Arthur Johnson

This professor has taught: HACS287

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Arthur Johnson Expecting an A pat 02/29/2012	There really arent enough terrible things to say about goober (prof johnson). I would rather eat a dog crap and light bulb sandwich then have him again - but alas the department is apparently high off its a$$ since he is the only one they have teach this stuff so I have no choice - just like you unfortunately. For starters he is the most senile professor I have ever had, and it's as if this is seriously the only thing he has to do with his life at this point. I'm pretty sure he retired some 10 years ago - why won't he just go away. The only reason I learned ANYTHING was from outside references - his notes make your head hemmorage as he is generally disorganized in thought and talks to the chalk board most of the lecture such that this class was completely a self taught experience. He basically screws everyone on purpose on a continual basis because he thinks it will make us good engineers to have to teach ourselves everything. Ok I understand that much, but why are we then forced to pay this windbag's salary? In my opinion, this class should be free based on his teaching methods. He makes over six figures a year and he doesn't teach us anything more than what we could look up on the internet or read in a book. To make things more frustrating they have Dr Ian White (chuck norris) COMPLETELY underutilized. Occasionally he would have some space to teach us which was amazing and highly informative. When he taught us we learned more in an hour than weeks of frustration and confusion on the scale of being sucked into a black hole and shot out in 9th dimensional space with goober. Goober basically sets the bar for the worst teaching methods I have ever encountered. He also has these stupid weekly quizzes that everyone is terrified of as he gives NO indication as to what is going to be on them - as long as you know everything that has happened in the history of humankind and have an IQ of 12008992 then this approach should be easy. Probably the biggest thing that pissed me off about goober was that he goobed us big time with our groups...we had worked with a group for over 3/4 of the semester. I personally loved my group since we worked so well together and they were all great guys. You may find yourself in a similar situation, but dont let your productivity and positive environment fool you! Goober changes you up right before the final project so that you are completely unfamiliar with the people you are working with - so your final grade is essentially just a dice roll at this point. If ever anyone was to pull such a d*ck move in real life - I would simply quit working and return to more stimulating activity like playing music and partying every night whilst staring at my engineering degree on the wall going "wow at least I dont have to get goobed every day like that one goober did me at maryland and that awful job where everyone wasted money and time because they got switched up before a huge task with people they dont know at all after having been working with their original groups for quite some time." Give me a break goober, which real world have you been living in for the past 150 years? I am very excited to be here, and bioengineering I feel will ultimately be a great field to be in - but goober is a terribly unfortunate significant part of the dept. He discourages everyone to the point where they just want to quit trying. I look back at this point in the semester with nothing but negative reflection on his behalf. This is by far the most ridiculous experience I have ever had with any professor at any level at any college and I am about to tear up at the very thought of having goober again for transport (a very difficult class). Goober does not teach - he punishes. Be prepared for pretty much the most awful experience of your life in ever facet of having to take a class. He knows everything and will most likely outlive the explosion of the sun so unfortunately you can't avoid him. My best advice is to embrace the horror and team up with your friends - its the only way to get through it. Good luck to you all. --------------------------------------- Transport This seriously and genuinely killed any interest that I had in engineering. I do not want to be an engineer now. You are a terrible creature, Arthur T Johnson.
Arthur Johnson Anonymous 12/25/2010	Johnson's contract to teach 455 is over. Dr. White is supposed to take over from next year. Lucky everybody else. The design project is a pain in the ass but rather easy in retrospect. Electronics sucks.
Arthur Johnson BIOE120 Expecting an A zhangsta 12/22/2010	overall, he was a terrible teacher for 120. so terrible, i cannot find the words to describe it the experience. all his exams took questions straight out of his book. between 10-20% of the questions on the exam would come right from his quizzes. For 455, he was much better. He actually tended to know what he was talking about. For 455, your grade is evenly split between lab reports, homework, weekly quizzes, a final lab practical, and a final project. The quizzes usually include material covered the week before and also included questions from the previous quiz that everyone got wrong. The quizzes given in the first half of the semester are doable since they tend to be similar to the homework in the book so make sure you do all the homework in the book. The quizzes given in the second half cover material he wrote so really pay attention in class then to know what's going on. He gives out 13-14 quizzes, but only counts 10 of them so pretty much, do well on the quizzes while you can.
