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worst prof ever. he is thinks he knows everything when really knows nothing. such a arrogant prof with no respect shown towards his students. someone please get rid of this guy!

Never take any classes with him! Inconsistent with everything, strict marking guidelines!

Hardest professor ever! Never take it with him! I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT DIABLO 3 HAS TO DO WITH CPSC 233 JAVA?!?!?!?!?!?

he does not know what he is teaching, do not take any classes with him

He thinks he knows how to teach everything, but he does not. James fail to understand the students' needs and briefly goes over concepts believing the students understand what he is talking about in class. James is not clear at all, and his examinations is just cruel for the students. I do not recommend taking any classes with him.

Worst prof I've ever had. His lectures are pointless to go to because he makes the slides more confusing, half the time he talks about how doing hard work makes you succeed in the course. His assignments have no explanation as what to do expecting you to just figure it out. Switch out of his class if your enrolled in it

Very boring prof, nails you with some impossible assignments, and is it just me or does he remind me of every character from lord of the rings? Plus he ruined lord of the rings for me with that last assignment.

Absolutely useless, might as well just buy the textbook and learn it all by myself. His instructions are unclear, and he is very rude when responding to students' questions. I don't mind if he is a strict marker, but he can't explain clearly about what he wants us to complete. He is the only prof that makes me hate a subject that I loved so much.

What a disappointment! James probably is the worst teacher I have ever had. Zero engagement. He expects us to copy his diagrams, but you CANNOT read what he writes. Seriously, he is at Grade 1 level printing. He writes outside the overhead field-of-view, and no one tells him that they cannot see what he is writing. No one cares enough to tell him.

This professor is very rude and his drawings are terrible. His accent made it even worse.

He would not teach thing that are necessary for the course, he just keep rambling about stuff he likes, like martial arts and Doctor who. I have to learn everything on my own.

This professor may be the worst professor on campus, avoid him at all cost

Why is he even a prof, he cannot teach, he cannot hand write and he definitely cannot draw. He kept using the blackboard at the front even though the lecture hall was so big that most of us can't read a thing on the board. Absolutely pointless to go to his lectures. I have to learn everything myself.

this course was suppose to be fun and easy, but somehow he managed to make us hate computer science. His would tell you at the beginning of the semester to not use the textbook, but his lectures were completely useless. Without the textbook, we would all fail the course. If you have him as your prof, prepare to learn everything by yourself

He is so rude, he expected you to go to all of his lecture(which I did), but he doesn't want to answer any your questions afterward. He never replies to any email, and he expects you to know the materials after explaining them once.

James Tam is a professor that you would find acceptable if you have only attended a few of his lectures. You would find him extremely enthusiastic, but after a few weeks of class with him, you would find him unacceptable as an university professor, his enthusiasm masked his incompetence in computer science and inability to teach and communicate.

I've now taken two classes with Tam, and can say he's a terrible prof. Which is a bit sad, hes's a very nice guy and is respectful to students, but he DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO TEACH. Lectures are terrible and it's impossible to learn in them. He's one of those people who thinks he is making a whole lot of sense, but no one else does.

Actually screws you over for the course. I did not learn a single thing from him. He stated that the only thing we needed was to read his slides but they were vague and made no sense. Stopped going to classes halfway through the semester cuz the textbook was that much better. Pick the topic in his slide, read it from the textbook to pass.

AVOID! AVOID! AVOID! I could not say this enough, I had previous experience in Java and his lectures make no sense. He changed things frequently without notifying his students. His notes are bad, his assignments are bad, his presentation skills are bad, his exam questions are bad, his metaphors are bad, everything about James Tam is bad. Avoid!

This prof is just terrible. Ignore at all cost, unless you want to fail!

This guy made me fail, he might be the worst professor anyone could have

I had background knowledge in java , which made the course easy for me; however, was difficult for students who just started programming. Thus my recommendation for future students is to look ahead into java programming (used in 233) in which the language is essentially the same as python (231). My TAs were very helpful, Tam was not.

