Stevens Miller

This professor has taught: CMSC398C, CMSC425, IMDM101, IMDM227

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Stevens Miller IMDM227 Expecting an A- chadvader29 12/10/2024	I have now taken Stevens Miller twice and I felt it necessary to write him a new review. In my old review I said that his lectures were interesting and that he is extremely knowledgeable in multiple fields, but that he could be a little bit smug about his background. This semester, however, I have not noticed that. I am not sure if I just got used to it or if he has genuinely improved, but either way, I no longer feel like he rubs his intelligence in your face, not that he ever did so on purpose, but I certainly felt that he did so nonetheless. I will say that his mastery of computer science, background in physics, and a degree in law does make him a little intimidating and hard to approach for me. Nonetheless, he is extremely knowledgeable and explains concepts in very interesting ways; a lot of his lectures also include tangents about how older technology (like CRT TV's) functioned, which I find genuinely interesting, but I could understand someone disagreeing. If you are into Computer Science or Immersive Media Design, you will probably find him interesting if you come to class and pay attention, but I wouldn't take him as an elective/for fun. His content is interesting and taught me a lot and he has also been very lenient to me during an ongoing medical issue of mine, and for that I could not be more thankful.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/04/2024	The class is interesting enough and Stevens is an entertaining guy in terms of personality but his lectures are the most boring thing I have ever endured. The content is also super disorganized. Instead of having a clear schedule of content he just posts modules on with dense paragraphs of confusing concepts that he doesn't even cover in class sometimes. He provides some example code but again accessing it is disorganized and there seems to be no real emphasis on what topics are important. Each assignment is weighted its percentage of your grade, so a project worth 15 points is 15% of your grade so losing one point is pretty detrimental. The final project is 40% of your grade and the presentation is super stressful. He literally pulls up your code and goes line by line why you did what you did. If you have experience with unity, work well in groups, and are okay with disorganized content, this class is really cool. Otherwise, just take CMSC335 and go on with your day.
Stevens Miller IMDM227 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/15/2024	This course is a mixed bag. It's definitely a step down from IMDM101, and a lot more focused on coding. Every class consists of lectures about random topics and demonstrations on Unity/Avalonia that may/may not be helpful for the assignments. I'd recommend taking notes because I found myself slightly distracted in class, and then completely clueless on some assignments. As of Fall 2024, there are only projects, and no exams. The content feels very disorganized, as if it's not even targeted towards us students. Luckily, as someone without much coding experience, a lot of the assignments can be done with other people. For the individual assignments, the TAs and the professor definitely helped with questions. It's just annoying when you have to ask someone for help for nearly EVERY SINGLE ASSIGNMENT! This would've been a different experience if it weren't a 9:30 class. I did get through most of the projects, and when I couldn't finish one perfectly, I still got partial credit. The assignments aren't meant to be time consuming, but they can be if you don't know what you're doing conceptually. Professor, TA, and other students in the class are all open to help you so don't be afraid to ask.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/31/2024	Stevens is a really cool dude. He was a lawyer for a long time and then decided to start teaching college students how to make video games. He's super knowledgeable about the subject and holds more knowledge and sophistication in Unity programming than most YouTube tutorial creators have. His lectures can get a little dry and it's easy to lose focus due to his calming voice (think Larry Herman), but he speaks well. He touches on all aspects of game development; mainly coding, but also art, geometry, music, psychology, and laws. He's also super reachable outside of class and makes himself as available as possible. Your main assignment is to work in a team of ~5 other people to create a 3D game of your own over the semester, and to present and submit it at the end of the semester. I had a good team and really enjoyed working on our game. I'd suggest this class to anyone with a decently strong interest in game development, but it was also difficult and a lot of work, so I wouldn't take it as a random elective.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/31/2024	The class was engaging and his lecturing was very good. It could have been a bit better with some more concrete materials to follow along with, but could be hard due to the nature of the material. He was very fair with his grading and requirements. The HWs were a bit hard, but manageable. The final project lasted the entire course, where you have a team of 4 others working on making a video game. I got a bit stiffed because of an absent teammate, but overall was a fun and rewarding experience.
