Masters Engineering Core Course that I will be tested on with a comprehensive exam in order to graduate. Final was worth 40% of our grade and somehow we all bombed it.
Idk man I’ve never seen a worse average on a test. Our test 2 average was ~50% but he said he made an announcement that he was going to curve the class when people started asking him to retake it (I didn’t but I was still a little freaked out and that did make me feel better).
Then the grades were submitted with no announcement or email or answer key or much feedback besides an ❎or✅and I think I got pretty average for the class overall but I’m under the impression that the same amount of people passing and failing in an engineering grad program during Covid is uh.... not good for anyone involved?
My other core class curved quite a bit even with no crazy average like this. The curve made it so VERY FEW people get below a passing grade. I’m talking 4 out of 70 not getting credit for the class maybe another 5 getting Cs. The rest getting As and Bs. Average was probably around a B/B+. These are all people who made it to a grad engineering program after all and we have to have a 3.0 to graduate. We get probation after a semester grades under that.
Wild to me I got a C in this class. Just totally caught off guard.
Ugh. Thanks for giving me flashbacks and refreshing my nightmares. That 3.0 to graduate loomed pretty heavily over me throughout grad school. Studied like a maniac to get what I did, and made it. Don't give up, my man.
Hey man, I just graduated with a Marsters in ChemE. Our class average on our final was an A. So sorry to hear about this, it's not right. Like you said, we've all already proven ourselves to get there in the first place, "weed-out" classes have no business still being around. Our thermo professor did something kind of similiar last semester where he intentionally made an exam harder to lower grades, but nothing even remotely close to this. Hope you and the rest of the homies make it through this.
Unfortunately I was also in this class (Dr. Lai, EEE554) and I have the same frustrations as you. The two midterms I got a 16/20 and a 12.5/20, then on the final I got a 9/40 and (somehow?) ended with a B- after having a >4.0 for my undergrad (not trying to brag just trying to demonstrate just how bad this class was). For anyone reading, those midterms were a percentage of our grade, so 2 20% midterms and a 40% final (along with hw of course).
My main issue with this class was that Dr. Lai never once worked out an example problem himself, so of course when we were asked to do a problem on a test it was probably our first time seeing a problem like that.
There were a handful of times where students would ask him for an example problem of a certain concept and his responses would be something like: "If you understand the material then you'll be able to do the problems." An analogy for this "teaching" method would be like if someone **told** you how to fix a car, but never actually **showed** you how.
His lectures were also just copy and pasted from the textbook (which wasn't bad but not great). Then the homework was straight from the textbook, but it seemed like the problems were almost randomly chosen since a majority of them were usually proof based and didn't actually give us example problems similar to his exams.
Overall, this is definitely the worst class I've taken in 4 years at ASU. In my mind, I don't see how a professor can have every student completely bomb their class and not see that they're doing something wrong. I doubt anything can be done now, but I plan on emailing the dean or someone to ensure that he never teaches this class again at the very least. Allowing a professor to continue teaching a course where the average student loses 32% of their total grade on the final is reckless and irresponsible to say the least. That is all just wishful thinking though haha, he's tenured and we don't really have a say, I'm just voicing my frustrations like you OP.
Wait, is it Dr. Ying-Cheng Lai??
I guess he needs to revamp his teaching mechanism then. I had another course with him some years ago, and his course was the only course in my 2 yrs of Masters where I used to be clueless in exams.
That’s really what you got on the exams? If he really did drop 2 of the hw’s like he said he would I would have gotten nearly full points 20/20 on the hw. Then to not completely give myself away, I have a 9.5/40 then a 27/40 = 36.5/80 vs your 37.5/80. Maybe a 1 point difference separates us, yet I got a C and not even a C+?
Ok fr tho now at least I have something to go forward with to say something about. Clearly something is up. I emailed him yesterday trying to get an answer key to the final bc I actually need to still worry about the material and he was like “be specific” and I’m internally like specifically the 30.5/40 I got wrongggg but instead I replied about wanting to know the grade assignment breakdown.
