Professor
Jonathan Hopkins
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - Professor Hopkins is easy to understand, though sometimes he went through lecture slides pretty fast. He cares about students understanding the material and he is very knowledgeable about it. One issue I had with the course were the homework assignments given. I did not feel that lectures well-prepared students for them and I needed to turn to the textbook to learn the material. Overall though, Hopkins made the class enjoyable and I do believe that I learned a lot about mechanisms and mechanical design. His lecture slides are pretty detailed and I feel confident about turning to them in the future when I enter industry!
Fall 2017 - Professor Hopkins is easy to understand, though sometimes he went through lecture slides pretty fast. He cares about students understanding the material and he is very knowledgeable about it. One issue I had with the course were the homework assignments given. I did not feel that lectures well-prepared students for them and I needed to turn to the textbook to learn the material. Overall though, Hopkins made the class enjoyable and I do believe that I learned a lot about mechanisms and mechanical design. His lecture slides are pretty detailed and I feel confident about turning to them in the future when I enter industry!
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - Very clear lectures and very interesting material. He basically invented this field of study and he is young so he knows how to teach it well. It's a lot of 3D visualizing systems rather than doing math. 5 homeworks that aren't too hard, but need to be turned in as a hard copy on time or else you get no credit. Involves MATLAB and SolidWorks. The midterm was good. Final was brutal and only covered the last couple weeks of material (average 62). He doesn't usually curve but he had to for this one. The group project was interesting and fun to complete. This quarter, we designed and built a toy for Kinder eggs and he got a representative from the company to watch our presentations. I would take the course again since he is entertaining, there's not much math, and the content seems important for the future of design.
Winter 2023 - Very clear lectures and very interesting material. He basically invented this field of study and he is young so he knows how to teach it well. It's a lot of 3D visualizing systems rather than doing math. 5 homeworks that aren't too hard, but need to be turned in as a hard copy on time or else you get no credit. Involves MATLAB and SolidWorks. The midterm was good. Final was brutal and only covered the last couple weeks of material (average 62). He doesn't usually curve but he had to for this one. The group project was interesting and fun to complete. This quarter, we designed and built a toy for Kinder eggs and he got a representative from the company to watch our presentations. I would take the course again since he is entertaining, there's not much math, and the content seems important for the future of design.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - This class is less about learning how to design and build compliant mechanisms as it is about evangelizing the professor’s very specific and applicable approach to doing so. Mid-term and Final are each 35% of the grade, so do well on tests. Some concepts are introduced with no actual teaching (designing in CAD, how to do simple FEA, running somewhat complex MATLAB scripts) MSOL students without prior CAD, FEA, or MATLAB skills may struggle. The TA was not helpful and contradicted the professor at times, so be sure to lean on Professor Hopkins’ knowledge if you have questions. He was very reachable by email and you could tell he cared about the student experience.
Fall 2024 - This class is less about learning how to design and build compliant mechanisms as it is about evangelizing the professor’s very specific and applicable approach to doing so. Mid-term and Final are each 35% of the grade, so do well on tests. Some concepts are introduced with no actual teaching (designing in CAD, how to do simple FEA, running somewhat complex MATLAB scripts) MSOL students without prior CAD, FEA, or MATLAB skills may struggle. The TA was not helpful and contradicted the professor at times, so be sure to lean on Professor Hopkins’ knowledge if you have questions. He was very reachable by email and you could tell he cared about the student experience.
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