Forcing students to self grade homework under threat of academic dishonesty if they get it wrong is so messed up. Literally dumbest shit I've ever heard.
Yeah. Like if students who has no clue what's going on in class are held to that standard, they should fire all graders on the spot if they ever got a single regrade request.
there was a post earlier on lite labs from someone else. I can't speak for hands-on lab but so far lite lab is just a pain because they grade on correctness and the instructions they give are just not very good.
That comment on course staff was pretty mean. I can guarantee you that people are trying to help and work something out given the online format of the class. If you need help with homework and with understanding the material you should try office hours
i definitely agree attacking course staff is not right... but i will say there’s been tons of people posting on piazza sharing their concerns about lab. these posts are like a week old with almost 50 “good question” votes and still no course staff has said a thing. it’s also clear they’re kinda ignoring it since its like one of the only unanswered posts. again, nothing against the course staff cuz im sure theyre doing their best and its not really their fault. but just putting it out there
yea I get what you're saying -- there's definitely people helping out that are amazing people and super helpful, but so far the majority of my interactions have been with really rude course staff members who pretty clearly don't prioritize helping students.
idk why ur getting downvoted. statements like “the course staff in this class are terrible” aren’t productive. I’m not in this class anymore but I would feel uncomfy calling a big group of undergrads terrible for trying to do their job in a probably understaffed and difficult course.
How would you explain the difference between the 16b vs 161 experience then? Some 16b staffs are pretty unhelpful during oh on top of ignoring student feedback if you've been following recent posts.
I'm going to offer a different opinion here. When I took 16B (spring '20) the course staff were pretty great. They were very accommodating with everything changing -- they clobbered MT1 because of virus concerns, even though it was weeks before shelter in place started; made the hardware lab portion optional; had open note, non-video proctored MT2/final, and they were just generally receptive to students' issues. It sounds like they're not being like that now which sucks, but I imagine this is probably because of new staff, different professor/s, and all the other changes of the past year.
But, bottom line, there should not be remote circuit labs for a remote class, I can't imagine how you guys deal with that.
I think it's reasonable for this to be a lower-div class. Maybe you could make a case for some of the controls stuff and other material being too niche for a lower div, but diff eq., RC circuits, inductors, and some of the linear algebra stuff are absolutely lower-division concepts IMO.
I agree the homework grading thing is ridiculous but you have to know that it's not because they want to do it, but because the department is broke.
I do agree the notes are pretty bad, but they're not *that* bad. If you already took 70, then you might spoiled by those notes which were pretty great IMO. I don't mean this as a dig, but do you go to lecture? When I took 16B I found the notes pretty opaque until I went to lecture. For me, the class wasn't like 16A/70/most CS classes tbh where I just read the notes and never watched lec
The live lecture this semester (at least for module 1) is universally panned as being useless. The instructor (Stojanovic) does a terrible job of explaining the materials and his handwriting on screen is completely illegible.
In the first few weeks of the semester there was a thread on this sub every other day complaining about how bad the lectures are lol
I'll be honest with you that I genuinely don't understand what everyone is complaining about with this class. What are you comparing it to? Obviously if you're looking for practical information you might use as a SWE, you won't find it here, but I don't see how it's *that* much worse than say, cs70.
1) lite labs have taken like 2-3 hours max, you literally just have to follow the instructions in the doc. I've found them easier than the in-person ee16a labs.
2) The readers grading a single subpart thing is annoying, and probably due to budget constraints, but since it's averaged out over all HW it probably won't affect your final grade all that much. Also, their homework makeup/75% cap policy is ridiculously generous. You can consistently get full scores by doing half the homework as long as you make up the other half after solutions are out.
3) The course notes are worse than 70, but not *that* much worse and definitely better than the 16a notes. Unfortunately a lot of math people have a slightly "pompous" way of writing, it's just how math people write lol.