Arthur Johnson BIOE332 Expecting a B Anonymous 06/09/2010	I have had Dr. J for 3 classes and yes his classes are hard but let me tell you first off that hes not bad. Trust me I’ve complained about him a lot until I did my research. He has published numerous papers on teaching methods and teaches they way he does ON PURPOSE. He deliberately makes it hard to understand and deliberately does not have office hours and is nowhere to be found come deadline. AS AN ENGINEER THIS IS HOW THE REAL WORLD IS. Clients will ask you to solve certain problems you know nothing about and do it as a team effort. Thus he always has group assignments and wants us to learn on our own and essentially teach ourselves, which unfortunately is a skill an engineer must have. To do well in his class for 332/455/120: You must do reading prior to class. Again, you MUST do it to get an A although you can get by with a B by doing nothing. I have read his papers on teaching and every one he mentions that “Do not let your students get away without doing the reading before class.” Do it or not its up to you, except for 332, doesn’t matter either way. This is why the quizzes are seen as hard (again 332 ur f’ed either way). You MUST raise your hand and ask questions, or joke around with him before, in or after class. You must suck it up and make an effort to GET NOTICED. The way he assigns grades is compile all the averages of all assignments and determines the amount of students that get A’s, B’s and C’s. Then he goes through the list and chooses students based on the amount of people he already assigned per grade. So you must get noticed for him to bump you up otherwise he’ll screw you over. Pretty much do some reading before class, contribute well on group projects (of course) and make sure to get noticed; be on first name basis with him. Also he is extremely smart, ask any BIOE prof they have a lot of respect for him and I don’t like Dr. J as its hard to get A’s, and classes suck but he wants us to be good engineers and actually does care about us.
Arthur Johnson Expecting a C Anonymous 05/11/2010	Dr. Johnson borders on incompetent in all aspects of teaching. The degree to which he plays favorites is incredible; he is extremely personable, approachable, and friendly to a select group of students, and completely ignores the rest of them, no matter what they do. His arbitrary grading methods strongly reflect this favoritism. His lectures are meandering and dull, and it is usually difficult to follow the illogical jumps he makes when "explaining" new topics. When asked to clarify a concept, he gets confused, and either avoids answering altogether, or asks Dr. White to explain the material. When asked to do an example problem from the homework, much of the time he is unable to do the problem correctly, or makes unrealistic assumptions that the students would lose credit for. In lab, he does not teach the material, expecting the students to figure it out and teach each other. For the homework, he has a socialist teaching system where students are supposed to sign off on each assignment that not only they, but everyone in their 4-person group, has mastered this assignment. However, as the semester was prefaced with the announcement that 25% of the students would get A's, there is a huge amount of competition, and everyone is wary of helping others at the expense of their own grade. The grading on the lab reports is completely arbitrary, and expectations are not defined. I can quote a conversation with Dr. Johnson about the grading of a lab. When asked why we lost points when all the material was present, he replied, "Oh, I guess you have everything after all. But I'm not going to raise your grade." Once the material in this class deviated from the textbook, which occurred in late September, there was no way of accessing the material outside of lecture, as no notes were posted, no review sessions were held, and office hours were not routinely held by Dr. Johnson. This made it very difficult to do well on the weekly quizzes. On the subject of the quizzes. This was probably the worst organizational aspect of the class. Each week, quizzes were given at the end of lecture. The quiz was frequently on material that had been briefly or poorly taught at least 3 weeks previously, and unrelated to anything that had recently been done in the class. When many people did poorly on a quiz, sometimes, but not every time, the same quiz was given the next week. Multiple times, the first of the two identical quizzes had not yet been returned to the students, so we did not know how we did, what we got wrong, what concepts we needed to review, or how to improve our understanding of the material. I learned a moderate amount in this class, despite the fact that it is a 3 credit class that I need for my major, with interesting material that can be applied in all areas of engineering. If there had been a competent teacher, I would have learn much more and been far less stressed over the arbitrary grading method and having no way to learn the material other than searching for help sites on the internet. Dr. Johnson's attitude and teaching methods are a serious detriment to the Bioengineering program at Clark school. I learned very little when he taught my BIOE120 lecture two years ago, and I am seriously concerned about grasping the more difficult concepts of Transport next semester, which he is also going to attempt to teach my cohort. The quality of the professors has a serious impact on the learning ability and grades of the students, and also to the lives of the students in general, and how much they enjoy their time as students at the University of Maryland. It is extremely frustrating to be interested in a subject, and to be held back by a lack of resources.