Unclear, boring PowerPoint presentations which are filled with errors. Lectures drag on forever. Cringeworthy sense of humor. Does not help out much at all for exam preparation. If you need to take this class just read Java tutorials online which cover the same topics on his slides. Easy course if you already know what you are doing with Java.

Slides are decent, and he has a good sense of humor but he doesnt know how to explain the material. Lectures are terrible, but assignments aren't too hard. The TA's are life savers.

Love broken English? Love assignments about basic functions of computers? Love a sense of humor based around all the reasons people hate Gamers? Love a teacher who cant understand the full screen function in Ppoint? Then Mr. Tam might be for you! This prof is Disgustingly poor at his job, AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

Avoid this professor at all cost!First of all his marking scheme is flawed: he marks you with a gap grade point and you can only get A if you have 4.0 which he considers a 100%!!!!!He also never gives out the answer key to any questions; i studied so hard yet still went into the final anxious because i couldn't figure out the questions.

He is horrible at explaining things. There is an assignment each week, pretty easy you'd think, but with the way he words them you never really know what he actually means. It's not that difficult if you read his textbook, but the only reason I attended classes was for top hat. Does not let you view the answer key to exams??

Tam should not be allowed to teach at a university level. His lectures are extremely boring and hard to pay attention. If you go to him for help he is very condescending and talks to you like you are stupid. He has also trained the TAs to not help out students. Assignment descriptions are confusing af. AVOID this class if you can. Terrible prof

Easily the worst teacher I've ever had. Somehow manages to take what should be moderately interesting and simple material from each lesson and turns each one into the most boring and confusing hour and a half known to man. All of my knowledge about the coarse concepts came from Java youtube tutorials.

I've been a university student for 7 years and he is by far the worst prof i ever had. He is very dedicated and may potentially be the best prof to ever teach this course but his ridiculous course load (5 assignments, 1 mini-assignment, 6 quizzes, 2 midterms and a final exam), zero people skills and an 'Im always right mentality' make him the worst

I have mixed feelings about Prof Tam. By the end of the semester there weren't ever more than 30 people in class, considering at the start every seat was taken with 100+. This class has LOTS of work and the grading is very tough. Will be your hardest 1st year course. Prof Tam has the potential and enthusiasm to be an amazing prof...

James Tam is by far the worst prof I've had in 4 years... If you like boring lectures, broken english, bad jokes, condescending feedback, using a website from 1995 instead of D2L, lecture decks with cringe worthy photos of said prof, and grammar errors on ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, then this is the class for you. If not, AVOID at all costs.

Inaccessible outside of class, poor grading schemes, and hands out little to no practice for exams (without the answers either)

James Tam. Worst prof ever. If u don't know what "foo" means u will fail. Creepy jokes (mainly about his foot fetish). Can't understand anything he says. TAs were the WORST. Told us he was "not allowed to help us" when we asked for help. Said final would be 5 questions and was actually 60 questions... wtf 0/10 would take again. Boring af.

Worst prof ever. He told us the final would only have 5 multiple choice questions, but there were like 5 PAGES worth of multiple choice and written response... Didnt want to help students, didnt explain things well, and doesnt type proper english...

Suuuuper boring. Makes no sense. Unclear. Every question on tests/assignments is worded badly, so you get most of the questions wrong because you dont understand what the hell he is trying to say. Every person in my class was confused (even the comp sci majors). Don't take this class, if you do, avoid this awful prof.

Suuuuper boring. Makes no sense. Unclear. Every question on tests/assignments is worded badly, so you get most of the questions wrong because you dont understand what the hell he is trying to say. Every person in my class was confused (even the comp sci majors). Don't take this class, if you do, avoid this awful prof

Tam is one of the worst profs. The course content itself would've been easy if Tam actually taught anything. Instead, he was condescending and rude to students, refused to answer questions and did not explain things at all. The TA's were practically as useless as Tam. If you have a background in programming, this will be an easy A, otherwise avoid.

