What to do if a class is taught by unengaged prof, untalented TAs, unpredictable exams and unfocused study material? [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

Couple months back I registered in a class that I was really interested in. Gradually, I started to lose interest in the class. Now we just had a midterm, needless to say I am at the nadir of my interest for this class. There are just so many things wrong with it I honestly do not know if I want to continue.

What's wrong with this class (from a student's perspective):

• All the notes are dated back from 2012 on the bottom right corner when it was taught by another professor, obviously no updates were necessary between then and now...along with the typos
• Prof's hand writing is pure chaos, no one can understand his writing but no one brings it up since it is a huge class (diffused responsibility I guess)
• The lab is too lengthy. There are so many things needed to be done during the lab that the work must be divided into 3 - 5 people. Needless to say no one sees the full picture by the end of it.
• The course is divided into concepts and calculations, all homework exams on calculations, all quizzes are on calculations, the TA only knows calculation (he doesn't want to spend time looking at the concepts it seems)...but exams is on concept, no calculation required. I don't know if I could have foreseen this the next time around.
• Prof reads off of the slides for entire lecture at a rate of 1< minute per slide. With this volume of material, it is unsurprising that large parts are ignored when it comes to exam. No one attempts to learn anything because any learning could potentially be a massive waste of time and it has been from my own experience. Goes back to the lack of focus.

• These slides are posted lecture by lecture basis. So no pre-reading occurs, no one knows what is covered next

• The slides are based off of an extremely wordy book and large portions are skipped at a time during the lecture, no one has a clue where in the book the prof is teaching. It is more than chapter hopping, it is chapter teleportation.

• The course requires two books. One of which is sold on the campus bookstore, the other cannot be found anywhere. You'd think in today's age there would be a pdf version of it, but no there isn't (for a while I thought it didn't actually exist). And you could only get it off of Amazon. Strangely the prof insists on pulling questions from that book. I still couldn't quite figure out how to do those questions since the symbols are literally not found anywhere else
• Here's the kicker, this class has prof rotation more than the number of years since the course has been established, each prof has different styles thereby leading to unpredictable exam coverage and unreliable past exams/midterms. In the past I have dealt with these types of courses by studying the past exams, but now that option is gone.

I want to bring this up to the professor himself, but 99.9% chance he will claim that there is one or two guys who are pulling 100% on the exams so I could do it too. Furthermore, there seems very little he can do to manage the situation. I think this is just how this course was taught in the past and he is not interested in changing the status quo.

What can I do as a student to try to adjust my learning experience for the better while I am in a situation such as this? Would it help bringing it up to the department that is offering the course?