I don't think some of these reviews are being fair. Yeah, all the material is pre-recorded videos, but this is an online course... so you get what you sign up for. Thrower is a really nice guy who was super accessible in office hours. The exams were pretty hard though. A lot of the MC felt like "gotcha" questions.
online lectures are almost 2 hours per lecture when they're supposed to be 50 mins, confusing explanations. tests are a memorization game where he asks the last idea of a bullet point on his 167th slide or something like that. lectures are just him reading off his screen. wouldn't recommend and didnt learn much, just memorized a lot of stuff lol.
Don't understand people giving a prof bad reviews because the class is hard. Yes, you have to memorize everything from the lectures for the exams--Thrower was very clear about that and the tests were not unreasonable if you actually went in with that expectation imo.
This class was extremely tough. You basically have to have EVERY single part of each lecture slide memorized even the tiniest of details. The tests were fair but had details on them that you wouldn't even think to study. Don't take this class if you can't get through extremely dense lecture videos that have a lot of pauses and are convoluted.
Just an overwhelming class with so much content thrown at you. didn't enjoy paying for SmartBook access and it not being useful for my studying at all. Prepare for big point FRQs on concepts from lecture slides that you felt you could lowkey gloss over (you can't). Experienced grading errors too so check your work vs the keys & get your points lol!
He's in retirement mode. Everything he offers is online, and sections aren't mandatory. I can't do STEM classes online, especially bio, so I didn't expect the class to be completely online for the spring. If you struggle with online classes like these, I wish you good luck.
This guy covers so much content it's ridiculous. And since lectures are videos, he has no respect for time and goes over way more info than professors would normally in class. Additionally, the material is not organized as well as it should be for a course so dense. The test questions are fair, but difficult due to the amount of content.
Lectures are dense, but with the free textbook and engaging study sessions, you can grasp the concepts. Using ChatGPT and unstuckstudy for practice questions really helped me prepare. Exams are challenging, but the curve makes it manageable. Overall, a worthwhile class.
Took this over summer with pre recorded lecture vids and in person exams. Accessible in OH but it was mostly managed by the TAs. Sections were pretty useless for anything but knowing a couple exam qs. He's a sweet guy but I def would not have been able to get an A- if I took this during the year because it's rlly lecture heavy. P good curve though
This was an async class where you could go the whole course without actually talking to Thrower. He would explain things in OH but the main interaction was his TAs. His tests were horrendous and it's a test heavy class. Very in depth multiple choice that made it look like you hadn't even studied. Truly tough, I don't know how people succeeded.
nice guy but you watch his lecture videos and gives the most bare minimum explanation for every concept that he teaches. his online videos were extremely hard to follow and requires 3x the amount of time and effort to understand what he is trying to say. on top of his convoluted teaching, exams were extremely vague and ambiguous.
Nice guy but not very good at explaining things. Goes into a lot of depth and random tangents. Would be a lot better with less yapping and more focus on the important stuff. Also doesn't point at what he's talking about in the slides and slides are loaded with information so have fun pausing all his videos to figure out what he's talking about.