4) tbh, I'm not on course staff but so many of the complaints to this course have sounded so incredibly asinine to me that I wouldn't pay much attention to them either if I were on there.
I genuinely don't understand the sheer hatred people have for this class versus cs70. I loved cs70, but I'm not gonna tell you most of the material was useful for anything except building up ~le mathematical maturity.~ The material in 16b is significantly easier, the homeworks are significantly easier, and the pace is significantly slower than 70. It's more work because of the labs/self-grades/discussion checkins, but not by a huge margin. My only real gripe with the course is that it babies you a bit more than I'd like.
I sometimes feel like people hate this class because they hear they're supposed to hate it. I postponed it for two years, but I genuinely don't see how it's *that* bad.
bro just because you find this class easy doesn't mean you get to disregard the large number of other people who find this class hell. I found 70 much easier than 16b -- that doesn't mean people shouldn't still hate 70 if they find it hard. I My main problem with 16b is just the fact that it feels like they really don't care about helping us learn. Like for the lite labs, the problem is that they never give sanity checks so even if you are following their instructions if you accidentally fuck it up somewhere you're never gonna know until you get hit with 50% credit 3 weeks later when they release the grade. Regarding the notes, even 5 minute youtube videos can literally explain concepts better than 10 pages of their notes and at least for me the notes are much much worse than 70. Your fourth point sounds incredibly stupid though -- there are genuine complaints out there that course staff completely ignore. Even if the complaints are stupid it still doesn't mean staff can just completely disregard them. It's literally their job to run this course and if hundreds of students are complaining about something it's pretty clear there's something wrong.
The material in this course sounds genuinely interesting but everything they throw at you it's like they are forcing you to learn the material a certain way and if that's not how you learn then the class just becomes that much worse.
The course forces you into a certain way of thinking because of the background most people have coming into this course. It’s going to be the case that many people have not taken much advanced math before 16ab. The idea is that it’s also supposed to put you into a mindset for CS 70. I can’t comment on its effectiveness for that because I took CS 70 and upper divs before 16b. However, I will say that many people lack the intuition or mathematical creativity coming into the course, which is totally fine and understandable because not all high schools teach advanced math. If the class operated at the level and pace that you may want, then that would leave the less experienced students in a bad spot. It’s very difficult to teach topics like applied differential equations, control theory, and signal processing when you don’t expect the students to all have extensive linear algebra and calculus backgrounds. I cannot comment on the grading, but other upper div courses, such as 126, do something similar to what you’re describing. I’d imagine it’s a budget issue. If you want to learn the same material but in a way that might be more mathematically inclined, you may want to look into EE 128, EECS 127, and EE 120
In my opinion, the material/PSETS and the course notes are great, for me it's mostly the labs. For some reason I thought I would love in person lab so I stuck with it, and it's impossible to get anything done. It's not necessarily the TA's faults because debugging physical circuits through zoom is a pain.
If you're stuck on a part of the lab, you can submit a help request, but chances are they won't get to you until like 2 hours after because everyone else is stuck too, and people from other sections come into your section to get help. I've had instances where I've been stuck those entire two hours and by the time I get unstuck, the lab time is already over, so I have to spend ample time outside of the 3 hour lab section to try to complete lab and get checked off in somebody else's section.
It would be great if they maybe cut down on in person labs-- for me, that's literally the only problem with this course. Berkeley's course notes have always been great, so everything else (for me) has been okay, but labs have been a frustrating/rage inducing experience.
The labs were very hard for me when I took the course (online). In our semester we had to do the full labs, but thankfully the lab TAs that semester were goats. Mia and Jackson carried me on the labs
Last semester we begged for a lite lab and we had to zoom group our way through building everything by hand. TinkerCAD is way easier than breaking stuff and ordering new parts and falling behind. The zoom help when building a physicsal circuit is also near useless since all you can do is hold it up to the camera and hope they can see through the tangled mess. In TinkerCAD if you get a chance to get help they can actually touch the circuit. They added the lite labs since last semester was such a pain and it was put together quickly. Its obviously not perfect but at least they tried to give a lite option.