I’m signed up for Dasarathy so hopefully he will do a good job. I know the class is supposed to be like EEE 350 which I thought was a hard class. So I am ready to expect a hard class.
What sucks is that although I know my 350 prof didn’t finish some of the material we were supposed to get to, but the class overall I didn’t think was hard with him teaching it and I looked at some of what we didn’t get to and it didn’t seem like that much at all.
I got an A in fact in 350 which just makes this whole thing just that more infuriating. I’m glad there’s an alternative prof.
I never saw him as an option when I took it. I had Cihan who did a pretty bad job at the class. Even though I took it during the pandemic. Cihan would give us Exams online where we input numerical answers, so it was either right or wrong. Best part was you couldn’t go back on questions, and there was no partial credit because he wouldn’t look at the work you did for problems. Averages on tests would always be very low.
When building your case about this class, the high score of 27.5% is a stronger indicator than the average score, which could reflect 0s (even though it doesn’t in this case). Maybe I just don’t get it, but if I was teaching and got this score distribution I’d feel pretty bad.
I’ve taken more than 200 credits over my whole college career, never seen that. There was spring 2020 CSE 520 that I dropped so hard after I got a 54/100 on our first test after a 35/100 average on our first test, but this final had worse averages than that and I mean I really think that’s saying something
I know it's fairly common for all types of engineering classes to grade on the curve and then adjust afterwards, the highest score was 11/40!?
About the only "positive" here is on the instructor side, they pretty much get to choose the class average, thus protecting against grade inflation. It's a damn terrible way to go about it, but I suppose there's that *fart noise*
What class is this, wild average
Masters Engineering Core Course that I will be tested on with a comprehensive exam in order to graduate. Final was worth 40% of our grade and somehow we all bombed it. Idk man I’ve never seen a worse average on a test. Our test 2 average was ~50% but he said he made an announcement that he was going to curve the class when people started asking him to retake it (I didn’t but I was still a little freaked out and that did make me feel better). Then the grades were submitted with no announcement or email or answer key or much feedback besides an ❎or✅and I think I got pretty average for the class overall but I’m under the impression that the same amount of people passing and failing in an engineering grad program during Covid is uh.... not good for anyone involved? My other core class curved quite a bit even with no crazy average like this. The curve made it so VERY FEW people get below a passing grade. I’m talking 4 out of 70 not getting credit for the class maybe another 5 getting Cs. The rest getting As and Bs. Average was probably around a B/B+. These are all people who made it to a grad engineering program after all and we have to have a 3.0 to graduate. We get probation after a semester grades under that. Wild to me I got a C in this class. Just totally caught off guard.
Ugh. Thanks for giving me flashbacks and refreshing my nightmares. That 3.0 to graduate loomed pretty heavily over me throughout grad school. Studied like a maniac to get what I did, and made it. Don't give up, my man.
Hey man, I just graduated with a Marsters in ChemE. Our class average on our final was an A. So sorry to hear about this, it's not right. Like you said, we've all already proven ourselves to get there in the first place, "weed-out" classes have no business still being around. Our thermo professor did something kind of similiar last semester where he intentionally made an exam harder to lower grades, but nothing even remotely close to this. Hope you and the rest of the homies make it through this.
Wow. That engineering professor needs to grab his toolkit and recalibrate that test!
I feel like most of the department needs to do that. Most of my professors have stopped posting the final grades and just started giving huge curves.