Arthur Johnson BIOE120 jahs389 03/03/2010	Well I have this guys as my BioE advisor and my BioE120 instructor and boy did he suck. Sure, he knows the material - he wrote the book, literally. But, he can't convey it whatsoever and 90% of people don't go to his class or sleep through it. His test questions are totally random and obscure tid-bits in the text. You need to find old exams from upperclassmen to have any idea whats on the test because he gives you nothing. Really disconnected from what students want / need. Finally, he is never available, not my phone or e-mail. You best option is to find him in person in his laboratory because he cares infinitely more about his research then teaching. Edit - got a B in his 120 class, apparently so did 95% of the class.
Arthur Johnson Expecting a B Anonymous 12/21/2009	This class is a lot of work. You have a quiz, lab, and homework due every week. As someone previously mentioned the quiz is on material taught the previous week or quiz questions that most people missed. I STRONGLY advise to study for these quizzes and score as high as possible for reasons I will later explain. The homework and labs are done in randomly assigned groups, which can either be awesome or suck. The homework is pretty straight forward. The answers mostly come straight from the book. Labs started off horribly. No one knows what they're doing but as the semester progresses it gets better. Lab reports require the following sections: objective, methods, observations, and discussion/conclusion. The reports aren't too bad either and as long as you write a decent amount you'll get an A (not that it matters). Final grades consist of 5 sections each worth 20%: Quizzes, Homework, Labs, Lab Practical, Final Design Project. Dr. Johnson has extremely biased grading. You will have no idea what your grade is during the entire semester and at the end of the semester you will get a grade with no numerical justification. In addition it was impossible to contact him because apparently he lives on his farm and he only checks his email when he's on campus. There are two ways to get an A. The first is if he knows your name and if he likes you. The second way is to score high on the quizzes and get your final design project to semi-work. It's almost like he didn't even take into consideration the lab, homework, and lab practical grades.
Arthur Johnson BIOE332 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/22/2009	I realize that BIOE120 is a pain in the ass, but Dr. Johnson's other two classes are much more useful. My advice: For electronics, take notes because the book is not helpful at all. Dr. Johnson especially likes students that show initiative, so if you have questions, ASK. He loves a good question. For the final project, become very good friends with your classmates and you'll be fine. I recommend going to Radio Shack also, since the materials in the electronics lab are not always reliable. For transport, the group projects really suck BUT they teach you some very useful things. 1) If you don't trust that your group members are going to do something right, do it yourself. 2) Dr. Johnson takes group evaluations seriously, so make sure you contribute as much as humanly possible, and if someone doesn't contribute, tell him. 3) Start working as soon as you get the project.
Arthur Johnson BIOE120 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/19/2009	To reiterate what the other reviews say, this professor is incredibly BORING. He's also not very helpful and does not respond to e-mail. The material covered in this course(if you want to call it that) is completely pointless and random. The majority of the topics are obvious observations that Johnson decided to give a proper title. Tests are just as random as the "material". I attended lectures and outlined the text and yet there were still some questions on the tests that were not mentioned in either of these places.
Arthur Johnson BIOE120 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/17/2008	Class was extremely boring! It made my interest in bioengineering drop. However, Dr. Shah the professor for the Cell Module section of the course revitalized my interest in the major. Dr. Johnson was extremely knowledgeable and presented interesting viewpoints on biology. After a cup of coffee before his class, he is pretty interesting; just pay attention to the lecture. Tests were random; the only way to pass is to read the textbook. I never had an idea as to what my grade was, even heading into the exam. Dr. Johnson was also impossible to reach by email.
Arthur Johnson BIOE120 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/19/2008	...OMG. HE'S SO BORINGGG. and his tests and quizzes are so dumb. He wrote the book, so he lectures straight out of it...and it's not even a real bio book. Pretty much, don't let him scare you away from bioE. He's the only guy who teaches the class, but it'll get better..
Arthur Johnson Expecting a B gundamwing4132 05/01/2008	The quizzes were hard. Although Dr. Johnson is intelligent and knows all the information forwards and backwards, he just can't teach very well; lectures were very boring. Note: It's nice that he tries to make jokes every once in a while.
