1) Bazylak forces you to go to lecture by making attendance mandatory through in class Quercus questions. 2) The course is poorly organized, and had an excessive amount of assignments and projects. 3) In two occasions in which I needed assistance with the course, I tried to get assistance from Bazylak, but he was not only unhelpful but rude too.

Not good!

There isnt much to say other than f this class. They try their best to lower your grade. Thanks people.

gives u the world's most ambiguous definitions, then tests you rigorously on these definitions on the midterms and finals. Impossible to study for this course. TAs mark all your group work and intentionally try to lower your marks. Some groups submit complete documents and still get 0.

Can't even give a yes/no answer. Although the course has an emphasis on being straight to the point, he can't even be straight to the point himself and confuses everyone

Doesn't care about your sanity. He also doesn't believe in moving assignments because we are "engineering students"

Puts deadlines on national holidays even when everyone else extends them, even after adding new components three days before. Lectures are generally boring and uninformative. Mandatory textbook (which the APS111 team wrote...) Seems like a nice fellow though.

Not flexible at all with deadlines

makes things due on national holidays because not everyone lives in canada.

It was fine until he said no thanksgiving that was one step too far

no, just no

Unfortunately, Bazylak is very unaccommadating with deadlines, in fact after every other course moved their assignments for Thanksgiving only APS111 did not. What's worse, he added a new component we have to do! The marking is subjective and arbitrary, and the lectures are very uninformative. Overall, the course design is not conducive to learning.

You could hire anyone off the street and they could probably do an equivalent or better job at teaching this course.

Students were asked to give feedback on the course mid-first semester. Obviously, him and the teaching team got terrible feedback from everyone but he replied with an insensitive email defending himself and the course. 0 f's given, no empathy shown. He just doesn't care. 2x more work than other courses for 20% lower grades. Absolutely terrible!

Bazylak sent the class a disturbing email in response to feedback about his course. The statement "I'm taking thing with a grain of salt" sums up the email pretty well. Bazylak has the audacity to disregard the negative feedback that he received in favour of changing absolutely nothing, despite the obvious malcontent from students in his class.

ESP kills me. Useless and annoying emails everywhere.

Absolute terrible. I don't think I've had a worse professor in my entire University life. Please do not listen to the comments that say he's good. He couldn't care less about the students. Sometimes it feels like he intentionally makes our lives tougher and likes to see them do badly and fail.

I think it's pretty ironic that someone who teaches students about teamwork and listening to feedback, completely ignores his students' feedback on the course that he teaches

Everytime a student gives him feedback, he just replies "This is how it's done in industry". That's his excuse for overburdening students with work and putting them in teams that are totally unfair. Well, prof, WE AREN'T IN INDUSTRY RIGHT NOW. You don't have to be a professor to figure out the difference between uni and industry. Our grades matter

Just teaches the most useless course, which takes time from our actual important classes.

Why do we need this course? Why the mark for the course is so frustrating?

Doesn't seem to care about student's feedback on the course at all and simply says "this is how it is in industry" to avoid having to do any additional work on his part, other than coming into our tutorials and yelling at us for no particular reason.

I don't know much about prof. Bazylak, but it really seems like his main goal with APS111 is to make the course as difficult as possible. The course includes massively convoluted group projects with an EXTREMELY low tolerance for even the smallest of mistakes. And too bad if you have bad teammates, because "that's how it is in the industry".

Absolutely terrible course. Your whole mark is based on group work and projects that contain so much content, yet has a capped word count. You can try staying under the word count, but then you will get terrible and useless feedback such as "be more detailed". All the work is marked incredibly subjectively and no useful feedback is given.

The course has a good purpose but a bad grading policy. All of your scores depend on whether TA is happy. You may get a low score because of TAs' ideas or a teammate who is lazy. Hope they can do some changes and make people get the scores they deserved.

I chose inspirational as a tag because he inspires me to drop out of engineering. Also every member of his teaching team for APS111 and APS112 have different opinions on how our work should be done.

The professor's response to feedback is tone deaf and completely disregards how students feel. If you're in uoft engineering, you can't avoid this course so good luck. Be prepared for subjective questions the midterm and tone deaf responses to feedback. Thanks to this course, I hate industry and would rather do research.

Suck Midterm

L + Ratio + Geoffrey go bonk

1. The tb material is like my grandma's advice 2. Doesn't care about students' feedback 3. The explanations are unclear 4. The expectations are much higher than the level they teach 5. Corrupted teaching team They teach you 1 2 3, expect 4 5 6 in the assignments, ask about 7 8 9 in the exams yet real life's about words, not numbers!!

TMA (Too Many Acronyms)

The prof gives a midterm consisting of multiple choices with an average of 50, and claims that it is balanced by previous assignments where high marks are given out. Perhaps a not so subtle strategy to keep the course mark "in check"? Not a good situation for students.

Completely tone-deaf to indications that he is doing a poor job. Created a midterm that is entirely subjective. Was sent a 6-page email of student concerns and responded with a small paragraph that nit-picked one small area of the email, disregarding the rest. Horrific experience in both 111 and 112, good luck if you have him in the future.

