I have a love/hate relationship with Geography 7. I took it during the summer, and it was a lot of work. Every week for six weeks, you have two tedious GIS projects, two quizzes, and two forum posts that you have to do. The projects are not that bad IF your professor provides the step-by-step vides made by Professor Burkhart AND if you start on your assignments early. I would start them they day I got them and would spend 4 to 6 hours a day completing everything. I am not sure if every professor provides these videos, but they are honestly the only reason I got an A in the class. By following along to these videos, I was able to meet all the requirements for my maps. However, in order to get a score of 19 or 20/20 on your weekly assignments, you must go "above and beyond." This means that you must add other elements to your map that aren't explicitly stated in the instructions in order to show that you've put in effort to your assignments. The final project looks daunting and long, but is actually quite doable. Since this class is online, you don't interact much with Madson, aside from Piazza. I found him to be a pretty fair grader though. I didn't enjoy the class that much, but I am also proud that I was able to master many GIS techniques, and you will feel good after completing your maps. If you are really scared of this class, don't be. I was terrified, and I honestly thought I would barely be able to pull of a C, but I got a solid A. You can do it!

The grading is as follows:
Weekly Quizzes: 15%
Weekly Assignments (Maps): 50%
Thematic Forum Posts: 10%
Syllabus Quiz: 5%
Final Project: 20%

My scores:
Quizzes: ~98%
Weekly Assignments: ~92%
Syllabus Quiz: 100%
Thematic Forum Posts: 100%
Final Project: 93%
FINAL GRADE: A

Austin isn't very helpful. He lectured the second half of each class and Sheng the first. Austin was in charge of the lab portion of the class. His grading rubric is such that you can't get higher than an 80 without going above and beyond. When introduced to the lab we don't get much instruction. While I get this is advance gis, sometimes it doesn't even have a list of end products that are necessary. Thus losing points when missing portions of required elements. When you ask questions, he is condescending often replying 'were you in class, we went over this.'