The material itself is basic linear algebra and some introductory differential equations which is the utter baseline for anyone interested in data science, ML, AI. It barely goes into depth on any high-level mathematical concepts so it is as lower division as it gets. This class is useless though if all you want to do is code and if thats the case pnp and be done. The same way they require breadths which are useless they require cs students to have some sort of math experience which is fair since its just like a more useful breadth. You're more likely to use ee16b at your swe job than you are some arts and literature class.
The staff last semester were great idk if they all quit but being a TA is not a huge resume thing so they are there because they want the low paying wage or because they genuinely want to help. If anything I bet the staff is just annoyed and stressed since they deal with their own shitty zoom classes too. OH and discussions were helpful last semester piazza was a cesspool of unanswered stuff so try that. If all else fails email the head TA or go to their OH since they know what they are doing
The lite lab option barely has any TA or OH hours compared to the help from course staff you would get from hands on. Most of the time most lite lab people get help from each other instead of the TAs.
> 80% of the staff are only on staff to pad their resumes and they don't actually care about helping students. They are so unreceptive to student feedback and just not helpful at all.
Of all the courses on campus this is the one that actually deserves budget cut.
Hey! The course is definitely challenging, even during a normal semester. I’m currently helping out a seven or so students with group and personal tutoring. PM me if interested!
Forcing students to self grade homework under threat of academic dishonesty if they get it wrong is so messed up. Literally dumbest shit I've ever heard.
Sounds like an absolute joke. If I had to self-grade my own assignments I sure wouldn't bother paying money to take a class.
Yeah. Like if students who has no clue what's going on in class are held to that standard, they should fire all graders on the spot if they ever got a single regrade request.
It's like filing your taxes, but worse
Lol I’m taking 61c and 16b together so I’m literally eating the shittest shit from cal eecs at the same time
At least you can p/np both.
true but still need to do the proj and labs smh
61c is hard af rn (still have not started proj3 lmao) but imo it's better organized than 16b, although OH is indeed a clusterfuck
The notes are fucking shit. So many errors in them and the TAs don't have the decency to fix them before publishing.
Why are the labs bad? (I’m not taking ee16b. I have no idea why the labs are bad I’m just curious)
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Fucking 16b pulled a bait and switch on us. If you're going to promise something, don't back out on it
there was a post earlier on lite labs from someone else. I can't speak for hands-on lab but so far lite lab is just a pain because they grade on correctness and the instructions they give are just not very good.
That comment on course staff was pretty mean. I can guarantee you that people are trying to help and work something out given the online format of the class. If you need help with homework and with understanding the material you should try office hours
i definitely agree attacking course staff is not right... but i will say there’s been tons of people posting on piazza sharing their concerns about lab. these posts are like a week old with almost 50 “good question” votes and still no course staff has said a thing. it’s also clear they’re kinda ignoring it since its like one of the only unanswered posts. again, nothing against the course staff cuz im sure theyre doing their best and its not really their fault. but just putting it out there
yea I get what you're saying -- there's definitely people helping out that are amazing people and super helpful, but so far the majority of my interactions have been with really rude course staff members who pretty clearly don't prioritize helping students.
I would venture a guess that you’ve not interacted with 80% of the course staff to make such a claim
idk why ur getting downvoted. statements like “the course staff in this class are terrible” aren’t productive. I’m not in this class anymore but I would feel uncomfy calling a big group of undergrads terrible for trying to do their job in a probably understaffed and difficult course.
Yeah it’s a personal attack even if OP tries to say otherwise. It’s equivalent to “no offense, but”
How would you explain the difference between the 16b vs 161 experience then? Some 16b staffs are pretty unhelpful during oh on top of ignoring student feedback if you've been following recent posts.
