Reviews for John P Fisher
Average Rating:| bloopity Course: BIOE340 Grade Expected: B December 27, 2011, 5:36 pm | Dr. Fisher reads off slides but he does try to kind of explain them once in awhile. Actually sometimes he does add in things that are not on the slides, but the things he adds in are also found in the book. You go over a lot of material in this class, it is insane amounts of biology. But for whatever reason, this semester (Fall 2011), a lot of his tests were mostly math based, which can be frustrating when you just spent so much time memorizing a lot of biology. If you're pre med you'll enjoy the material but before you go into any test make sure you're solid on any math concepts covered. I'm going to stress that again, make sure you're solid on any math that you've done in class. Also, if you didn't pay attention in class it might be a good idea to go over the graphs from lecture by looking them up in the book. When it comes to memorizing all the information, everyone is different. Personally, drawing pictures helped me and so did making use of whiteboards, doing a question-answer thing in a group, or explaining things to others. Bottomline, if you're not doing well on the tests because of the biology, try a different study technique because the one you used before was clearly not working. Another thing, if you're BIOE don't completely rely on what people say from previous semesters, BIOE classes change A LOT so be careful. Do your best and don't procrastinate, know that this class takes up a lot of your time. But again, the material is highly enjoyable if you're pre med so have fun while you're at it. All the best! |
| pat Course: BIOE340 Grade Expected: B October 30, 2011, 12:53 am | Fisher is a really cool guy, but this class is literally the source of my depression this semester. It is like drinking from a fire hose when you aren't thirsty for the material at all. There are some useful sections here and there involving math and modeling certain situations, but for the most part it is overwhelmed by superfluous material that is truely not interesting at all unless you are a pre-med (Heart and muscle physiology, blood flow physiology, physiology physiology). The math stuff also seems to be pseudo chemical engineering, transfer, and fluid dynamic stuff (kind of like the hodgepodge of most BIOE classes), but it doesn't go into near satisfying detail on how to use it to model phenomenon, or into the actual material itself for that matter. This class sucks up entire weekends to study for with ease. I am on 16 creds this semester, am a senior, and have to halt everything for these tests - which I tend to do very poor on despite my best efforts. Tests: Complete bullshi* through and through. Our grader is obviously not a nice person at all, and she grades your test based on keywords. Essentially, unless you are rainman, and can verbalize the material word-for-word , it really doesn't matter how well you understand what is going on if you don't have the exact keywords in the solutions manuals that are created for each test. There are no home works all semester, just end-of-class quizzes. After you feel like jabbing your eyes out for over an hour trying to pay attention to the material, Fisher gives a 10 point quiz on what was covered that lecture. Averages tended to be around a 6 or 7/10 on good days, which left Dr. Fisher stunningly surprised most of the time (kind of funny). The lab's consist of ridiculously ill-explained MATLAB lectures at the end of most weeks, and depending on the assignment, a very large amount of work. The prime example was that we had to program a MATLAB script which would take any linear system Ax = b, put the larges t value of A in the 1,1 position of the matrix, do all of the row and column swaps, put the matrix in reduced echelon form, find the solutions, back substitute, and display all of the solutions. If you didn't understand that , it's ok - it's linear algebra stuff, which for reasons unbeknownst to me BioE doesn't include in the curriculum. The TA had notes that everyone tried to follow, but at least 80 percent or more of the class ended up attempting this monster from scratch because her notes were incorrect, overly complicated/convoluted, or poorly explained. I got it to work, after an entire Saturday and > 24 hours of no sleep. Warning: If your MATLAB isn't in tip-top shape, you will struggle I promise you. What else....hmm...not much I suppose. This class just really sucks a fat one in every imaginable facet of sucking fat ones. It's really miserable. I am actually deferring my study time to write this review. I suppose I should get back to it, but I have a similar expectation of working ridiculously hard to no avail - earning roughly a 63% on the next test. What a bummer. This class elucidates why BIOE as a whole is kind of disappointing here now that I think about it. If you happen to be thinking about choosing it as your major - choose a more traditional major here and apply it to medical systems later on, I sure wish I did. FML |
