GEOL204 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/24/2025	Amazing professor who has a lot of energy. The material is actually difficult but you can look up literally every answer. The midterms are take home and open note (same with every assignment). There's honestly a lot of assignments and it really is busy work. Halfway through I stopped even going to lectures (only went to discussions) and nothing really changed. It's a fun class for some but you can just coast by and get the NS gen ed.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/18/2025	My biggest piece of advice would be PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS IF YOU ARE EXPECTING AN EASY GEN-ED. I am ending with an A+ solely because I had an extremely light semester and could dedicate the absurd amount of time needed for this class. Dr. Holtz is so incredibly passionate and knowledgable (and pretty understanding), it's literally insane how much he knows and how he can answer even the most absurd questions. But this class is so lecture heavy- there are hundreds of slides filled with so much information (he does not post them, but class is recorded) that he also verbally adds on to when teaching. He will talk nonstop for the full hour and 15 min every single class and often post extra recordings afterwards with more stuff that he didn't have time to go through. And don't even get me started on the tedious homeworks- most of them literally took me hours. The exams are online and open-note with fair questions BUT you NEED to go to class. Not only is attendance taken every class, but my second exam grade dropped so much when I skipped a couple of classes. And the mandatory discussion was the worst part of my week, it was so boring.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/16/2025	Professor Holtz is an amazing professor and clearly is passionate about what he’s teaching. I think he’s awesome. But my god this class can be so tedious at times…. The homework’s are easy but not when the graphs have 50 columns and font size of 1 pixel that you can’t upscale because it’s low resolution, I had to find the graphs on different sites and scale them myself. The homework’s were basically tedious busy work. The discussions were extremely boring and more busy work. The exams were fair as they were open note and online and the lectures were interesting. Also beware the museum trip is a lot too it took me about 3 hours of typing as fast as I could. You have to go to the Smithsonian for 10% of your grade on your own time and answer over 60 questions and some have multiple parts 😁. Overall professor Holtz is amazing but the course is just too much tedious busy work and not worth while for a gen ed requirement unless you are interested in geology.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/05/2025	Dr. Holtz is a very funny and engaging professor! His assignments and coursework are easy and the presentations are also extremely easy. If I had to find one thing to complain about it would be that the lectures are very content heavy and you will be extremely behind if you miss even one lecture. He does post the slides, but they are mostly pictures and you need to watch the lecture recordings to really understand them. Tests are open note, and exams are presentations, meaning that there is no point where you need to memorize or study content heavily so you can just enjoy the lectures without needing to take a huge amount of notes. Other than that, this class was very fun and I would recommend to anybody who wants to knock out two gen eds in one class.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting a B Anonymous 03/05/2025	I will start by saying that Holtz is a great guy who is clearly very passionate about dinosaurs. While I cannot speak to the level of difficulty in his other dinosaur class of geol104, I need to warn people that GEOL204 IS NOT AN EASY GEN ED!! Just because every assignment is online, open-notes and asynchronous DOES NOT MEAN THIS COURSE IS EASY! In fact, that makes it quite difficult. Since he wants to discourage people from looking up every answer, all of the discussion activities and homework assignments are in-depth analyses of graphs and scientific papers, while the exams are timed, longer versions of the same thing. His lectures are full of prehistoric terms that he expects everyone to know going into this class, despite it being labeled as a science gen ed designed for non-science students. Without my discussion section and a very helpful TA who is willing to walk me through the homeworks, I would legitimately have a sub-50% in this course. If you do not have any prior knowledge of geology and prehistoric life, I highly recommend taking a different gen ed to fulfill your DSNS or SCIS credit.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/13/2024	Pros: -Incredibly passionate professor, who has a pretty entertaining lecture style. He is kind of a real life cartoon character. -Course material is pretty interesting for the most part. -Fairly easy homeworks that often rely more on your ability to read than your ability to understand the material. -Project where you travel to DC and do a scavenger hunt at the Smithsonian. -Open-note midterms -Final project instead of exam that is weighed at about 10% of the grade and is graded very leniently. -Profuse extra credit that will negate pretty much any point deductions. Frankly, I am not sure it is possible to get below an A if you give a little effort for the course. (Minor) Cons: -There is an attendance grade in the form of "QOTDs," but I ended up not attending ~50% of the lectures and the grade hit was so minimal that it did not matter. It's weighted at like 5%. You also get 4 free absences (lol). -Discussion sections feel like busywork. My TAs were very chill though. I think this is an amazing course to check off the DSNS (no lab) requirement.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/13/2024	Excellent professor. Exams are online and other assignments aren't too difficult. Able to miss 4 classes with no penalty but must answer the Question of the Day for participation points during lecture
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2024	One of the best professors I've had at UMD and one of the most interesting classes I've taken. This class was an easy A, but it was also super interesting. It's everything you want in a gened. Lectures are recorded and exams are open-note and take-home. You can even use Dr. Holtz's extensive lecture notes for the exam. The final was just a group project that was pretty straightforward. Super easy and super chill.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/23/2023	Super great professor you can really tell that he enjoys taking about this stuff. Take this class if you can!
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/10/2023	Awesome professor. Super enthusiastic about what he teaches. He is also super approachable and I find it very fun to converse with him. His classes are extremely interesting and his assignments are fun. If you have a remote interest in prehistoric life, you should take his class. His exams are online and open note too, with lots of extra credit questions. I have over a 100% in the course. I took the class for my minor in paleobiology and hope I can take more of his classes in the future.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/19/2022	It is my favorite course at college!!! Prof Holtz is very nice and he is passionate about what he teaches. The lecture is very interesting and you can learn a lot about fossils. If you love paleontology I would highly recommend all his courses.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/18/2021	Holtz really loves his stuff. For those who do not know, Holtz is a world renown Paleontologist (Studies Dinosaurs), and his love for the topic in this class is quite evident. However, I do not think he handled the switch to online too well. His lectures (pre-recorded) would be around 3 hours in length, thsi combined with the fact that we had mandatory discussion sections and an "optional" review session, meant his class took way too much work and time than it should have for a gen ed. The homework assignments for this class also took way too long, however, I will note that out of the 8 total homework assignments, 7 of them were in the first 5 weeks of the course, which for the rest of the course there was essentially no homework, except for weekly discussion posts and a bi-weekly quiz (of which 2 lowest are dropped). He also gives around 5 bonus points on each exam (usually easy questions), so it is a nice buffer. If you are taking this class for the Dinosaurs in its name, fair warning, this class is more of an evolution class or a speed run of history of life on the planet. We spent 2 lectures on Dinosaurs themselves, and you only really learned about their evolutionary traits or some special things about them as a whole. Like for example we did not talk about like anything about the Cretaceous Period which I find ironic because Holtz specializes in Tyrannosaurs (we did cover the extinction in great detail). We also spent a good chunk of time on stuff like paleoclimate (which while important) , is extremely boring and took up waaayy too much time. If you came to this class for an easy gen-ed, I believe the ease of this class is based solely on your love of prehistoric life, I loved dinosaurs and etc growing up, so this class was quite enjoyable and I did quite well on all of the midterms and finals because of that, however , this class can be challenging for those who werent as invested into Walking with Dinosaurs and etc when they were kids.
Thomas Holtz GEOL204 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/13/2019	Exams, quizzes, and assignments are great. You don't need to go to class, just take half an hour a week to read the lecture notes he posts online.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/24/2025

