About Brown's Courses, His Teaching Philosophy, and Your Workload

If you're thinking about taking a course from me, you might want to visit http://www.ratemyprofessors.com. There you will see that I get a sort-of C grade from my former students. However, if you look closely, you will not find a lot of C ratings. You will find A's and D's, or maybe F's. This is what statisticians call a bimodal distribution, and it reveals one of the problems of using an average as the only measure of something. Students either like my classes or really do not. Very few are in the middle. If you read the comments of students who really didn't like my classes, the single most frequent complaint is that the workload is too heavy. On the other hand, one of my best ratings came from a student who wrote, "big emphasis on homework." Here's why some students are happy about that and some are unhappy...

I believe that we learn things by doing them. Reading about them will help you with background. Hearing about them in lectures will help you organize your thoughts. You learn them by doing them. In my classes, you do things. That takes time.

Just what things you will do depends on the class. If you take my Web development class, you will develop Web applications and put them on a Web server. If you take my MIS class, you will analyze real-world business problems and write up the results of your analysis. In Professional Practices and Ethics, you will confront ethical problems and write up your thoughts and recommendations. In programming classes, you will write programs.

Doing these things takes time. As a rule of thumb, you should expect to spend about twice as much time outside class in preparing and doing as you spend in class. For a class that meets for two 75 minute sessions (2-1/2 hours per week) you should plan on spending another five hours on work outside of class.

That's only a rule of thumb. Some things will come easily to you and some will be more difficult. If you're in a class where the work comes easily, it may take you less than five hours outside of class. If the subject is difficult for you, it may take more time.

I can tell you this: You will not be asked to do anything that a Kennesaw State student can't do, and if you do the work, you will earn a good grade and learn quite a lot about the subject. If you're in school to learn, come to my classes!

If your idea of a university course is coming to most of the lectures, sitting for the exams, and doing very little outside class, you should give my classes a miss; they're not for you!

Last updated: 2015-07-06 17:14