If you understand the content then the class is easy. I only went to half the lectures and bombed the final but still ended up with a good grade. His lectures are boring and dull and not necessary unless you don't understand the material and the tutorials are pointless.

he is so boring it will actually make you want to cry. if you manage to pay attention in lecture you will ace this course because it is pretty easy,but paying attention is hard when its this guy doing the lecture. he just reads off of his endless and boring slides. this class will make you a better student because the prof is certainly no help.

James Tam is a terrible prof. I tried so hard not to sleep in his class but couldn't help it, his lectures are dry and dull af. He is rude to students. He has so many errors in his assignments. Overall terrible! (And his jokes are not funny.) Do NOT take his class! I ended up not going to class and self-teaching myself, which worked for me.

Tam is rude to students in class, unhelpful in lecture, and unclear on his expectations. Jokes aren't funny and textbook is a printed version of the slides he shows in class. I self-taught myself from lecture materials online, and still ended up with a decent grade. Considering this was an elective, I do not recommend James Tam as a CompSci prof.

Worst and least professional communicator I have ever seen. Even a pandemic wasn't enough to get him to stop complaining about his bosses. Makes everything exponentially more confusing then it needs to be. ex. his grading scale is some sort of cryptic, weighted, grade point conversion of test marks instead of just using %'s like everyone else.

His course is insultingly bad. Incredibly unprofessional & sometimes downright factually wrong. Class moved online due to COVID & he responded by sending multiple meandering emails complaining about Admin but no updates as to the class. Then moved one of his 4 midterms so that we had 2 exams (50% of total grade) within a week of each other. Nice.

Lectures are incredibly dry and boring and borders being cringe with his random rants and describing events with clip-art. Class became even worse when it transitioned to being online. Poor communication in regards to the transition and tests us on the videos he posts, which are excessively long, averaging 3-4 minutes on slides with 5 words.

I've seriously never encountered such an incompetent prof. This man had no desire to learn how to use zoom and blames it on the students and consequently the software itself when nobody can hear him or see what he's doing. Instead of doing anything constructive he devotes his time complaining about zoom. Every other prof can figure this stuff out

Prof doesn't learn zoom functionality, instead blames software for being obnoxious. When students ask questions about a topic he covered 4 minutes ago he shuts them down and continues teaching.

James Tam's notes are disorganized and really hard to follow. That being said, I dont have any background on programming. Echoing to previous comments, he is very condescending to students and not that approachable. The workload was overwhelming but understandable for a spring semester. He always goes off tangent most of the time during lectures.

You could have the basics of programming down and you will still do poorly in this class. He will not explain things to you if you ask and he deducts marks for things that are never specified in his project excel sheets that he prides himself on for having so detailed. I'm a straight-A student and somehow I still did poorly in this class

Taking this course during quarantine is a hard task for both the professor and the students, but Tam was a horrible professor. The lectures never helped and he was rude when answering questions. Would belittle the person asking the questions as well as give a poor answer. Promotes dystopian style marking , Bad teacher but seems like a cool guy :D

Tam is not clear about the teaching target. Even if you get the same output in homework and use the methods learned, you can only get 1/4 of the score. You must follow his own style, which greatly limits students' thinking. Also very rude in class, always thinking that the student is wrong, even if he doesn't use ZOOM to turn on the microphone.

First things first, if you have a class with him coming up DONT TAKE IT. He is the hardest marker I have ever had in my life (this is not an exaggeration). His assignments are never clear and always worded confusingly. I got 0.5 GPA taken off because I forgot to put my name and tutorial number in one of my assignments. Please find a different prof

Gave the worst assignments ever and never understands students problem regarding late submission or any kind of emergency

A class for non-majors and he docks you based on 'industry standard.' I talked with CPSC major friends. What he says is NOT industry standard. Tons of homework and grading is so slow that feedback is useless or non-existent. Extremely rude in emails. Gets easily off topic in PRE-RECORDED lectures. I learned everything from online outside sources.

