Laura Biester
This course was a witch hunt for AI use. The homework was far too difficult and high stakes for an intro class. If you have absolutely no experience coding in any language-- DO NOT take this course. They transitioned to no-partial-credit written exams, which made this course very hard to do well in. So many people bombed the midterm that they had to implement an exchange program to gain points back by doing extra homework. This was nice, but it doubled my weekly workload. Biester was very nice, but it seemed like Andrews called all the shots, and he was not as forgiving (in grading or generally). So many people got flagged for AI use (sometimes wrongly), which is clearly a result of the homework problems being too hard. If you couldn't complete a homework problem, you got no credit and no chance to redo it, AND if you couldn't complete a few over the course of the semester, it was impossible to get an A (even if it was a result of only a minor coding error). Overall, this course is far too intense for an intro, and they need to figure out how they are handling AI usage. **This is not a reflection of Biester as an instructor- she was wonderful- it seems that there are bigger systemic problems within the course and the department.
This course was a witch hunt for AI use. The homework was far too difficult and high stakes for an intro class. If you have absolutely no experience coding in any language-- DO NOT take this course. They transitioned to no-partial-credit written exams, which made this course very hard to do well in. So many people bombed the midterm …Read more
Professor Biester is very clear and concise with her teachings. Her approach towards homework is very good as it allows for and encourages revisioning and improvement through having multiple checkpoints for feedback before a final deadline. Very helpful for those that prefer a feedback loop into their learning.
This course was very valuable in teaching the fundamentals of Python. There were many opportunities to resubmit homework problem sets to improve our grade. I spent most of my afternoon at office hours and TA hours to help with debugging. The grading system became more relaxed and the professors became more lenient as the course went on, which I really appreciated.