| Information | Review |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI450 Expecting a W Anonymous 11/03/2024 |
Class is very interesting, Speer is a terrific lecturer. The exams are horrendous, grades on "half, full or no credit" scale with only "excellent" answers leading to full credit. I was on track to Pass with a C, but he told me if I wanted to hit the B- cutoff I would have to study for 10+ hours weekly OUTSIDE of class. I feel like I learned all the material just to not get the grades I deserved. Decided to save my GPA, take this class with a professor that grades more leniently. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI450 Anonymous 10/17/2024 |
There’s a ton of material, and the 4 exams plus final all build on each other. Homework barely affects your grade, and the professor doesn’t record lectures, so you’ll have to do that yourself. The lecture slides are minimal, meaning you’ll need to put in extra work, and reading the textbook is a must, but it takes a lot of time. The exams are too long for the 50-minute time frame, with average scores typically below 75. The professor is a great lecturer, but that doesn’t make it easier to learn from 3 different sources. Plus, every exam is all free response—if you miss one minor detail, you’ll lose points, even if you cover all the other small details. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI450 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/12/2023 |
I would agree with most of what has been said. Dr. Speer is a great lecturer and makes class engaging, often encouraging student participation which even translates outside of the classroom into discussion boards and office hours. For many pre-meds, they put in the work, lived and breathed Mam Phys and I think did relatively fine because of it. I had class during office hours and other things going on in my life which made it hard to do well, given you can not just rely on lectures and it is difficult to study for exams. He does not give partial credit and exams were often hard to prepare for given we did not have practice problems to study from, aside from the ones he pulled from the book to put in the exam. The format changed a bit each exam as well as how he assigned points. Overall, I would say you can do well in this class, simply be prepared for the time that will take |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2023 |
He is very unaccommodating to student needs. He tends to go very fast in each lecture and does not record even when many students asked him to do so. Each exam is graded extremely harshly and there hasn't been one time till now that anybody in the class got a 100. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/17/2023 |
I have worked so hard in this class, and as much as I love what we are learning, Dr. Speer consistently ensures that the exams are graded very strictly and seems to enjoy to see an average of 62 or below on each exam. Each exam is too long for the class time, and even if you follow everything he recommends and study even more, you still won't necessarily do well. He purposely doesn't record any lectures and does not allow any exam review sessions to happen on Zoom or be recorded, and honestly I think the review sessions almost purposely throw you off, literally punishing the people who want to do well. Making 50% of a class of pre-meds fail on each exam is honestly dangerous and reckless. Dr. Speer's exams have made me feel like I will never be good enough to be a doctor, a dream I have had my whole life, and so this semester is the one where I give up on that dream. Thank you Dr. Speer. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/15/2022 |
Dr. Speer inspired my passion for medicine. He did a great job tying all the knowledge I had accumulated from biology, chemistry, and physics together, and made even the most difficult concepts make sense. Thank you, Dr. Speer, for your enthusiastic approach to teaching and for your warm, supportive mentorship! |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting a C Anonymous 01/24/2022 |
Dr. Speer is a great lecturer. He was always interesting to listen to and he explained things very clearly. He was also always very approachable and would have discussion boards where people were free to ask questions about the material. However, I agree with the previous review below. I was constantly reading the textbook, I'd record the lectures and then listen to them and rewrite my notes based on exactly what he said and then before every exam, I'd rewrite my notes again/draw things out. In addition, I'd do all the practice problems in the textbook (both the ones throughout the chapter and the ones at the end of the chapter). Despite the detail of my notes and the amount of time I spent reading the textbook as well as answering questions, I still did poorly on most of the exams. After doing poorly on exams 1 and 2 (59 and 55), I reached out to him to ask for advice on how to study for exams. He sent me a long and detailed email about best study practices for exams and I followed them to a T. I did better on exam 3 (72) but I mainly attribute that to the fact that it was less material than the other exams because I again did terribly on exam 4 and the final (51 and 49). For both those exams, I followed all his advice and spent around 2 weeks studying for both but I still did badly. I'm not even sure what happened with the final because I actually felt decent about that one (expected like maybe a 70). BSCI440 is notoriously hard so I came into this class expecting to have to work hard but it was frustrating working as hard as I did to get such little results in return. Also, don't let people get in your head when they talk about this class having a curve to it. Whatever curve there is, its very little. My overall score was a 71.5% and I ended up with a final grade of a C. He's a great lecturer but I could never figure out how to study to be able to do well on the exams. My recommendation would be to ask someone who did well in this class (and had the same professor) what they did to study for exams and follow their advice because they clearly figured out what I couldn't. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 01/06/2022 |
