SOCY200 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Daniel Swann SOCY200 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/07/2024	Clearly didn't want to teach the course (took it Spring '23, his first time teaching it) -- flatly disregarded international/cross-cultural comparisons until a few weeks near the end of the course and showed almost 0 awareness of global processes or social issues outside the West (or even the U.S). Bro also just wanted to get mad at social issues and/or crack jokes to a room sometimes, but much of it was immaterial/opinion-based with patchy background statistics (and he specifically tested the statistics used on slides he doesn't post -- some of which were contradictory or lacking context). Most importantly, EVERY statistic was at least 5 (and often 10-15) years outdated and he clearly didn't put any effort into updating the trends he teaches but continues to call them "current issues." His course didn't add value to my education and was mostly off-topic based on the SoC description. I don't think I learned a lot -- I know a lot more about Daniel Swann's opinions on social media though.
Daniel Swann SOCY200 Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/04/2024	He teaches his own beliefs and biases and is incredibly unorganized. Assignments had no rubrics. He doesn't know how to write assessments; he assesses arbitrary facts and figures. Ie something like "what is the federal poverty income line for a 4 person family? give an exact number". Prior to the midterm, he just said we needed to "know numbers that are important to the story". Did not elaborate on this. This class was my lowest grade not because it was hard but because grading and test questions were so, so arbitrary. I highly suspect he reused the same exact material from SOCY105 to teach this course, so my review is not relevant to SOCY200. This lecturer is by far the worst in the department. He had some good jokes at least.
Daniel Swann SOCY200 Anonymous 05/15/2024	He will his teach his own beliefs and biases
Daniel Swann SOCY200 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/10/2024	Extremely nice and entertaining professor, but SUPER disorganized!!! He won't post quizzes until a day or two before they're due, and this semester he assigned another quiz due the first day of exams, in addition to two video projects and a final exam.
Daniel Swann SOCY200 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/06/2024	NOT AN EASY A!! There's an in person mid term and final as well. Week before the final there is 2 videos due that you have to make. He is a nice guy but really unorganized. There are easier classes out there if you need a gen ed. Out of my 6 classes, this one is the only one with an in person final and stressing me out the most.
Jeffrey Parsells-johnson SOCY200 Expecting an A cm222 01/15/2024	super nice and friendly guy, tries to make class interesting but his lectures could get very confusing and he can tend to ramble. content was interesting just hard to follow. very lenient about due dates, attendance, but doesn't go easy on grading. group project for final which i didn't love.
Jeffrey Parsells-johnson SOCY200 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/20/2023	Pretty cool professor, was scared to take him at first because of all of the reviews about weird grading but the grading ended up being fine. Make sure you get the required reading materials because that is what the whole class is based off of. His teaching style is pretty average but I liked how he cracked a few jokes and made references to old 90's/ early 2000's shows. For my class you get assigned your TA by first letter of your last name that you can communicate with through the semester. We had a total of 2 and Prof. PJ was assigned the rest of the students, so if you would ever email him and he is not your assigned TA/ instructor, he probably won't get back to you unfortunately. Overall this class was just taking notes on slide shows and reading the materials to write papers on (lowest paper gets dropped). It's obvious Prof. PJ has a dedicated passion for this subject so he's not all that bad.
Jeffrey Parsells-johnson SOCY200 Expecting a B- Anonymous 10/21/2023	Dr. PJ is really enthusiastic about the topics but does not explain them in a good way. He tries to explain complex concepts with other complex concepts that also make no sense. This class consists of lectures, take-home tests, 3 critical thinking papers and weekly class participation that is about a paragraph response to a prompt he gives in the lecture (so you have to go). The critical thinking papers have a rubric but it is not clear and he is a very harsh grader. Easy class if you are very perceptive to what he says in class and the take-home tests are super easy.
Nicole DeLoatch SOCY200 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2022	She is an amazing instructor that is very passionate about the subjects she teaches. The coursework can be slightly hefty and repetitive at times but once you get into the flow of it, it becomes easier as the course goes on. Attendance isn't mandatory but I would advise you go as much as you possibly can because she likes to drop hints on exams during lecture and regularly gives extra credit as the semester goes on. All in all I would highly recommend Dr.DeLoatch.
John Pease SOCY200 Expecting an A- Anonymous 07/02/2014	This class was boring. Straight up. I mean I learned some stuff from it, but eh. The class is graded really oddly, but since Pease is so old, he does whatever he wants and nobody argues. (I got an A- with a 93.5%. I didn’t even think that was ethical.) He is a very nice man who knows his stuff though, but honestly the TAs do all the grading and write all of the exams except for the final. If you do not study for exams, you will not do well. However, the exams are very easy to study for if you’re good at binge memorizing. I once started studying at midnight the night before an exam and got a 100. The exams are exactly based off of Gazettes (worksheets) that you fill in word for word in class- it’s just like high school. They take attendance for lecture and discussion, so if you go to all of them, that’s an easy way to boost your grade. I had Jessica Pena as my TA and she was decent. She was awesome for hinting exam questions during discussion though- she does that as a reward for the students actually showing up to a 9AM discussion. Your TA will factor in a little bit of your success in this course, but it’s mostly up to you, as are all classes. The workload isn’t that bad, it took me two months of the semester though to figure out that nobody actually does the readings regularly. You will want to read Top of the World and the articles here and there he puts in the syllabus because they can come up on exams, but don’t bother with regularly reading the course book. I didn’t read Guns Germs and Steel either and I was fine. There is no homework other than 4 or 5 easy assignments for discussion that are never more than a page long. I took this course with a heavy course load and managed fine.
John Pease SOCY200 Expecting a C Erik.Deaton 05/02/2013	All in all, he knows the material a hundred times over. He is intelligent, but the exams are designed to trip students up. The lectures can also get a little boring

