Absolutely horrible professor. Spent Two weeks doing calculations and CALCULUS, which turned out to be pretty much useless for the final exam. Slides are sloppy, USE THE TEXTBOOK! Pretty easy final exam though. Allowed a cheat sheet for 8 equations.

Worst prof ever, my class just got back their midterms and the class average was 37% and he said it was obvious we were not working hard enough. we had split teaching for this course so a different prof taught the first half and the course and i got a 90% on the first term test... seeing a common factor?

spends a lot of time focusing on calculus and deriving equations, which won't help you on the exam. Take it with Lingle, and read the textbook.

Avoid this professor. He is friendly and intelligent but he can't teach. I believe he is required to teach due to his research position at the school (not 100% on that but that's what I've heard. It makes sense...) Just don't ever take a class with him. Ever.

I had him for vascular plants and ecology lab. He is a very friendly man. However, he is a terrible teacher it takes him at least 3 lectures to get to course material. You don't even need to attend class, just read the assigned readings and go to the labs that is where I learnt all my stuff.

Dr. Avila is a very nice man; however, he should not be allowed to teach. His lectures are confusing, misleading and boring and he attempts to be funny, but really he's not. I would highly recommend never taking a class with this prof unless you want a D!

Very poor teaching abilities. The testing is not relevant to what is covered in class. He is kind, in a way, but will not teach you much about ecology.

Horrible Professor. Unorganized, doesn't follow class schedule. Material he tests you on is hardly relevant to what you cover in class, his questions feel like he doesn't want you to do well. He's very kind and will answer questions, but that won't help. DO NOT take a biology class with him!

Avoid at all costs. He quickly fell behind his course outline...far behind, a third of the intended course material was never covered. His lectures were excruciating, I learned nothing from attending class. Exam questions are not based on lecture material. Midterm avg was 53%. Powerpoints consist of figures and definitions straight from the text.

He is not a well organized professor. His testing is more based on irrelevant topics, that do not relate to biology. His exams are not fair by any means, and he simply does not know how to teach. When he answers questions, he does not make sense. Avoid this prof at all costs!!!!!!

terrible, terrible, terrible. tests were not related to the 'mandatory' text, instead were copy and pasted from an american professors posted online exams, word for word. that also meant that occasionally the questions weren't even related to lecture material. does not offer any help on material. struggled every class to keep my eyes open.

I hope to never, and I mean NEVER, take a class with Avila again! PLEASE do not take a class with him. Please, please do not. Save your money and time.

I hate to beat a dead horse, and he does try hard sometimes, but he's real bad. He spent a number of classes trying to teach differential equations (I've taken Calculus, and it is NOT necessary for this course). One of his exam questions, I kid you not, was "Jungle trees are generally about 60 feet tall. How tall is the MB Hydro building downtown?"

Lectures are not interesting and often not relevant to the test material. If you want to do well in this course you have to basically memorise the textbook. Multiple questions from his exam were similar to "how long was darwin on the beagle?" Basically irrelevent, not stuff that matters. These rates are no joke, avoid if you can.

Incredibly disappointed with this prof. Unfortunately he really shouldn't teach as his lectures were irrelevant to what he actually tested us on. I found the entire experience frustrating as his notes were just as unorganized as his lectures and his exams were about 20% based on material in the txtbook and 80% based on material from who knows where

This one was rough. His lectures were hard to sit through and Went on a lot of tangents. Tests are difficult, final had the midterm questions on it but I luckily studied all of the textbook chapters since I felt from the midterm he was gonna pull some hard questions and thank god I did because I still walked out of the final thinking what the

He is the worst prof at u of w, dont take any class with him. I dont know why the university still lets him teach because all Ive heard is negative things about him. You dont need to go to class, buy the $300+ text book and read it. Doesnt post slides. Doesnt care about students. Do NOT take a course with him.

He doesn't use nexus but his slides are vague anyways so it doesn't matter. You need to read the entire textbook basically you will learn more from it than him. his class discussions are the basic stuff from the textbook he never goes into detail about anything really.

Never failed an exam in my life, but failed his midterm. Doesn't use nexus, slides are super hard to follow, rants and you can't even follow what he's teaching. Will make you chase him down to find out your grade-emailed him once for help and he gave me super rude answer. basically buy the textbook and read the whole thing to pass.

He likes to teach in Latin. this is not a latin course. he expects you to memorize every latin term in the plant world, and 90% of his tests are in latin, or latin based. he does not teach, he posts pictures of plants on his slides and you have to try and interpret his latin/off topic nonsense to try and even learn anything 0/10 would not recommend

Avila Sakar does not teach the course. During lecture he wont go into any amount of detail that will actually be helpful to you and youll leave feeling it was a waste of time. There were exam questions that no one knew how to answer because it was never brought up in class. He is funny and approachable and polite. But otherwise I would not adivse

Half the question on his exam are ridiculous. Like, "which one of these principles of ecology haven't we studied yet". Not to mention he gave me a 0% on an assignment and when I challenged it his excuse was that he only skimmed it because he had to mark 80 of them and then gave me an 80%. I'm sorry is having to do the job u get paid for too much

I have never in my half decade at the university of Winnipeg come across a professor as infuriating and lazy.I understand the need to try and make ecology out to be an extremely hard scientific field, but why sabotage students to do so? His assignment and lectures are poorly explained and the man could not commit to a schedule to save his life.

I have nothing good to say about his teaching. Avoid at all costs. I went to every lecture, but the material he covered was irrelevant and confusing. I had to teach myself straight from the textbook, which would have worked if his exams followed the textbook OR the notes. They didn't. I don't know where he pulls his questions out of. Avoid!