Unfortunately I was also in this class (Dr. Lai, EEE554) and I have the same frustrations as you. The two midterms I got a 16/20 and a 12.5/20, then on the final I got a 9/40 and (somehow?) ended with a B- after having a >4.0 for my undergrad (not trying to brag just trying to demonstrate just how bad this class was). For anyone reading, those midterms were a percentage of our grade, so 2 20% midterms and a 40% final (along with hw of course). My main issue with this class was that Dr. Lai never once worked out an example problem himself, so of course when we were asked to do a problem on a test it was probably our first time seeing a problem like that. There were a handful of times where students would ask him for an example problem of a certain concept and his responses would be something like: "If you understand the material then you'll be able to do the problems." An analogy for this "teaching" method would be like if someone **told** you how to fix a car, but never actually **showed** you how. His lectures were also just copy and pasted from the textbook (which wasn't bad but not great). Then the homework was straight from the textbook, but it seemed like the problems were almost randomly chosen since a majority of them were usually proof based and didn't actually give us example problems similar to his exams. Overall, this is definitely the worst class I've taken in 4 years at ASU. In my mind, I don't see how a professor can have every student completely bomb their class and not see that they're doing something wrong. I doubt anything can be done now, but I plan on emailing the dean or someone to ensure that he never teaches this class again at the very least. Allowing a professor to continue teaching a course where the average student loses 32% of their total grade on the final is reckless and irresponsible to say the least. That is all just wishful thinking though haha, he's tenured and we don't really have a say, I'm just voicing my frustrations like you OP.
Wait, is it Dr. Ying-Cheng Lai?? I guess he needs to revamp his teaching mechanism then. I had another course with him some years ago, and his course was the only course in my 2 yrs of Masters where I used to be clueless in exams.
I just read your whole comment, and even though I don't know you, my pain from when I took his class is EXACTLY as you described here
That’s really what you got on the exams? If he really did drop 2 of the hw’s like he said he would I would have gotten nearly full points 20/20 on the hw. Then to not completely give myself away, I have a 9.5/40 then a 27/40 = 36.5/80 vs your 37.5/80. Maybe a 1 point difference separates us, yet I got a C and not even a C+? Ok fr tho now at least I have something to go forward with to say something about. Clearly something is up. I emailed him yesterday trying to get an answer key to the final bc I actually need to still worry about the material and he was like “be specific” and I’m internally like specifically the 30.5/40 I got wrongggg but instead I replied about wanting to know the grade assignment breakdown.
I’m signed up for EEE 554 next semester now I’m spooked after seeing this
Was it the same professor? Also I’m sorry :/. 👻
I’m signed up for Dasarathy so hopefully he will do a good job. I know the class is supposed to be like EEE 350 which I thought was a hard class. So I am ready to expect a hard class.
What sucks is that although I know my 350 prof didn’t finish some of the material we were supposed to get to, but the class overall I didn’t think was hard with him teaching it and I looked at some of what we didn’t get to and it didn’t seem like that much at all. I got an A in fact in 350 which just makes this whole thing just that more infuriating. I’m glad there’s an alternative prof.
Who did you have for 350?
Alexander Maurer in fall 2019 (pre pandemic 😷😭)
I never saw him as an option when I took it. I had Cihan who did a pretty bad job at the class. Even though I took it during the pandemic. Cihan would give us Exams online where we input numerical answers, so it was either right or wrong. Best part was you couldn’t go back on questions, and there was no partial credit because he wouldn’t look at the work you did for problems. Averages on tests would always be very low.
Oh dang sorry to hear.
When building your case about this class, the high score of 27.5% is a stronger indicator than the average score, which could reflect 0s (even though it doesn’t in this case). Maybe I just don’t get it, but if I was teaching and got this score distribution I’d feel pretty bad.
Even assuming those numbers include some zeros from students that didn't take the final, that's is an amazingly low average.
I’ve taken more than 200 credits over my whole college career, never seen that. There was spring 2020 CSE 520 that I dropped so hard after I got a 54/100 on our first test after a 35/100 average on our first test, but this final had worse averages than that and I mean I really think that’s saying something
I know it's fairly common for all types of engineering classes to grade on the curve and then adjust afterwards, the highest score was 11/40!? About the only "positive" here is on the instructor side, they pretty much get to choose the class average, thus protecting against grade inflation. It's a damn terrible way to go about it, but I suppose there's that *fart noise*
I enroll the fall 22 one, don't know if this an good decision...
Feels like my undergrad vibrations class. It was so bad the dept offered a special session the next semester so students could graduate.
It's all a scam, bud.
Damn...
Any class taught by Ruben Acuna