Marking criteria is extremely unclear, it feels like they are almost randomly assigned. The midterm was not an accurate assessment of student learning and when students complained Bazylak dismissed all concerns, refusing to meet with students to talk about it.

DO NOT TAKE THE ARCHITECTURE COMPONENT OF THIS COURSE!!!!!!! ARC tutorials are even more poorly managed than the APS tutorials. Not to mention that there is additional work that needs to be done for the architecture students ON TOP of the already massive amount of work in the original course. Joining the ARC tutorial was my worst mistake of year 1.

BIG F! His course is complete bullshit. Worst prof in 1st year

aps112 is very much based on luck since your mark will depend on the difficulty of your specific TA's grading, the quality of your team members and the difficulty of your project (yes, some projects are inherently easier to tackle than others). The midterm was quite poorly designed as most answers were very subjective.

He suck

Professor Bazylak cares very little about students and when given any feedback on his teaching whatsoever gets extremely hostile, even when such feedback was delivered to him by all our year reps in a well-written and respective email. Fortuntately he is on sabbatical next year, and I hope for future students that he does not return to teaching.

low grades

Created an all-multiple choice midterm with subjective answers. For example, the answer to a question about resolving team conflicts was 'trust' when there were options that made more sense but were marked wrong. Students felt as if they learned little to nothing from the lecture component of the course.

I really like to see those 3 people who have rated this prof with 5 stars and congratulate them for their level of tolerance. This prof is unbelievably unbearable, so is the course he has made. Students do not like him and I think the amount of negative comments prove that. Leave us alone man, no one wants you here.

By far the worst class in engineering

Every uoft engineering student has a horror story to tell about aps111/112. What is yours going to be?

Professor Bazylak is kind of a clown. The reason this course is so bad is not because of the material (which isn't necessarily rewarding either) its his incredible attitude towards students. He doesn't take criticism well, and I fell victim to his wrath personally. I was singled out among hundreds of people and told that I was disrespectful.

Having to do a group project for 2/3 of the course is a good experience... if you have a good team if not tough luck because you are thoroughly screwed.

Jason you gotta stop deleting our comments. If you are seeing this, I just wanted to let you know that 1.3/5 is a severely overrated score for you.

rubric is not clear, mark with the flow

His midterm exams are an absolute disaster, filled with poorly constructed questions and no regard for student feedback. Don't be fooled by the fake smile; behind it lies a dagger ready to slash your grades with unfairly low marks. Good luck if you have him as the EM.

Doesn't listen or care about students whatsoever, think of it as talking to a brick wall. Will try anything to give lower marks.

The worst prof I have ever had. He is the rudest professor at U of T and constantly talks down to students. If you have him good luck.

He is an extremely "intelligent" person and treating his student at his "best" ability. I will "highly recommend" everyone to attend his course.

..

Lot of reading, lots of homework, not hellpful, when you ask question he responds: "shouldve listen to the lecture"

Bad prof dont recommend

I cannot understand anything

Man, what can I say, 5% of grade is from reading that takes up like 3 hrs every week we had to work rly hard to get class performance score and then get penalties for missing lectures

awfull l l l

APS111 is the bane of my existence

Paid $80 to annotate glaze a textbook due every week.

Kind of rude.

Worse prof ever, quizzes and assignments are very vague

Very unorganized course. No support for students. Any questions are redirected to TAs or CIs and then students are redirected back to ask the professors, and it becomes an endless cycle and nobody gets a clear answer. No clear criteria for graded projects, so everything gets graded badly. Things take forever for grading.

The course is oddly structured and there's a lack of feedback which stunts progression. The material isn't hard, but it's hard to apply concepts you've never seen before while your prof isn't giving helpful or specific enough feedback. The lectures are vague, repeated textbook summaries, would rather focus on actual applications and strategies.

He is a fu great ck prof ing bit

Horrible course coordinator, makes evaluations to test students on knowledge they quite literally don't have and makes it worth for 5% of overall grade. The 5 or 6 people who even gave him a five star rating don't even have a valid explanation as to why, just goes to show his high-standing and prestige within the university.

Shabi prof

Will give a 5 once my ps quiz mark is higher

this prof barely teaches anything in class, and makes such a simple, easy course so efing difficult, gives minimum mark, shows no examples, gave unclear guidelines and pulls a chunk from your marks.

I love him

absolutely shabi prof, i love him with my full hearts.

Don't take his course

the professor shows bias against all students. proof-readed

Best prof in my life. Love from UofT

He literally said that he's mean.

. .

For a course centered around design, it is HORRIBLY designed itself. I can't believe I am paying so much in tuition for such a horrible class.

The course sucks and Mr. Bazylak has frankly done nothing to fix it for someone who has done research in engineering education.

Too much work

A "good" professor. You can learn "a lot" from him. Assignments are "not time-consuming". CDS project very "interesting". Overall, I "suggest" that you take the course. The saying goes, "No zuo no die."