Amazing professor who has a lot of energy. The material is actually difficult but you can look up literally every answer. The midterms are take home and open note (same with every assignment). There's honestly a lot of assignments and it really is busy work. Halfway through I stopped even going to lectures (only went to discussions) and nothing really changed. It's a fun class for some but you can just coast by and get the NS gen ed.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/18/2025

My biggest piece of advice would be PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS IF YOU ARE EXPECTING AN EASY GEN-ED. I am ending with an A+ solely because I had an extremely light semester and could dedicate the absurd amount of time needed for this class. Dr. Holtz is so incredibly passionate and knowledgable (and pretty understanding), it's literally insane how much he knows and how he can answer even the most absurd questions. But this class is so lecture heavy- there are hundreds of slides filled with so much information (he does not post them, but class is recorded) that he also verbally adds on to when teaching. He will talk nonstop for the full hour and 15 min every single class and often post extra recordings afterwards with more stuff that he didn't have time to go through. And don't even get me started on the tedious homeworks- most of them literally took me hours. The exams are online and open-note with fair questions BUT you NEED to go to class. Not only is attendance taken every class, but my second exam grade dropped so much when I skipped a couple of classes. And the mandatory discussion was the worst part of my week, it was so boring.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/16/2025

Professor Holtz is an amazing professor and clearly is passionate about what he’s teaching. I think he’s awesome. But my god this class can be so tedious at times…. The homework’s are easy but not when the graphs have 50 columns and font size of 1 pixel that you can’t upscale because it’s low resolution, I had to find the graphs on different sites and scale them myself. The homework’s were basically tedious busy work. The discussions were extremely boring and more busy work. The exams were fair as they were open note and online and the lectures were interesting. Also beware the museum trip is a lot too it took me about 3 hours of typing as fast as I could. You have to go to the Smithsonian for 10% of your grade on your own time and answer over 60 questions and some have multiple parts 😁. Overall professor Holtz is amazing but the course is just too much tedious busy work and not worth while for a gen ed requirement unless you are interested in geology.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/05/2025

Dr. Holtz is a very funny and engaging professor! His assignments and coursework are easy and the presentations are also extremely easy. If I had to find one thing to complain about it would be that the lectures are very content heavy and you will be extremely behind if you miss even one lecture. He does post the slides, but they are mostly pictures and you need to watch the lecture recordings to really understand them. Tests are open note, and exams are presentations, meaning that there is no point where you need to memorize or study content heavily so you can just enjoy the lectures without needing to take a huge amount of notes. Other than that, this class was very fun and I would recommend to anybody who wants to knock out two gen eds in one class.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting a B
Anonymous
03/05/2025

