Professor
Elizabeth Darvick
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - Before taking psychology, I was very interested in the course, because while I had never taken a psychology course before, I had heard very good things, the things I knew sounded interesting, and the rest I didn’t really know what to expect. Unfortunately, Professor Darvick was unable to increase my interest in this course for multiple reasons . For one, she’s an incredibly hard grader. Normally, that’s not a problem, because I know it’s important to really test that your students know the material. However, the difficulty of the course wasn’t because I hadn’t mastered the material (I spent hours upon hours learning it). Instead, she purposely made the material difficult to maintain a low C average. For example, each week she assigned weekly responses, which ask good, thought-provoking questions about the material we had learned that week. However, her grading rubric for it was fundamentally flawed. If I had answered the question perfectly well, I would get a 2/3 or a 67% on my homework (a fact she admitted herself). A 3/3 was reserved for people who went above and beyond like doing outside research to answer the question, a criterion that was never mentioned in class. These grades were set purposely low in order to maintain that low C average. I asked her, if everyone in the class wrote amazing responses using outside material, would we all get 3/3’s? The answer was no. It was only after several weeks of many complaints from students that she finally changed the grading scheme. Unfortunately, I and a lot of other students still have many 2/3s on our records because it took so long for her to change it. In addition, while some of her test questions were a good representation of the material, a lot of other questions asked random specifics from the textbook (which included over 200 pages of in-depth reading) that were frankly, quite irrelevant. When I went in to ask her questions about the test, I found there were multiple correct answers because her test was fundamentally flawed. However, she would argue that the answers were not the “most correct,” and refused to back down on any of her incorrect answers. She doesn’t even know a great deal on the material she is talking about. I went to her office hours a few times to ask specific questions from the book or from the material she taught in class, and she would pull up a page in Google to answer it. If I wanted an answer from Google, I would have googled it, not gone to office hours. Darvick’s teaching style is taken straight from the book, and to be quite honest, I could have gotten up and taught the course the same way she had. Instead, I and many others pay to go to school with extremely highly qualified teachers who know the material they’re talking about. Both TAs presented guest lectures at the end of class, and, to be quite honest, their lectures were much better and more informative than Darvick’s. In fact, (TA) Peter Clayson’s lecture was so good that I would actually take a class taught by him because he was engaging and knowledgeable on the subject, two qualities Darvick lacks. Overall, I still learned quite a bit about psych, but the amount of textbook work required for tests was unreasonable, as was Darvick’s grading scheme. The first midterm had many flawed questions, but the second midterm (which took place week 10) was fairer. Her homework policy was also ridiculous, as it seemed that the homework was pulling my grade down more than my test scores were. If you are willing to read a lot and not learn anything new in lecture, I would recommend this professor.
Winter 2016 - Before taking psychology, I was very interested in the course, because while I had never taken a psychology course before, I had heard very good things, the things I knew sounded interesting, and the rest I didn’t really know what to expect. Unfortunately, Professor Darvick was unable to increase my interest in this course for multiple reasons . For one, she’s an incredibly hard grader. Normally, that’s not a problem, because I know it’s important to really test that your students know the material. However, the difficulty of the course wasn’t because I hadn’t mastered the material (I spent hours upon hours learning it). Instead, she purposely made the material difficult to maintain a low C average. For example, each week she assigned weekly responses, which ask good, thought-provoking questions about the material we had learned that week. However, her grading rubric for it was fundamentally flawed. If I had answered the question perfectly well, I would get a 2/3 or a 67% on my homework (a fact she admitted herself). A 3/3 was reserved for people who went above and beyond like doing outside research to answer the question, a criterion that was never mentioned in class. These grades were set purposely low in order to maintain that low C average. I asked her, if everyone in the class wrote amazing responses using outside material, would we all get 3/3’s? The answer was no. It was only after several weeks of many complaints from students that she finally changed the grading scheme. Unfortunately, I and a lot of other students still have many 2/3s on our records because it took so long for her to change it. In addition, while some of her test questions were a good representation of the material, a lot of other questions asked random specifics from the textbook (which included over 200 pages of in-depth reading) that were frankly, quite irrelevant. When I went in to ask her questions about the test, I found there were multiple correct answers because her test was fundamentally flawed. However, she would argue that the answers were not the “most correct,” and refused to back down on any of her incorrect answers. She doesn’t even know a great deal on the material she is talking about. I went to her office hours a few times to ask specific questions from the book or from the material she taught in class, and she would pull up a page in Google to answer it. If I wanted an answer from Google, I would have googled it, not gone to office hours. Darvick’s teaching style is taken straight from the book, and to be quite honest, I could have gotten up and taught the course the same way she had. Instead, I and many others pay to go to school with extremely highly qualified teachers who know the material they’re talking about. Both TAs presented guest lectures at the end of class, and, to be quite honest, their lectures were much better and more informative than Darvick’s. In fact, (TA) Peter Clayson’s lecture was so good that I would actually take a class taught by him because he was engaging and knowledgeable on the subject, two qualities Darvick lacks. Overall, I still learned quite a bit about psych, but the amount of textbook work required for tests was unreasonable, as was Darvick’s grading scheme. The first midterm had many flawed questions, but the second midterm (which took place week 10) was fairer. Her homework policy was also ridiculous, as it seemed that the homework was pulling my grade down more than my test scores were. If you are willing to read a lot and not learn anything new in lecture, I would recommend this professor.
AD
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