Kara Hoffman

This professor has taught: PHYS106, PHYS171, PHYS171H, PHYS260, PHYS275, PHYS276, PHYS401, PHYS407, PHYS420, PHYS758E

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Kara Hoffman PHYS401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/11/2024	Having had Dr. Hoffman for PHYS171, this class was a big improvement over that experience. Lectures were good and they remained engaging thanks to regular Piazza questions that also helped to reinforce the material. The homeworks were the perfect length to really learn the material while not being super tedious. The exams were also fair in my opinion. I think the only thing keeping this from being 5 stars is McIntyre not being the my favorite textbook. The TAs were also really good. Regardless of how good at physics you are, I recommend going to the group problem solving sessions. They're totally worth it.
Kara Hoffman PHYS401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2024	Kara Hoffman is an extremely poor professor. She doesn't explain the content well at all during lectures, and the textbook that she insisted we use (QM by David McIntyre) was no help at all, as it more often than not simply presented us with complicated formulas without explaining or deriving them at all, so we were left with an incredibly poor grasp of many concepts in this class. She also insists on forcing her "active learning" style on students, where 10% of your grade goes to answering piazza questions for participation in lectures, and another 10% goes to attending discussions, such that 20% of your total grade ends up having nothing to do with your grasp of the material. All in all, this was an atrocious learning experience, and if you can, I'd recommend waiting a semester to take this class with a different professor.
Kara Hoffman PHYS401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/10/2024	Kara Hoffman is the worst physics professor I have ever had at UMD. First of all, she is an awful lecturer. She only lectures from premade slides that move way too fast and anyways don't teach anything. She knows her lectures are bad, so she forces students to come to class by grading them based on their responses to clicker questions (this is 10% of your grade). None of this helps the actual issue, which is that she doesn't know how to teach at all. Another 10% of your grade is attendance for discussion sections, where the worksheets given are usually on topics that have not been taught yet, so that is not very useful. Indeed, this same issue was present in the homework. Also, Hoffman gave a more difficult first midterm than we were led to expect (average in the 60s and most people agreed with this sentiment), which wouldn't necessarily be an issue, except for the fact that she previously said we should expect a pretty easy midterm that most people can finish before class ends. Additionally, Hoffman also insisted on using the textbook of MacIntyre, not Griffiths. MacIntyre is a terrible quantum textbook because it derives next to nothing, so you are really left to just memorize formulas without understanding the underlying physics. Hoffman's lectures are somehow even worse, and explain absolutely no concepts and are all about calculations and memorizing formulas. On top of all that, Hoffman is rude and snarky in manner and not understanding at all. She does not care if her students succeed and seems disinterested in their learning. Anecdotally, for example, she wrote in the official syllabus that students could come 10 minutes late to the discussion section with no points lost. However, without telling the class, halfway through the semester she started taking off points from participation for students who were even just a minute late. This is a breach of the syllabus and therefore against university rules, but Hoffman doesn’t care. She insists we are in class for every possible second, which makes it all the more infuriating that being in her class is completely useless since she is a terrible lecturer. For a class as crucial for a physics student as quantum, it was exceedingly disappointing to have had such a bad experience and learn so little conceptual information. If you can afford to wait a semester and take quantum with a different professor, I would highly recommend doing so and wish I did so myself.
Kara Hoffman PHYS401 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/10/2024	Extremely lazy lectures. Slides are direct copy from the book but without the care and the detail. She also stumbles through HER own slides like she doesn't know what she's talking about. She is clearly very smart and is an expert in astroparticle physics experiments, meaning she is obviously well-versed in the subject. But she absolutely fails to convey that enthusiasm and knowledge through her lectures. We used some god-forsaken copyrighted material from some other university for our discussion session activities, which meant that she could not post the solutions on elms at the risk of being sued. She said she would have the solutions available at TA office hours but they did not, in fact, have the solutions. The homeworks were graded so slowly. I mean what's the point of getting a hw I submitted a month ago to be graded now? I don't completely blame the TAs because they had to hold office hours, show up for discussion sessions, etc. I think they should hire more TAs or reserve 1 of the 3 for just grading purposes.