I will start by saying that Holtz is a great guy who is clearly very passionate about dinosaurs. While I cannot speak to the level of difficulty in his other dinosaur class of geol104, I need to warn people that GEOL204 IS NOT AN EASY GEN ED!! Just because every assignment is online, open-notes and asynchronous DOES NOT MEAN THIS COURSE IS EASY! In fact, that makes it quite difficult. Since he wants to discourage people from looking up every answer, all of the discussion activities and homework assignments are in-depth analyses of graphs and scientific papers, while the exams are timed, longer versions of the same thing. His lectures are full of prehistoric terms that he expects everyone to know going into this class, despite it being labeled as a science gen ed designed for non-science students. Without my discussion section and a very helpful TA who is willing to walk me through the homeworks, I would legitimately have a sub-50% in this course. If you do not have any prior knowledge of geology and prehistoric life, I highly recommend taking a different gen ed to fulfill your DSNS or SCIS credit.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/13/2024

Pros: -Incredibly passionate professor, who has a pretty entertaining lecture style. He is kind of a real life cartoon character. -Course material is pretty interesting for the most part. -Fairly easy homeworks that often rely more on your ability to read than your ability to understand the material. -Project where you travel to DC and do a scavenger hunt at the Smithsonian. -Open-note midterms -Final project instead of exam that is weighed at about 10% of the grade and is graded very leniently. -Profuse extra credit that will negate pretty much any point deductions. Frankly, I am not sure it is possible to get below an A if you give a little effort for the course. (Minor) Cons: -There is an attendance grade in the form of "QOTDs," but I ended up not attending ~50% of the lectures and the grade hit was so minimal that it did not matter. It's weighted at like 5%. You also get 4 free absences (lol). -Discussion sections feel like busywork. My TAs were very chill though. I think this is an amazing course to check off the DSNS (no lab) requirement.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/13/2024

Excellent professor. Exams are online and other assignments aren't too difficult. Able to miss 4 classes with no penalty but must answer the Question of the Day for participation points during lecture

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/09/2024

One of the best professors I've had at UMD and one of the most interesting classes I've taken. This class was an easy A, but it was also super interesting. It's everything you want in a gened. Lectures are recorded and exams are open-note and take-home. You can even use Dr. Holtz's extensive lecture notes for the exam. The final was just a group project that was pretty straightforward. Super easy and super chill.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/23/2023

Super great professor you can really tell that he enjoys taking about this stuff. Take this class if you can!

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/10/2023

Awesome professor. Super enthusiastic about what he teaches. He is also super approachable and I find it very fun to converse with him. His classes are extremely interesting and his assignments are fun. If you have a remote interest in prehistoric life, you should take his class. His exams are online and open note too, with lots of extra credit questions. I have over a 100% in the course. I took the class for my minor in paleobiology and hope I can take more of his classes in the future.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
11/19/2022

It is my favorite course at college!!! Prof Holtz is very nice and he is passionate about what he teaches. The lecture is very interesting and you can learn a lot about fossils. If you love paleontology I would highly recommend all his courses.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/18/2021

Holtz really loves his stuff. For those who do not know, Holtz is a world renown Paleontologist (Studies Dinosaurs), and his love for the topic in this class is quite evident. However, I do not think he handled the switch to online too well. His lectures (pre-recorded) would be around 3 hours in length, thsi combined with the fact that we had mandatory discussion sections and an "optional" review session, meant his class took way too much work and time than it should have for a gen ed. The homework assignments for this class also took way too long, however, I will note that out of the 8 total homework assignments, 7 of them were in the first 5 weeks of the course, which for the rest of the course there was essentially no homework, except for weekly discussion posts and a bi-weekly quiz (of which 2 lowest are dropped). He also gives around 5 bonus points on each exam (usually easy questions), so it is a nice buffer. If you are taking this class for the Dinosaurs in its name, fair warning, this class is more of an evolution class or a speed run of history of life on the planet. We spent 2 lectures on Dinosaurs themselves, and you only really learned about their evolutionary traits or some special things about them as a whole. Like for example we did not talk about like anything about the Cretaceous Period which I find ironic because Holtz specializes in Tyrannosaurs (we did cover the extinction in great detail). We also spent a good chunk of time on stuff like paleoclimate (which while important) , is extremely boring and took up waaayy too much time. If you came to this class for an easy gen-ed, I believe the ease of this class is based solely on your love of prehistoric life, I loved dinosaurs and etc growing up, so this class was quite enjoyable and I did quite well on all of the midterms and finals because of that, however , this class can be challenging for those who werent as invested into Walking with Dinosaurs and etc when they were kids.

Thomas Holtz
GEOL204

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
06/13/2019

Exams, quizzes, and assignments are great. You don't need to go to class, just take half an hour a week to read the lecture notes he posts online.

Reviews for GEOL204