Stevens Miller IMDM101 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2024	Thought I would leave a review since I had a very pleasant experience with Stevens and most other reviews seem outdated/inaccurate. I found the lectures entertaining and Stevens is clearly very knowledgable about not just the content of the course but also many other fields, and I especially appreciated his input about presentation and public speaking. This class has a big amount of group work, which I think you'll need to be comfortable with if you're going into the IMD major, but if that's not your thing and you're planning on taking it as an elective then you might want to find another option. The grading policies in this class seem to be massively improved compared to the review of this class from last year. While the mid-term and final exam did both feel more difficult than necessary, he gave heavy curves (averaging your actual score with a perfect score on both), and the median for both was a B. He also specifically stated that he recognized this was a 100-level course and was reasonably lenient because of that when it came to grading and late policies. The biggest problem was that there was no written homework in this class and no study guides/practice problems for either test, and so actually sitting down and taking a test on paper felt alien and you wouldn't really know what to expect. I really think this course would benefit from practice exams (maybe some short quizzes on ELMS?) or at least practice problems before the tests. With that said, all of the questions were definitely covered by the content posted on ELMS as he promised, and he allowed you to bring handwritten notes to use during the test. My biggest gripe was that no calculator was allowed, forcing you to do arithmetic (including long division) by hand. The vast majority of questions didn't involve math anyways, but this restriction felt very arbitrary, especially in the context of a major/field that encourages the use of tech to solve problems. Overall I get the impression that Stevens has taken the feedback he received previously into consideration and made an effort to improve those aspects of his teaching, which to me is the most important indicator of a good professor and why I'm even bothering to leave a review.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/12/2024	Guy is bland, loves hearing his own voice, and makes such a fun topic uninteresting. The homeworks are infrequent and not very difficult, although he doesn't really teach you how to do them. The final project is fun, but you get left in the dark for the whole semester to do it, without any guidance or progress checks. I'd suggest that if you're interested, just learn Unity on your own, because that's what you'll be doing anyways.
Stevens Miller IMDM101 Expecting an A chadvader29 05/10/2024	Stevens is honestly a good professor. I found his lectures genuinely interesting and he's clearly extremely knowledgeable about pretty much anything in the realm of coding or immersive media design. He made his material interesting, the workload was always fair (tbf it is a 101 class...) and he can help you with your code very quickly and explain the problem quite well. Only reason I can't give the 5th star is just because during his lectures he comes off as a bit smug, always reminding his students that not only is he an accomplished computer scientist, but he also has a degree in physics and he's a lawyer. This wasn't entirely insufferable, but for me, at least, it made him less approachable when I did have a problem I needed help on.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/09/2024	I think that Stevens means well. He is clearly a big fan of game programming. Unfortunately, this class was basically a trainwreck for the year. His lectures are him rambling at the class about a topic that he sees fit, which are NOT RECORDED, and the notes he puts on canvas do not accurately match the content covered in class. Worse still, his homework assignments ranged from pretty easy if you came to class, to mathematical nonsense that we had never seen before. Some of the homework was completely arbitrary and took hours to complete in office hours. Because of the shoddy state of the course's canvas and the lack of recordings, if you don't remember every detail from class, it is downright impossible to do some of the homework. Making matters worse, there are too many assignments that take away from your ability to actually work towards the final project. The final project is team based, and I would highly recommend taking this class with a few people that you already know, because if you get stuck with a bad team, your semester is basically hell. Stevens did not provide any form of rubric or expectations for the final's content, and provided very little useful information on getting it done (besides meta level content about how to be a good team worker) The class content did not teach us anything useful for the final until the last few weeks of the class. This means that to actually maintain a good pace of work on the final, you'd have to go to the internet for tutorials. Overall, Stevens ultimately reinforces a lot of the issues that the gamedev industry has, and while I would say that I learned a lot about Unity and game programming, this class was the worst CMSC4XX class that I have taken.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2024	His lectures are a little boring, but he makes up for it with easy projects. He's very understanding as an instructor (I accidentally submitted a wrong file for an assignment and he gave me credit back after I submitted the right one). Final project is make or break and he's consistently putting emphasis on starting early, so choosing good teammates and sticking to a development schedule is important. He takes the class and the projects seriously, but as long as you're respectful and reciprocate his passion for the course, it's pretty fun overall.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/28/2023	This was a decent class. The lectures were somewhat dry, but I felt I learned a few interesting tricks about Unity Game Programming. There were HW's every two or three works, and they were tricky because we usually did not learn how to do them in class. They took maybe 4-5 hours each. The final project was making a full game, and I had fun with it. The final exam was reasonable. This professor reminds me of Larry Herman--he is quite particular about rules and he is very specific about how he says things. He also has the same sort of monotone voice. If you don't follow his strict rules, then he gets angry with you, which I didn't appreciate. I'd suggest this class to anyone wanting to get into game programming.
Stevens Miller IMDM227 Expecting an A- greenhoodie04 12/21/2023	average teacher. he underestimated how hard his assignments were, so he extended the due dates to almost all of them. if anything, it feels like he's still trying to get his footing with how to teach this class. lectures don't relate to the assignments as much as they should. if you don't understand the basics of coding (like logistically), the class will be a bit harder. i came in with little c# experience but the class was manageable.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 11/29/2023	Course consisted of weekly/biweekly homework assignments in Unity covering all sorts of topics in class. Final project is the semester long creation of a game with your (5 person) group. There was also an exam the week before the final game is due of 30 multiple choice questions covering the class. I personally felt like the homeworks were tough and took a good bit of time but were definitely doable. Stevens clearly has a ton of knowledge about the field and is very passionate. Overall I felt like a lot of the lectures were slow and repetitive and not always relevant to things I needed for assignments like the final project. For someone interested in game programming and entering the field the lectures would likely be much more interesting. Had to do a lot of self research for assignments, especially the final game (Lot of Unity documentation) but the final project was fun and rewarding and you can really do whatever you want. The class is certainly not a walk in the park, but its not a bad class to take if you need a class.