Kara Hoffman PHYS401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/06/2024	I have nothing but praise for Dr. Hoffman’s PHYS401 course. Every element of this class was useful for learning the material. Homeworks were legitimately helpful for both learning and studying. Friday discussions repeatedly hammered concepts into my head until I genuinely understood them. The textbook choice was great. Exams were just the right level of difficulty. Dr. Hoffman even went the extra mile to post exams from previous years for us to practice with, which was a great study tool. I haven’t taken the final exam yet, but Hoffman said she’s willing to replace our lowest midterm grade with the final exam grade. If you have the chance to take PHYS401 with Dr. Hoffman, you should do so with no reservations!
Kara Hoffman PHYS401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/29/2023	I thought this class was very well-taught. I've come out of it with a strong understanding of the fundamentals of QM and feel like I was able to follow along with the material without having to fake it. Homeworks were usually helpful and suitably challenging, albeit often computationally intensive and tedious (don't shy away from using Mathematica/integral calculators). Exams were very fair as long as you went over the homework and understood it. There were a few lectures (spherical harmonics, harmonic oscillator) where she just quickly went through a complicated derivation, which I didn't find particularly useful, although I don't really know how I would teach those in an engaging or memorable way either. Most lectures were engaging and comprehensive. I know there was a lot of frustration from the class over the fact that 20% of the grade was participation/attendance. 10% of the grade came from attendance to the weekly Friday discussions/group worksheets. She dropped one of these at the end of the semester if you missed it but wasn't really communicative or forgiving if you had to miss more than one, so just don't be sick on Friday more than once I guess. Another 10% of the grade was "class engagement" through Piazza, which she graded based on whether or not you were responding to the in-class clicker questions because people weren't posting questions/discussions outside of class enough. She didn't tell us this until the end of the semester, so lecture attendance was being secretly graded.
Kara Hoffman PHYS171 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/16/2022	Her TA is the only reason I’m surviving this class. She missed our last final review session and was unable to coordinate a sub. Very nonchalant about the worries or successes of her students
Kara Hoffman PHYS171 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/06/2022	Extremely inconsiderate and completely devoid of any empathy. Lectures were boring and monotonous, and there’s lots of homework (it’s all hard.) would not recommend even though I currently have an A in the class.
Kara Hoffman PHYS171 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/06/2022	Dr. Hoffman is one of those professors who is a wonderful person and a great scientist but not a stellar teacher. My main quibble is that she teaches off of slides but reads them word for word, without adding much during lecture. She often struggles to convey what she wants to say as well. If I hadn’t taken AP Physics in high school, I doubt I would’ve done nearly as well in her class. That said, she truly cares about her students and I personally thought that her exams were quite good for a physics course.
Kara Hoffman PHYS276 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/11/2014	As a course, PHYS276 was very easy. Just read and understand the pre-lab material before class and you'll have the easiest time. Dr. Hoffman, however, wasn't the most helpful professor. I found the TA to be much more useful. This class was easy, but I wouldn't take a more difficult course with her. You would be fine in the lower level labs though.
Kara Hoffman PHYS276 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/03/2013	Dr. Hoffman has a clear lack of understanding about the information taught in the class. Her tests were very difficult, and not an accurate measure of the course.
Kara Hoffman PHYS273 Expecting an A Austin90 05/09/2009	Dr. Hoffman is one of the better professors at MD. Her lectures are very useful, and her demonstrations in class are very interesting. The only problem is that not-too-uncommon questions catch her by surprise. Therefore, she isn't able to answer them until a day or more later. However, she is very easy to talk to, because she doesn't have an ego that dominates her personality. Her tests are a little harder than most (Hence our average test score for the spring 2009 semester was a 60%) However, she gives generous curves (1/3 As, 1/3 Bs, 1/3 C's, and some "stragglers" get Ds and Fs ) If you do well on the webassign and homework, none of which are too hard, then you should really enjoy her class. As a side note, GO TO RECITATIONS EVERY FRIDAY since not doing so can take up to 10% off your final grade.