2.6
Quality3.3
Difficulty16%
Would Retake83
Reviews16%
Would Retake
83
Reviews
Rating DistributionOfficial
5
11
4
11
3
23
2
23
1
15
What Students Say
“Very confusing, and unclear with lectures”
BIOL225 - 2.0 rating“A very poor educator, try to avoid if possible”
BILO261 - 2.0 ratingClass Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
81%
Textbook Required
50%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-1.06 avg changeRatings by Course
BIOL201
5.0
(1)BIOL618
5.0
(1)BIOL206
4.0
(5)GEN206
4.0
(1)BIOL271
4.0
(1)Difficulty by Course
BIOL202
4.5
BIOL321
4.5
GEN206
4.0
BIOL227
4.0
BIOL226
4.0
Reviews (83)
He is a bit confused during his lectures. He is a bit snappy toward some students. In the end, he is fair and that is all that we can ask.
very nice guy and very easy-going. He exaplains things quite clearly and is quite organized in the course that he teaches. I'd be happy to take one of his classes again if i can.
Very helpful and knowledgeable. Domo arigato.
Well...compared to other ppl that posted comments...I HATED this teacher (and I know a few more ppl that did too)...his notes are TERRIBLE- very disorganized and he can't spell...his exams are based on his 'weird' notes...he expects too much from a basic genetic course. (and he's just weird).
Sweet but sooooooo confusing! And confused... Makes the materail mare complicated than it really is. Well intentioned though.
not a class for rookies. knows his stuff, but material ishard. He encourages students to ask for help, but when I wrte my final, he suggested that the class was 'slow". When I handed in my exam (after 2 hrs), I apoligized, and he had the guts to say, "its o.k, your not the only one".HELLO?
While I agree that this teacher is nice and knows his stuf I believe that he created a much more dificult course than an introductory biology course should have been. We were required to know in great detail every single aspect of Biology. Probably a good Biology teacher for Biology students but he should probably stay away from intro courses.
I really didn't enjoy his lectures or this class. the tutorials are a life saver because his lectures arent that clear and the textbook isnt all that great. the material is interesting, but he needs to deliver it better. mistakes on the exam and ambiguous questions.
Lots of material but just stick to his notes... His tests are pretty tricky and classes are not very helpful.
Not a good professor at all for a 200 level class. He emphasizes memorization instead of understanding concepts, and has extremely hard quizzes. This (of 3) was the worst lab section, although the material could have been interesting if we hadn't been focused on memorizing terms.
Compared to the other professors teaching this course, he is the best. MC tests and final, all easier than it would seem if you're only looking at the problems in the book. Teaches a bit above his audience and has trouble explaining some things, but at least he's an English-speaker. (Relatively) easy tests make up for most of the problems.
he has a bad reputation as a teacher but I absolutely loved him! He goes really slow and is very thorough. His lectures are available before class so you can print them and bring them. The class is easy so it can be boring but his tests are really good and fair. All test questions come from powerpoint slides on moodle.
Great teacher, classes are nice and relaxing, he's very mild mannered and soft spoken. Very knowledgeable of his material and the notes are posted well in advance. He does not treat students like children and that's probably why some people do not like him, they actually have to put in some effort.
He's a good teacher but he does emphasize memorization as opposed to understanding. There are a million names of organisms that you need to memorize for this class. Also the textbook is almost useless unless it is to better understand the lecture material. No midterm, but there is a 5 min quiz at the beginning of each lab.
Weird lectures, but reasonable tests. Go to the tutorial sessions.
He is one of the few teachers in ConU who combines extensive knowledge, bioethics, a relaxing manner, and a respectable personality. His lectures are lots of fun but you need to sit in the front.
He is very helpful and listening to his lectures is pleasant. Very calm and cultured. Best to sit in the front of the class.
Lecture notes are made right before class so it is a work in progress as you are following the lecture. He lacks clarity and do not rely on the textbook because it is also a work in progress. Stick to the slides even though they suck and ask him for clarifications. GO to the tutorials
His class was completely unhelpful, he changed the readings and problems each week, he posted his lectures 45 mins. before class(and it showed that he pretty much wrote them the night before). Overall, he needs to learn how to teach properly. Avoid him if you can.
very nice person and helpful, but lectures can sometimes be a bit dull. course material was interesting
Great prof. He knows the material very well. His exams were mostly fair with couple of tricky Q.s, but if you read his notes then you're good to go.
he is amazingly a good prof
AVOID! do NOT take genetics with this professor, he butchered the course completely. very disorganized, difficult to learn. he tells you to memorize everything. very very dissappointing class. he does know the material, but has no idea how to teach. terrible class. avoid.