Daniel Swann
SOCY200

Expecting an A
Anonymous
10/07/2024

Clearly didn't want to teach the course (took it Spring '23, his first time teaching it) -- flatly disregarded international/cross-cultural comparisons until a few weeks near the end of the course and showed almost 0 awareness of global processes or social issues outside the West (or even the U.S). Bro also just wanted to get mad at social issues and/or crack jokes to a room sometimes, but much of it was immaterial/opinion-based with patchy background statistics (and he specifically tested the statistics used on slides he doesn't post -- some of which were contradictory or lacking context). Most importantly, EVERY statistic was at least 5 (and often 10-15) years outdated and he clearly didn't put any effort into updating the trends he teaches but continues to call them "current issues." His course didn't add value to my education and was mostly off-topic based on the SoC description. I don't think I learned a lot -- I know a lot more about Daniel Swann's opinions on social media though.

Daniel Swann
SOCY200

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
10/04/2024

He teaches his own beliefs and biases and is incredibly unorganized. Assignments had no rubrics. He doesn't know how to write assessments; he assesses arbitrary facts and figures. Ie something like "what is the federal poverty income line for a 4 person family? give an exact number". Prior to the midterm, he just said we needed to "know numbers that are important to the story". Did not elaborate on this. This class was my lowest grade not because it was hard but because grading and test questions were so, so arbitrary. I highly suspect he reused the same exact material from SOCY105 to teach this course, so my review is not relevant to SOCY200. This lecturer is by far the worst in the department. He had some good jokes at least.

Daniel Swann
SOCY200

Anonymous
05/15/2024

He will his teach his own beliefs and biases

Daniel Swann
SOCY200

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/10/2024

Extremely nice and entertaining professor, but SUPER disorganized!!! He won't post quizzes until a day or two before they're due, and this semester he assigned another quiz due the first day of exams, in addition to two video projects and a final exam.