| undergrad2011 Course: ENCH468T Grade Expected: May 12, 2011, 9:42 pm | In retrospect, the best way to approach ENCH468T is probably to study from the slides - and maybe even skip class because class is really dry and kills any inherent excitement you may have for the material. When reading the slides at home and fully processing the information, the course seems a good deal more interesting. The book is loaded with superfelous facts, which is well suited for an MD or anybody with a really good memorizing ability for names. His slides are organized and have good content, but he presents the information in such a manner that its really hard to follow along and everything seems irrelevant. In reality, he's picked out all the relevant and important details that you need to know. He's just a really boring presenter and thus it makes for a sucky class experience. |
| zhangsta Course: BIOE340 Grade Expected: A December 23, 2010, 12:35 am | Dr. Fisher teaches from powerpoint slides which were taken right out of the book. The only information that wasn't in the book were the parts where we were supposed to do math, but those weren't too bad since they were pretty much simple integrations or first order ODEs. The semester starts off slow, but it gets faster towards the end. This semester, 55% of our grade was determined by assignments given in the last 3 weeks of class. Also, there is absolutely no point in going to his office hours because he will answer your question in the most unhelpful way that will only lead you to ask the same question again. Homeworks weren't too bad as they tended to involve math. The MATLAB assignments weren't so bad as long as long as you save the MATLAB notes from BIOE241 since you can't really count on the TAs to be helpful in any way. The lab reports are generally no more than 10 pages, and if you follow his lab report guidelines, you should do fine becaused the TAs grade the lab report exactly how Fisher outlines it in his guidelines. Also, make sure you go to every lecture because he'll randomly give a quiz or something to count for attendance if he feels like there aren't enough people going to class. The exams were what really determined our grades. Just going over slides are not enough to get an A on his exams. You need to read all the chapters covered on the exam and remember every detail because he will ask a question on some of the most random bits of information out of the book and this class in general covers A LOT of material. At least 20 points out of 100 will be a math-based question where he asks you to derive something, which is either really easy or really hard depending on how well you know fluid mechanics. |
| Anonymous Course: BIOE340 Grade Expected: A January 4, 2010, 2:05 pm | The review posted on 10/2/09 is a little bit skewed. The page lengths for the lab reports were blown out of proportion. The lab reports were at a MAX of 12-15 pages except for the final report which was around 20 pages and was completed in a group. There is A LOT of material to cover. He follows the book very closely and condenses the book into notes on a powerpoint. By the end of the semester there are 600+ slides. The difficulty of this class is that it takes a lot of time to remember the content on the slides. Exams were 100 points and usually covered about 200 slides of material. You could say that the exams were usually hit or miss unless you really did know every detail. He looks for key words in exams which can be a good and bad thing but he's really generous with partial credit. Homework and MATLAB assignmetns alternate in due dates. 1st week = HW, 2nd week = MATLAB, 3rd week = HW, etc. Homework isn't too bad if you work with friends. MATLAB is difficult/time consuming so make sure you save your notes from BIOE241. |
| Anonymous Course: BIOE340 Grade Expected: B October 2, 2009, 1:14 pm | He teaches by the book and slid show, (very boring in his class), sometime he tried to reword the way book has for description and it just makes things more difficult to understand. He won't allow you to use computer because he don't want you to look at his slid show during class. Very computer illiterate and doesn't know how to use computer at all! Many times students ask him a question and he doesn't know the answer at all, he would say he don't know or move on with out bothering to answer the question that is related to the topic that he is teaching!! Horrible professor, don't take his class if you can help it! Exams are half short answers (he look only for key word, so any long description is wrong!) and other half is problem solving plus short answers. The average for class exam is C, so you must work very hard at the 4 full lab reports (report length: 1st 10page, 2nd 25page, 3rd 35page, 4th 35-50pages). You must have a hell of understand for MATLAB in order to get good grades for your 4 full reports, basically you must analysis your MATLAB. Good Luck! |