy is trash but I'm giving him 2 stars instead of 1 because there isn't a better option than him (as of 2023). About the professor: - He is incredibly rude to his students and really doesn't seem to care about them either. For example, when we asked when the homework answer keys will be posted, he responded with "when you see them on elms." Or someone will ask for him to go over an example and he says, "no... there are examples in the textbook." It's almost comedic how disconnected he is with his students. About his teaching: -This man pulls out a pdf of hand-written notes (riddled with mistakes) from whenever he started teaching this course and mumbles through this pdf the entire class. He says "this goes here and then you do this and then you have the answer... moving on" all while scrolling through this confusing pdf of notes and very rarely writing things on the board. This goes back to him not giving a flying f*ck about his students because he's too lazy to write out the examples on the white board. Although, when he does muster up the energy to go through something on the board, it makes sense and is easy to follow. - He also gives pop quizzes on the same material covered in class that day. You can just see the panic and confusion in most people's faces when he gives these pop quizzes... he calls them "independent classwork." - The homework is incredibly difficult and you need to go to the TAs office hours AND discussion sections in order to complete it. On the bright side, it's graded for completion. - The exams are brutal and he does not give that much partial credit. It's not even the concepts that are difficult, he just finds a way to make "easy" material very difficult by making the algebra for most questions incredibly long and tedious (time crunch). He does not curve the exams but he does give out extra credit (in the form of confusing pop-quizzes). The other teacher for this class, Dr. Koh, is even worse so I would take Espinoza but just beware and make sure you prioritize it if you want a good grade. Both teachers are awful but at least Espinoza makes the final optional. Good luck, you'll need it for this class :)

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Anonymous
01/25/2023

Blames students for not understanding the material when the whole class is struggling to pass. Much harder than previous lecturers for the class. Exams are lengthy, challenging, and not curved. Lectures were impossible to follow, he even once did a whole lecture with a dry erase marker that wouldn't write. Mostly reads off of slides, but the examples on the slides are always significantly easier than the problems on the exam. Even the TAs felt bad for the students in this course.

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
01/07/2023

Let's begin this review with a personal anecdote in regards to the last homework we had for the semester. I showed one of my electrical engineering friends one of the questions, which NO ONE had figured out (I asked 13 classmates), and my EE friend responded that this was a question that was straight out of the class material for ENEE222. ENEE222 is a weed-out electrical engineering course, "Discrete Signal Analysis". That alone should tell you how astronomically difficult this course was, and how useless Dr. Koh was as an instructor. I have to admit, he is a really nice guy. I honestly felt bad for him at first -- maybe it's his first time teaching, maybe he's never taught linear algebra in general. But my sympathy for him dissipated quickly when I realized he had no sympathy for his students either: for starters, he refused to curve. Not sure if this is because he planned to curve the final exam (somehow the average was an 83.9 and I got an 83, which boggles my mind), but the idea of not having any extra credit or cushioning from homework after performing poorly on midterms was mentally stressful for the entire class. Dr. Koh was assigned with teaching linear algebra in BIOE371. NOT controls, or discrete signals, or anything RELATED to block diagrams. I had shown previous BIOE371 students the material we were learning (those who had Esperanza), and NONE of them could recognize it. Forget everything you learn about linear algebra for the first 2 months of the class, because the second 2 turn this class into an electrical engineering elective. It's literally just controller designs all day long, that never get fully explained. Yes, he has examples in his lecture slides. Yes, he also tries to articulate the conceptual meaning behind them, but none of that matters if you have NOTHING pertaining to the level of content one might find on the homework, or on midterms. If you did not go to the TA directly and get homework help, you were screwed. Prepare for many sleepless nights scrambling with your friends to find other friends who might have an idea where to start, if you don't go to the TA. And guess what? The TAs don't have a SINGLE clue what to do until they look at the answer key, because THAT'S how foreign the material for this class was. Had Dr. Koh stuck to the content covered by Esperanza, we'd have no real excuse to complain other than the fact that this is an already difficult class. But by putting his own twists and spending an entire half of the semester on material that had NOTHING to do with matrices, eigenvectors, eigenvalues, and normal linear algebra, he destined the entire class for failure. I cannot even begin to express how thankful, no, how *grateful* I feel for having passed this class, knowing that half of the class either (1) withdrew midsemester or (2) failed the final and had to retake it. You can tell how many students failed this time around because next semester's BIOE371 is already booked to the brim for BOTH sections. There's even a waitlist for one of them! I don't think I could ever handle this class ever again. My deepest condolences to my fallen brethren. Please mentally prepare yourself for an ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING elective, NOT a BIOENGINEERING LINEAR SYSTEMS class. I'll end this review with a direct quote from one of the TA's, when I had asked where on the internet I may find extra resources to practice controller systems before the final exam: "I have no idea, in fact, I tried looking for myself, and couldn't find anything."