Daniel Swann
SOCY200

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/06/2024

NOT AN EASY A!! There's an in person mid term and final as well. Week before the final there is 2 videos due that you have to make. He is a nice guy but really unorganized. There are easier classes out there if you need a gen ed. Out of my 6 classes, this one is the only one with an in person final and stressing me out the most.

Jeffrey Parsells-johnson
SOCY200

Expecting an A
cm222
01/15/2024

super nice and friendly guy, tries to make class interesting but his lectures could get very confusing and he can tend to ramble. content was interesting just hard to follow. very lenient about due dates, attendance, but doesn't go easy on grading. group project for final which i didn't love.

Jeffrey Parsells-johnson
SOCY200

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/20/2023

Pretty cool professor, was scared to take him at first because of all of the reviews about weird grading but the grading ended up being fine. Make sure you get the required reading materials because that is what the whole class is based off of. His teaching style is pretty average but I liked how he cracked a few jokes and made references to old 90's/ early 2000's shows. For my class you get assigned your TA by first letter of your last name that you can communicate with through the semester. We had a total of 2 and Prof. PJ was assigned the rest of the students, so if you would ever email him and he is not your assigned TA/ instructor, he probably won't get back to you unfortunately. Overall this class was just taking notes on slide shows and reading the materials to write papers on (lowest paper gets dropped). It's obvious Prof. PJ has a dedicated passion for this subject so he's not all that bad.

Jeffrey Parsells-johnson
SOCY200

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
10/21/2023

Dr. PJ is really enthusiastic about the topics but does not explain them in a good way. He tries to explain complex concepts with other complex concepts that also make no sense. This class consists of lectures, take-home tests, 3 critical thinking papers and weekly class participation that is about a paragraph response to a prompt he gives in the lecture (so you have to go). The critical thinking papers have a rubric but it is not clear and he is a very harsh grader. Easy class if you are very perceptive to what he says in class and the take-home tests are super easy.

Nicole DeLoatch
SOCY200

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/12/2022

She is an amazing instructor that is very passionate about the subjects she teaches. The coursework can be slightly hefty and repetitive at times but once you get into the flow of it, it becomes easier as the course goes on. Attendance isn't mandatory but I would advise you go as much as you possibly can because she likes to drop hints on exams during lecture and regularly gives extra credit as the semester goes on. All in all I would highly recommend Dr.DeLoatch.

John Pease
SOCY200

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
07/02/2014

This class was boring. Straight up. I mean I learned some stuff from it, but eh. The class is graded really oddly, but since Pease is so old, he does whatever he wants and nobody argues. (I got an A- with a 93.5%. I didn’t even think that was ethical.) He is a very nice man who knows his stuff though, but honestly the TAs do all the grading and write all of the exams except for the final. If you do not study for exams, you will not do well. However, the exams are very easy to study for if you’re good at binge memorizing. I once started studying at midnight the night before an exam and got a 100. The exams are exactly based off of Gazettes (worksheets) that you fill in word for word in class- it’s just like high school. They take attendance for lecture and discussion, so if you go to all of them, that’s an easy way to boost your grade. I had Jessica Pena as my TA and she was decent. She was awesome for hinting exam questions during discussion though- she does that as a reward for the students actually showing up to a 9AM discussion. Your TA will factor in a little bit of your success in this course, but it’s mostly up to you, as are all classes. The workload isn’t that bad, it took me two months of the semester though to figure out that nobody actually does the readings regularly. You will want to read Top of the World and the articles here and there he puts in the syllabus because they can come up on exams, but don’t bother with regularly reading the course book. I didn’t read Guns Germs and Steel either and I was fine. There is no homework other than 4 or 5 easy assignments for discussion that are never more than a page long. I took this course with a heavy course load and managed fine.

John Pease
SOCY200

Expecting a C
Erik.Deaton
05/02/2013

All in all, he knows the material a hundred times over. He is intelligent, but the exams are designed to trip students up. The lectures can also get a little boring

Reviews for SOCY200