Cunxi Yu | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Cunxi Yu ENEE350 Expecting a B Anonymous 06/05/2024	Cunxi is a really nice guy who is passionate about the material he teaches. However, his lectures are impossible to learn from. He blazes through his slides and scribbles random notes on the board, most times not even erasing what was on the board from the previous class. His exams are heavily reliant on pure memorization as he requires replication of drawings of complicated datapath diagrams, which are usually in the slides he briefly goes over. There are also very little review materials for the exams, so it usually feels like you're going in blind. The homework assignments were thoughtful and helpful in learning the material; however, knowing the material only helped so much if you didn't memorize his slides verbatim. There's also a final project in addition to the final exam, which seemed a bit extra, at first, but ended up being a nice grade boost (if done correctly) and a cool way to use the material learned in this class in a real application. The only complaint about the project is that it is assigned during finals week, so finding time to complete it in the midst of other exams is a little rough.
Cunxi Yu ENEE350 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/23/2024	Great professor. Very passionate with teaching the contents and nice to communicate. The course can be further improved though (first time teaching I think).
Cunxi Yu ENEE350 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/13/2024	The exams and homework's have high averages, so take him if your grade is your priority (which it probably should be). His lectures are terrible, he regularly says things and then backtracks. Any "examples" he uses are so far beyond the simple concepts he's trying to actually teach that they aren't helpful to learn the material at all. Also, he scheduled the final for the Wednesday in the last week of classes, then on top of that had a final project due during finals week, one he very poorly explained.
Cunxi Yu ENEE350 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/10/2024	Dr. Yu is nice and he definitely cared about the learning of his students, but seeing as it was his first semester teaching for the university, there are some major issues with his course which must be addressed. 1.) Better communication over office hours. It's acceptable for an instructor to be late for - or miss office hours entirely - from time-to-time. However, these scheduling changes must ALWAYS be communicated in online announcement prior to the office hours. This semester, it was not uncommon for students to arrive to office hours to be greeted with a locked door. One possible change could be asking for students to email the instructor ahead of time prior to each office hours visit. This way, the attendance of both the student and the instructor can be guaranteed. Simply missing 20-100% of the office hours session, however, is disrespectful of students' time. 2.) Exam study material. The overwhelming majority of instructors at this university release sample exams AND/OR study guides in order to denote what will be covered on upcoming exams. Such study material is the best method for a student to gauge his/her own understanding of the curriculum. The simple directive to gloss through a 60-page PowerPoint does not constitute effective study material, no matter how trivial the subject might seem to the instructor. The easiest solution to this issue would be to release Exams 1, 2, and 3 (along with accompanying answers) for next semester students to study on. Exams should not be reused year-after-year anyway; the more study material, the better. 3.) Homework load. This may seem like an unusual critique, but the volume of homework in this class was stunning low - to the point where some students would feel disengaged with what was being taught in-class. As amenable as it may be for weeks to pass without assignments due, there needs to be rigorous homework assigned for every element of the curriculum tested on exams in order to guide students on what they must review. 4.) Question / Answer structure of Homeworks and Exams. Students would sometimes be confused over what to write - or how to write - their responses to questions asked on homeworks and exams. This can be remediated with the use of answer boxes and exam study material (see feedback 2). For an example on what exams are well-structured, see Justin's CMSC351 exams here: https://www.coursehero.com/file/225088096/Exam3-Justin-Tue-Exampdf/
Cunxi Yu ENEE350 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/29/2024	Yu is a good professor in terms of explaining things in lecture, but the assignments and homework feel kind of bare bones and ever so slightly disconnected from the course. It feels like we discuss a lot of concepts in class related to the field of computer architecture design but then in terms of the technical concepts we have to apply there is much less to be talked about. Really most of what we learned was how to code in assembly and just a handful of equations, even the homework and exam questions are a lot of conceptual written responses. At times, the course can feel more like a gened discussing computer architecture rather than a technical ECE course, especially in the first two weeks. Yu is at least very fair with grading, very generous with giving bonus points, and the assignments are clear and straightforward and we almost always discuss directly what we do on them in class almost 1 to 1. He is also just a generally nice guy and a pretty engaging lecturer if you can understand his accent.
Cunxi Yu ENEE350 Expecting an A- Anonymous 04/06/2024	Nice guy but impossible to learn from
Cunxi Yu ENEE350 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/01/2024	Very good professor. Passionate about what he teaches and uses real world examples.