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Anonymous
12/13/2022

This guy absolutely makes zero sense in lecture. HWs are extremely hard and exams are terrible.

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Anonymous
12/12/2022

So bad. I mean BIOE371 is not easy but it should not be this painful. This guy just points at the board and doesn't explain shit. He just points at letters and expects us to understand. "this guy then goes here and then that happens" like bruh, don't teach the class if you can't explain the material well. Also apparently Helim sucks too but he makes the final optional??? Koh does not

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Anonymous
12/08/2022

Awful teacher for 371. Nice guy

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Anonymous
12/06/2022

Omfg the whole class is screwed for the final

Kyung Koh
BIOE371

Anonymous
11/29/2022

I really gave this guy many chances. He is probably one of the worst professors I’ve had yet. The WHOLE CLASS never understands what he’s talking about and the TAs are even like “wtf are you learning?” Let’s get this class clear. This is not linear algebra—it is a controls class written IN linear algebra. Linear algebra is not a pre req. Taking linear algebra won’t really help you much in the grand scheme of things. The second week, he told us “i hope you guys have taken linear algebra” and that the reason we don’t understand the content is because we’re not Ivy League students. He seems like a sweet guy but he really can’t teach! He reads the slides and mumbles nonsense. At one point I kid you not only 6 people attended class. That changed when he made attendance mandatory…. Going to class is a waste of time. The only way people learn is from the TAs going over how to do the hw from the answer key. Exams are ridiculously hard.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/02/2022

Although Helim can be a bit soft spoken in class and does go really fast some days, he will listen if you tell him to speak up and is pretty accommodating. I still thought he was a great professor and taught diff eq way better than my actual diff eq prof. He is also funny and relates things to actual bio and engineering concepts if you listen carefully. He’s also great in office hours. To get a good grade, go to every discussion and every class. It’s ok if you miss some class days, but definitely don’t miss discussion. The TAs go over HW problems due that week and will help with any example you ask. Both Helim and the TAs also will basically tell you exactly how the exam will be set up and what each question is going to be (it’s category). Helim also gives a practice exam the lecture before every exam and the TAs hold an exam review after this answering the whole thing. The practice exam is usually exactly like the actual exam (represents each category of question that will be asked). Extra credit is also great. Does give classwork “quizzes” in class but will help you so that you solve the problem correctly, just ask. Overall great class and great prof! Not an easy A but definitely doable.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
05/18/2022

His lectures are terrible. The hw is terrible. The exams are okay. Help from the TAs were the only thing that made this class bearable. Do not take this professor if you have any other choice. His notes arent very helpful and his class is not engaging AT ALL. One of the worst

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
03/30/2022

He simply has copy-pasted the textbook for his lecture slides...how is this not plagiarism? His handwritten notes leave much to be deserved in terms of understandability and legibility. He speaks so quiet sometimes you don't even know he is in the room. He randomly assigns "classwork" giving you 5 minutes to submit something hastily handwritten at the end of class. The only good thing is that he grades homework for completion so you can actually check the answers and learn without panicking. This is where you will actually learn the material. The exams, contrary to what people are posting below, are not simply practice homework problems. You should look at examples from the textbook he mentions to "Study" in class as well. Apparently he also doesn't allow examples on reference sheets for exams? Strange.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/29/2021