Arthur Johnson BIOE120 Anonymous 04/04/2008	This class was extremely boring and a waste of my time. The textbook was ridiculously unhelpful and full of really bad jokes and seemingly scattered information. I read all the chapters and can honestly say it would have been better if I had not read any of the chapters at all. The tests test you on testtaking skills. If you did well on the SAT, you will probably do well in this class taking all the tests. The problem is, if you are a bioE major, you can really avoid this class or Professor Johnson. He is also really boring so my notes ended up not being about much biology anyway.
Arthur Johnson BIOE120 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/04/2008	Terrible teacher!! He was so boring in BIOE120 and he turned many students away from the Bio major because of his antics. Tests were difficult because he tested us on trivial knowledge from his ludicrous textbook, and not on actual biology. I feel like I lost knowledge while taking this class!
Arthur Johnson BIOE332 Expecting an A nodice 12/17/2007	Dr. Johnson is sort of an institution in the ENBE/BIOE departments - he's been teaching for a very long time, and knows exactly what he wants from his students (although he doesn't always tell you first). So far, I've had him for ENBE455 and BIOE332. Here are my impressions: ENBE455: Decent course. Labs, homeworks, quizzes, and the final lab practical weren't bad at all, particularly if you did some outside studying (don't just split up the homework problems among your group -- make sure you know how to do them all). However, the end-of-semester project was pretty bad - there weren't enough supplies in the lab to go around, and no group got their project to work completely. Once he assigned the project, he stopped giving help outside of class. Be prepared for this: I've heard it from this year's students too. BIOE332: This course is mostly about the projects, and does an excellent job of preparing you for a career in engineering. You get four randomly-assigned groups and three projects, each of which entails a pretty major design report with only 2 weeks to do it. He's specifically vague when he gives out the problem statements - he wants you to ask clarification questions , and his answers are helpful. If in doubt, be sure to ask. Lectures aren't really that helpful - he expects you to have read the material beforehand, so he just gives you a narrative of what's in his book (you probably won't learn much in lecture unless you come prepared with questions). All in all, BIOE332 is probably the most work for any one class in the ENBE/BIOE curriculum (even more than ENME331), but it's worth it to do a good job -- you'll learn a lot.
Arthur Johnson BIOE332 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/05/2007	As a teacher Dr. Johnson is pretty terrible. He goes way to fast, has a very dull voice so its hard to focus, and its hard to understand what hes talking about. For both electronics and transport processes you have a choice of doing a lot of work and maybe getting an A, or doing absolutely nothing and getting a C. Still he is the only teacher for these classes so you just have to deal with it. For electronics, he gives a quiz, hw, and lab every week. Homeworks are pretty straightforward. For labs, make sure you write up a legit lab report. It will be pretty short but have an objective, methods, results section. The quizes he gives were on information he taught last class or they were recycled questions that everyone got wrong from previous quizzes. For the first half (analog) you can study whatever he is teaching from the book itself since it explains the information much better. The second half (digital) is actually pretty trivial and he does a decent job explaining it. You do learn a lot in labs especially when whatever you are doing is not working. Troubleshooting your circuit will help you understand the concepts much better. Towards the end of the semester make sure to use the spec sheet to help check for too much current or if a chip is esd sensitive. For transport process, he goes at an insanely fast pace and it is very hard to pay attention to him. Fortunately the practice quizzes online are basically the same question as the quizes he gives in class. Homeworks are not as straightforward as in electronics but they are doable. The majority of your grade comes from the 3 projects which involve lots of work. To me putting effort in the class seemed pointless because I would do bad anyway. Still if you put in the effort to be successful, every class afterwards will seem a lot easier.
Arthur Johnson BIOE332 Expecting an A scroofoo 10/23/2007	Tough course but by the the most rewarding if you are planning on being an engineer after college. Tight deadlines and bad groupmates are the two things to overcome here (exactly what you will see in the real world) Work is a lab, homework, and quiz a week plus 3 25-35 page technical design reports. You will also have to review other group's reports twice during the semester (hint: write alot to get a good grade). This is 7 credit hours of work packed into only 3. You must multi-task like crazy to get everything in. Or you could coast on the back of your groupmates- but there are group evaluations so be warned. Johnson may seem like he goes a mile a minute in lecture, but that is because he wrote teh book and has expected you to have read the section he is teaching before you came to class. Be warned that this requires a ton of work but once you pass it, you know you will have passed the hardest course in your major and be ready for real-world bioengineering.