Professor
Alan Barreca
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Barreca did not seem to care about student learning. When students had brought up concerns in class, this instructor said her opinion was a minority opinion and said his vote counted for 81 voices whereas hers was just one. Although I don't think his comment were meant to offend, it was clear to me that he did not care about the student learning experience and the rest of the quarter seemed to prove this as well. Barecca on the first day of class had told us he would teach us like we had no prior experience in R, economics, or statistics which I don't think was reflected during the quarter. The only part I felt was taught well and from the basics was R, which was the responsibility of the TA anyway. Furthermore, for our final project, we were expected to know codes we had not yet learn in class. I understand Barecca had the intentions of being a great professor and was modeling the style of a certain teacher he had mentioned, however the quarter did not mirror his intentions. Therefore, I felt if multiple students had brought up concerns and feedback about his teaching styles, he should have considered them. Additionally, I understand wanting students to learn from experience, from trial and error, so I understand his emphasis on examples. However, I believe a certain amount of basic concepts must be taught in conjunction. Barecca taught primarily through examples and students were left to their own devices to figure out trends and concepts based on examples. I believe it would have been more effective if he had taught basic concepts and given us examples to apply our knowledge with. For example, in my past physics classes, professors taught us concepts in class with a few examples, and gave us many practice problems of varying difficulty to work with. I have never been in a class where I tried to learn by merely observing trends in the way the professor solved problems. I was very disappointed in this class especially since I was looking forward to it last quarter and over break. Even if Barecca wanted to teach through examples, I would have appreciated if he had assigned mandatory textbook readings or education videos to supplement the learning so we could learn about the concepts on our own time. I don't agree with Barecca's emphasis on intuition because it made many of his explanations confusing and hard to follow. In addition, when students had asked for further clarification on questions, he would attempt to explain based on intuition or phrases like "move this block of wood" which to this day is unclear and confusing to me. Most of the articles we read for homework were interesting but were but were used as applicable examples in class and again, still lacked the basic concepts we needed to understand everything. I consistently felt throughout the quarter that I had no knowledge of the basic concepts. I really do not recommend this class for anyone. I did end up getting an A- in the class, but really the students in the class had to teach each other.
Winter 2019 - Barreca did not seem to care about student learning. When students had brought up concerns in class, this instructor said her opinion was a minority opinion and said his vote counted for 81 voices whereas hers was just one. Although I don't think his comment were meant to offend, it was clear to me that he did not care about the student learning experience and the rest of the quarter seemed to prove this as well. Barecca on the first day of class had told us he would teach us like we had no prior experience in R, economics, or statistics which I don't think was reflected during the quarter. The only part I felt was taught well and from the basics was R, which was the responsibility of the TA anyway. Furthermore, for our final project, we were expected to know codes we had not yet learn in class. I understand Barecca had the intentions of being a great professor and was modeling the style of a certain teacher he had mentioned, however the quarter did not mirror his intentions. Therefore, I felt if multiple students had brought up concerns and feedback about his teaching styles, he should have considered them. Additionally, I understand wanting students to learn from experience, from trial and error, so I understand his emphasis on examples. However, I believe a certain amount of basic concepts must be taught in conjunction. Barecca taught primarily through examples and students were left to their own devices to figure out trends and concepts based on examples. I believe it would have been more effective if he had taught basic concepts and given us examples to apply our knowledge with. For example, in my past physics classes, professors taught us concepts in class with a few examples, and gave us many practice problems of varying difficulty to work with. I have never been in a class where I tried to learn by merely observing trends in the way the professor solved problems. I was very disappointed in this class especially since I was looking forward to it last quarter and over break. Even if Barecca wanted to teach through examples, I would have appreciated if he had assigned mandatory textbook readings or education videos to supplement the learning so we could learn about the concepts on our own time. I don't agree with Barecca's emphasis on intuition because it made many of his explanations confusing and hard to follow. In addition, when students had asked for further clarification on questions, he would attempt to explain based on intuition or phrases like "move this block of wood" which to this day is unclear and confusing to me. Most of the articles we read for homework were interesting but were but were used as applicable examples in class and again, still lacked the basic concepts we needed to understand everything. I consistently felt throughout the quarter that I had no knowledge of the basic concepts. I really do not recommend this class for anyone. I did end up getting an A- in the class, but really the students in the class had to teach each other.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - Professor Barreca is great. It's rare nowadays to find a professor who actually cares about student learning and is just focused on teaching their students the material rather than literally gatekeeping helpful info to make the tests confusing. If you pay attention in this class and go through all the modules you will learn and you will do well on the Projects. Class structure: Pre-class coding assignment (2 per week) which took no more than an hour. Very easy you literally just follow along to a module that Barreca made and copy your code in. Easy to just skip through and copy the code but I recommend actually going through it and reading everything so that you understand what you're doing and what everything is for. Otherwise you'll be screwed for the projects. 1 pt. Attendance is taken but you get 5 free passes of absence with no explanation. Taken via Slido participation, 1 pt. Assignments that you do at the end of class worth 4 pts each. Mimic what you did for the pre-class assignment and is just practice. Can ask classmates for help if you need. You also get a free pass on 5 of these. One "escape room" which is literally just you going through how you download stuff with the TA to make sure ur doing it right which is 4 pts and absolutely nothing to worry about don't view it as a quiz or anything cuz it's not. Two midterm projects and 1 Final Projects. Midterm projects you can help each other with but the Final you do on your own. These are gucci if you actually went through the modules, but be careful because he takes points of if you do anything different than what he does in the modules. Ex. if you've ever coded before and have some habits already, LOSE THEM. I lost points for using one-line comments instead of block comments like he does... which was kind of BS but whatever. The midterm projects are worth 8 points each and the Final is 20 pts. Overall good and easy class and would take again. I really did learn a lot about coding and I didn't previously consider myself interested in it.
Spring 2024 - Professor Barreca is great. It's rare nowadays to find a professor who actually cares about student learning and is just focused on teaching their students the material rather than literally gatekeeping helpful info to make the tests confusing. If you pay attention in this class and go through all the modules you will learn and you will do well on the Projects. Class structure: Pre-class coding assignment (2 per week) which took no more than an hour. Very easy you literally just follow along to a module that Barreca made and copy your code in. Easy to just skip through and copy the code but I recommend actually going through it and reading everything so that you understand what you're doing and what everything is for. Otherwise you'll be screwed for the projects. 1 pt. Attendance is taken but you get 5 free passes of absence with no explanation. Taken via Slido participation, 1 pt. Assignments that you do at the end of class worth 4 pts each. Mimic what you did for the pre-class assignment and is just practice. Can ask classmates for help if you need. You also get a free pass on 5 of these. One "escape room" which is literally just you going through how you download stuff with the TA to make sure ur doing it right which is 4 pts and absolutely nothing to worry about don't view it as a quiz or anything cuz it's not. Two midterm projects and 1 Final Projects. Midterm projects you can help each other with but the Final you do on your own. These are gucci if you actually went through the modules, but be careful because he takes points of if you do anything different than what he does in the modules. Ex. if you've ever coded before and have some habits already, LOSE THEM. I lost points for using one-line comments instead of block comments like he does... which was kind of BS but whatever. The midterm projects are worth 8 points each and the Final is 20 pts. Overall good and easy class and would take again. I really did learn a lot about coding and I didn't previously consider myself interested in it.
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