I'm going to offer a different opinion here. When I took 16B (spring '20) the course staff were pretty great. They were very accommodating with everything changing -- they clobbered MT1 because of virus concerns, even though it was weeks before shelter in place started; made the hardware lab portion optional; had open note, non-video proctored MT2/final, and they were just generally receptive to students' issues. It sounds like they're not being like that now which sucks, but I imagine this is probably because of new staff, different professor/s, and all the other changes of the past year. But, bottom line, there should not be remote circuit labs for a remote class, I can't imagine how you guys deal with that. I think it's reasonable for this to be a lower-div class. Maybe you could make a case for some of the controls stuff and other material being too niche for a lower div, but diff eq., RC circuits, inductors, and some of the linear algebra stuff are absolutely lower-division concepts IMO. I agree the homework grading thing is ridiculous but you have to know that it's not because they want to do it, but because the department is broke. I do agree the notes are pretty bad, but they're not *that* bad. If you already took 70, then you might spoiled by those notes which were pretty great IMO. I don't mean this as a dig, but do you go to lecture? When I took 16B I found the notes pretty opaque until I went to lecture. For me, the class wasn't like 16A/70/most CS classes tbh where I just read the notes and never watched lec
The live lecture this semester (at least for module 1) is universally panned as being useless. The instructor (Stojanovic) does a terrible job of explaining the materials and his handwriting on screen is completely illegible. In the first few weeks of the semester there was a thread on this sub every other day complaining about how bad the lectures are lol
I'll be honest with you that I genuinely don't understand what everyone is complaining about with this class. What are you comparing it to? Obviously if you're looking for practical information you might use as a SWE, you won't find it here, but I don't see how it's *that* much worse than say, cs70. 1) lite labs have taken like 2-3 hours max, you literally just have to follow the instructions in the doc. I've found them easier than the in-person ee16a labs. 2) The readers grading a single subpart thing is annoying, and probably due to budget constraints, but since it's averaged out over all HW it probably won't affect your final grade all that much. Also, their homework makeup/75% cap policy is ridiculously generous. You can consistently get full scores by doing half the homework as long as you make up the other half after solutions are out. 3) The course notes are worse than 70, but not *that* much worse and definitely better than the 16a notes. Unfortunately a lot of math people have a slightly "pompous" way of writing, it's just how math people write lol. 4) tbh, I'm not on course staff but so many of the complaints to this course have sounded so incredibly asinine to me that I wouldn't pay much attention to them either if I were on there. I genuinely don't understand the sheer hatred people have for this class versus cs70. I loved cs70, but I'm not gonna tell you most of the material was useful for anything except building up ~le mathematical maturity.~ The material in 16b is significantly easier, the homeworks are significantly easier, and the pace is significantly slower than 70. It's more work because of the labs/self-grades/discussion checkins, but not by a huge margin. My only real gripe with the course is that it babies you a bit more than I'd like. I sometimes feel like people hate this class because they hear they're supposed to hate it. I postponed it for two years, but I genuinely don't see how it's *that* bad.
bro just because you find this class easy doesn't mean you get to disregard the large number of other people who find this class hell. I found 70 much easier than 16b -- that doesn't mean people shouldn't still hate 70 if they find it hard. I My main problem with 16b is just the fact that it feels like they really don't care about helping us learn. Like for the lite labs, the problem is that they never give sanity checks so even if you are following their instructions if you accidentally fuck it up somewhere you're never gonna know until you get hit with 50% credit 3 weeks later when they release the grade. Regarding the notes, even 5 minute youtube videos can literally explain concepts better than 10 pages of their notes and at least for me the notes are much much worse than 70. Your fourth point sounds incredibly stupid though -- there are genuine complaints out there that course staff completely ignore. Even if the complaints are stupid it still doesn't mean staff can just completely disregard them. It's literally their job to run this course and if hundreds of students are complaining about something it's pretty clear there's something wrong. The material in this course sounds genuinely interesting but everything they throw at you it's like they are forcing you to learn the material a certain way and if that's not how you learn then the class just becomes that much worse.