Kind of rude and overall the course is a waste of time, especially the textbook annotation which costs $80

APS111 is probably the worse first year engineering course and my peers can affirm this. Lectures are not helpful but tutorials are a must though. Textbook is somewhat helpful (good for the projects), and group projects are long, very tedious, and very stressful, especially for those placed in bad teams. Marking of projects are extremely harsh.

the person below me is trolling

not that good

this course is a joke, it planed for lowering your overall gpa

This course is totally a joke, the professor uses PowerPoint all the time, and grade you a low score whatever you do, it planed to be lowering your overall gpa.

This entire course is a joke, its planed for lowering your overall gpa.

Very long and tedious readings, and lots of work. Lack of coordination between teaching team and students. Very strict marking, without clear feedback and requirements. Course is very dependent on team composition as a bad team will produce a worse mark. Unfortunately, this course is mandatory, so be prepared. Good luck future APS111 students.

The purpose of this design course (APS111) is important, yet its execution is absolutely horrible. This is all thanks to "Professor" Jason Bazylak. There is no consistency whatsoever in the answers students recieve from TAs, CIs, and instructors. A rework of this course should be prioritized over anything else. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD.

Yesterday, my Grandma told me, "Jason Bazylak is a great teacher." Unfortunately, she died 11 years ago. She, nor did anyone, ever say that.

I never believed Satan existed until I took APS111

The prof does not explain how to format/do the assignment, so half your time on an assignment is spent figuring out how to format things the way he likes it.

spent the most amount of time on the team projects and individual projects, spent the most amount of time on this whole course compared to the other courses, got the lowest grade on this course compared to all other courses, the grading scheme is way too tough, this course is there to press my gpa all the way to 2.0 from 2.6, man im failing.

Assignments criteria are super vague, the CI with no engineering background marks our papers and marks them SUPER HARSH!!! Ive spent ton of time making engineering observations and working for group project and in the end i get 50% on all of my assignments

nononononononon

This course is so poorly structured and TA-dependent. The TAs and CIs, despite never working a day in the engineering field, will act like they know it all and nitpick any minor formatting mistake. They act like "misformatting" a table is the end of the world. They also make us pay like 40 dollars to glaze a textbook.

cooked prof

Cooked ahh mf

This guy makes the lives of all engineers a living hell for 8 months. APS111 is the worst course I have ever taken and I would not wish taking this course on my worst enemy.

"Unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe my series, this course rewards blind luck and nothing else, I am beyond convinced at this point. After getting completely tooled by my project's scope and my teammates, I don't see a reason to continue engaging in an activity where what is within my control is overwhelmingly outweighed by what is not

If a professor has this low of a rating theres a reason. He genuinely believes hes always right and "the people who write these reviews are just the slackers". THAT IS NOT TRUE WITH BAZYLEK. If not 1/1200 engineering students can get over a 90% (2024) on a ALL MULTIPLE CHOICE MIDTERM, maybe its time to re-evaluate your horrible, opinionated tests.

His tests are ridiculously subjective, no matter how well you understand the material, your grade depends on what he thinks. Even if your answer is right, he'll find a way to take marks off because it's not phrased exactly how he wants. Asking for clarification is useless because he either dodges the question or gives a vague response.

Cooked ahh prof

Worst Security Guard at Chestnut Residence.

The following two reviews are (obviously) written by the "prof" himself.

Jason Bazylek is extremely rude anytime you has him a question he answers that you should go look at your notes. His tests depend on thin air and he never is willing to help with anything. He also only cares about bragging about himself during lectures and how much he's done for this course, and nothing about the students.

Screw Bazylak with the utmost disrespect I can't stand that man

hes actuallly terrible, thats it

This guy is a joke. Getting paid 6 figures to do a whole lot of nothing. Man spends his entire paycheque on uber eats. Absolute joke of a man.

He is so bad.

Every time I have ESP, I am absolutely elated!!!! I would love to see Jason Bazylak 24/7. Whenever I don't have Jason Bazylak for class, I mentally superimpose his image onto the supervising prof - this motivates me, inspires me, and overall improves my character. I am a changed person because of Jason Bazylak. He pleases me day and night.

This class is very hard to run so i will give a benefit of a doubt but this class relies too much on luck on who is grading you and it will stay like that probably for as long as this class exists

It's almost all luck and if you win the lottery ur life becomes so much easier but if not, even if ur a smart hardworking student, u are almost guaranteed to be screwed over by this class. I wish UofT would discontinue this class or at least revamp it significantly.

Bad, never going see him, the rubric of marking is a joke.

This professor's lectures were so heavy with boredom they could sink a battleship. Just like him heavy.Every class felt like being force-fed burnt toast until my brain begged for mercy. If bad teaching had calories, I'd be obese from just one semester.

Will caress your shoulder while yelling at you if he sees you doing anything other than devoting your life to this course Also walks into his own lectures late with food every time it's no wonder...

i didn't wear my seatbelt driving to his lecture.

jason bazylak claims he did so much for this course and its students. In reality, jason bazylak is part of why so many people drop out of eng first year!

ur grade in this course and the effort you put in are inversely proportional