| Information | Review |
|---|---|
|
William Arbaugh
CMSC414 Expecting an A+ xenonscreams 01/11/2012 |
He's trying really hard to change this course and make it interesting. The biggest fallback comes from trying to change it too quickly, often mid-semester. Long-term changes to a course are appreciated, but within a semester a course should be completely consistent (e.g. the professor should have the labs prepared in advanced), otherwise it can be stressful to the students. Otherwise I thought his teaching style was decent and the class was pretty cool. I learned a lot. I got to do lots of awesome things that I had never looked into because I wasn't sure how to do them legally. He was pretty nice and accommodating when I spoke to him. I was just stressed out about my grade for most of the semester because of how frequently details of the course changed. And Capture The Flag is awesome, but shouldn't be a graded assignment, since that brings it straight from something fun and interesting to something worrisome and annoying. |
|
William Arbaugh
CMSC412 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/03/2010 |
Arbaugh was frequently absent from class and he had his TAs teach for him. He took the projects from other universities, didn't do them himself, and rarely understood what was going on with them. Given how frustrating this class could get, it's insulting that he doesn't seem to give a hoot about the class, when he's expecting us to spend 12 credits worth of effort on a 3 credit class. Also, I'm sure some people knew that Arbaugh was planning on teaching 412 in Windows instead of a unix-based system, but they really, really need to put that in the course catalog or something. Yet another thing Arbaugh could have done to make this class more reasonable. In short, he sucks. The only reason he didn't get a 1 is because he is actually quite knowledgeable. He's not an idiot -- just a jerk and a flake. |