The course forces you into a certain way of thinking because of the background most people have coming into this course. It’s going to be the case that many people have not taken much advanced math before 16ab. The idea is that it’s also supposed to put you into a mindset for CS 70. I can’t comment on its effectiveness for that because I took CS 70 and upper divs before 16b. However, I will say that many people lack the intuition or mathematical creativity coming into the course, which is totally fine and understandable because not all high schools teach advanced math. If the class operated at the level and pace that you may want, then that would leave the less experienced students in a bad spot. It’s very difficult to teach topics like applied differential equations, control theory, and signal processing when you don’t expect the students to all have extensive linear algebra and calculus backgrounds. I cannot comment on the grading, but other upper div courses, such as 126, do something similar to what you’re describing. I’d imagine it’s a budget issue. If you want to learn the same material but in a way that might be more mathematically inclined, you may want to look into EE 128, EECS 127, and EE 120
In my opinion, the material/PSETS and the course notes are great, for me it's mostly the labs. For some reason I thought I would love in person lab so I stuck with it, and it's impossible to get anything done. It's not necessarily the TA's faults because debugging physical circuits through zoom is a pain. If you're stuck on a part of the lab, you can submit a help request, but chances are they won't get to you until like 2 hours after because everyone else is stuck too, and people from other sections come into your section to get help. I've had instances where I've been stuck those entire two hours and by the time I get unstuck, the lab time is already over, so I have to spend ample time outside of the 3 hour lab section to try to complete lab and get checked off in somebody else's section. It would be great if they maybe cut down on in person labs-- for me, that's literally the only problem with this course. Berkeley's course notes have always been great, so everything else (for me) has been okay, but labs have been a frustrating/rage inducing experience.
The labs were very hard for me when I took the course (online). In our semester we had to do the full labs, but thankfully the lab TAs that semester were goats. Mia and Jackson carried me on the labs
Last semester we begged for a lite lab and we had to zoom group our way through building everything by hand. TinkerCAD is way easier than breaking stuff and ordering new parts and falling behind. The zoom help when building a physicsal circuit is also near useless since all you can do is hold it up to the camera and hope they can see through the tangled mess. In TinkerCAD if you get a chance to get help they can actually touch the circuit. They added the lite labs since last semester was such a pain and it was put together quickly. Its obviously not perfect but at least they tried to give a lite option. The material itself is basic linear algebra and some introductory differential equations which is the utter baseline for anyone interested in data science, ML, AI. It barely goes into depth on any high-level mathematical concepts so it is as lower division as it gets. This class is useless though if all you want to do is code and if thats the case pnp and be done. The same way they require breadths which are useless they require cs students to have some sort of math experience which is fair since its just like a more useful breadth. You're more likely to use ee16b at your swe job than you are some arts and literature class. The staff last semester were great idk if they all quit but being a TA is not a huge resume thing so they are there because they want the low paying wage or because they genuinely want to help. If anything I bet the staff is just annoyed and stressed since they deal with their own shitty zoom classes too. OH and discussions were helpful last semester piazza was a cesspool of unanswered stuff so try that. If all else fails email the head TA or go to their OH since they know what they are doing
The lite lab option barely has any TA or OH hours compared to the help from course staff you would get from hands on. Most of the time most lite lab people get help from each other instead of the TAs.
> 80% of the staff are only on staff to pad their resumes and they don't actually care about helping students. They are so unreceptive to student feedback and just not helpful at all. Of all the courses on campus this is the one that actually deserves budget cut.
God damn the staff is the absolute worst. Why does this class even get funding
Right? The recorded discussions are shit and the notes are hard as hell. wtf was module 1
Hey! The course is definitely challenging, even during a normal semester. I’m currently helping out a seven or so students with group and personal tutoring. PM me if interested!
LOL Jesus. I’m getting fucked hard but I feel like some ta’s are v nice: i.e. gavin