I had him for biol2153 as well since he is the only prof that teaches it, I got a D. I should finish this course with a C+ hopefully because the lab boosts ur mark. he is one of the worst profs, his questions come from nowhere and he calls people out in class. I have no idea how to do any of the formulas in the course because he does not teach

Lectures never went into any detail at all. Extremely unclear on what we actually needed to know for tests and exams. Nothing in his notes showed up on the exam, it was just super obscure textbook examples that were mentioned in a single paragraph or figure. The questions were worded extremely badly, too. He doesn't help students what-so-ever.

Avoid at all costs. There were so many inconsistencies between his notes and the textbook it was almost impossible to determine what we had to know. He is incapable of following the syllabus with regards to dates which was extremely frustrating. The questions on his exams didn't reflect what we had learned. Pls do not take a class with him.

His notes make 0 sense. No definitions, no structure to lectures. Lectures should give the main points in the textbook, and textbook should put the whole story together with relevance. His notes have pictures with no information so decifering the content relavency is rediculous. Save your time, skip class and read the textbook. :(

This was the second semester of online courses due to pandemic. I found he put in as little time as possible. He used prerecorded lectures done in the previous semester and although the lectures were sometimes done very poorly with lots of "ums" and long pauses. He is very bad at answering his email; if you have questions you have google & textbook

Little effort put in on his part. Slow to answer emails. Reads off of slides. Could have learnt with the textbook alone if I didn't need a formal credit.

He will go on random tangents for 30 mins, his powerpoints does not make sense at all!!!! he will assign you chapters that you will need to know for the midterm... but once you sit during the midterm you realize that his midterms have nothing to doo with the chapters he assigned... The good reviews here are the from the people who work for him.....

DO NOT TAKE HIM, HE DOES NOT CARE YOU FOR YOU AT ALL!!!

This guy is super lazy and his prerecorded lectures are the most painful things you will watch in your life. Prepare yourself for 30sec pauses every sentence and each lecture is like 1.5hrs long. He puts no effort into making the class enjoyable. His lectures are so bad you are better off reading the textbook. All the good reviews here are from him

Please for your sake avoid this professor at all costs. I took his class because there was no room in the other bio courses but honestly it would have been better to just avoid German and take the bio course the next year with a better prof. Yes, he is that bad. I read the good reviews here and joined the class but realized they were lies. AVOIDPLS

DONT TAKE, ONLY TAKE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A MENTAL BREAKDOWN. lab was fun though

Awful

Lectures are okay until he starts rambling about something extra and eventually unrelated to slides. His exams consist more of the off-handed things he says during lecture that he doesn't go into depth about. If you don't write down every word this man says, you will be screwed on the final, because random stuff is what's going to be on his final.

To be fair, he is a really nice person and I feel bad for doing this. It's just that if you are someone who cannot self teach, then his class is not for you (coming from someone who cannot). His slides are very confusing and his teaching in general confuses you more on the topic. I honestly do not recommend, but he has a great personality!

Disorganized lectures in both verbal and visual content. Unclear expectations for assignments and exams. Assigns problems as homework then does not give the correct answer. Assigns additional recorded lectures when he goes too slow in lecture to watch on our own time prior to the exam. Does not highlight important content. AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!!!!!!

Honestly, he seems like a good guy and very knowledgeable but can not teach it and puts in very little effort to attempt to do so. Best option is to just read the whole textbook instead of trying to learn from him or his slides.

Respectfully, would never take this Prof again. He's lectures are boring, and tests are insanely hard. He the definition of inverse proportion. He's teaching style is inversely proportional to his tests or exam. I recommend the textbook over his lecture note, but check the notes though (he likes putting some important facts that appear on the exam)

Just don't . Hard exams. Hard test. Terrible teaching

Do not take this professor

He seems like a very knowledgeable guy but when I attended lectures, nothing much clicked. He tends to talk very quietly too with long breaks in between so I recommend sitting at the front of the class versus the back. His tests can be very tricky as well. If you have the textbook, read it front and back!!

unclear, with terrible instructions and tough grading. also likes to accuse you of things that you did not do.

I share the same sentiment with many students here. Nice guy however his lectures are very dry and more stale than a loaf of bread that has been left out for 100 years. Exams have material not even discussed in lecture very unfair. Lectures are convoluted and more confusing than a Rubix Cube. I don't envy anyone who is taking a class with this man

Worst class I've ever taken. He loves to talk during lectures which seems important but then during the exam not a single one of those things matter. He says the textbook isn't “required” yet most exam questions are from the textbook but unexplained. The bad grades for all sections were blamed on the students and his “too high expectations”

Don't do this to yourself

Just awful.

This professor does not provide individualized feedback to his students for assignments. Additionally, his questions for assignments are super vague which he uses to dock marks for. Additionally, the textbook is not mentioned in class but he tests from it which was shocking!

Please don't take this class with him. The class average was ~40% and he refuses to curve. no feedback is given, no rubrics for assignments, his exams are solely off the textbook (even though it is not mandatory text), he doesnt answer questions. Basically, only take this class if you're already an ecologist who has been in the field for 30+ years.

He is full of knowledge and knows lots of stuff. He will be good as research or ecologist but he does not know how to teach. If you could avoid taking his class please do. Course I really easy and understandable but he makes it very hard for students. Unclear, refuses to understand students and also add at communication via mail.

This professor completely ruined my graduation. I was at 49% and just needed 1% to pass. I offered to do extra work, but he flat-out refused. He ignores department chairs, gives vague instructions, and tests mostly from the textbook after saying it's not needed. He's stubborn, unhelpful, careless, and unfair. Avoid this course at all costs.