ENEE244 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 06/06/2024	Wade reads off the slides for this class, but it is a lot more helpful compared to 150. Class is boring, but Wade is one of the nicest professors I've had, allowing me to take extensions on a few of the homework assignments. The bulk of the course work that aren't quizzes or exams is the homework, which can be around 10-20 problems per chapter. You can expect to have 2 quizzes, 2 exams, and 6-7 homeworks, depending how far you get into the class. GRADING IS VERY LENIENT, and if you put even a little time into studying, you are guaranteed at least a B- on any exam or quiz, including the final.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/21/2024	For reference, I review all my professors, and my average review is 4.2, 4.13 weighted by credit Singularities/Unique because: - New to teaching, still adjusting for sure - Dr. Wade is Senegalese and a very nice man, though reserved, again I think because he is nervous and still adjusting to teaching. - 2 Midterms and a final, 25% each. 6, maybe 7 in the future, grueling homeworks that make the exams really easy. Plenty of extension time to do them, as well. You'll probably like: - Discussion TAs don't have much else to do, so they'll go ahead of lecture so you get to see and do everything twice. This is a skill-based class - the only memory you need is in the flip-flops ;). - Easy exams, easy grading, curved if necessary. - Nice guy if you talk to him, will explain things well 1-on-1, and yes he does have a sense of humor, just have to get over a little bit of a culture/language barrier You might get frustrated by: - Yes, he is a little robotic. Largely teaches by reading through his slides, and explaining increasingly complicated diagrams as the semester goes on, and there isn't always filler information for him to add, so it certainly gets dry after a while. - Sometimes, it's hard to get a question answered, because usually you're asking about a specific part of a diagram, and it takes a while to get on the same page with him. Dr. Wade struggles a little bit with interruptions, such as tech issues or these long breaks for specific questions. The bottom line is, Dr. Wade does what a professor is supposed to do. He teaches to the best of his ability, makes sure you learn, and gives fair exams. His way of doing this might not be anyone's favorite, and hence the 4-star review, but it absolutely works if you have a little patience and motivation.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/14/2024	Wade’s lectures were subpar. He essentially just gives you material straight from the book, and at a snail’s pace. My TA covered the same material as Wade in around 1/3 of the time. I would have enjoyed seeing other interesting examples or additional intuition behind why things work, but again he basically just rehashes the book. Exams and homeworks were quite easy. However the first few homeworks were really excessively long (even though the material is not particularly hard) so start early. It’s an easy class overall, but pretty boring. Be prepared.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2024	Professor Wade is a great professor for this course. He wants you to pass, so he welcomes questions, and creates fair quizzes and exams. Power points for 244 are easy to follow, making this one of the easiest ENEE courses.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/09/2024	Mr. Wade is a very nice professor who genuienly cares for his students learning. His slides are inspired directly from the textbook and he's pretty good at exlaining the course concepts clearly. The class itself is pretty easy, and I enjoyed his teaching overall. Would recommend :)
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/09/2024	very nice guy. the material may not be everyone's favorite, but he writes exams that tests what you see in class.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/08/2024	244 with Wade is an extremely easy course. His lectures can be boring at times, and occasionally he overcomplicates the easier topics, but just go to discussion and everything usually clicks. The homework's are very tedious, and can sometimes be hard, but they make the exams feel extremely easy. He gives lots of time to complete each homework, and gives a 3 day grace period for them all. As long as you can get over some somewhat boring lectures, Wade is a good professor.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A- Anonymous 02/14/2024	Class, is medium difficulty but Wade curved. Take it with Wade
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/15/2023	He’s a very nice guy and cares about his students learning, I would just recommend some more examples in the slides and he would be perfect
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/14/2023	Dr. Wade is super understanding. I had a rough semester, and him being understanding about it helped me a lot. He is approachable and will happily help you in his office hours. His exams are easy and fair, and he is very lenient grader. There are 2 midterms which are both 25% and so is the final. Although, I did have have to teach myself most of the class. He just reads off of the lecture slides and doesn't really teach you the why behind things. I think it would help a lot if he had more engaging slides, I just feel like he picks up the textbook definitions and puts them in the slides (but I have never opened the textbook so..). Reading through his slides will guarantee you a 100% on the tests. This class has no complicated concepts anyway (it gets complicated after ch5) and you should be good with YouTube vids, HW, and asking TAs questions. He doesn't post solutions to homeworks which I wish he did because they can help a lot during revision. He has pop quizzes which are 10% of your grade. They are super easy and he tells you about them in advance. Take him if you want an A in this class.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/11/2023	Even though Dr. Wade is a nice professor who's lenient with grades, he's not a great lecturer. He takes the examples and information directly from the book that we follow in class, even though the book has mistakes in both its concepts and its examples. Sometimes, he catches on to these and lets us know in the lecture, but other times he does not; regardless, I felt like I couldn't trust 100% of the information he presented in lecture. Additionally, his homeworks felt hit-or-miss, because some of them took extremely long to complete but were easy, while for other ones, I didn't really understand what the problem was asking for and the mentioned problem felt too far to what we were being presented in class. Finally, Dr. Wade's pacing isn't great, since he spends a lot more time with binary-related computations such as addition and subtraction (and not as much on other topics that seem more useful, such as k-maps), but TAs can go more or less in detail on what is more or less important in the class.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/02/2023	The fact that Wade is the only professor for 244 and 245 would be less than ideal even if he was the best professor in the world, and he very much is not. He doesn't really plan his pacing well for going through content. The homework for each chapter is due "a week after finishing the chapter" and the exams are "a month after we finish chapter 3." It's not like he was springing exams on us without warning or anything but as someone who likes to plan I really would have appreciated actually knowing when exams were going to be at the beginning of the semester. We are almost at the end of the semester and it seems like we won't finish chapter 7, which seems common for Wade. Also, homeworks are incredibly lengthy so definitely do not procrastinate. Luckily he just assigns problems from the textbook so pretty much all the answers are online. I would tell you to try and get someone else but it doesn't seem like you can.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/05/2023	Great Professor. Super smart and helps you with homeworks, exams, and is really there for you to succeed.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A- Agt 05/11/2023	Jerry is a great option for ENEE244! Pros: -Industry-experienced and highly knowledgeable about hardware design -Jerry cares about your individual success, and is always willing to answer your questions and look into grading issues. -Jerry offers fair - perhaps easy - exams which closely correspond with homework, and curves exam scores that don't average in the [B-, A+] range! -Jerry is happy to provide greater learning opportunities for students who are uniquely interested in hardware design, and is willing to mentor and write recommendations for students who are exploring his industry. -Attendance in lecture is NOT mandatory, except in the form of rare pop-quizzes during lecture. Nonetheless, these quizzes are only worth ~3% of your grade anyway. -Attendance in discussion is NOT mandatory, except during pre-announced dates where a discussion quiz is given. Cons: -Jerry has a thick accent which means that his lectures are sometimes difficult to follow. -Study guides are NOT provided in this class, although Jerry IS transparent about exam topics and his exam questions do align closely with homework. -Lectures are NOT recorded.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2023	Full disclosure: I haven't finished the course. I haven't even taken the second exam (it is on 5/10, the current day is 5/7). This class. I don't even have words to describe how bad it is. Easily the most poorly paced class I have taken so far at the university. Let's start with exams. The first exam covered chapters 1-3, or in other words, the units so incredibly easy that a 5 year old could do it. The only reason I didn't get 100% on that exam is because I didn't fully simplify something. That was in mid-March. The second exam is covering chapters 4-7, which is digital logic is actually somewhat applied. It is on the last day of class. The final is immediately the following week, which I know for a fact we won't get the second exam back to help study for it. And guess what? We don't have chapter 7 homework, but content from it can still show up on the second exam and final. The "Midterm 2 Practice" folder on ELMS? IT ONLY COVERS UP TO CHAPTER 5. It's not like this class is difficult either. Every quiz and exam I've taken has been incredibly easy, and I don't anticipate the upcoming exams to be difficult either. It's just that Wade does not know how to pace his class, and doesn't provide anything to compensate. His lectures are almost completely skippable. Don't go to them, except when there's a quiz or exam. I promise, you will likely get nothing from it. I certainly didn't. All he does is regurgitate the slides, which are posted to ELMS anyways. He barely adds his own touch, especially as the semester goes on. Honestly, part of this is a failure of the ECE department. Some concepts are introduced, such as the carry-lookahead adder and synchronous counters. But forget about breadboarding, we don't even see a simulator such as Logisim used to give an intuitive understanding of why these would be used instead of the ripple counterparts. I've had experience with breadboarding digital electronics before, so I am fully aware of everything introduced in this class. Heck, much of this material until chapter 6 is pretty much verbatim what I learned in PLTW Digital Electronics, and I didn't need a programming prerequisite to take that class. I certainly didn't need to have a sophomore standing in college. I even got breadboarding experience out of that, which I certainly can't say for this waste of time of a class. Anyways, I feel bad that 3 classes next semester are being stuck with Wade. How is it possible that 3 major track courses for electrical engineering only have 1 professor? I was debating whether to give this professor a 1 or 2 star rating, and honestly, I fully believe he deserves a 1 star for his teaching in ENEE244. It isn't hard, but it's entirely worthless. Just hope you get a good TA in case the awful textbook trips you up.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/03/2023	The homework in this class is no joke. Wade assigns a homework for each chapter we learn, approximately once every two weeks. Make sure to get started on it early because it will take many hours to complete. Homework is not very hard but VERY time consuming, i.e. making us draw a truth table for a massive circuit that takes up an entire page (I feel bad for the TAs that have to grade this stuff). Basically just busy work but at least it forces you to get a ton of practice and get the concepts down well. Wade is somewhat lenient with due dates for the assignments, allowing students to turn it in a few days late. Lectures are extremely boring, more than half of the class doesn't even show up. Looking at the lecture slides and watching YouTube videos is likely a lot more productive. If you've taken CMSC250 already, the first half of this class is basically just a review of stuff you already know. Exams and quizzes weren't very hard.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/13/2023	Pacing was poor and resulted in not covering content which was necessary for ENEE245. Although the exams were easy, homework was tedious and miserable. Although this class was an easy A given the content, I would not recommend this professor for anything more involved.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/05/2023	HW is really tedious and repetitive, although it is not difficult to do at all and you are given insanely long periods of time to do it. Exams are very easy and Prof. Wade will answer any questions you have thoroughly. However, Prof. Wade teaches this class extremely slowly and at the end of the semester there were large chunks of content Prof. Wu's class went over that we just never did (half of chapter 5 and onwards). I basically never showed up to class and vague memories from PLTW Digital Electronics in highschool as well as CMSC250 was more than enough to comfortably get through this class. Take Prof. Wade if you want an easy A, but don't expect to learn very much. I'm somewhat worried that ENEE245 is going to be terrible now because we didn't go over so much content that is the basis for it.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/31/2022	Good class. Homeworks and exams could be a bit long, but he generally let us stay after class so we can finish. He doesn't curve, but offers some extra credit on the exams to help boost grades. Everything is very fair, no weird trick questions or anything. Solid prof who cares about his students.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/12/2022	Overall a good professor. He can be a bit hard to understand sometimes, and the lectures seem unnecessarily complicated given the simplicity of the material, once you get to actually doing the homework. The homework assignments were reasonable and the exams were too, although they definitely need to be a bit shorter to accomodate a 75 minute window. Because there was no class after ours, it was not uncommon for an exam to take 90 minutes, sometimes closer to 105 minutes, because he kept giving us more time since over half the class would still be working at the end. My TA really helped with difficult and weird concepts, though, which made it all much more manageable.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/01/2022	Prof. Wade's teaching leaves a lot to be desired. His pacing is way off which can be quite frustrating. Homeworks are long and hard, tests and quizzes are the exact opposite. Do not reccomend.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/25/2022	Straightforward lectures, but we are critically behind the syllabus (Chapter 4, out of 8 in syllabus at Thanksgiving Break). Infrequent but absurdly long homework (4-5 hours). Easy quizzes and exams. Would not recommend.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/16/2022	His lectures are rough and straight from the text book, but that does allow easy review and he posts his slides which are basically cliff notes of the text book. The homeworks are long but the quizzes and exams are extremely straight forward.
Manoj Franklin ENEE244 Anonymous 05/05/2022	The worst professor I have ever taken at this university. His lectures are filled with him talking nonsense and his exams are beyond what we learned in class. The averages are extremely low and he blames it on the questions being poorly written when it was him not being able to teach his class. The whole class a week before the exam was trying to teach themselves the material but no one could help each other because everyone else was lost. Only curved 2 points on a 25 point exam when the average was a 13/25. I wanted to learn from him and I actively paid attention during lecture but I was unable to retain any of the information he would mumble on about.
Manoj Franklin ENEE244 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 04/26/2022	Manoj is EXTREMELY knowledgeable. He comes into the lecture hall and doesn't pull any reference material out, just goes to the board and starts, because he just KNOWS. However, he is terrible at email. He has not replied to a single email of mine from 244 or 245. Also, do not take 244 with Manoj if you're not cool with a 25 minute final exam, out of a total of 15 points, that's worth 40% of your grade... Yes, one midterm (40%), one final (40%), and 6 homeworks (20%)
Russell Chiu ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 03/18/2022	Best TA I've ever had.
Gang Qu ENEE244 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/29/2021	Gang Qu is pretty frustrating as a professor. The homework was very hard but you could figure it out, also most were graded by completion with only a few points of accuracy. The quizzes were very very easy, but the exams were rough. The exams were much harder than most examples from the quizzes and homework, but this is also a self teach kind of class, I went to lectures the first few weeks but they were not pertinent and frankly did not cover what was needed to understand the material, mostly examples without real explanation.
Gang Qu ENEE244 Anonymous 12/14/2021	Probably the most disorganized and confusing teacher I've ever had. Does not post any practice problems and tells us to review the semi-weekly homework assignments to study instead. Additionally, he also mentions how he pulls things from "the book", but he never mentioned any book, and there is no reference in the syllabus or in any documents he has. The only lecture material he posts is the chapter slides, so it is near impossible to know exactly what material he covers in a single class, unless you know exactly what he ended on the prior class and what he started teaching the next class. Additionally, he does not have any idea how to measure the workload he is giving his students. There was one week where he assigned a homework assignment due the day of an exam, and then he assigned a quiz on material covered in the exam literally the next day in discussion. His lectures, if you went, were hard to understand what was going on, and I eventually realized that I understood more from the slides alone than looking at the slides and hearing him discuss them. The only reason I'm giving him 2 stars is because I can tell he's a nice guy, but he's just not good at his job at all. TLDR: Qu is unorganized and makes it hard to know and study material. Take any other teacher if you can.
Pramod Govindan ENEE244 Anonymous 05/21/2021	He's super understanding and really nice. Quizzes and exams were usually straightforward. Yes it's true, the lectures are boring but you can learn everything you need to know by reviewing the slides and reading the textbook anyway.
Pramod Govindan ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/02/2021	Professor Govindan is a nice guy. While his lectures are indeed kind of dry, he does accomodate students quite nicely and his quizzes, exams, and homeworks are very fair. Having a good TA helped a lot, but reading the book and simply doing practice problems will allow you to do well in the course.
Pramod Govindan ENEE244 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/12/2021	One of the driest professors I've ever had. Lectures are really boring, and by the end of the semester I ended up watching his lectures asynchronously. In terms of workload, homework was due once a week, and if you give yourself enough time to do them, they're not too bad (though quite time consuming). Quizzes were relatively easy, and exams overall weren't too bad. He usually threw on one question worth 20% of the grade that would be an oddball, but you could usually get some credit for the question. If you have a good TA, you should be fine, but if not, you'll probably find yourself rewatching the recorded lectures and citing outside sources to learn the content.
Pramod Govindan ENEE244 Anonymous 01/11/2021	Nice professor that was willing to accommodate students' needs when it came to due dates. Lecture content was usually focused on examples of the course material and real-world applications. The content itself is not too difficult to learn, but a knowledgeable TA can really enhance your experience and help reinforce ideas, since lecture doesn't focus much on past material. Exams were manageable and did not feature any foreign material, but one or two questions typically required some "outside the box" thinking for real-world application. Overall, good professor and fair course.
Pramod Govindan ENEE244 Anonymous 12/27/2020	Friendly professor but extremely dry during lectures. Homeworks are occasionally long, but exams were always fair difficulty-wise. The course content is not too bad, so if you can teach yourself using the textbook, you will probably get an A.
