Pathetic, all over the place, knows her stuff but does not present it well. Exam are given to you in advance but are complicated. Should lecture at graduate level...waste of time

I was so excited to take this class and it's heartbreaking to think how much of a let down it was. Don't even bother buying the text book, you won't use it or need it... it's pretty much just a waste of 90 bucks. The most entertaining thing about the class isn't the lectures, but rather contemplating the chaos that is her wardrobe and mind. INSANE!

ive taken 4 of her classes. easiest exams possible - she no longer gives essay bc its too much of a hassle to mark. she is scattered brained, useless notes, rambles off, and needs to brush her hair. also needs to learn how to dress. but mostly needs to learn how to lecture.

Firstly, the wardrobe was out of this world bad. At one point she was wearing a tutu with orange leggings! Secondly, she taught about her drug use and her subsequent 'trip back in time'. Also, she had favourites who sat at the front, were fat, and baked her cookies. I wonder who got the A's in that class... Her TA was straight out of 1930's Berlin.

SO bad I might cry. I have never encountered a more immature, condescending, defensive, unhelpful, incapable teacher in all my life.

Very Terrible.

Worst professor I've ever had the misfortune of being taught by. Slides aren't clear, she's all over the place with her teaching. Throws in random pictures and information that has nothing to do with she's teaching. I DO NOT recommend taking any of her classes. Stay away. Save yourself the trouble of having to teach yourself a class.

I am actually not even sure this professor knows how to read/write. Even though she provides slides to her students, they are incomprehensible. Her lectures don't make sense, she usually can't answer students questions, and has a negative attitude. Her tests are fairly easy and she gives you a review to go over- that's at least a plus.

I was a teaching assistant for this prof. She was totally unclear in what she wanted me to do. She would say "I will give you these papers on the 5th, return them on the 15th." Doesn't give them until the 12th. Still wants them the 15th. Then called me at home to harrass me. Actually gave me a mental breakdown. I had to leave school for a month.

Horrible professor, can't teach. Her approach to the subject is just memorize instead of understand. Can't follow her lectures, reads her online notes word for word. Tests seemed easy but somehow got satisfactory grades. Definitely avoiding her the rest of my time at Ottawa U. Waste of my money.

Useless teacher. Claims her exams are easy but in reality they're brutal. She makes you memorize a ridiculous amount of people, battles and terms. On top of that she makes you memorize them chronologically. Her lectures are extremely dry. She doesn't use email, she doesn't answer your questions about exams or lectures. Avoid at all costs. Brutal.

She is completely disorganized. She reads off her notes, which you have access to before hand on the website she uses, ARTstor (which is awful)- but she never proof reads them, and they often blatantly contradict themselves. I will do my absolute best to avoid taking another course from her ever again- even to the point of switching universities!!

I took this as an elective thinking it would be a typical easy memorization course. However, The prof's lectures are useless and the amount of detailed information she expects you to teach yourself is way too much. I thought everyone was exaggeration but they aren't. DO NOT take Holden. Worst prof I have ever had. Bad teacher, hard exams.

She seems like she knows her stuff, but she can't teach. I literally printed all her notes and memorized. Not what I would call a good university course or professor.

omg awful. Like others have posted, scatter-brained, not helpful in the least, uses ARTstor but doesn't use OIV so if the server crashes, you won't have access to review notes or slides, lectures are all over the place, contradicts herself, doesn't give back tests, and has an exorbitant amount of info to memorize for exams.

DO NOT TAKE THE COURSE WITH THIS PROF. Extremely scatter brained, was not clear on her expectations of you in the course and on final exams. Horrible prof, goes off on tangents very often.

She posted learning modules at the beginning of the year (good), but you didn't need to go to class because she wouldn't say anything not on them (bad). She seems to know the material (although she contradicts herself on dates) but has no idea how to teach it. Not worth the class time, but a close reading of the notes should get you an A easily.

Gives less than 20 seconds per slide to take notes, spelling typos everywhere, gets distracted and rambles, gives a lecture with test material 2 days before test, upside: no homework, downside: only 2 midterms before final. Says "you know" after everything (no, I don't know). Doesn't return tests. Expects familiarity with over 150 terms per test.

Worst prof in my entire four year program. Irrelevant lectures, she won't test you on the material anyway. Tests consist of photographs of things that you are expected to remember. Ridiculous amounts of photos to study, for her to choose 10. You would need a photographic memory to pass this class, let alone do well. Huge waste of my money and time

This professor doesn't seem to know what she is talking about. Her lectures are very scattered, unorganized and hard to follow. I think that it would be beneficial if she would research the content of her courses a little bit more in depth before lecturing.

I would never take another class with this prof. Her lectures are boring, she often goes off topic. She makes her exams seem easy - they aren't.

She skips through lectures so quickly that you won't have time to get anything down in your notes. She's also absolutely useless (and sometimes rude) when it comes to asking questions since she seems more confused about the subject than even the students do. If you can get through all this though, you can get a very high mark in the class.