His expectations for assignments were not so clear. I took his class in the winter and it's as if he expects we are only taking one class with how long his prerecorded lectures are. I'm sure there's an effective way to teach the information, with hours of shorter video. I do appreciate his effort. Assignments are way too hard for someone new to CS

He doesn't seem accommodating & does not set out clear grading criteria, I doubt I would've done well on the assignments if I continued in the course. He rambles a lot & never gets to the point

Marking was confusing and made no sense. Lecture were recorded with a wish(dot)com microphone and I could not watch them as they were uninformative and extremely long.

Tam's lectures are excruciatingly long and always include him rambling for ages without getting anywhere. The only time I could pick up on anything was when I muted him and taught myself via youtube. On top of how strict he is with marking,his assignments were very difficult for a class expecting no previous knowledge of coding/python.

These lectures are just wack. Personally I just didn't bother and just did the work on my own. At least the assignments will give you easy grades if you can figure them out and just work at it.

He makes good mini assignments, however, his full assignments were where problems came in. I know you can do well in his class, but once you bring his lecture content into the full assignments it gets realllllllyyy confusing. His lectures are really boring.

Dr. Tam wasn't very helpful, he teaches the class functioning off the belief that it's "common sense". He isn't easily accessible outside of class and gives pretty ridiculously hard assignments. I learnt most of my knowledge from the TAs since Dr. Tam was very condescending. Spent so much time on this course, I'd suggest to avoid him if you could.

Not great. His d2l is weird. I'm sure he thinks its organized but no one else does. His marking guidelines are way to pedantic and the way he does gpa conversions makes it very hard to get an A (although it makes passing very easy). He is also weirdly aggressive in lectures and emails. His tests are really easy, but a 91.9 only gets you a 3.7 or A-

I had a 97% in cs 30 but could only get an A- in his class. His gpa cutoffs for high grades are above the uofc standards. The quality of code you have to write is also way higher to get a good grade compared to the other classes. I don't see anyone who doesn't already know cs getting above a B+. His d2l is also a mess.

Textbooks aren't necessary but he tells you to get them. Assignments went from stupid easy to weirdly complicated so I wouldn't take this course unless you've done some programming before. Lectures are dry and you don't need to attend them unless you need help with one of your assignments. Glad this was only for my science credits and not my major.

The majority of actual learning in this course was from the TA's in the tutorials. The lectures are only valuable if you want to watch Tam repeated open and close documents, draw on PowerPoints, and lose application windows immediately after moving them. If possible, take this course with a more competent professor.

James tam was one of the most confusing individuals I've encountering. The worst of it was by far his practice test for the final, where he allowed us to write the test and receive a mark, but never let us see our results for it, meaning that one doesn't know where they had made an error, and only that they madre an error.

The pitfall with James is that the material was not complex, and now as I study the material, I figure I could've learned it all on a youtube channel at a quarter of the time. His assignments are an eyesore to read.

Professor Tam is unhelpful with questions, often responding to emails with a link and advising to "figure it out yourself." The midterm and final preparation is lacking, with one-attempt practice tests lacking review options. Despite passionate lectures and clear grading criteria, the class is awful for those without prior experience.

Unless you're a masochist I suggest not taking this class with Tam. Funny guy, but definitely not a course designed for people who have never coded before.

He seems passionate in his teaching, but the teaching style is difficult and confusing. He goes fast during lecture, and I found it hard to keep up with him. The online final and midterm prep review close early, and will not receive feedback on what you got wrong. A LOT of self-teaching and homework.

The way he teaches is tough to grasp. The lectures move quickly, making it hard to keep up. Plus, the online final and midterm prep reviews on d2l close early, and you won't get feedback on your mistakes. Be prepared for a lot of self-teaching. The Exams are very difficult and graded on hand written syntax which makes zero sense. TOUGH GRADER.