Gang Qu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2020	So, I did learn a bit, and I think the class was fair. What makes it difficult to recommend Dr. Qu is that he is extremely disorganized. I never felt as stressed for exams as I felt about last-minute assignments and such. Often, he would say "homework is coming out tomorrow", then it comes out a week later, he extends the deadline, then quizzes us on the homework the day before it's due, and so on. If you can handle the stress of a disorganized course, I think it would be good to take Qu because he is not too bad otherwise. He's a mediocre lecturer, but the homework is very similar to the exams, and he is forgiving when he makes organizational mistakes.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/02/2020	It was a good class. Make sure you do the homework problem and try them over again a few times before exams and you are good to go. I learned a lot from this class
Manoj Franklin ENEE244 Anonymous 01/14/2020	Hopefully my reign with this professor is over. I've taken ENEE324, ENEE244 and ENEE245 with him, and each class varied a lot in terms of how difficult he made it. 324 was a nightmare because it was all math and he really did not try to make the material interesting through lecture. Exams were extremely unpredictable in terms of what he could test us on; he referenced the textbook several times however the problems from the book ended up being different in terms of content compared to what was on the exam. This class will be difficult no matter who you take it with, and he will not make it any easier. However, I had a good experience with him for 244; he tried to relate the material to real world concepts as much as possible and made fair exams that covered everything he talked about in class. 245 was another nightmare though, where Verilog was barely taught in class but tested rigorously through the prelabs which is a shame because it is a very interesting class. What's even more crazy is that you are expected to know the language and associated concepts thoroughly for the exams... this was evident especially through the final exam. Overall Franklin will always be a mixed bag in terms of his exams as it is difficult to prepare for them. Expect to work super hard if you are enrolled in any of his classes.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/14/2019	I think Professor Wu must have seen most of his reviews on websites like these and said, "Gee, I really need to change some of my exams." Overall, for me ENEE244 was kind of a mess. Wu is not a good lecturer imo, the TAs are not very helpful and also love to not show to office hours, and plus the textbook isn't great either. His exams are long and TEDIOUS (but I think that's partially due to the nature of the content). I came into this class thinking it was going to be easy, but that wasn't the case for me. Wu is a great man who truly wants the best for his students, but I'd recommend taking a different professor who can actually teach properly.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2019	Jerry wu has thick accent but his lecture is fun and he gives a lot real world insight. The exams are easy as long as you did all the hw. He is also passionate if you talk to him.
Manoj Franklin ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/29/2019	This is one of those courses that is so needlessly made challenging and stressful by how inept the teacher is at organizing it. Manoj Franklin does not directly teach material from the textbook, most of his notes are oral (and he has a thick accent), and there is no syllabus that describes what to learn. So, there is a lot of stressful guesswork that goes into learning the curriculum. It would be completely unlearnable if not for the hardworking TF's that have learned from the previous semester what Manoj intends for us to learn.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/28/2019	This manz a wild ride. You will have no idea what his talking about during lecture unless you are one of those extremely hard working students who read the textbook before lectures. Unless if you are learning the material for the first time, you will have no idea what his talking about and think you are dumb or something. But once you start studying and learn everything on your own you should be good. His exams are easy very similar to homework problems. He gives bonus points. Quizzes are easy, just make sure you go to all lecture because you don't know when he will give a quiz in lecture. But most quizzes are during discussion. The final exams mostly the newer chapters (5-7). Just do homework problems to study. He gives bonus points.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/11/2019	Jerry Wu is a good instructor to choose. While his accent can be thick, and it may be hard pass the language-barrier on occasion, he is very passionate about his students' understanding and success. Though okay as a lecturer, Wu shines when he deviates from the normal day's lecture and talks about real life applications and why each topic matters. He is also very helpful to speak with 1-on-1. His exams are appropriately difficult given the course he is teaching and what has been covered by each exam date. Overall, I would take Wu again.
Jerry Wu ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/18/2018	So this guy's exams are dirt easy. A lot of his questions are just straight from the HW. As a lecturer, he wasn't that good, he has an accent that's pretty thick, but that regardless, he tends to want to go off-topic a lot, and he's quiet. You'll most likely be doing some self-studying. But the exams are easy as long as you do your HWs.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Anonymous 01/13/2018	Silio is a bore in class and couldn't teach a cat to meow. Avoid if you can. Most of his class is ranting about old computers.
Gang Qu ENEE244 soulelite 09/30/2016	He's an ok lecturer, but it is sometimes hard to understand what he is saying. As for the courseload, the homework was reasonable. He did make the 3rd exam and final very hard, so I would recommend trying harder once you get to the last 3rd of the course.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Anonymous 05/06/2015	Do not take him!! He is horrible at teaching, he puts students to sleep but you cant skip class because he purposefully puts things in his lecture that you cant learn anywhere outside of class so you will fail the test if you didnt learn it. Only problem is half of the crap he says is useless, so what do you memorize? On the subject of his test, he tries to trick his students then he grades without partial credit. One mistake and you loose all your points, no matter what. Its honestly the first time Ive seen multiple people fail a class entirely from stupid mistakes. It doesnt help that he is rude and seems like he has something out for his students. Just stay away from him
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/04/2015	I really like Silio. His lectures can feel a bit long and boring, but I don't know how any other professor could do much better. Sometimes he goes off on tangents about his experiences, but I really enjoy his stories because they help you make connections between the theory you learn and real-world applications. His midterms have seemed fair so far. Its really annoying that he doesn't give partial credit, but he doesn't put any surprises on the midterm and gives you a sample midterm so if you don't make stupid mistakes and study then you should do fine. He also replaces the lower of the two midterm grades with the final which is nice. Overall, I think he is a good professor and I think he really knows what he is talking about. You can tell he's put a lot of though into the best way to teach the topic and the textbook that will allow us to learn best.
Rajeev Barua ENEE244 Expecting an A sachsry 11/25/2014	Rajeev is the man. He always shows 5 mins late to lecture and usually goes over but it's still chill. He is the first teacher I had for any ENEE class and he made me fall in love with the material. He's a fantastic lecturer and keeps you engaged the whole time. I never got bored. His exams and homeworks are fair and he works straight out of the textbook which makes it easy to get ahead in class if you desire or to look over anything you didn't understand. I personally never had to because he's a dope teacher.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting a C- Anonymous 07/29/2014	I can't necessarily speak for how Nakajima is as a regular semester professor, but if you have the option of taking him during the summer, don't. But if you have to, or want a good start in his class in general, here's what you need to know. To begin, he has a thick Japanese accent, so he speaks fluent "engrish". If you're bad at deciphering broken English, that's going to be a huge hurdle. Also he has like one tooth in the front of his mouth that is rotten and hanging by a thread that is really distracting, try not to look at it. Also, be aware that he plays favorites, and picks them very early on. So sit in the front of the class, laugh at his dumb jokes and whatever you do, DON'T ASK QUESTIONS. I can't stress this enough, if you ask too many questions in that class, your life will become hell. Here's the reality, he likes to pick on the students that he feels are not cut out for his class. So he initially tries to scare off the weak with talk of dropping and failing his course. So ANY sign of weakness or confusion will make you a target for future criticism and condescension. He picks his punching bag fairly early on and will make you feel like the town idiot if given the chance. To avoid this, make friends with the smartest kid in the class at all costs, and know that he teaches straight out of the book, so you pretty much don't need him to teach you squat. He likes to say "right" and "okay" constantly, so rather than asking a question when asked, just nod your head and let him move on in the lecture. His homeworks are the stuff of nightmares. Many a nights I was awake just doing his assignments non-stop till the sun came up. This is where being friends with the smartest kid comes into play, because there is going to be at least one guy who knows what he's doing. Also he lets you work together on homework in a way that other professors would consider cheating. Its pretty strange, but don't complain. He is very picky about partial credit, and most of the time rewards you with a fraction of what a question was weighted with for a slight mistake. This means if you take his quizzes lightly, you'll get under 15% on them easily. His tests are pretty brutal because of this too, and he likes to throw curves balls and test things he knows the students aren't confident about. This isn't much prep for this besides doing his old practice exams and getting a feel for the kinds of questions he asks. He isn't Silio, though, so it is more than possible he'll give you question that will leave you completely dumbfounded. Finally, he will only curve an exam or assignment if no ones get an A, which makes your life difficult to say the least. After all this, I can't say he's a bad professor. He certainly isn't good, but he isn't the worst and is actually a pretty nice guy. The key is getting on his good side, figuring out how to efficiently get decent grades on his homework, not failing his quizzes or midterms and praying to Testudo at McKeldin before the final. If you can do all that, you can pass his class.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Anonymous 05/26/2014	Nope. Don't take him. He made 244 a pain and a bore, when otherwise it could have been a very interesting class. What a shame and a waste of money. I don't ever want to have him as a professor again. Apart from him being a poor teacher and his character condescending, the way he grades exams is illogical (the irony). Your grade can easily turn into a C if you are not a human calculator because mistakes are inexcusable for exams, even if you completely understand the course material and you just made a silly mistake, inexcusable. Maybe one person in the entire class enjoyed it. He is not a good professor.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/26/2014	The only reason I'd give him 3 stars is because of the easy exams. Apply for IEEE (UMD one) so you can look up his previous exams. They are almost word for word the same, so you should nail them with little trouble. He gives minimal partial credit so you'd better get the questions entirely correct. Homework is an absolute BITCH so watch out for that. Plan on spending ~2 hrs on each week's assignment (more if you actually want to read the book, which I recommend you do). Pray that you have a good TA because s/he'll be able to teach a week's worth of Silio's lecture in one discussion. Anything they miss can be learn easily enough through the book. I recommend for the easy exams, but as a lecturer.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/19/2013	Worst lecturer on the planet. Pretty sure he just put ridiculous questions on the exams because he was trying to make a point about people not attending his boring lectures. If you can manage to be excited enough about the material to actually pay attention in lecture, you might be able to do well. Do not recommend.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/21/2013	Silio really likes IBM and will spend 75% of his lectures talking about the industry rather than the material you're supposed to know for the class. His exams don't really test how well you know the material; rather, how well you can memorize the answers from IEEE testbank. You have to know the exams inside out because there is no partial credit, so if you make the tiniest mistake, you will not get higher than a B. His grading also is very hit or miss (the final is worth 35% of your grade and can replace a midterm which totals to over 50% of your grade). However, he is the better alternative for the professors that teach ENEE244, so you should take him as a lesser of two evils.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/22/2013	This class takes a lot of effort. For one, there is soooo much homework. All quizzes are unannounced and in our semester he gave so many quizzes that we began expecting one every week. The first test is long and it is very easy to make mistakes. The second test is super easy. Our final, however, was not as easy as those of previous semesters, but it was not that bad. I thought I was going to get an A-, but there was a slight curve, so I got an A. As everyone says, getting an A is hard and is no walk in the park.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/06/2013	Dr. Silio is truly terrible as a professor. He goes on and on off tangents and fails to really communicate the course content across. Doing the homeworks is the main way you'll learn anything on this course, and the tests are the same year after year as other people mention. It's not too hard to get an A though as long as you study off of the old tests and memorize/learn the way he poses questions. Also, learn to do as much of the homework as you need, and copy the test from the answer key (he assigns WAY too much: more than a 4 credit class). He seems to have no respect for student's time and notion of what is appropriate. He's also quite arrogant which comes across easily. It's ironic considering he's a no-end professor with a very low salary and low significance. It's clear that he thinks of himself as better than scientists, and quite ridiculous actually.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/26/2012	Silio can be very blunt and rude at times. The one time I went to office hours he wasn't pleasant at all. But when it comes to the actual class and the material, I thought he was pretty good. Lecture is spent not on theory but on going through example problems and explaining the concepts behind them. The methods that Silio used during lecture were generally a lot better than the ones presented in the book. The 2 midterm exams are worth 27.5% of your grade each, and the final is worth 35%, with the other 10% coming from discussion section. In addition he will drop your lowest midterm and replace it with your final exam score if this benefits you. The layout of the tests is nearly identical to his prior exams on the UMD IEEE test bank. Definitely run through a bunch of those old exams and you will do fine on the tests. Silio is very straight-forward and is not out to trick you, so you will be able to anticipate exactly what is going to be on the exams. For the final, he gave those of us in lecture lots of hints about the problems that would appear, so definitely go to lecture to benefit from this.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/27/2011	Very straight forward professor - he is not around the bush, not out to "trick" the students. He is very blunt about what he tests on and what he expects you to take from his class. Personally, I loved this about him. The sample exams he hands out are very similar to the actual exams (almost identical to the 1st). There are weekly homework assignments, two midterms, and one final exam. The homeworks are very tedious and time consuming, but they are beneficial in that most of the problems at the end of the chapter are harder than any problem he will give on an exam. I remember one homework assignment had 75 karnaugh maps. The two midterms are significant toward your grade in that they count for most of the points in the class; however, he has a policy in which if one performs better on the final than any of the previous midterms the midterm grade will be replaced by the final. This is only for 1 exam though. One thing about him people hate, though, is the fact that he does not believe in partial credit. Only very rare occasions will he give out partial credit. As far as the lectures go, he goes off topic often but has interesting stories pertaining to the material that you learn, which makes it better. Also, he teaches much easier methods to perform logic than the book does. Definitely get your hands on previous exams - they do not change. He says so himself.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2011	The homework can be difficult and time-consuming in this class, but it's only 10% of the grade and TAs seem to be very fair in grading it. The book is useless, but unfortunately you need it in order to do the homework. Attend lecture, as Dr. Silio explains things much better, and often knows much simpler methods than the book uses. The problems on tests are identical from semester to semester, only with slightly different information. If you do not belong to the testbank, sign up and study old tests. Practicing them, and being very careful not to make a mistake on test day, can get you a pretty easy A.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2011	Everyone else has pretty much hit the nail on the head. He says "uhh" and "right" every other word. He laughs at his own jokes. His lectures slides are LITERALLY pages from the book scanned onto a powerpoint. Literally. He scares you by saying he doesn't curve if even one person gets an A on the exam, BUT HE DOES. Do not believe his lies. One time he even said he would curve downwards. I swear he just loves to troll students. He heavily favors those who sit in the front, so do that if you want to get on his good side. By the end of the class, I'm pretty sure he hated me, but I got an A so who cares. His exams aren't too bad. His homework is RIDICULOUS. He gives a homework which is graded for correctness, and then an "optional" SPS (Selected Problem Set), which is in fact not optional at all, but mostly graded for completion. Don't stress those too much on the SPSs. In fact, I think homework only counts for at most 10% of your grade, so don't stress it at all too much. Overall, this guys a joke. He'll come in rockin athletic shorts and a Hawaiian button down shirt like its nothing, proceed to mumble incoherently in engrish and laugh at his own jokes for 15 minutes, and then proceed to read lecture slides that are scanned imaged of the book. The only reason you'll go to class is because he threatens with pop quizzes, of which there might have been 2-3 the whole semester.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Anonymous 04/06/2011	Professor Nakajima is a nice guy if you go talk to him. He will never turn away your questions or interest to learn. However, his exams are very unforgiving. His HW are very long. He is incompetent in explaining material. I don't like his class or his grading policy, but he is a nice guy who if you build a good relationship with, could be depended upon to help you with research opportunities, etc.
Charles Silio ENEE244 UMDstudent2011 04/04/2011	Boring lectures, and lots of homework are what describes taking ENEE244 with Silo. HOWEVER, his exams are the same every semester (just different numbers). Take Silo for ENEE244, you won't regret it.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 UMDstudent2011 04/04/2011	Difficult exams, 10+ hours of HW, and my favorite: He says "right" & "ok" & "uhhhhh" at least a 100 times each class period. My advice: Take the other guy; silo gives same exams every semester (easy), and Barua exams are straight forward and he does teach the material fairly well. The choice is yours.
Rajeev Barua ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/24/2010	Dr. Barua was good at explaining the material. Make sure you make it to all lectures, they are very worth it. He does, however, not repeat anything under almost any circumstance. So make sure you're awake throughout lecture. The grade consists of homework (15%) , two midterms (25% each), and the final (35%). Grading is dependent on your TA; we had an awesome, fair TA this semester. Good luck! Definitely one of the best professors for this class!
