Phuong Nguyen-Le

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Phuong Nguyen-Le Expecting a B+ Anonymous 04/16/2025	She seems to have good intentions but is a terrible professor. As someone who truly enjoys my classes and likes most of my professors, she as the professor completely killed my joy for the material. I found a lot of the material we covered interesting, and I enjoyed completing the assignments. However, the way she structured the classroom made it almost impossible for me to get a better grade despite the effort I put into the class (as a previously 4.0 student). Mind you, I got As in Calc II and Calc III. She was complete unreceptive to my asks for excused absences for lecture (once for being sick and once for a major professional event I had to attend). The lecture attendance model she uses also frequently does not work correctly, leading to students who attended lecture being marked as absent. When students frequently bring up technology issues, she got upset and told students they should be able to troubleshoot the issues by themselves. Attendance is such a major part of the grade but she offers no flexibility, empathy, or understanding regarding exceptions and extenuating circumstances. When students speak up with feedback, she immediately shuts them down and is extremely defensive and immature. She frequently makes last minute changes to assignments and lecture/discussion section requirements with 1 to 2 days of prior notice. She refuses to listen to students who want to dispute grades, claiming grades can be disputed "in the last week of the semester." Additionally, the course is so self-taught to the point where (to me personally), the professor provides little academic support and instead serves to irritate me during lectures and feel completely discouraged about the course material. I would learn more and do better in the course if it were completely asynchronous or if the professor was not present. I can tell she is a passionate professor, and I appreciate the importance of the material she wants to cover. However, she is a bad professor and teacher and should choose a different profession or course model.
Phuong Nguyen-Le Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/26/2025	Taking INST414. I respect that this professor seeks to cultivate professional development and relevant skills in students. It's also a flipped classroom. I have taken other flipped classes and really enjoyed it, but, given the complexity of this class compared to many other INST courses, planned lectures and supplemental material would be more beneficial than this experimental approach so we can ask questions and understand what information is important. One of the first weeks, we were assigned 3+ hours of linear algebra videos. In class, we did an assignment on it, but it has hardly been relevant to the rest of the class. There are no rubrics for assignments. I commend that she consistently asks for feedback; however, she can come across as pretty dismissive of it. Another week, we were asked to find videos on the topic of the week before class. It wasn't overly tedious and meant to encourage us to take responsibility for our own learning, but it can be difficult to know how detailed we should get before class. Despite watching multiple videos, the assignment contained information that I was not familiar with simply because I didn't know we'd be asked that. There are times I have asked for help and was told to ask LLMs instead to "familiarize" myself. Additionally, the things she says during class are not super helpful for the material. They can be helpful as career advice. In a few years she will be great at teaching this class because of her passion, but I would avoid taking INST414 with her anytime soon.
Phuong Nguyen-Le INST414 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 03/15/2025	She teaches INST 414, at least for Spring 2025. By far the worst professor I had at INFO Sci Dept. Attendance are worth 40% of the grade so if you miss weeks of classes your grades will hit the rock bottom in matter of no time. I do not like how the class is structured cause the class is mostly self-learning. Class only meets twice a week, in each of the classes she makes students to complete worksheets on their on or with partners rather than actually giving lectures. I do not understand why the attendance is mandatory when students can get their worksheets done while being in their home. Also, she is a super harsh grader and have no mercy at all. Another thing is that she doesn't respond to any grade inquiries until the end of the semesters, which makes it hard for students to know if they going to pass the class or not before the withdrawal period. I do not recommend anyone to take this professor cause she is just gonna drain your GPA.