Wish I'd taken RMP more seriously. It's not that he's a terrible instructor in the sense of not presenting course material, because on the contrary, I find that James Tam actually wants to teach people the material. But his attitude is so bad/ mean, it's as if the computer science department put him in a first year course just to get rid of people.

going to lecture was useless. got screwed over on the final

Raised a lot of academic misconduct to the students. Definitely hates his students. Avoid !

He had 3 online exams each weighing 33.33%. Overall I didn't like the way he delivered the course.

Hard to follow what content is important as lectures are boring and slow. Can not stop yapping about useless information that has no use. He talks about how tall his ceiling are and about his car for periods of time. The grading scheme is complex for no reason. If you can bare the lectures and take useful notes, you will do good in this class.

Not a very good prof. You will be studying on your own mostly as you realize his lectures are **** .

The class was very boring, I found myself having to focus on staying awake a lot. He has a VERY thick accent, making it hard to understand what he is saying. He is SO SNEAKY bc he is the author of the madatory textbooks required! he also doesn't use D2L bc he has his confusing website. This class deteriorated my mental health. AVOID AT ALL COST.

Worst lecturer I have had so far. Would recommend avoiding, I will be for the rest of my time here.

No feedback. No help. What a joke- just retire.

Does not provide sufficient information about exams and what is expected as you of a student in his course.

Goes way beyond the scope and is surprised when students ask him questions or are confused

Don't take this class if you don't have to. i took it as a GPA Booster, might end up CG this course. Exams are very difficult and he doesn't even mention it properly in slides and expects us to know all answers to his stupid questions

Testable content not covered properly in lectures & slides. Got 90% on Exam 1, so I was happy. Quiz 2 (I studied double for), around 1/3 of the questions were ambiguous and/or not even remotely touched upon in lectures. I got under 70% in Quiz 2. You shouldn't drop 4-5 grade points when you put in double the effort. He did in on purpose, bad prof.

Purposefully goes into too little detail on important parts of the course, overexplains parts that are not testable or remotely related to the topic. Makes questions extremely confusing and answers painfully similar purely to confuse students. If the majority of your class cannot get above a C+ in your exam, you are the problem, not the students.

Does not make an effort to reply to students' emails, and if you get a reply expect it to be extremely condescending. I am averaging a 3.85- but because of his negligence most likely will drop this course to protect GPA. Money wasted. In every other 400 level in CPSC I have got between a B+ and A+... Rude, unhelpful professor and bad course.

Start of the term seemed like a good course and professor- very wrong. Each week gets worse and there is no support whatsoever. I thought university professors were meant to be a step up from high school I am so upset and disappointed.

Laziest course format I have ever seen. You may be mislead into thinking this course is easy based off of only having 3 exams that are all online. I promise you it is not. 30 questions in 50 minutes, and half of the questions are beyond confusing. For some, it feels like there could be multiple correct answers but there is only one. Lazy course.

Literally yaps about nothing related to the class and then expects you to know all the material for the tests. Also, he just reads off the slides that are so poorly done that you can barely understand what they are saying. My TAs were honestly the only ones who taught me anything all semester.

Reads off the slides the whole time, and the slides are hard to understand. Take any other prof and save your time.

lectures were just all about him and had to force myself to listen whenever i went because everything he was saying was off tangent and so went in one ear and out the other. most poeple left in the middle of his lectures everyday and he was pissed lol

His lectures were incredibly useless, the notes he gave were really hard to understand and they are posted on this hard to look at website. Overall, pick anyone else.

if you are taking CPSC 217 with JT personally I would recommend just staying home and using chatgpt to give you practice questions based on the test and just do a bunch of those until you get the hang of it - probably only need 4-5 hours of practice per mid term using that method - lectures imo were useless - did not bother going after first week.

Tam made this class extremely difficult, not because the intro material was hard, but because he would not stop yapping. He went on tangents unrelated to the course. His slides were confusing and messy. He rarely did examples. Attending another lecture and my TA were what actually helped me succeed.

Not a good prof. He made this course super difficult because he would start talking about unrelated things during lecture. Better to just teach yourself the content.