Dr. Speer is in a hard spot with 440 as it is a notoriously hard course but given that he does "ok". However, I consistently found it near impossible to prepare adequately for exams in this class. On every exam there was at least 1 question (10 pts usually) that was outside of what any of us expected to be included. Through the entire semester there was not a single test average above 70% and despite attending office hours, asking questions and reading the textbook like it was gospel, I simply found it impossible to walk into class prepared for his exams. As an instructor, Dr. Speer is affable and kind but his exams and the class structure is enough to make an undergrad switch majors. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/23/2021 |
Dr. Speer is a fantastic professor for this historically difficult class. He tells you exactly what you need to do to be successful in the class and part of that is reading the textbook. The textbook is absolutely necessary to do well in this class. 50% of the points from his exams are textbook questions (written exactly as they are in the textbook). I am not much of a textbook reader and will avoid it if I don't view it as necessary, but this class is one where you are working against yourself if you don't use it. You also cannot cram for this class, there is A LOT of information to take in. You should be thinking critically about concepts as he is teaching and as you are reviewing. For example, if you are thinking about a neuron action potential, you should be able to identify what the impacts on the action potential would be if there was a defect in any of the channels involved. This class goes fast, but I found myself relatively comfortable with the pace. In all honesty, this class was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be and I never found myself terribly overwhelmed by it. Yes, it required more studying than any other biology class I had faced, but I adjusted. I thought all of his tests were completely fair. As long as you do well-enough above the average in all cases, you should be fine. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Anonymous 11/19/2021 |
I am still in the process of taking BSCI 440 with Dr. Speer and he seriously is the best professor I've ever had at UMD. He's great at explaining things and will slow down the entire class if he feels like kids are struggling with certain concepts. 4 exams total and a final, with quizzes a week before each exam to get you prepared for the exam. Homework assignments are due before every exam as well but you have 3-4 weeks to work on those. He wants his students to actually understand the material being taught and will accommodate to make sure that is happening. He is also extremely knowledgeable. This class is super challenging no matter what so complaining about his exams or the density of his lectures or material really doesn't matter; with a class this hard, a good or bad professor will make or break your grade. He does a great job at teaching hard concepts. Still, make sure to read the textbook though no matter what! It's impossible to have everything that you are expected to know for exams be taught to you in a 50 minute or 75 minute lecture. He will make you work for the A but he does a great job in trying to get you there. Highly, highly recommend. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/01/2019 |
I took BSCI440 with Dr. Speer during fall 2018. The man is a great lecturer in my opinion. He explains concepts slowly and clearly, so it's easy to keep up in class. You can tell he's passionate about the material too, and I have a lot of respect for that. Lecture assignments consisted of four exams and a final. All of them were primarily free-response, with a bit of matching and multiple-choice. A few problems would be straight from the textbook (which he let us know) - but I personally never used the textbook. Discussion assignments consists of four group quizzes. The quizzes were case studies that related to lecture material. My only problem with the class was that grading seemed inconsistent - points would be taken off for what seemed like no good reason, and sometimes people would earn or lose points for the same answer. But this falls on TAs, not so much the prof. Overall, this was one of my favorite courses that I took at UMD. You'll learn a whole lot about human physiology, and if you're really interested in pursuing medicine then this is a class you should enjoy. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/30/2019 |
Honestly I’m only writing a review as a response to the previous review because it’s just wrong .... First of all, mammphys is a hard class no matter who you take it with. There is a lot of material and the questions are mostly case studies so you need to know how to apply what you learned not just memorize. Sooooo, when you get a question like how do frogs breathe (given that they are positive pressure breathers and don’t have a rib cage *important detail* and we are negative pressure), you should be able to figure it out. And the astronaut question was mentioned in class AND in the book so .... can’t get any more fair imo. And speaking of the exams, he told us from the very start that every exam will have questions from the book and they did. And when I say questions from them book, I mean literally copy pasted questions from the back of each chapter. About 1 page of every exam was book questions which was easy points if you read the book and did the questions. The rest was case/application questions from lecture and the lecture covers pretty much everything in the chapter so I guess you could say from the book as well....(also I never really read the book for any class but I did for this one and I would totally recommend doing so cuz it’s really well written and actually very helpful) The grading was a bit of a mess for one of the exams and you really needed to go for a regrade and get a bunch of points back. so to me this just showed that the TAs didn’t know how to grade/were too strict cuz when you go for the regrade which Speer himself does, you got your points back. So I don’t really see how he’s to blame here.... He was a great lecturer in my opinion. He seemed really interested in the topic and the enthusiasm showed and was contagious. Explained everything pretty well and was engaging with the students and asking question etc. At the end we got a nice curve too. Overall, it’s a hard class so you have to have to put in a lot of work, sit in the front, and start studying early and you’ll be fine. I would def recommend him. |