Rajeev Barua ENEE244 Expecting a B smhmd0521 12/17/2010	So Rajeev likes to come into lectures one minute late day after day. You can expect the same routine from his class everyday, he spends the first few minutes reviewing what you did the previous class and then moves forward from there. And he follows the order of the book, so if u miss something it is not difficult to find in the book. As a lecturer, he is very good. He explains everything thoroughly, and uses visual aids often. I thought he was the best teacher ever, until i went to his office hours a couple times. He does not help at all! In lecture he explains things well, but if you cannot follow the way he explains it he just keeps explaining the EXACT same way until you say you understand. Overall, good lecturer and in class teacher. But not very helpful outside, and addiionally he can be very moody certain days and doesnt call on people for questions when he is
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Anonymous 12/16/2010	Run for your life! This guy is the worst professor at UMD. EE professors are horrible. And this guy would be horrible even by EE standards. Has no teaching abilities whatsoever. Teaches from slides, which he doesn't post online. Uses different means to force students to attend is torture of lectures, by taking attendance, unannounced quizzes etc. Exams are extremely hard. Another thing is that this guy is very hard to understand. He has a thick Asian accent (which I personally don't mind, lot of professors here are from foreign countries). But the bigger problem is that his English grammar is horrible. And even if this guy had Morgan Freeman's voice with perfect grammar, his lectures would still be horrible since he just does not know how to teach. Also, this guy is very biased. He is nice with students he likes, and really mean to students he doesn't. I'll say the same thing as another reviewer below me did. Taking this guy's class was the biggest mistake in my life. Avoid this guy at any cost. Trust me, any professor is better than Nakajima. If two professors are taking this class, pick the other guy. If Nakajima's the only choice, wait a semester.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting a C+ frapis 11/16/2010	This guy will try to scare you into dropping his class, because if you don't, you FAIL. ALOT of work, and homework is barely part of your overall grade. The differences between him and Silio are: Nakajima gives partial credit (not much though), and Silio's tests are slightly easier. Good luck. Try not to FAIILLL
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting a C logical-zero 10/21/2010	Well, I read a lot of poor reviews about Prof Silio and for the first 3 weeks of the semester I had made up my mind to hate him. Yes, his lectures are ancient. Yes, he likes to tell army stories. Yes his exams require you to be proficient, not just knowledgeable. Yes, he gives very little partial credit. Now read this carefully: Prof Silio is the Mr. Miyagi of professors. He has been teaching the same 5-6 courses since Elizbeth Taylor was in the second grade. There is a method to his madness. You might not like how he teaches but you will be a digital logic ninja. If you go to his office hours he will explain, in great detail, how to solve the problems. Additionally, if you take him for 244, you will be a whiz kid in 206. If you ask his gradebook, I was at the bottom of his class but 206 is a cakewalk now. All in all I enjoyed the class because you get to solve problems without complicated math. You get to design things that solve problems with only two numbers (1,0). It's quite fascinating how much you can do with True, False. I'm honestly considering minoring in microelectronics now.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Anonymous 10/19/2010	Took ENEE244 with him and that was the biggest mistake in my life at umd. Don't take the class if you are not Japa***. I am dead serious. All Japa students got A in the class. In class you will understand only 10% materials. You have to learn 90% on your own or from TA or buddies. Avoid at all costs even if you have no other choices (delay your graduation 6 months) but don't take him. With due respect, he is very old guy, mind set is similar to military, countdowns in seconds when he collects quiz in class. If you are one second late then he won't accept it. Laughs at his own jokes. Sometime you will get it sometime not. I always laughed just to make him happy. Questions (half page each) on the exams are similar to history essay. You need 10 min to read the question and 10 more min to understand it, but usually japa** students get it quick :)
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A silversd 07/21/2010	First of all, anyone who is looking at this review has to take this course at some point. That really isn't an option. The only option you have is the professor. I recommend Silio over Nakajima. From what I have heard and read, Nakajima cares too much about proofs and Boolean algebra instead of Digital Logic Design. Silio, on the other hand, does teach the material, including helpful hints that detour from the book. In fact, I didn't really have to read the book at all because I learned everything in class. The one drawback to Silio is his grading. He does give partial credit if you do part of the problem correctly, but it isn't always as much as you would like. For example, if you fill in every row correctly on a truth table except for one, there goes a quarter of your points even though you got 1/16th of the problem wrong. That said, pay attention in class, and study the sample exams, and you will do fine with Silio.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting a B fma1 05/22/2010	If you wondering who to take, Silio or Nakajima, it's really up to you. Silio will actually teach you something unlike Nakajima, but he doesn't hold review sessions. Nakajima holds review sessions, but he can't teach. If you study a bunch of Silio's past exams, the test will be a cinch. Nakajima makes you do stuff like prove this and that using Boolean algebra which I really don't see the point of. Basically, it's like the other guy said. If you have to stop and think, you probably got the problem wrong. On the final exam I took 5 days ago, I had to stop and think on the propagation delay one, so I just left it for last. It was multiple choice, so I worked it out partially and guessed. I mean, I would say, I liked Silio because the final exam is the most important thing. I got an 54 on the midterm and a 40 something on the 2nd exam, but I got a B on the final so I got a B in the class. You should come to class just to see if there's anything important that might be on a test. But most of the time it isn't so bring a pillow, catch up on your sleep. Don't bother taking too many notes if it's in the book because he goes way too fast with slides. You won't be able to copy them. You're better off reading the book and his notes. I recommend Mano's book, not Givone's. Givone never gets to the point. Honestly, I barely even used the book. Only for homework did I actually open it. When he gives you the choose a/b/c/d/e for karnaugh map about implicants, do not choose none of the above. That is always wrong. That killed me on the first exam. And hopefully your TA will teach you the graphical method for NAND->OR/AND. After you do that, put it on a Karnaugh map and then get the sum of products. And make sure you know exclusive OR really well. Basically, it tests to see if the inputs are both the same. 0 XOR x = 0, 1 XOR x = NOT x. Think of it like this: 0 0 0 If I don't eat the cake and I don't eat the pie, then there won't be only one thing left to eat. 0 1 1 If I don't eat the cake and I eat the pie, then there will be only one thing left to eat. 1 0 1 If I eat the cake and I don't eat the pie, then there will be only one thing left to eat. 1 1 0 If I eat the cake and the pie, then there won't be only one thing left to eat.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/13/2010	his son went to princeton. at princeton they don't let you double major. he once had a student who misread a question and when the student asked for a regrade, he wrote "learn to read" on his paper. the student's mom was a reading teacher. everyone loves ibm. he laughs like tickle me elmo. these are the things and more that you will learn in his ENEE 244 class. What did you expect to learn? Engineering? He handwrites everything on transparencies and they mean nothing to me. Literally, it's just a bunch of variables. No one asks questions because it seems like everyone is too lost to ask them. They don't even know what to ask about. to put it in perspective, i had a 3.9 GPA in high school and came in with 40 AP credits and had a 4.0, let's see what happens this semester...
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Anonymous 12/31/2009	Great class. Fair exams.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Anonymous 12/31/2009	This class was cake. People need to relax. Nakajima is a very easy professor, all his antics are just for show. And he is actually very good. Do the homework and you'll breeze through this class.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/31/2009	This class is a cinch. I studied my butt off for the first test, I got a 50.9%. Didn't study for the last exam and final, got an A on both exams. What I learned from this class, studying makes it worse. The problems are always very tedious though. So learn some time management or something. Quizzes are random. Either way, by the time you finish the class(hopefully passing) you will evolve into your next form via the Nakajima stone. Good luck. P.S. He has corny jokes. And speaks Engrish. Not English.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/28/2009	You will learn a lot in Nakajima's 244 class from the book and the TA's. You will not learn very much from Nakajima. His English is not that great, so the first few classes it's basically impossible to understand what's going on. After a while you will get used to this though and you will be able to discern sentences from what he is saying. Once you can actually understand him, you will realize that he is not presenting the information very well at all and that you should probably just read the book during class. So you basically have to learn the material by going to the TA's and by doing problems and looking at the solutions he hands out and by reading the book (although the book is very long-winded and hard to read). That being said, you can do well in his class. He is a very tough grader because he wants students to work hard, but I think there is a curve in the end, so your grade will turn out better than you thought. His exams are hit or miss. Our first exam was really long and had some very unfair questions on it (two 5-variable Karnaugh map questions which basically test how well you can circle groups of 1's, which is not a very useful skill to test students on). However, our second exam and the final were very fair based on what we practiced on the hw and he gave extra time to make sure people could finish. The key factor was that if you did all the hw and worked out all the problems that you got wrong until you understood them and then made sure you knew how to do all the problems before the exam, then you were very well-prepared to do well on the exam. So if you work hard, it is very possible to do well in this class. One thing that I liked about Nakajima, which a lot of people hated actually, was that he would take class time to explain important practical things about getting a job and about various programs in the ECE department that can give you some great opportunities, such as the BS/MS program. Also, Nakajima is a pretty nice guy, and it's apparent that he cares about his students and wants them to learn, which is good. I am rating Nakajima pretty low because he really isn't that great at explaining the material. However, he will force you to learn the material by making the class hard, so it's good to know that you will come out of it with a lot of new knowledge. And it is possible to do well if you work hard. But really you should try to find a professor who is better at explaining the topics. Petrov seems to be a good bet. He taught one of our lectures when Nakajima was away traveling and I thought his lecture was excellent, so I would recommend Petrov based on that.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/27/2009	One of the nicest and most inspiring professors I have yet. He really teaches you that hard work pays off. If you are one of those students that likes getting 1 point above the average and expects a B, you are in the wrong class. However, if you are a student who is interesting in really working hard, going to office hours, actually reading the book and learning the material in conjunction with attending lecture you're in the right place! Nakajima is a very nice professor who will help you if you have decent questions in office hours. Don't come in saying 'I don't understand anything help me!' Instead come in and ask, 'I am having trouble with this concept.' I will admit he does have a habit of predicting which students will do well, but that doesn't mean that he is putting the rest of the students down. If you prove to him that you work hard and care about his class a little bit, you will be okay in this class. BTW, he does curve. He curves the final grades of everyone. He doesn't say he curves because he wants students to work very hard, but he does indeed curve. Earning an A in his class isn't easy, but as long as you are in the top 15% of the class you have a set A.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A miyamamo 12/18/2009	I had Silio last Spring and he has been by far my favorite professor. He tells personal anecdotes, which irritates some people, but which helped me stay engaged throughout the class. His lectures alternated between written on the chalkboard and overhead slides pre-written in marker upon request (but it was a foolish request). Having some background to the course is very useful as he'll jump right into things that will be over your head if you've never done anything with logic before. I took an Introduction to the Fundamentals of Computer Science class in high school and it was more than enough to give me solid footing. He does give partial credit, but in a different way then most professors. He'll follow your process and from the moment you make a mistake, everything that follows is wrong (because you have a wrong assumption). Unless, I suppose, you make a second mistake that magically fixes your first, in which case you'll get credit for the work that's right again. Most people complain because they get no credit when they fail to set up a problem correctly, but if you can't take the time to read a problem why did you bother even enrolling?
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/16/2009	The worst professor I have ever had at UMD. Avoid him at all costs. It seems like Nakajima almost tries to screw everyone over in the class. Studying for the final exam is difficult because he doesn't post any practice materials. The last day of class included a ridiculous pop quiz that took about an hour to complete. Basically going to lecture is like reading the book since he literally scans the book page by page and puts the scans on the powerpoint presentation with little supplement. I learned more about Digital Logic from reading the book than attending lectures -- and the book cost a whole lot less. Horrible Experience.
Kazuo Nakajima ENEE244 Expecting a B Anonymous 10/28/2009	This professor is horrible. His most recent stunt left 44 of 60 people in the class not passing the exam according to university standards(D{18 people} or F{26 people}) and he will not curve exams if one person gets an A on the exam. Well, 1 person got an 89.5 and he said that was an A meaning no curve. 8 B's and 7 C's were scores of the other students. He spends an average of 15-30 minutes of each class talking about terrible jokes and statistics to try and scare you into dropping the class instead of actually teaching the material to help you pass it. His idea of teaching is taking worked-out examples from the book and putting them on powerpoint to talk about/run through during class. He assigns "suggested"(still graded for completion) homework out of the book for almost every class, and there are no answers in the back of the book, so you have no idea whether you are doing it right or not and have no opportunity to learn from it. After you hand that in during class, he then assigns a HW assignment graded for correctness which he writes on the same material; however, the catch is that he hands out solutions for both assignments a week later - AFTER you had to complete the HW for correctness. The process ends up as that you have no idea whether you're doing anything right on the book-hw because you can't check your answers anywhere, and then you find out you were doing it all wrong on the correctness-hw and the pop-quizes and end up with horrible scores for 20% of your grade (hw + pop quizes). The worst part about all the homework is that you don't get your homeworks back until a week before the exam. Listening to him talk is also tough to get through because he has extremely poor English and says the word "right" every other word. A friend of mine held a counter one class and tallied a little over 300 times in an hour and a half class. I can't say much about Silio (the other professor who teaches 244), but from what I understand, he uses the same tests every year with different numbers but gives no partial credit on anything; you either have it 100% correct or its all wrong. You have a choice to make if you have to take this class between a horrible professor and tough grading. Overall 244 with Nakajima has so far been a horrific experience and I'm just trying to survive through his antics. Hope for a good TA like I have.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting a B Anonymous 08/01/2009	Silio is one of those professors that you dont want to go through. I skipped his lectures quite often because i could not keep up with his lecture notes. BUT if you take his class, all you have to do is study his past exams, because the ones he gives are very similar. that should be enough to get by
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A dmorris 07/23/2009	Had him for Summer 2009. Was a good teacher. Make sure you get a hold of his previous exams and study his practice exams as well as any homework problems he gives you.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Anonymous 04/12/2009	He is awesome if you want to talk past ancient history about some computer that he advised the government to make is small size but they never listened... and how the whole project is in somebody's basement... If you want an easy "A" or "C-" and dont want to understand a single word of the material... then get homework solution and his past exam form other students... Otherwise "YOU ARE WARNED IN ADVANCE"
Ankur Srivastava ENEE244 vbury 02/25/2009	ENEE244 is hard, but he keeps his lectures interesting. You need to keep up with the work, though, because his tests can be brutal. Luckily, the curve can save you. I personally failed the second exam and still wound up with an A-. Overall, from what I've heard, DEFINITELY better than Silio.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/03/2009	Unlike what everyone else says, he actually isn't too bad of a lecturer. However, you have to come prepared for class i.e. look at the material in the book in order to understand him. The best thing about taking his class is that his exams are all very similar to his previous exams which you can easily obtain. All he does is switch up a few minor things. Sometimes, he uses the exact same questions. Best way to study for his exams are to look over past exams and maybe go over the homeworks. Its true that he's stingy with partial credit but if you can do his past exams, the real exam should be easy and you shouldn't really make any mistakes. Also, he's pretty generous with his exam curves which really help out at the end. Best advice I can give you: start early on the homeworks since they take forever, get your hands on previous exams, and practice practice practice. If you do enough practice problemss, eventually they become second nature to you and it's really not that bad.
Charles Silio ENEE244 cp_eng 12/26/2008	He's a good teacher. He thoroughly explains the material (get him to teach on the chalk/whiteboard-- this is much more effective than his transparencies) and he is always willing to help if you go to office hours. People complain because he's a harsh grader, but it really just motivates you to actually learn the material. Yes, this is engineering, you have to do a lot of work.
Charles Silio ENEE244 Expecting an A ProphetElisha 09/03/2008	He's such a terrible lecturer. He'll give really long supplemental readings that are worthless to you and are a waste of paper because no one understands them. His handwriting is illegible on his ancient overhead slides. His homeworks take a long time. He hasn't changed the format of his tests for years so you'll probably get more out of studying previous tests if you can find a test bank than from his practice tests. He's really harsh in his grading and gives next to no partial grading. You might be surprised at the grade you get (could be higher or lower than what you expect). He curves a lot, but given the harsh grading, it might not be enough.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
06/06/2024