He knows the subject matter really well and his in-class lectures are good (although a little boring) but his notes are awful. He doesn't seem to have any grasp of formatting, grammar or punctuation. It sounds petty, but his notes are so poorly written that it takes the same amount of time to understand what he's trying to say as it does to study.
he seems to have a passion for the material, but does not know how to teach a class. he is disorganized & his notes are difficult to make sense of. the textbook is just as bad. GO to the tutorials, it will help clear things up. exams arent bad, but you dont learn much in this class. if you want an interesting class, take it with someone else
not bad, he really makes it easier to do well by giving bonus question of final, and having quizzes in tutorial, just memorize the slides well!
Very good professor, very helpful and very constructive in correcting the assignments and in providing feedback. I would totally recommend in taking his class!
Though he is very knowledgeable on the course material his lectures were boring. His power points were extremely confusing and disorganized, so basically impossible to follow. Luckily the class material is super simple
Knows his stuff very well! But very boring. Needs to find a way to keep students interest. MEMORIZE all phylum classes ... etc.
Stirling is all over the place, his slides are messy and they are very incomprehensible, he only posts them a few minutes before class. His midterms are quite brutal he curved our marks by 20% on the second midterm because we did so bad. I am doing great overall but try and chose another prof. if possible!
I have never gotten a grade under 90% until taking his class. He is obsessed with details. He takes the fun out of genetics. I found myself spending 10x more time studying for this class than I did for organic chemistry. Horrible teacher. He is all over the place when he teaches and his slides make no sense.
This teacher is very difficult to understand. His exams are far to difficult. Try to avoid taking classes taught by this professor if you value your GPA .
Oh boy... Sitrling. He appears to be a nice guy but he really isn't and at the start of the therm he made me happy to attend class. But then you find out how messy and unorganized his slides are. He does not keep a chronological order to his teaching at all. He is so uptight and believes everyone cheats during the exams. He is very hardcore. AVOID
Disorganized lectures, monotone voice and a priority on memorization rather than understanding concepts. Overall a bad experience
Dr. Stirling clearly wants us to understand and care about plants. His slides are very confusing, so study mostly from the book. His exams are pretty hard but he's a fair marker. All multiple choice and curved. Not difficult if you study and understand the material.
Contrary to the other comments, he is actually very kind, but appears to be harsh on the outside. His expectations may be a tad too high; don't try asking him questions if you haven't done your share of studying. Exams are VERY easy. He tends to ask a lot of questions during lecture, stay vigilant at all time.
First, all exams are curved and there is a reason for it, he rather make hard exam and boost the notes than the opposite. You don't need to fully understand the material to pass the class just know the details. In the final 100 multiple choices and everyone didn't know where the last 13 came from.
Disturbingly serene teacher but knowledgeable and will help you when in need. Do not worry about performing badly in exams, he'll curve your worthy grade to a non-deserving one.
He covered the plant Biology for us which is a boring subject by nature but he managed to make it interesting. He does not change tones or use other tricks to keep interest. He knows his material and he presents it so well you do not notice the passage of two hours in a plant biology class. Certainly an honor to learn from this professor.
He was teaching the second half of BIOL225. Most boring teacher ever! Exams had NOTHING to do with the textbook or lectures. He asks very specific details and uses black&white pictures in his exam, you cant see anything. Thk god the final was multiple choice
He knows the material but doesnt know how to teach it !! Horrible teacher
Boring teacher, makes going to class horrible but good luck trying to sift through his slides because they're a disorganized nightmare! Really lazy, stays in lab for 10 mins then leaves, is not approachable, and doesn't show to his office hours. However, not a tough grader. Read the book or take w Biol 226 to understand class but avoid if possible
LOVED this class, was very interesting. Half the material taught is already seen in college biology. You won't pass if your a last minute person, weekly test in tutorials made me study every week and thus lead me to an A. His tests aren't hard but there is a lot of extra info in his slides therefore go to class, he tells you what you need to know.
Take him if your desperate. He had to curve test 2 and increased the final to 75% since the average was low. Genetics is complicated and so is his slides. The tutorials are good and there are weekly quizes. But i don't see it being useful for the tests apart form the tutorial grades. The chapters become harder and harder so its important to study.