Stevens Miller IMDM101 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/15/2023	If you're going to take this course and not do the major, do NOT take it with Stevens. While very VERY knowledgeable, he is really harsh and critical for a 101 level course. He grades really harshly and if you're new to programming you might struggle with class content. It is literally his goal to keep you from getting an A at all costs. While that's funny and all for upper level classes, in my opinion it is brutal considering its literally an an intro course. You have been warned.
Stevens Miller Anonymous 08/02/2021	The dude really went and wrote 2 reviews on the same day and capitalized the exact same points. Poorly organized class
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/23/2021	This is the definition of a 2-star class. The material was original and the lectures were just interesting enough to keep me from withdrawing. The class is terribly organized for the following reasons: 1. Homework assignments are out of between 4 and 7 points, so when you lose half a point on a question, it turns out to be around 10% of the total grade for the assignment, even if your mistake isn't that big. 2. Assignments are graded without any indication of what you lost points for (rubric not filled out and no comments), so for each assignment, you have to make a piazza post asking where you lost points. Archaic and pointless way of doing things. Also, they don't post solutions for most of the homework assignments. 3. You have two days to request a regrade on assignments, which is unreasonably short when they don't post solutions and you have to ask what you lost points on. 4. You're only allowed one submission per assignment, so if you submit and then realize you did something wrong you're out of luck, even though the deadline hasn't passed yet. 5. You'll lose points on questions if your answers contain too much information. Whatever that means. 6. During some of the synchronous lectures, he just played recordings of his previous lectures, which is fine, but why hold synchronous classes if you're barely going to interact with the students? 7. While my class didn't seem to experience a downward curve (perhaps even a slight upward curve?), the possibility of having one is absolutely ridiculous. It really just exemplifies how poorly organized this class is. If the students do well on the assignments, they should get the grades they earned, and if the assignments are easy enough that everyone aces them, make them harder. Don't leave me guessing whether I'll be bumped down a grade because you're having a bad day. 8. Somehow after all the assignment grades were in, it took them over a week to put in final grades, which was incredibly stressful given the lack of transparency regarding the curve. 9. There was no mention of redoing assignments for full credit, so I'm not sure where the previous reviews got that from, but this was the summer session, so that could be part of it. No single point is that bad on its own (except maybe curving down), but it's infuriating to deal with poor organization in every part of this class. Game programming is cool, and I learned a bunch, but it wasn't really worth the stress and poor organization.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Anonymous 05/28/2021	Curving backwards is unacceptable, a teacher should not move the goalpost and suddenly tell students the grade they've been working towards is now a different grade. A LOWER grade. Also I'm 99% sure Miller wrote those good reviews himself: 1) They're both posted on the same day 2) Who writes a review the day before the next semester starts, and the class has been over for 4 weeks 3) If you go to rate my professor there is another good review posted, what do you know, the same day as the good reviews here. Man has to write his own good reviews.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/25/2021	Do not trust these IGNORANT 1-star reviews. He upcurved because this was the easiest class in all of existence. HE LETS YOU REDO PROJECTS FOR FULL CREDIT. If you get a bad grade on a project you can just resubmit a week after the deadline for full credit. All of his projects are super straight forward and he has great informative lectures. Rubrics were super straight forward and his exams were also very straight forward (one exam which is a 40 question online assignment with no time limit). He was super nice and down to Earth, not pretentious like some ignorant people say. The midterm wasn't even an exam it was just a project that he gave you 2 weeks to do. He also records all of his lectures. Stevens was by far the best CS professor I have ever had. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just mad they didn't take advantage of his resubmit policy because they didn't think he would up curve even though resubmit policy is so BS and overly benefits the student. I didn't even need to use the resubmit policy because the projects were so straightforward and easy to understand and do.
Stevens Miller CMSC425 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/25/2021	I really enjoyed this class. Stevens clearly put in the time for each lecture, and made the class interesting, with lots of live coding examples. Plenty of supplemental material to go along with the lectures as well, and VERY generous with how the class was graded. I'm talking getting a grade back, being permitted to fix the problems, and resubmitting for FULL POINTS. He did reverse curve at the end of the semester (which was scandalous and caused a huge conflict), but honestly, just doing the minimum on the assignments and the easy exams netted me a 97 in the class. I don't consider myself a genius either. The only reason he upcurved is because everyone was doing so well in the class. Highly recommend him as a professor, and I would definitely take him again.