Wade reads off the slides for this class, but it is a lot more helpful compared to 150. Class is boring, but Wade is one of the nicest professors I've had, allowing me to take extensions on a few of the homework assignments. The bulk of the course work that aren't quizzes or exams is the homework, which can be around 10-20 problems per chapter. You can expect to have 2 quizzes, 2 exams, and 6-7 homeworks, depending how far you get into the class. GRADING IS VERY LENIENT, and if you put even a little time into studying, you are guaranteed at least a B- on any exam or quiz, including the final.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/21/2024

For reference, I review all my professors, and my average review is 4.2, 4.13 weighted by credit Singularities/Unique because: - New to teaching, still adjusting for sure - Dr. Wade is Senegalese and a very nice man, though reserved, again I think because he is nervous and still adjusting to teaching. - 2 Midterms and a final, 25% each. 6, maybe 7 in the future, grueling homeworks that make the exams really easy. Plenty of extension time to do them, as well. You'll probably like: - Discussion TAs don't have much else to do, so they'll go ahead of lecture so you get to see and do everything twice. This is a skill-based class - the only memory you need is in the flip-flops ;). - Easy exams, easy grading, curved if necessary. - Nice guy if you talk to him, will explain things well 1-on-1, and yes he does have a sense of humor, just have to get over a little bit of a culture/language barrier You might get frustrated by: - Yes, he is a little robotic. Largely teaches by reading through his slides, and explaining increasingly complicated diagrams as the semester goes on, and there isn't always filler information for him to add, so it certainly gets dry after a while. - Sometimes, it's hard to get a question answered, because usually you're asking about a specific part of a diagram, and it takes a while to get on the same page with him. Dr. Wade struggles a little bit with interruptions, such as tech issues or these long breaks for specific questions. The bottom line is, Dr. Wade does what a professor is supposed to do. He teaches to the best of his ability, makes sure you learn, and gives fair exams. His way of doing this might not be anyone's favorite, and hence the 4-star review, but it absolutely works if you have a little patience and motivation.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/14/2024