He's incredibly boring. Avoid. Personally, he's the worst teacher in Biology. Take anyone but him.
His slides were confusing, i had to read the textbook to understand (although the textbook was confusing too). But try to remember every details in his slides, all the questions in the exams were in the slides. The tutorials were helpful, the TA gave quizzes with similar questions to the exams.
Go to the tutorials, and do your readings before class and you'll just fine!
His style of teaching is not that great. He also made us use tophat which I found stupid since not everybody has smartphones and such. Definitely don't skip class and make sure you do all the practice problems in tutorials and in class questions, and you'll do well on the exams. Take advantage of the tutorials; that's where you learn the most.
His lecture slides are just horrible, so you HAVE to read the textbook. He might seem confusing but it's just that the course material gets tough towards the end of the course. He's so passionate about the topics taught :)
Wow so many bad reviews, I think he's a great teacher, he loves what he does and you can tell. Just come to class and study and you will do well.
Really nice guy, really enjoys his subject, and he enjoys teaching. However, his slides are really crowded, and he often will add a whole bunch of new slides into the lecture that weren't in the slides he posted. It makes it really confusing. I ended up looking up lectures on the same topics at other universities.
He is a good teacher, knows a lot about what he teaches. Suggested text book, but his slides are full of info, so the text book is not necessary, although it might help you a lot since his slides are sometimes a little confusing. Study ahead of time and don't wait till the last min. Final is hard if you don't prepare. Attend all lectures.
In my opinion, an easy A even without showing up to class 80% of the time. Just pay attention to what he focuses on during the labs and know your material. He is usually available for office hours if you have extra questions. Cue cards are the key to the lab portion of this class! Had him for BIOL261 as well and I got used to his teaching style.
Well this was the worst class I have ever taken. I had no choice but to take it though. Course load is too heavy and the prof doesn't make it easier. His slides are very confusing with just too many unnecessary pictures.
Very confusing, and unclear with lectures. Often says "This is easy so I'll leave it up to you guys". Relies to heavily on the textbook. Lectures aren't parallel with reading assignments which creates an insane amount of confusion and stress.
Too much readings, so much unnecessary slides, focus too much on small details... You need to know everything perfectly by heart... Heavy class and boring lectures. Although, homeworks and participation in class gives you easy extra credits
He's the diplomatic professor: won't tell you you're wrong. His slides and classes are a nightmare to follow. I would take him again for a class based on facts, but not in a class based on concepts, otherwise I'll be spending endless hours learning material outside of class. Some of his MC questions have mistakes and/or are incomprehensible.
Very interesting class but the professor can overcomplicate some things since he goes through many ppt slides very fast! You have to buy tophat which is annoying but you get participation and attendance points. Do the tutorial for easy points. I recommend using his lecture slides as a guide for what to know and then go in depth with the text.
Very hard to follow lecture slides. He'll drop 20 terms that you've never seen before in 1 paragraph without defining any of them. Interesting class but he manages to make it very boring. Very bad at explaining complicated concepts. Study practice exams that he gives because the tests will be very similar.
His lectures are incredibly dull, and he has a gift for taking relatively simple concepts and making them pretty confusing. His notes are a mess; you're better off just reading the textbook, though you will have to go to class regardless because he uses clicker questions for part of the grade. A very poor educator, try to avoid if possible.
His lectures are absolutely useless and you can't even skip them because you are graded on clicker questions. Easy class but not a good teacher.
the lecture is boring .Read the textbook if you want to understand , the notes are not the best too :( .
The lectures are sooooo unorganized. He makes simple concepts complicated. The final was 100 questions and each questions was like 4 lines long. The tutorials helped to understand the material so I suggest to attend them.
Read the chapters before the tutorial, and try to pay attention to the important stuff. He puts a lot of extra info on the slides that makes it overwhelming and hard to find the important details but if you read the chapters you should be able to follow along. He loves what hes teaching its just so hard bc its so much info
Dr. Stirling is a great man, and he's very passionate about teaching. However, his lecture slides can be rather convoluted. Your best bet for passing with a good grade is to read the material ahead of lectures (from the book), because trying to study mainly from his slides is a recipe for disaster.