Had her for 3 classes, extremely scatter brained. She skips through material so quickly that you don't have enough time to write notes. Her lectures are more confusing than the outlines that she posts online, and even those are addled with spelling and other errors. She'll turn any class into an art class. Tests are fill in the blank but hard AVOID

Class is 100% useless, she puts study sheets online and you can just fill it in with the notes she posts. BUT the notes are so scattered, confusing and sometimes WRONG that I just googles the whole thing. Got 88%.

Her classes are her reading off the powerpoint. She gives you all the information for the exam which is nice. You can for sure skip class just make sure you study hard for her tests because it is all learning things by heart. No essays or small assignements, just 3 exams.

Not sure why AH is a prof at UofO, she dosnt seem to enjoy lecturing or cares about her students (except for the couple history majors that have taken classes with her before). Her classes weren't fun to attend. She stands there and just rambles, reading off her slides, & dosnt make it interactive. If you want to hate your semester then sign up.

Straightforward exam format which makes studying easy, but she cannot string together any ideas. She is unclear in class and in her class notes. To many typos and mistakes for anything to make sense. In class, all she does is read off the powerpoint and sounds surprised and confused by her information. Also, she is constantly changing the notes.

Easiest class ever. She blatantly says you do not need to go to class. She posts all the notes you need for the midterms/exam. The midterms and exams are chronology then match the definitions to the terms(terms provided beforehand), but she is a terrible prof. Talks about primary sources never graded on. Contradicts herself multiple times.

the lectures were dry, you can't learn anything. Too much to memorize

If you can avoid it, don't take this class. All exams are MC and are essentially tests on Latin names and terms. Huge PowerPoint presentations (asynchronous) that make it impossible to focus on what you need to know for the tests. I have never felt so uninspired and discouraged by a class, especially as a history lover.

So I took this class because I love roman history, I now hate roman history this class was the most boring and dull thing I've ever experienced. It is literally just PowerPoint after Powerpoint. It feels lazy while it's challenging to make online exciting just assigning students to read PowerPoint For hours makes watching paint dry fun.

This class is literally just copy-paste; the only thing you will be doing is going through power points to find definitions of terms that will be on the midterm or final exam. The review for the final exam is just 11 pages of terms. I am incredibly disappointed in this class as I love Roman history, but this has made me hate it.

just too many powerpoints very hard to memorize

If I knew how tough her tests were I would have dropped out of the class. More than half of the stuff she puts on the test is stuff we had never covered in slides or readings. She also leaves the setup and everything on the TAs, which isn't fair to them. It is an online class, but that doesn't give her the excuse to not give effort to the students.

This class was not what I expected. I had heard it was an easy elective to take, and with my heavy course load I was excited, but that was not the case. The amount of content is ridiculous and she just reads the slides. While she gives you the terms to memorize, they have so many contexts that they're not helpful. Study hard for this course.

Her course is online and asynchronous, which is nice. Her lectures are clearly recycled from years ago and they are covered in typos that she clearly won't bother to correct. The presentations are black backgrounds filled with words and sometimes her face in the corner, but usually not. You're expected to memorize names + dates. Do not take.

if you are tempted to take this course, please don't. While the final is multiple choice, the multiple choice isn't single word answers but rather sentences. The lecture videos are black and white and boring. The final was extremely hard.

i tallied up the amount of reading for the final and it consists of no less than 1057 slides. Does this prof live in reality? The finals not even cumulative. The other tests were no less than 500 pages of reading as well.

Puts absolutely no effort into teaching + many questions are purposefully way too obscure, designed to trip you up.

Gave far more content than could ever be covered in an in-person class. Everything was horribly organized, the slides were recorded and recycled from previous years, and she had her TA do all the Q and As, and the tests were awful. Never again.

This class is heavy on the slideshows. There are way too many slides to be done in 80 minutes, way too much writing on them. If you're taking this because you're interested in the Roman Republic get ready to spend and ungodly amount of time of the Neolithic era and everything that came before and the politics of Rome, not the historical figures.

A master class in how not to make a slideshow. I made better PowerPoints when I was seven. Content is extremely disorganized and she keeps changing things. PDFs also aren't searchable, which is a major accessibility problem. When people say online school is poor quality education, they're referring to classes like this.

I don't want to seem entitled but, for reference, until now, I always got A to A+s in History classes. Prof. Holden seems a kind and knowledgeable woman but, unfortunately, her proficiency at teaching online courses does not reflect this. Modules are walls of text, exams take the form of prolonged and over-specific multiple-choice quizzes, etc.

The class format is absolutely awful when it comes to actually learning. It's all by-heart memorization of endless walls of text on a black power-point, and the exams are entirely constituted of multiple choice questions. This is the laziest I've ever seen when it comes to university teaching.