Wade’s lectures were subpar. He essentially just gives you material straight from the book, and at a snail’s pace. My TA covered the same material as Wade in around 1/3 of the time. I would have enjoyed seeing other interesting examples or additional intuition behind why things work, but again he basically just rehashes the book. Exams and homeworks were quite easy. However the first few homeworks were really excessively long (even though the material is not particularly hard) so start early. It’s an easy class overall, but pretty boring. Be prepared.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/10/2024

Professor Wade is a great professor for this course. He wants you to pass, so he welcomes questions, and creates fair quizzes and exams. Power points for 244 are easy to follow, making this one of the easiest ENEE courses.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/09/2024

Mr. Wade is a very nice professor who genuienly cares for his students learning. His slides are inspired directly from the textbook and he's pretty good at exlaining the course concepts clearly. The class itself is pretty easy, and I enjoyed his teaching overall. Would recommend :)

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/09/2024

very nice guy. the material may not be everyone's favorite, but he writes exams that tests what you see in class.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/08/2024

244 with Wade is an extremely easy course. His lectures can be boring at times, and occasionally he overcomplicates the easier topics, but just go to discussion and everything usually clicks. The homework's are very tedious, and can sometimes be hard, but they make the exams feel extremely easy. He gives lots of time to complete each homework, and gives a 3 day grace period for them all. As long as you can get over some somewhat boring lectures, Wade is a good professor.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
02/14/2024

Class, is medium difficulty but Wade curved. Take it with Wade

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/15/2023

He’s a very nice guy and cares about his students learning, I would just recommend some more examples in the slides and he would be perfect

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/14/2023

Dr. Wade is super understanding. I had a rough semester, and him being understanding about it helped me a lot. He is approachable and will happily help you in his office hours. His exams are easy and fair, and he is very lenient grader. There are 2 midterms which are both 25% and so is the final. Although, I did have have to teach myself most of the class. He just reads off of the lecture slides and doesn't really teach you the why behind things. I think it would help a lot if he had more engaging slides, I just feel like he picks up the textbook definitions and puts them in the slides (but I have never opened the textbook so..). Reading through his slides will guarantee you a 100% on the tests. This class has no complicated concepts anyway (it gets complicated after ch5) and you should be good with YouTube vids, HW, and asking TAs questions. He doesn't post solutions to homeworks which I wish he did because they can help a lot during revision. He has pop quizzes which are 10% of your grade. They are super easy and he tells you about them in advance. Take him if you want an A in this class.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/11/2023

Even though Dr. Wade is a nice professor who's lenient with grades, he's not a great lecturer. He takes the examples and information directly from the book that we follow in class, even though the book has mistakes in both its concepts and its examples. Sometimes, he catches on to these and lets us know in the lecture, but other times he does not; regardless, I felt like I couldn't trust 100% of the information he presented in lecture. Additionally, his homeworks felt hit-or-miss, because some of them took extremely long to complete but were easy, while for other ones, I didn't really understand what the problem was asking for and the mentioned problem felt too far to what we were being presented in class. Finally, Dr. Wade's pacing isn't great, since he spends a lot more time with binary-related computations such as addition and subtraction (and not as much on other topics that seem more useful, such as k-maps), but TAs can go more or less in detail on what is more or less important in the class.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/02/2023

The fact that Wade is the only professor for 244 and 245 would be less than ideal even if he was the best professor in the world, and he very much is not. He doesn't really plan his pacing well for going through content. The homework for each chapter is due "a week after finishing the chapter" and the exams are "a month after we finish chapter 3." It's not like he was springing exams on us without warning or anything but as someone who likes to plan I really would have appreciated actually knowing when exams were going to be at the beginning of the semester. We are almost at the end of the semester and it seems like we won't finish chapter 7, which seems common for Wade. Also, homeworks are incredibly lengthy so definitely do not procrastinate. Luckily he just assigns problems from the textbook so pretty much all the answers are online. I would tell you to try and get someone else but it doesn't seem like you can.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
09/05/2023

Great Professor. Super smart and helps you with homeworks, exams, and is really there for you to succeed.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A-
Agt
05/11/2023

Jerry is a great option for ENEE244! Pros: -Industry-experienced and highly knowledgeable about hardware design -Jerry cares about your individual success, and is always willing to answer your questions and look into grading issues. -Jerry offers fair - perhaps easy - exams which closely correspond with homework, and curves exam scores that don't average in the [B-, A+] range! -Jerry is happy to provide greater learning opportunities for students who are uniquely interested in hardware design, and is willing to mentor and write recommendations for students who are exploring his industry. -Attendance in lecture is NOT mandatory, except in the form of rare pop-quizzes during lecture. Nonetheless, these quizzes are only worth ~3% of your grade anyway. -Attendance in discussion is NOT mandatory, except during pre-announced dates where a discussion quiz is given. Cons: -Jerry has a thick accent which means that his lectures are sometimes difficult to follow. -Study guides are NOT provided in this class, although Jerry IS transparent about exam topics and his exam questions do align closely with homework. -Lectures are NOT recorded.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/07/2023

Full disclosure: I haven't finished the course. I haven't even taken the second exam (it is on 5/10, the current day is 5/7). This class. I don't even have words to describe how bad it is. Easily the most poorly paced class I have taken so far at the university. Let's start with exams. The first exam covered chapters 1-3, or in other words, the units so incredibly easy that a 5 year old could do it. The only reason I didn't get 100% on that exam is because I didn't fully simplify something. That was in mid-March. The second exam is covering chapters 4-7, which is digital logic is actually somewhat applied. It is on the last day of class. The final is immediately the following week, which I know for a fact we won't get the second exam back to help study for it. And guess what? We don't have chapter 7 homework, but content from it can still show up on the second exam and final. The "Midterm 2 Practice" folder on ELMS? IT ONLY COVERS UP TO CHAPTER 5. It's not like this class is difficult either. Every quiz and exam I've taken has been incredibly easy, and I don't anticipate the upcoming exams to be difficult either. It's just that Wade does not know how to pace his class, and doesn't provide anything to compensate. His lectures are almost completely skippable. Don't go to them, except when there's a quiz or exam. I promise, you will likely get nothing from it. I certainly didn't. All he does is regurgitate the slides, which are posted to ELMS anyways. He barely adds his own touch, especially as the semester goes on. Honestly, part of this is a failure of the ECE department. Some concepts are introduced, such as the carry-lookahead adder and synchronous counters. But forget about breadboarding, we don't even see a simulator such as Logisim used to give an intuitive understanding of why these would be used instead of the ripple counterparts. I've had experience with breadboarding digital electronics before, so I am fully aware of everything introduced in this class. Heck, much of this material until chapter 6 is pretty much verbatim what I learned in PLTW Digital Electronics, and I didn't need a programming prerequisite to take that class. I certainly didn't need to have a sophomore standing in college. I even got breadboarding experience out of that, which I certainly can't say for this waste of time of a class. Anyways, I feel bad that 3 classes next semester are being stuck with Wade. How is it possible that 3 major track courses for electrical engineering only have 1 professor? I was debating whether to give this professor a 1 or 2 star rating, and honestly, I fully believe he deserves a 1 star for his teaching in ENEE244. It isn't hard, but it's entirely worthless. Just hope you get a good TA in case the awful textbook trips you up.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/03/2023

The homework in this class is no joke. Wade assigns a homework for each chapter we learn, approximately once every two weeks. Make sure to get started on it early because it will take many hours to complete. Homework is not very hard but VERY time consuming, i.e. making us draw a truth table for a massive circuit that takes up an entire page (I feel bad for the TAs that have to grade this stuff). Basically just busy work but at least it forces you to get a ton of practice and get the concepts down well. Wade is somewhat lenient with due dates for the assignments, allowing students to turn it in a few days late. Lectures are extremely boring, more than half of the class doesn't even show up. Looking at the lecture slides and watching YouTube videos is likely a lot more productive. If you've taken CMSC250 already, the first half of this class is basically just a review of stuff you already know. Exams and quizzes weren't very hard.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
02/13/2023

Pacing was poor and resulted in not covering content which was necessary for ENEE245. Although the exams were easy, homework was tedious and miserable. Although this class was an easy A given the content, I would not recommend this professor for anything more involved.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/05/2023

HW is really tedious and repetitive, although it is not difficult to do at all and you are given insanely long periods of time to do it. Exams are very easy and Prof. Wade will answer any questions you have thoroughly. However, Prof. Wade teaches this class extremely slowly and at the end of the semester there were large chunks of content Prof. Wu's class went over that we just never did (half of chapter 5 and onwards). I basically never showed up to class and vague memories from PLTW Digital Electronics in highschool as well as CMSC250 was more than enough to comfortably get through this class. Take Prof. Wade if you want an easy A, but don't expect to learn very much. I'm somewhat worried that ENEE245 is going to be terrible now because we didn't go over so much content that is the basis for it.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/31/2022

Good class. Homeworks and exams could be a bit long, but he generally let us stay after class so we can finish. He doesn't curve, but offers some extra credit on the exams to help boost grades. Everything is very fair, no weird trick questions or anything. Solid prof who cares about his students.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
12/12/2022

Overall a good professor. He can be a bit hard to understand sometimes, and the lectures seem unnecessarily complicated given the simplicity of the material, once you get to actually doing the homework. The homework assignments were reasonable and the exams were too, although they definitely need to be a bit shorter to accomodate a 75 minute window. Because there was no class after ours, it was not uncommon for an exam to take 90 minutes, sometimes closer to 105 minutes, because he kept giving us more time since over half the class would still be working at the end. My TA really helped with difficult and weird concepts, though, which made it all much more manageable.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/01/2022

Prof. Wade's teaching leaves a lot to be desired. His pacing is way off which can be quite frustrating. Homeworks are long and hard, tests and quizzes are the exact opposite. Do not reccomend.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/25/2022

Straightforward lectures, but we are critically behind the syllabus (Chapter 4, out of 8 in syllabus at Thanksgiving Break). Infrequent but absurdly long homework (4-5 hours). Easy quizzes and exams. Would not recommend.

Mamadou Wade
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/16/2022

His lectures are rough and straight from the text book, but that does allow easy review and he posts his slides which are basically cliff notes of the text book. The homeworks are long but the quizzes and exams are extremely straight forward.