Cunxi Yu
ENEE350

Expecting a B
Anonymous
06/05/2024

Cunxi is a really nice guy who is passionate about the material he teaches. However, his lectures are impossible to learn from. He blazes through his slides and scribbles random notes on the board, most times not even erasing what was on the board from the previous class. His exams are heavily reliant on pure memorization as he requires replication of drawings of complicated datapath diagrams, which are usually in the slides he briefly goes over. There are also very little review materials for the exams, so it usually feels like you're going in blind. The homework assignments were thoughtful and helpful in learning the material; however, knowing the material only helped so much if you didn't memorize his slides verbatim. There's also a final project in addition to the final exam, which seemed a bit extra, at first, but ended up being a nice grade boost (if done correctly) and a cool way to use the material learned in this class in a real application. The only complaint about the project is that it is assigned during finals week, so finding time to complete it in the midst of other exams is a little rough.

Cunxi Yu
ENEE350

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/23/2024

Great professor. Very passionate with teaching the contents and nice to communicate. The course can be further improved though (first time teaching I think).

Cunxi Yu
ENEE350

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/13/2024

The exams and homework's have high averages, so take him if your grade is your priority (which it probably should be). His lectures are terrible, he regularly says things and then backtracks. Any "examples" he uses are so far beyond the simple concepts he's trying to actually teach that they aren't helpful to learn the material at all. Also, he scheduled the final for the Wednesday in the last week of classes, then on top of that had a final project due during finals week, one he very poorly explained.

Cunxi Yu
ENEE350

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/10/2024

Dr. Yu is nice and he definitely cared about the learning of his students, but seeing as it was his first semester teaching for the university, there are some major issues with his course which must be addressed. 1.) Better communication over office hours. It's acceptable for an instructor to be late for - or miss office hours entirely - from time-to-time. However, these scheduling changes must ALWAYS be communicated in online announcement prior to the office hours. This semester, it was not uncommon for students to arrive to office hours to be greeted with a locked door. One possible change could be asking for students to email the instructor ahead of time prior to each office hours visit. This way, the attendance of both the student and the instructor can be guaranteed. Simply missing 20-100% of the office hours session, however, is disrespectful of students' time. 2.) Exam study material. The overwhelming majority of instructors at this university release sample exams AND/OR study guides in order to denote what will be covered on upcoming exams. Such study material is the best method for a student to gauge his/her own understanding of the curriculum. The simple directive to gloss through a 60-page PowerPoint does not constitute effective study material, no matter how trivial the subject might seem to the instructor. The easiest solution to this issue would be to release Exams 1, 2, and 3 (along with accompanying answers) for next semester students to study on. Exams should not be reused year-after-year anyway; the more study material, the better. 3.) Homework load. This may seem like an unusual critique, but the volume of homework in this class was stunning low - to the point where some students would feel disengaged with what was being taught in-class. As amenable as it may be for weeks to pass without assignments due, there needs to be rigorous homework assigned for every element of the curriculum tested on exams in order to guide students on what they must review. 4.) Question / Answer structure of Homeworks and Exams. Students would sometimes be confused over what to write - or how to write - their responses to questions asked on homeworks and exams. This can be remediated with the use of answer boxes and exam study material (see feedback 2). For an example on what exams are well-structured, see Justin's CMSC351 exams here: https://www.coursehero.com/file/225088096/Exam3-Justin-Tue-Exampdf/

Cunxi Yu
ENEE350

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/29/2024

Yu is a good professor in terms of explaining things in lecture, but the assignments and homework feel kind of bare bones and ever so slightly disconnected from the course. It feels like we discuss a lot of concepts in class related to the field of computer architecture design but then in terms of the technical concepts we have to apply there is much less to be talked about. Really most of what we learned was how to code in assembly and just a handful of equations, even the homework and exam questions are a lot of conceptual written responses. At times, the course can feel more like a gened discussing computer architecture rather than a technical ECE course, especially in the first two weeks. Yu is at least very fair with grading, very generous with giving bonus points, and the assignments are clear and straightforward and we almost always discuss directly what we do on them in class almost 1 to 1. He is also just a generally nice guy and a pretty engaging lecturer if you can understand his accent.

Cunxi Yu
ENEE350

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
04/06/2024

Nice guy but impossible to learn from

Cunxi Yu
ENEE350

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/01/2024

Very good professor. Passionate about what he teaches and uses real world examples.