Dr Stirling is a very smart professor who is definitely passionate by his subject. However he has a hard time teaching it. The slides and the lecture are messy, going back and forth. The lab material itself is well organized but some of his TA's are really tough graders on the lab reports. Avoid if you can.
His ppts are confusing and disorganized. No midterm but two finals, one lab exam and one theory. Lab exam is hard study everything in detail. Theory exam was about 100 mc. I wouldn't take him again, there are other teachers that are much better. I put all my time into this course.
Very nice professor and clearly cares that students learn and is passionate about the material. However, his slides are awful and for all the work you put into drawing structures in the labs and labeling, we barely get tested on it in the exams. Lab exam was really bad and I found studying the theory really tough. I recommend reading ahead.
I find that he stresses you out by giving so many things to study... but at the end when he gives out the exams the questions are more general than what he points out during the semester. They are so picky and annoying during the lab corrections so be careful
Horrible prof! has messy slides and doesn't know how to teach. He needs to retire!
227 was not a fun class. Stirling gives no midterms for this class which often leads to cramming for the final. Studying slides that are messy, full of information, hard to pick what exactly we need to know. iClicker questions every class. The labs were long, tedious and relied on TA's to help with drawing the structures. Labs graded harshly. Skip.
In all honesty, you need to know what kind of questions he will be asking for the midterm and the final. If you understand all the material such as the in class clicker questions and the tutorial quizzes (which are all taken from a test bank), you will do just fine in the class. His lectures are too packed, make sure to condense them A LOT.
You won't understand anything from his slides. Lab reports are way too long and worth very little. Final lab exam was way too hard.
The worst slides I've ever seen, packed with info and disorganized. Lab reports are very long even the TA agrees but easy to get 90%+ if you ask questions to the TAs. To do well in quizzes, learn by heart what the prof tells you to focus on. No midterms! Just lab report, quizzes, and 2 finals (theory & lab). Lab exam was a lot easier than theory.
A few descriptive adjectives; contradictory, unengaging, and quite simply uninspired. His homework assignments are full of errors, unclear direction and they are for marks regardless of him telling the class that they are not.
knowledgeable, but incredibly disorganized and difficult to follow. the lecture slides make no sense and have lots of errors making them difficult to read and understand. unclear about what he wants you to know for the exams.
A smart man who cant teach whatsoever! His lectures made NO sense and he expected you to understand terms never seen before. Extremely tough graders for labs (his TAs). Most of your grade (64%) is based on two finals you have to prepare for like 2 months in advance. I didnt learn anything in any of his lectures. He has clicker questions as well.
Extremely boring lectures that you have to attend because he does iclicker questions that are graded. Slides are some of the worst I've ever seen. They are extremely unclear and disorganized. He's bad at explaining and will often tell you to figure some of the material out on your own time. His exams are pretty tough and often have mistakes.
It's sad to say, but I am 100% convinced that this prof is, unfortunately, suffering from early signs of dementia. He is absolutely all over the place in lectures, vehemently lies to the class about exam instructions by changing crucial information last-minute (doubled the # of MCQ on an exam last second), and sends out instructions weeks late.
One of the most disorganized, careless and confused prof I've ever had. Lectures are all over the place and slides are incomprehensible, do not follow any sensical order. The information given (i.e. # questions etc.) is completely different than what is given on exams. Given double the amount of Q's than what we were told. Horrible experience, SKIP
Prof stirling made class too difficult for no reason during pandemic. Lab exam had too many questions in too little time! Then, for final theory, he gives 14 ESSAY questions we have to prepare but only 1 random essay will Show up on the exam! This is thousands of words of answering hard questions to fight for 10 marks on final exam. Avoid him!!!
disorganized, impossibly confusing class notes. basically improvs his way through every lecture saying random anecdotes and you'll have no clue what kinda questions he could possibly ask on the test.
He has serious issues with organization and remembering things, which was actually very concerning. He often would forget things from one class to the next or even within the same class. Lectures were very confusing and scattered and tests were a total crapshoot, no idea what you would be tested on, and hed forget what he said was on them.
Class Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
81%
Textbook Required
50%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-1.06 avg changeRatings by Course
BIOL201
5.0
(1)BIOL618
5.0
(1)BIOL206
4.0
(5)GEN206
4.0
(1)BIOL271
4.0
(1)Difficulty by Course
BIOL202
4.5
BIOL321
4.5
GEN206
4.0
BIOL227
4.0
BIOL226
4.0