Manoj Franklin
ENEE244

Anonymous
05/05/2022

The worst professor I have ever taken at this university. His lectures are filled with him talking nonsense and his exams are beyond what we learned in class. The averages are extremely low and he blames it on the questions being poorly written when it was him not being able to teach his class. The whole class a week before the exam was trying to teach themselves the material but no one could help each other because everyone else was lost. Only curved 2 points on a 25 point exam when the average was a 13/25. I wanted to learn from him and I actively paid attention during lecture but I was unable to retain any of the information he would mumble on about.

Manoj Franklin
ENEE244

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
04/26/2022

Manoj is EXTREMELY knowledgeable. He comes into the lecture hall and doesn't pull any reference material out, just goes to the board and starts, because he just KNOWS. However, he is terrible at email. He has not replied to a single email of mine from 244 or 245. Also, do not take 244 with Manoj if you're not cool with a 25 minute final exam, out of a total of 15 points, that's worth 40% of your grade... Yes, one midterm (40%), one final (40%), and 6 homeworks (20%)

Russell Chiu
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
03/18/2022

Best TA I've ever had.

Gang Qu
ENEE244

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/29/2021

Gang Qu is pretty frustrating as a professor. The homework was very hard but you could figure it out, also most were graded by completion with only a few points of accuracy. The quizzes were very very easy, but the exams were rough. The exams were much harder than most examples from the quizzes and homework, but this is also a self teach kind of class, I went to lectures the first few weeks but they were not pertinent and frankly did not cover what was needed to understand the material, mostly examples without real explanation.

Gang Qu
ENEE244

Anonymous
12/14/2021

Probably the most disorganized and confusing teacher I've ever had. Does not post any practice problems and tells us to review the semi-weekly homework assignments to study instead. Additionally, he also mentions how he pulls things from "the book", but he never mentioned any book, and there is no reference in the syllabus or in any documents he has. The only lecture material he posts is the chapter slides, so it is near impossible to know exactly what material he covers in a single class, unless you know exactly what he ended on the prior class and what he started teaching the next class. Additionally, he does not have any idea how to measure the workload he is giving his students. There was one week where he assigned a homework assignment due the day of an exam, and then he assigned a quiz on material covered in the exam literally the next day in discussion. His lectures, if you went, were hard to understand what was going on, and I eventually realized that I understood more from the slides alone than looking at the slides and hearing him discuss them. The only reason I'm giving him 2 stars is because I can tell he's a nice guy, but he's just not good at his job at all. TLDR: Qu is unorganized and makes it hard to know and study material. Take any other teacher if you can.

Pramod Govindan
ENEE244

Anonymous
05/21/2021

He's super understanding and really nice. Quizzes and exams were usually straightforward. Yes it's true, the lectures are boring but you can learn everything you need to know by reviewing the slides and reading the textbook anyway.

Pramod Govindan
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
02/02/2021

Professor Govindan is a nice guy. While his lectures are indeed kind of dry, he does accomodate students quite nicely and his quizzes, exams, and homeworks are very fair. Having a good TA helped a lot, but reading the book and simply doing practice problems will allow you to do well in the course.

Pramod Govindan
ENEE244

Expecting a B
Anonymous
01/12/2021

One of the driest professors I've ever had. Lectures are really boring, and by the end of the semester I ended up watching his lectures asynchronously. In terms of workload, homework was due once a week, and if you give yourself enough time to do them, they're not too bad (though quite time consuming). Quizzes were relatively easy, and exams overall weren't too bad. He usually threw on one question worth 20% of the grade that would be an oddball, but you could usually get some credit for the question. If you have a good TA, you should be fine, but if not, you'll probably find yourself rewatching the recorded lectures and citing outside sources to learn the content.

Pramod Govindan
ENEE244

Anonymous
01/11/2021

Nice professor that was willing to accommodate students' needs when it came to due dates. Lecture content was usually focused on examples of the course material and real-world applications. The content itself is not too difficult to learn, but a knowledgeable TA can really enhance your experience and help reinforce ideas, since lecture doesn't focus much on past material. Exams were manageable and did not feature any foreign material, but one or two questions typically required some "outside the box" thinking for real-world application. Overall, good professor and fair course.

Pramod Govindan
ENEE244

Anonymous
12/27/2020

Friendly professor but extremely dry during lectures. Homeworks are occasionally long, but exams were always fair difficulty-wise. The course content is not too bad, so if you can teach yourself using the textbook, you will probably get an A.

Gang Qu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/19/2020

So, I did learn a bit, and I think the class was fair. What makes it difficult to recommend Dr. Qu is that he is extremely disorganized. I never felt as stressed for exams as I felt about last-minute assignments and such. Often, he would say "homework is coming out tomorrow", then it comes out a week later, he extends the deadline, then quizzes us on the homework the day before it's due, and so on. If you can handle the stress of a disorganized course, I think it would be good to take Qu because he is not too bad otherwise. He's a mediocre lecturer, but the homework is very similar to the exams, and he is forgiving when he makes organizational mistakes.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
09/02/2020

It was a good class. Make sure you do the homework problem and try them over again a few times before exams and you are good to go. I learned a lot from this class

Manoj Franklin
ENEE244

Anonymous
01/14/2020

Hopefully my reign with this professor is over. I've taken ENEE324, ENEE244 and ENEE245 with him, and each class varied a lot in terms of how difficult he made it. 324 was a nightmare because it was all math and he really did not try to make the material interesting through lecture. Exams were extremely unpredictable in terms of what he could test us on; he referenced the textbook several times however the problems from the book ended up being different in terms of content compared to what was on the exam. This class will be difficult no matter who you take it with, and he will not make it any easier. However, I had a good experience with him for 244; he tried to relate the material to real world concepts as much as possible and made fair exams that covered everything he talked about in class. 245 was another nightmare though, where Verilog was barely taught in class but tested rigorously through the prelabs which is a shame because it is a very interesting class. What's even more crazy is that you are expected to know the language and associated concepts thoroughly for the exams... this was evident especially through the final exam. Overall Franklin will always be a mixed bag in terms of his exams as it is difficult to prepare for them. Expect to work super hard if you are enrolled in any of his classes.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/14/2019

I think Professor Wu must have seen most of his reviews on websites like these and said, "Gee, I really need to change some of my exams." Overall, for me ENEE244 was kind of a mess. Wu is not a good lecturer imo, the TAs are not very helpful and also love to not show to office hours, and plus the textbook isn't great either. His exams are long and TEDIOUS (but I think that's partially due to the nature of the content). I came into this class thinking it was going to be easy, but that wasn't the case for me. Wu is a great man who truly wants the best for his students, but I'd recommend taking a different professor who can actually teach properly.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/10/2019

Jerry wu has thick accent but his lecture is fun and he gives a lot real world insight. The exams are easy as long as you did all the hw. He is also passionate if you talk to him.

Manoj Franklin
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/29/2019

This is one of those courses that is so needlessly made challenging and stressful by how inept the teacher is at organizing it. Manoj Franklin does not directly teach material from the textbook, most of his notes are oral (and he has a thick accent), and there is no syllabus that describes what to learn. So, there is a lot of stressful guesswork that goes into learning the curriculum. It would be completely unlearnable if not for the hardworking TF's that have learned from the previous semester what Manoj intends for us to learn.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/28/2019

This manz a wild ride. You will have no idea what his talking about during lecture unless you are one of those extremely hard working students who read the textbook before lectures. Unless if you are learning the material for the first time, you will have no idea what his talking about and think you are dumb or something. But once you start studying and learn everything on your own you should be good. His exams are easy very similar to homework problems. He gives bonus points. Quizzes are easy, just make sure you go to all lecture because you don't know when he will give a quiz in lecture. But most quizzes are during discussion. The final exams mostly the newer chapters (5-7). Just do homework problems to study. He gives bonus points.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/11/2019

Jerry Wu is a good instructor to choose. While his accent can be thick, and it may be hard pass the language-barrier on occasion, he is very passionate about his students' understanding and success. Though okay as a lecturer, Wu shines when he deviates from the normal day's lecture and talks about real life applications and why each topic matters. He is also very helpful to speak with 1-on-1. His exams are appropriately difficult given the course he is teaching and what has been covered by each exam date. Overall, I would take Wu again.

Jerry Wu
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
09/18/2018

So this guy's exams are dirt easy. A lot of his questions are just straight from the HW. As a lecturer, he wasn't that good, he has an accent that's pretty thick, but that regardless, he tends to want to go off-topic a lot, and he's quiet. You'll most likely be doing some self-studying. But the exams are easy as long as you do your HWs.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Anonymous
01/13/2018

Silio is a bore in class and couldn't teach a cat to meow. Avoid if you can. Most of his class is ranting about old computers.

Gang Qu
ENEE244

soulelite
09/30/2016

He's an ok lecturer, but it is sometimes hard to understand what he is saying. As for the courseload, the homework was reasonable. He did make the 3rd exam and final very hard, so I would recommend trying harder once you get to the last 3rd of the course.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Anonymous
05/06/2015

Do not take him!! He is horrible at teaching, he puts students to sleep but you cant skip class because he purposefully puts things in his lecture that you cant learn anywhere outside of class so you will fail the test if you didnt learn it. Only problem is half of the crap he says is useless, so what do you memorize? On the subject of his test, he tries to trick his students then he grades without partial credit. One mistake and you loose all your points, no matter what. Its honestly the first time Ive seen multiple people fail a class entirely from stupid mistakes. It doesnt help that he is rude and seems like he has something out for his students. Just stay away from him

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/04/2015

I really like Silio. His lectures can feel a bit long and boring, but I don't know how any other professor could do much better. Sometimes he goes off on tangents about his experiences, but I really enjoy his stories because they help you make connections between the theory you learn and real-world applications. His midterms have seemed fair so far. Its really annoying that he doesn't give partial credit, but he doesn't put any surprises on the midterm and gives you a sample midterm so if you don't make stupid mistakes and study then you should do fine. He also replaces the lower of the two midterm grades with the final which is nice. Overall, I think he is a good professor and I think he really knows what he is talking about. You can tell he's put a lot of though into the best way to teach the topic and the textbook that will allow us to learn best.

Rajeev Barua
ENEE244

Expecting an A
sachsry
11/25/2014

Rajeev is the man. He always shows 5 mins late to lecture and usually goes over but it's still chill. He is the first teacher I had for any ENEE class and he made me fall in love with the material. He's a fantastic lecturer and keeps you engaged the whole time. I never got bored. His exams and homeworks are fair and he works straight out of the textbook which makes it easy to get ahead in class if you desire or to look over anything you didn't understand. I personally never had to because he's a dope teacher.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
07/29/2014

I can't necessarily speak for how Nakajima is as a regular semester professor, but if you have the option of taking him during the summer, don't. But if you have to, or want a good start in his class in general, here's what you need to know. To begin, he has a thick Japanese accent, so he speaks fluent "engrish". If you're bad at deciphering broken English, that's going to be a huge hurdle. Also he has like one tooth in the front of his mouth that is rotten and hanging by a thread that is really distracting, try not to look at it. Also, be aware that he plays favorites, and picks them very early on. So sit in the front of the class, laugh at his dumb jokes and whatever you do, DON'T ASK QUESTIONS. I can't stress this enough, if you ask too many questions in that class, your life will become hell. Here's the reality, he likes to pick on the students that he feels are not cut out for his class. So he initially tries to scare off the weak with talk of dropping and failing his course. So ANY sign of weakness or confusion will make you a target for future criticism and condescension. He picks his punching bag fairly early on and will make you feel like the town idiot if given the chance. To avoid this, make friends with the smartest kid in the class at all costs, and know that he teaches straight out of the book, so you pretty much don't need him to teach you squat. He likes to say "right" and "okay" constantly, so rather than asking a question when asked, just nod your head and let him move on in the lecture. His homeworks are the stuff of nightmares. Many a nights I was awake just doing his assignments non-stop till the sun came up. This is where being friends with the smartest kid comes into play, because there is going to be at least one guy who knows what he's doing. Also he lets you work together on homework in a way that other professors would consider cheating. Its pretty strange, but don't complain. He is very picky about partial credit, and most of the time rewards you with a fraction of what a question was weighted with for a slight mistake. This means if you take his quizzes lightly, you'll get under 15% on them easily. His tests are pretty brutal because of this too, and he likes to throw curves balls and test things he knows the students aren't confident about. This isn't much prep for this besides doing his old practice exams and getting a feel for the kinds of questions he asks. He isn't Silio, though, so it is more than possible he'll give you question that will leave you completely dumbfounded. Finally, he will only curve an exam or assignment if no ones get an A, which makes your life difficult to say the least. After all this, I can't say he's a bad professor. He certainly isn't good, but he isn't the worst and is actually a pretty nice guy. The key is getting on his good side, figuring out how to efficiently get decent grades on his homework, not failing his quizzes or midterms and praying to Testudo at McKeldin before the final. If you can do all that, you can pass his class.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Anonymous
05/26/2014