I am not sure why everyone rates Helim so low, but his class was very fair and I felt that I learned a lot. Forst, it was an 8 AM class which did make it difficult to focus, and his lectures are basically him going through the textbook in his own handwriting. However, I thought he made more sense than the textbook, and he skipped over things in the text that you wouldn't have known if you didn't go to lecture. The homework was very long (6 + pages), and was only graded for completion. However, the reason I rate this class so highly was that our exams always had only problems from the homework, discussion, or class with minor modifications. So basically, if you show up to class, discussion, and at least go over the homework answers (which he posts), you should do extremely well on the exams. On top of that, he gave many opportunities for extra credit on each exam, and the discussion was a great tool to teach you how to solve specific problems that would almost always show up on the exam. TL;DR Go to class, do the homework, and go to discussions and there is no reason you shouldn't get at least an A-

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/20/2021

Yes, lecture is pretty much repeating the textbook. I thought he made more sense than the text and if he didn't you could just ask questions in class, so you don't have to open the text if you go to class. He also hints at what questions will and won't be tested. Homework is completion. Classwork is graded, but collaborative and you can ask him or TAs for help. Exams were very fair. Questions taken straight from hw or lecture notes or were very similar. Allowed equation sheet. Lowest two non-exam grades were dropped. Lots of opportunity for extra credit applied to exam grades. Final is optional, don't count on taking the final. TAs were very useful. We worked on hw in discussions. They led review sessions leading up to every test. Overall, I felt like he wanted us to succeed and was accommodating. He even tried new teaching style of working out problems and taking questions/problems from students during class, but the class voted to return to his old lecture style.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Expecting a C
Anonymous
05/21/2019

Avoid if you can. He made 371 harder and more difficult than it's supposed to be. He has ridiculously high standards and he claims he is not curving. Gives extra credit as a "curve" but he usually picks the most difficult questions for extra cred, making it nearly impossible to get. It doesn't even boost your grade. We had a take-home exam due the day before finals that was extremely difficult and took up so much time. if there was a 0-star rating I would give him that.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
03/25/2019

If I can give him less than a star, I would. He doesn't teach. His notes (which he reads off of) are straight from the textbook so there's no point in going to class. Even when he tries to do examples of problems, he only focuses on the ones already in the book. The way the grading system work is really messed up. Quizzes are 25% of your grade, and the lowest one isn't dropped. This is very frustrating because the class is at 9am and the quizzes are given the first 10 minutes of class. So if you miss one, you're screwed. Only way I can probably pass this class is if he curves.

Jose Aranda-Espinoza
BIOE371

Anonymous
03/18/2019

Absolutely the worst professor in the world I can assure you. Never take him because you will end up learning nothing from him. He may be a nice person, but he cannot teach. He has zero passion for teaching and if you take his class he has ridiculous standards for every student. Unless if you're phenomenally good at math, you will struggle if he's the professor for 371. Avoid at all costs. I am not even a bad student but the semester I took his class affected my grades, solely because he was the professor for 371. He doesn't teach, he just reads the textbook to us, and even when he attempts to teach, he never really explains anything and assumes we all understand. Even when you go to his office hours he is frustrating to talk to. I would never advise my worst enemy to take his class, that's how horrible he is as a professor.

Benjamin Shapiro
BIOE371

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
11/03/2016

He's a great professor and knows his stuff (he likes giving examples based on cars and cruise control). His quizzes can be crazy at times and i had 2 or 3 quizzes with zeros but I still ended up with a B+ in the class. His exams are standard and this is were you need to pick up and slack from quizzes so as long as you pay attention in class, study and understand his notes you can easily get a perfect score. He cares about students understanding material so he will ask multiple times before moving on if you understand so if you don't just say you don't.

Reviews for BIOE371