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Colenso Speer
BSCI440 Anonymous 03/29/2019 |
I took Speer during the Fall 18 semester which was his first time teaching this class (unsure if he's taught other classes before). I have a lot of complaints about the class so brace yourself. 1. In the beginning of the semester no one knew what he was saying. It wasn't because of an accent or anything, just his volume of speaking. It was so low that you frequently had incomplete notes. Asking him to speak up resulted in a slightly louder tone for about 5 minutes, after which he reverted back to the low volume. This is even when he was using the mic in the ESJ classroom. 2. He refuses to record lectures. Instead he says you can record them yourself. I and many others asked him to reconsider since his voice was so low and the material was difficult and plentiful. He still refused. I began recording lectures on my phone soon after, but even when sitting in the second or third row, his volume was so low that even my phone mic could not pick it up. I had to buy an external mic off Amazon to get any use of my recordings. 3. His exams focus very heavily off the book, not the lectures. He frequently outright copies questions from the book. I have no problem with this, but he gave us the wrong impression on what to know during lecture for his exams when in reality nothing he mentioned showed up. It made matters worse when he said in office hours that his exams are not heavily book based compared to someone like Opoku. 4. Exam grading is completely arbitrary. He gives you the answer key, but the TAs have a different answer key that they use that isn't even provided to you (except for one instance for us). If you take this class, get a regrade for every single exam because it is guaranteed you will get a higher grade back. There is no leeway when a TA is grading and if you don't put the right key words in your short answer response, you lose significant points. An example of this is that someone got 0 credit for a question (was posted to the class Groupme). The explanation written by the TA was that this could be correct but is not the answer on the key. In his syllabus he states that grading is not based on key words, but on correctness of the response as a whole. This is not true even in the slightest and I have several examples of this on my exams. One last note about exam grading is for regrades, he will look over the whole exam, even for questions you didn't ask for a regrade on. He will also deduct points if he thinks you got too many for a question, but 95% of the time you will end up with a higher grade even after the deductions with the other points you get back. He did get more stingy on regrades towards the end though. 5. Discussions are a mess. The TAs as a group made these awesome slides to help learn the material because the lecture slides which he posts are not as useful when trying to understand. However, he refused to allow the TAs to share the discussion slides with us. I have no idea why this rule is in place, but this basically forced the students to take a picture of every single slide instead of listening to the explanation by the TAs for the material. To make matters worse, some TAs broke the rule and just sent the slides to their students after class while some refused to break the rule. Luckily my friend was in a different discussion section and was able to provide me the slides. 6. Studying for exams was incredibly difficult due to the lack of material provided. His lecture slides were mediocre, most didn't have discussion slides, and no practice exams/study guides/example questions were provided. I think this will get better as time goes on and past exams are then floating around from previous semesters. The best thing to do was probably to know how to do every single question in the corresponding chapters in the book. 7. He throws in a curveball question on almost every exam that would be almost impossible to study for unless you somehow had prior knowledge of the topic. An example is how does a frog get air into its lungs? I'm not an expert, but I didn't know that a frog was considered a mammal and we were required to know this for an exam when the class is called mammalian physiology (in reality should just be called human physiology). Another curveball was something like what happens to heart rate when an astronaut in space comes back to Earth. 8. Scheduling of different assignments was a nightmare. For the first 3 exams they were spaced out a pretty good (every 2.5ish weeks). Each of the first 3 exams also had a relatively manageable amount of content compared to the 4th exam. The first 3 you had to learn about 2 chapters each and then we took a huge break and the 4th exam came up with material that covered 4 chapters. In BSCI440, this is a significant amount of material and was basically like a final before the final. The final then occurred after about 10 days after the fourth exam. I know that having an exam right before the final is super common for many classes, but the amount of content the last exam covered was huge. Also, some of the exams were scheduled for a Wednesday which forced Wednesday discussions to be canceled. Speer told anyone in the Wed discussion to go to a Mon or Tues discussion instead, but this isn't always possible. Scheduling all the exams on Friday would have made the most sense so all discussions had the chance to review. This may seem like a lot of ranting but I just wanted to point out some of these serious flaws so you could be better prepared if you have to take him. This was his first semester teaching so things could better in future semesters but it's hard to know. There were no other professors to choose from when I took him so there really wasn't a choice unless you had time to wait for the following semester. This class is already difficult enough as it is, and Speer just makes things harder. Good luck |