Nope. Don't take him. He made 244 a pain and a bore, when otherwise it could have been a very interesting class. What a shame and a waste of money. I don't ever want to have him as a professor again. Apart from him being a poor teacher and his character condescending, the way he grades exams is illogical (the irony). Your grade can easily turn into a C if you are not a human calculator because mistakes are inexcusable for exams, even if you completely understand the course material and you just made a silly mistake, inexcusable. Maybe one person in the entire class enjoyed it. He is not a good professor.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/26/2014

The only reason I'd give him 3 stars is because of the easy exams. Apply for IEEE (UMD one) so you can look up his previous exams. They are almost word for word the same, so you should nail them with little trouble. He gives minimal partial credit so you'd better get the questions entirely correct. Homework is an absolute BITCH so watch out for that. Plan on spending ~2 hrs on each week's assignment (more if you actually want to read the book, which I recommend you do). Pray that you have a good TA because s/he'll be able to teach a week's worth of Silio's lecture in one discussion. Anything they miss can be learn easily enough through the book. I recommend for the easy exams, but as a lecturer.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/19/2013

Worst lecturer on the planet. Pretty sure he just put ridiculous questions on the exams because he was trying to make a point about people not attending his boring lectures. If you can manage to be excited enough about the material to actually pay attention in lecture, you might be able to do well. Do not recommend.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting a B
Anonymous
11/21/2013

Silio really likes IBM and will spend 75% of his lectures talking about the industry rather than the material you're supposed to know for the class. His exams don't really test how well you know the material; rather, how well you can memorize the answers from IEEE testbank. You have to know the exams inside out because there is no partial credit, so if you make the tiniest mistake, you will not get higher than a B. His grading also is very hit or miss (the final is worth 35% of your grade and can replace a midterm which totals to over 50% of your grade). However, he is the better alternative for the professors that teach ENEE244, so you should take him as a lesser of two evils.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/22/2013

This class takes a lot of effort. For one, there is soooo much homework. All quizzes are unannounced and in our semester he gave so many quizzes that we began expecting one every week. The first test is long and it is very easy to make mistakes. The second test is super easy. Our final, however, was not as easy as those of previous semesters, but it was not that bad. I thought I was going to get an A-, but there was a slight curve, so I got an A. As everyone says, getting an A is hard and is no walk in the park.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/06/2013

Dr. Silio is truly terrible as a professor. He goes on and on off tangents and fails to really communicate the course content across. Doing the homeworks is the main way you'll learn anything on this course, and the tests are the same year after year as other people mention. It's not too hard to get an A though as long as you study off of the old tests and memorize/learn the way he poses questions. Also, learn to do as much of the homework as you need, and copy the test from the answer key (he assigns WAY too much: more than a 4 credit class). He seems to have no respect for student's time and notion of what is appropriate. He's also quite arrogant which comes across easily. It's ironic considering he's a no-end professor with a very low salary and low significance. It's clear that he thinks of himself as better than scientists, and quite ridiculous actually.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/26/2012

Silio can be very blunt and rude at times. The one time I went to office hours he wasn't pleasant at all. But when it comes to the actual class and the material, I thought he was pretty good. Lecture is spent not on theory but on going through example problems and explaining the concepts behind them. The methods that Silio used during lecture were generally a lot better than the ones presented in the book. The 2 midterm exams are worth 27.5% of your grade each, and the final is worth 35%, with the other 10% coming from discussion section. In addition he will drop your lowest midterm and replace it with your final exam score if this benefits you. The layout of the tests is nearly identical to his prior exams on the UMD IEEE test bank. Definitely run through a bunch of those old exams and you will do fine on the tests. Silio is very straight-forward and is not out to trick you, so you will be able to anticipate exactly what is going to be on the exams. For the final, he gave those of us in lecture lots of hints about the problems that would appear, so definitely go to lecture to benefit from this.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/27/2011

Very straight forward professor - he is not around the bush, not out to "trick" the students. He is very blunt about what he tests on and what he expects you to take from his class. Personally, I loved this about him. The sample exams he hands out are very similar to the actual exams (almost identical to the 1st). There are weekly homework assignments, two midterms, and one final exam. The homeworks are very tedious and time consuming, but they are beneficial in that most of the problems at the end of the chapter are harder than any problem he will give on an exam. I remember one homework assignment had 75 karnaugh maps. The two midterms are significant toward your grade in that they count for most of the points in the class; however, he has a policy in which if one performs better on the final than any of the previous midterms the midterm grade will be replaced by the final. This is only for 1 exam though. One thing about him people hate, though, is the fact that he does not believe in partial credit. Only very rare occasions will he give out partial credit. As far as the lectures go, he goes off topic often but has interesting stories pertaining to the material that you learn, which makes it better. Also, he teaches much easier methods to perform logic than the book does. Definitely get your hands on previous exams - they do not change. He says so himself.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/17/2011

The homework can be difficult and time-consuming in this class, but it's only 10% of the grade and TAs seem to be very fair in grading it. The book is useless, but unfortunately you need it in order to do the homework. Attend lecture, as Dr. Silio explains things much better, and often knows much simpler methods than the book uses. The problems on tests are identical from semester to semester, only with slightly different information. If you do not belong to the testbank, sign up and study old tests. Practicing them, and being very careful not to make a mistake on test day, can get you a pretty easy A.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/17/2011

Everyone else has pretty much hit the nail on the head. He says "uhh" and "right" every other word. He laughs at his own jokes. His lectures slides are LITERALLY pages from the book scanned onto a powerpoint. Literally. He scares you by saying he doesn't curve if even one person gets an A on the exam, BUT HE DOES. Do not believe his lies. One time he even said he would curve downwards. I swear he just loves to troll students. He heavily favors those who sit in the front, so do that if you want to get on his good side. By the end of the class, I'm pretty sure he hated me, but I got an A so who cares. His exams aren't too bad. His homework is RIDICULOUS. He gives a homework which is graded for correctness, and then an "optional" SPS (Selected Problem Set), which is in fact not optional at all, but mostly graded for completion. Don't stress those too much on the SPSs. In fact, I think homework only counts for at most 10% of your grade, so don't stress it at all too much. Overall, this guys a joke. He'll come in rockin athletic shorts and a Hawaiian button down shirt like its nothing, proceed to mumble incoherently in engrish and laugh at his own jokes for 15 minutes, and then proceed to read lecture slides that are scanned imaged of the book. The only reason you'll go to class is because he threatens with pop quizzes, of which there might have been 2-3 the whole semester.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Anonymous
04/06/2011

Professor Nakajima is a nice guy if you go talk to him. He will never turn away your questions or interest to learn. However, his exams are very unforgiving. His HW are very long. He is incompetent in explaining material. I don't like his class or his grading policy, but he is a nice guy who if you build a good relationship with, could be depended upon to help you with research opportunities, etc.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

UMDstudent2011
04/04/2011

Boring lectures, and lots of homework are what describes taking ENEE244 with Silo. HOWEVER, his exams are the same every semester (just different numbers). Take Silo for ENEE244, you won't regret it.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

UMDstudent2011
04/04/2011

Difficult exams, 10+ hours of HW, and my favorite: He says "right" & "ok" & "uhhhhh" at least a 100 times each class period. My advice: Take the other guy; silo gives same exams every semester (easy), and Barua exams are straight forward and he does teach the material fairly well. The choice is yours.

Rajeev Barua
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/24/2010

Dr. Barua was good at explaining the material. Make sure you make it to all lectures, they are very worth it. He does, however, not repeat anything under almost any circumstance. So make sure you're awake throughout lecture. The grade consists of homework (15%) , two midterms (25% each), and the final (35%). Grading is dependent on your TA; we had an awesome, fair TA this semester. Good luck! Definitely one of the best professors for this class!

Rajeev Barua
ENEE244

Expecting a B
smhmd0521
12/17/2010

So Rajeev likes to come into lectures one minute late day after day. You can expect the same routine from his class everyday, he spends the first few minutes reviewing what you did the previous class and then moves forward from there. And he follows the order of the book, so if u miss something it is not difficult to find in the book. As a lecturer, he is very good. He explains everything thoroughly, and uses visual aids often. I thought he was the best teacher ever, until i went to his office hours a couple times. He does not help at all! In lecture he explains things well, but if you cannot follow the way he explains it he just keeps explaining the EXACT same way until you say you understand. Overall, good lecturer and in class teacher. But not very helpful outside, and addiionally he can be very moody certain days and doesnt call on people for questions when he is

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Anonymous
12/16/2010

Run for your life! This guy is the worst professor at UMD. EE professors are horrible. And this guy would be horrible even by EE standards. Has no teaching abilities whatsoever. Teaches from slides, which he doesn't post online. Uses different means to force students to attend is torture of lectures, by taking attendance, unannounced quizzes etc. Exams are extremely hard. Another thing is that this guy is very hard to understand. He has a thick Asian accent (which I personally don't mind, lot of professors here are from foreign countries). But the bigger problem is that his English grammar is horrible. And even if this guy had Morgan Freeman's voice with perfect grammar, his lectures would still be horrible since he just does not know how to teach. Also, this guy is very biased. He is nice with students he likes, and really mean to students he doesn't. I'll say the same thing as another reviewer below me did. Taking this guy's class was the biggest mistake in my life. Avoid this guy at any cost. Trust me, any professor is better than Nakajima. If two professors are taking this class, pick the other guy. If Nakajima's the only choice, wait a semester.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting a C+
frapis
11/16/2010

This guy will try to scare you into dropping his class, because if you don't, you FAIL. ALOT of work, and homework is barely part of your overall grade. The differences between him and Silio are: Nakajima gives partial credit (not much though), and Silio's tests are slightly easier. Good luck. Try not to FAIILLL

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting a C
logical-zero
10/21/2010

Well, I read a lot of poor reviews about Prof Silio and for the first 3 weeks of the semester I had made up my mind to hate him. Yes, his lectures are ancient. Yes, he likes to tell army stories. Yes his exams require you to be proficient, not just knowledgeable. Yes, he gives very little partial credit. Now read this carefully: Prof Silio is the Mr. Miyagi of professors. He has been teaching the same 5-6 courses since Elizbeth Taylor was in the second grade. There is a method to his madness. You might not like how he teaches but you will be a digital logic ninja. If you go to his office hours he will explain, in great detail, how to solve the problems. Additionally, if you take him for 244, you will be a whiz kid in 206. If you ask his gradebook, I was at the bottom of his class but 206 is a cakewalk now. All in all I enjoyed the class because you get to solve problems without complicated math. You get to design things that solve problems with only two numbers (1,0). It's quite fascinating how much you can do with True, False. I'm honestly considering minoring in microelectronics now.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Anonymous
10/19/2010

Took ENEE244 with him and that was the biggest mistake in my life at umd. Don't take the class if you are not Japa****. I am dead serious. All Japa* students got A in the class. In class you will understand only 10% materials. You have to learn 90% on your own or from TA or buddies. Avoid at all costs even if you have no other choices (delay your graduation 6 months) but don't take him. With due respect, he is very old guy, mind set is similar to military, countdowns in seconds when he collects quiz in class. If you are one second late then he won't accept it. Laughs at his own jokes. Sometime you will get it sometime not. I always laughed just to make him happy. Questions (half page each) on the exams are similar to history essay. You need 10 min to read the question and 10 more min to understand it, but usually japa** students get it quick :)

