Reviews for CMSC389Z

Information Review
Michael Marsh
CMSC389Z

Expecting a C
Anonymous
01/24/2023 		The only reason why I didn’t rate prof Marsh a 0 is because he seems to be a generally nice guy, lenient on deadlines, records his lectures, and replies to piazza quickly. But that’s just not enough to be a good teacher. You have to teach. First off, This class is horribly put together. Marsh uses scripts to grade, but doesn’t show you how those scripts are written, so its constant guessing to know if you’ve done something right or wrong. His projects (in this elective at least) are very loosely defined, and after reading the description you don’t have a great idea of what exactly your supposed to do and what his scripts are expecting.. Second, the lectures do not really “teach” you anything. The amount of times I had to go to youtube or use an online resource with a proper explanation.. too many to count. The only requirements are 216, however from the first day Professor marsh was already using terminology as though we had taken 417. His lectures are just him talking about things only people who already knew the material could possibly hope to understand. Prof marsh seems not to understand that we have no background in this subject and never uses images or diagrams in his explanations.. only words. What good is a word if you have no concept of what it means? This is a networking class, a picture would go a long way. Marsh Never breaks down a complex idea into basic ones, just expects you to know what he’s talking about. His style of lecturing is really just rambling. It is really easy to get bored when you are lost Even the pdf he put together for the class has several typos where bits off code are just cut off, causing errors when you run them. In the book, he uses words that he hasnt explained (just like his lectures) and all the ideas seem disconnected Perhaps I’m being too harsh and this is merely the 1 credit winter STIC experience at umd. But if given the chance I would never have taken this course