- Home
- Search
- Portonovo Ayyaswamy
- MECH&AE 105D
AD
Based on 3 Users
TOP TAGS
There are no relevant tags for this professor yet.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Sorry, no enrollment data is available.
AD
Lecture: Extremely dry, often meanders away from his point. Absolutely no sense of pacing for the course. Conduction took 5 weeks, convection 4, and radiation was barely covered. Didn't cover any examples, just pure theory and derivations, which were explained poorly. He complained to the class over Bruinlearn that people weren't attending (without realizing the reason was that his lectures were useless).
Homework: Short, won't prepare you for any real heat transfer problem-solving.
Discussion: Poor TA scrambles to cover a week's worth of content, equations, and examples in 2 hours.
Exams: Open book, open note. Relatively reasonable, though he likes to sneak some wordy explanation problem or derivation in there.
Overall: 0/10 would not recommend. There are tolerable professors, and then there's this guy. You'll probably do okay, but acquire a fair bit of trauma doing it. By far the worst part was, as mentioned, the pacing. We were left in the dark about what we would ever cover, even until the very last day. My bet would be the most common question to him was what would be on the exam, as no one knew what he would consider fair game. The syllabus and schedule were forgone. It's hard to convey the mental warfare that was this class. Try to take Lavine instead (she co-wrote the textbook).
Breakdown: Homework 20% - These homeworks are super easy. 2-4 problems from the textbook once a week. The professor knew it was a light homework load but he said it's better to understand the most important problems than to copy down solutions to a lot of them.
Midterm 30% - The professor was very soft on this. The average was around a 92% and it was easier than the homeworks. 2 pages of cheat sheets.
Final 50% - Because of Coronavirus, this was a take home final that we had 3.5 hours to complete. It was challenging in the time span but because it was open book/open note, this is understandable. It was very similar to the practice final he sent out. The concepts of this class aren't too hard but there are A LOT of equations to keep track of.
Overall, his lectures were pretty dry and focused on derivations so most people didn't go. I just sat in the back and did homework. You can skip these and still get a good grade. However, the discussion sections you should not skip. The TA's select the most important practice problems and walk you through how to do them. My TA was super helpful and told you exactly what concepts you need to know. Overall, this professor probably wasn't better or worse than any other one. Like most classes, you'll end up teaching yourself most of the material.
If you have to take this class for credit/grade, then you have to. If you want to learn the material, take another professor. Very confusing lectures that more than half the class stopped attending after the midterm. He gives hints for the midterm and final in his lectures, though, so you have to attend if you want a good grade.
A nice person. Not an engaging or inspiring professor. After taking this class, I became disinterested in further study of heat transfer. Before taking this class, I was very interested in it.
Lecture: Extremely dry, often meanders away from his point. Absolutely no sense of pacing for the course. Conduction took 5 weeks, convection 4, and radiation was barely covered. Didn't cover any examples, just pure theory and derivations, which were explained poorly. He complained to the class over Bruinlearn that people weren't attending (without realizing the reason was that his lectures were useless).
Homework: Short, won't prepare you for any real heat transfer problem-solving.
Discussion: Poor TA scrambles to cover a week's worth of content, equations, and examples in 2 hours.
Exams: Open book, open note. Relatively reasonable, though he likes to sneak some wordy explanation problem or derivation in there.
Overall: 0/10 would not recommend. There are tolerable professors, and then there's this guy. You'll probably do okay, but acquire a fair bit of trauma doing it. By far the worst part was, as mentioned, the pacing. We were left in the dark about what we would ever cover, even until the very last day. My bet would be the most common question to him was what would be on the exam, as no one knew what he would consider fair game. The syllabus and schedule were forgone. It's hard to convey the mental warfare that was this class. Try to take Lavine instead (she co-wrote the textbook).
Breakdown: Homework 20% - These homeworks are super easy. 2-4 problems from the textbook once a week. The professor knew it was a light homework load but he said it's better to understand the most important problems than to copy down solutions to a lot of them.
Midterm 30% - The professor was very soft on this. The average was around a 92% and it was easier than the homeworks. 2 pages of cheat sheets.
Final 50% - Because of Coronavirus, this was a take home final that we had 3.5 hours to complete. It was challenging in the time span but because it was open book/open note, this is understandable. It was very similar to the practice final he sent out. The concepts of this class aren't too hard but there are A LOT of equations to keep track of.
Overall, his lectures were pretty dry and focused on derivations so most people didn't go. I just sat in the back and did homework. You can skip these and still get a good grade. However, the discussion sections you should not skip. The TA's select the most important practice problems and walk you through how to do them. My TA was super helpful and told you exactly what concepts you need to know. Overall, this professor probably wasn't better or worse than any other one. Like most classes, you'll end up teaching yourself most of the material.
If you have to take this class for credit/grade, then you have to. If you want to learn the material, take another professor. Very confusing lectures that more than half the class stopped attending after the midterm. He gives hints for the midterm and final in his lectures, though, so you have to attend if you want a good grade.
A nice person. Not an engaging or inspiring professor. After taking this class, I became disinterested in further study of heat transfer. Before taking this class, I was very interested in it.
Based on 3 Users
TOP TAGS
There are no relevant tags for this professor yet.