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
silversd
07/21/2010

First of all, anyone who is looking at this review has to take this course at some point. That really isn't an option. The only option you have is the professor. I recommend Silio over Nakajima. From what I have heard and read, Nakajima cares too much about proofs and Boolean algebra instead of Digital Logic Design. Silio, on the other hand, does teach the material, including helpful hints that detour from the book. In fact, I didn't really have to read the book at all because I learned everything in class. The one drawback to Silio is his grading. He does give partial credit if you do part of the problem correctly, but it isn't always as much as you would like. For example, if you fill in every row correctly on a truth table except for one, there goes a quarter of your points even though you got 1/16th of the problem wrong. That said, pay attention in class, and study the sample exams, and you will do fine with Silio.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting a B
fma1
05/22/2010

If you wondering who to take, Silio or Nakajima, it's really up to you. Silio will actually teach you something unlike Nakajima, but he doesn't hold review sessions. Nakajima holds review sessions, but he can't teach. If you study a bunch of Silio's past exams, the test will be a cinch. Nakajima makes you do stuff like prove this and that using Boolean algebra which I really don't see the point of. Basically, it's like the other guy said. If you have to stop and think, you probably got the problem wrong. On the final exam I took 5 days ago, I had to stop and think on the propagation delay one, so I just left it for last. It was multiple choice, so I worked it out partially and guessed. I mean, I would say, I liked Silio because the final exam is the most important thing. I got an 54 on the midterm and a 40 something on the 2nd exam, but I got a B on the final so I got a B in the class. You should come to class just to see if there's anything important that might be on a test. But most of the time it isn't so bring a pillow, catch up on your sleep. Don't bother taking too many notes if it's in the book because he goes way too fast with slides. You won't be able to copy them. You're better off reading the book and his notes. I recommend Mano's book, not Givone's. Givone never gets to the point. Honestly, I barely even used the book. Only for homework did I actually open it. When he gives you the choose a/b/c/d/e for karnaugh map about implicants, do not choose none of the above. That is always wrong. That killed me on the first exam. And hopefully your TA will teach you the graphical method for NAND->OR/AND. After you do that, put it on a Karnaugh map and then get the sum of products. And make sure you know exclusive OR really well. Basically, it tests to see if the inputs are both the same. 0 XOR x = 0, 1 XOR x = NOT x. Think of it like this: 0 0 0 If I don't eat the cake and I don't eat the pie, then there won't be only one thing left to eat. 0 1 1 If I don't eat the cake and I eat the pie, then there will be only one thing left to eat. 1 0 1 If I eat the cake and I don't eat the pie, then there will be only one thing left to eat. 1 1 0 If I eat the cake and the pie, then there won't be only one thing left to eat.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/13/2010

his son went to princeton. at princeton they don't let you double major. he once had a student who misread a question and when the student asked for a regrade, he wrote "learn to read" on his paper. the student's mom was a reading teacher. everyone loves ibm. he laughs like tickle me elmo. these are the things and more that you will learn in his ENEE 244 class. What did you expect to learn? Engineering? He handwrites everything on transparencies and they mean nothing to me. Literally, it's just a bunch of variables. No one asks questions because it seems like everyone is too lost to ask them. They don't even know what to ask about. to put it in perspective, i had a 3.9 GPA in high school and came in with 40 AP credits and had a 4.0, let's see what happens this semester...

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Anonymous
12/31/2009

Great class. Fair exams.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Anonymous
12/31/2009

This class was cake. People need to relax. Nakajima is a very easy professor, all his antics are just for show. And he is actually very good. Do the homework and you'll breeze through this class.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/31/2009

This class is a cinch. I studied my butt off for the first test, I got a 50.9%. Didn't study for the last exam and final, got an A on both exams. What I learned from this class, studying makes it worse. The problems are always very tedious though. So learn some time management or something. Quizzes are random. Either way, by the time you finish the class(hopefully passing) you will evolve into your next form via the Nakajima stone. Good luck. P.S. He has corny jokes. And speaks Engrish. Not English.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/28/2009

You will learn a lot in Nakajima's 244 class from the book and the TA's. You will not learn very much from Nakajima. His English is not that great, so the first few classes it's basically impossible to understand what's going on. After a while you will get used to this though and you will be able to discern sentences from what he is saying. Once you can actually understand him, you will realize that he is not presenting the information very well at all and that you should probably just read the book during class. So you basically have to learn the material by going to the TA's and by doing problems and looking at the solutions he hands out and by reading the book (although the book is very long-winded and hard to read). That being said, you can do well in his class. He is a very tough grader because he wants students to work hard, but I think there is a curve in the end, so your grade will turn out better than you thought. His exams are hit or miss. Our first exam was really long and had some very unfair questions on it (two 5-variable Karnaugh map questions which basically test how well you can circle groups of 1's, which is not a very useful skill to test students on). However, our second exam and the final were very fair based on what we practiced on the hw and he gave extra time to make sure people could finish. The key factor was that if you did all the hw and worked out all the problems that you got wrong until you understood them and then made sure you knew how to do all the problems before the exam, then you were very well-prepared to do well on the exam. So if you work hard, it is very possible to do well in this class. One thing that I liked about Nakajima, which a lot of people hated actually, was that he would take class time to explain important practical things about getting a job and about various programs in the ECE department that can give you some great opportunities, such as the BS/MS program. Also, Nakajima is a pretty nice guy, and it's apparent that he cares about his students and wants them to learn, which is good. I am rating Nakajima pretty low because he really isn't that great at explaining the material. However, he will force you to learn the material by making the class hard, so it's good to know that you will come out of it with a lot of new knowledge. And it is possible to do well if you work hard. But really you should try to find a professor who is better at explaining the topics. Petrov seems to be a good bet. He taught one of our lectures when Nakajima was away traveling and I thought his lecture was excellent, so I would recommend Petrov based on that.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/27/2009

One of the nicest and most inspiring professors I have yet. He really teaches you that hard work pays off. If you are one of those students that likes getting 1 point above the average and expects a B, you are in the wrong class. However, if you are a student who is interesting in really working hard, going to office hours, actually reading the book and learning the material in conjunction with attending lecture you're in the right place! Nakajima is a very nice professor who will help you if you have decent questions in office hours. Don't come in saying 'I don't understand anything help me!' Instead come in and ask, 'I am having trouble with this concept.' I will admit he does have a habit of predicting which students will do well, but that doesn't mean that he is putting the rest of the students down. If you prove to him that you work hard and care about his class a little bit, you will be okay in this class. BTW, he does curve. He curves the final grades of everyone. He doesn't say he curves because he wants students to work very hard, but he does indeed curve. Earning an A in his class isn't easy, but as long as you are in the top 15% of the class you have a set A.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
miyamamo
12/18/2009

I had Silio last Spring and he has been by far my favorite professor. He tells personal anecdotes, which irritates some people, but which helped me stay engaged throughout the class. His lectures alternated between written on the chalkboard and overhead slides pre-written in marker upon request (but it was a foolish request). Having some background to the course is very useful as he'll jump right into things that will be over your head if you've never done anything with logic before. I took an Introduction to the Fundamentals of Computer Science class in high school and it was more than enough to give me solid footing. He does give partial credit, but in a different way then most professors. He'll follow your process and from the moment you make a mistake, everything that follows is wrong (because you have a wrong assumption). Unless, I suppose, you make a second mistake that magically fixes your first, in which case you'll get credit for the work that's right again. Most people complain because they get no credit when they fail to set up a problem correctly, but if you can't take the time to read a problem why did you bother even enrolling?

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting a C
Anonymous
12/16/2009

The worst professor I have ever had at UMD. Avoid him at all costs. It seems like Nakajima almost tries to screw everyone over in the class. Studying for the final exam is difficult because he doesn't post any practice materials. The last day of class included a ridiculous pop quiz that took about an hour to complete. Basically going to lecture is like reading the book since he literally scans the book page by page and puts the scans on the powerpoint presentation with little supplement. I learned more about Digital Logic from reading the book than attending lectures -- and the book cost a whole lot less. Horrible Experience.

Kazuo Nakajima
ENEE244

Expecting a B
Anonymous
10/28/2009

This professor is horrible. His most recent stunt left 44 of 60 people in the class not passing the exam according to university standards(D{18 people} or F{26 people}) and he will not curve exams if one person gets an A on the exam. Well, 1 person got an 89.5 and he said that was an A meaning no curve. 8 B's and 7 C's were scores of the other students. He spends an average of 15-30 minutes of each class talking about terrible jokes and statistics to try and scare you into dropping the class instead of actually teaching the material to help you pass it. His idea of teaching is taking worked-out examples from the book and putting them on powerpoint to talk about/run through during class. He assigns "suggested"(still graded for completion) homework out of the book for almost every class, and there are no answers in the back of the book, so you have no idea whether you are doing it right or not and have no opportunity to learn from it. After you hand that in during class, he then assigns a HW assignment graded for correctness which he writes on the same material; however, the catch is that he hands out solutions for both assignments a week later - AFTER you had to complete the HW for correctness. The process ends up as that you have no idea whether you're doing anything right on the book-hw because you can't check your answers anywhere, and then you find out you were doing it all wrong on the correctness-hw and the pop-quizes and end up with horrible scores for 20% of your grade (hw + pop quizes). The worst part about all the homework is that you don't get your homeworks back until a week before the exam. Listening to him talk is also tough to get through because he has extremely poor English and says the word "right" every other word. A friend of mine held a counter one class and tallied a little over 300 times in an hour and a half class. I can't say much about Silio (the other professor who teaches 244), but from what I understand, he uses the same tests every year with different numbers but gives no partial credit on anything; you either have it 100% correct or its all wrong. You have a choice to make if you have to take this class between a horrible professor and tough grading. Overall 244 with Nakajima has so far been a horrific experience and I'm just trying to survive through his antics. Hope for a good TA like I have.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting a B
Anonymous
08/01/2009

Silio is one of those professors that you dont want to go through. I skipped his lectures quite often because i could not keep up with his lecture notes. BUT if you take his class, all you have to do is study his past exams, because the ones he gives are very similar. that should be enough to get by

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
dmorris
07/23/2009

Had him for Summer 2009. Was a good teacher. Make sure you get a hold of his previous exams and study his practice exams as well as any homework problems he gives you.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Anonymous
04/12/2009

He is awesome if you want to talk past ancient history about some computer that he advised the government to make is small size but they never listened... and how the whole project is in somebody's basement... If you want an easy "A" or "C-" and dont want to understand a single word of the material... then get homework solution and his past exam form other students... Otherwise "YOU ARE WARNED IN ADVANCE"

Ankur Srivastava
ENEE244

vbury
02/25/2009

ENEE244 is hard, but he keeps his lectures interesting. You need to keep up with the work, though, because his tests can be brutal. Luckily, the curve can save you. I personally failed the second exam and still wound up with an A-. Overall, from what I've heard, DEFINITELY better than Silio.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/03/2009

Unlike what everyone else says, he actually isn't too bad of a lecturer. However, you have to come prepared for class i.e. look at the material in the book in order to understand him. The best thing about taking his class is that his exams are all very similar to his previous exams which you can easily obtain. All he does is switch up a few minor things. Sometimes, he uses the exact same questions. Best way to study for his exams are to look over past exams and maybe go over the homeworks. Its true that he's stingy with partial credit but if you can do his past exams, the real exam should be easy and you shouldn't really make any mistakes. Also, he's pretty generous with his exam curves which really help out at the end. Best advice I can give you: start early on the homeworks since they take forever, get your hands on previous exams, and practice practice practice. If you do enough practice problemss, eventually they become second nature to you and it's really not that bad.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

cp_eng
12/26/2008

He's a good teacher. He thoroughly explains the material (get him to teach on the chalk/whiteboard-- this is much more effective than his transparencies) and he is always willing to help if you go to office hours. People complain because he's a harsh grader, but it really just motivates you to actually learn the material. Yes, this is engineering, you have to do a lot of work.

Charles Silio
ENEE244

Expecting an A
ProphetElisha
09/03/2008

He's such a terrible lecturer. He'll give really long supplemental readings that are worthless to you and are a waste of paper because no one understands them. His handwriting is illegible on his ancient overhead slides. His homeworks take a long time. He hasn't changed the format of his tests for years so you'll probably get more out of studying previous tests if you can find a test bank than from his practice tests. He's really harsh in his grading and gives next to no partial grading. You might be surprised at the grade you get (could be higher or lower than what you expect). He curves a lot, but given the harsh grading, it might not be enough.

Reviews for ENEE244