3.2
Quality3.3
Difficulty56%
Would Retake85
Reviews56%
Would Retake
85
Reviews
Rating DistributionOfficial
5
23
4
16
3
12
2
19
1
15
What Students Say
“you either love or hate Jeffery Ackerman, he does a great job of keeping students engaged by trying to be relatable or funny but it gets In the way of his teaching”
EC201 - 2.0 rating“Exams make up the majority of your grade”
EC201 - 1.0 ratingClass Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
43%
Textbook Required
0%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Stable
+0.07 avg changeRatings by Course
EC201
3.3
(27)EC202
3.1
(54)ECON201
2.8
(4)Difficulty by Course
ECON201
3.8
EC201
3.3
EC202
3.3
Reviews (85)
Spends a lot of time during lectures talking about his personal life. Also uses way to many examples to explain concepts, and often we fall behind. He also gets stumped easily by questions in class which makes me think he isn't very knowledgeable about the material.
Ackerman is a great guy- very nice and approachable. 75% of your grade in this class is made up of two exams. There are three total exams but he lets you drop one. The exams are very difficult. Overall, it is easy to earn points outside of the exams with the homework and in-class tophat questions, but it doesn't make up a huge part of your grade.
Ackerman is caring and quirky! Great human being. One of the things I wish I did more of during the semester would be to go to his office hours and dedicate more time to studying. I will say if you are NOT a good test taker like myself, you might not want to take his class. Your results from your exams and test will be your entire overall grade.
Professor Ackerman is a really nice and accommodating instructor. His class isn't bad as long as you do the practice questions and look over Top Hat questions before the exam. People who do not take tests very well might struggle a little more. The homework is relatively easy as long as you give it some effort.
I'm not even an econ major and I took a second econ class so I could have this dude as prof again. The homework is super easy and it teaches you everything you need for the test so you really don't have to study much more. Jeff knows his memes and got a victory royale over the summer so he's a man of many talents.
Such an awesome professor! He teaches material in a very easy to understand manner and has immaculate online lectures. He makes the class stress free by relating to his students and giving life advice. I learned a ton about econ.
Very very lecture heavy, most of the grades come from tests. Didn't offer any extra-credit opportunities, doesn't curve grades. He's pretty nice and fun during lectures, talks about his experiences, and shares any stories he has. However, he isn't that interested in getting to know students (probably because it's a super big class).
Not the best communicator. A lot of people did not finish a group of 4 assignments and he refused to give credit back partially because of the system he uses, and partially because he thinks he's not in the wrong.
This guy is the man. One of my favorite professors at MSU. I struggle deeply with math and, by extension, Economics and Ackerman made it pretty accessible and understandable to me. He is an easy grader but is still effective in getting his material across. Plus he is a genuinely enjoyable person with a good sense of humor.
Jeff is the man. He makes econ as best as it could be. The course has a decent amount of homework which is much harder than the exams, so they are good preparation if you actually do them. The lectures are great, and Jeff makes an effort to know you. The lectures are perfectly paced, as he will wait a little bit after each slide for typing.
VERY DIFFICULT EXAMS that are monitored and not open note. He is so boring! The class did really bad. Do not take him. He doesnt care about the students. His lectures are too long and he doesnt clean them up when he messes up. Expect bad grades.
Lectures made graded material easy. I recommend the work book and really thinking about and doing the work he offers. it makes the exams much easier.
This is one of the worst classes I’ve ever taken. The exam questions are nothing you can prepare for and his lectures don’t teach you anything. I showed up to class everyday, did my homework, took notes, studied and still did horrible along with other people. I’m not one to fail classes but this may be my first.
Provides lecture playlist that covers the same material as classes, so attending is optional. Online homework textbook is a mess but it is easy to get full points and he gives a few homework drops. Exam content comes from lectures, not the textbook.
He's fine. Not the worst but not the best.
Ackerman is a great professor! It's a hard class but he conveys the information well and gives lots of practice problems to help you do well. It is lecture heavy, but he uses lots of examples that make it easier to understand.
Funny dude, horrible professor. Lectures make no sense and just uses graphs that he only understands. Exam questions are near impossible and have nothing to do with anything we learn. The class did horrible, there is not much homework and he is a nice, laid back guy but if you truly want a good grade avoid at all costs.
Professor Ackermann is very mid at best. He tries to keep lectures relevant and up to date but the actual content is not very helpful for the class. I took him for EC 202 and exams are a huge part of the grade and very hard. Be prepared to spend countless hours doing online homework that is barely relevant to the actual class.
Horrible HW. For our class we had online homework through SIMnet. It was awful, the assignment would loop the same questions over and over, most assignments had around 300 questions, being the same 20 questions looped. A weeks worth of homework would take anywhere between 1-5 hours of completing the same 15 questions over and over again
-lets you drop an exam and four homework assignments -funny -study and you will be fine -not boring -best econ prof
funny guy, exams are difficult without studying & practice, uses iclicker for attendance, homework assignments were long but helpful to learn material, easy-ish class if you're determined enough
Horrible. His lectures are boring and full of random facts about his family or pop culture references. Attendance is mandatory. Exams are so difficult, you will not pass if you don't do a significant amount of preparation. Cracked out on charged lemonade. Some say he's nice/ funny, I personally would never step foot into his lecture hall again.
Professor Ackerman relied on lockdown browser and webcam for all exams, and they had mandatory time slots in which they would be taken. We took 2 exams and each exam had 7 or 8 chapters of content that were on it. His lectures posted on d2l could range from 10 minutes to over an hour. And you would have to watch 1-2 videos for each chapter.
The curriculum isn't necessarily easy, however, there are lots of resources that will help you succeed so long as you put the work in. The Econ help room, reading all of the chapters covered, watching lectures from his summer course, and doing as many practice problems as possible essentially ensures a 4.0. Ackermann is a good professor.
took online, lockdown browser and the lectures are so monotone it is hard to listen to. homework is easy but has almost no relevance to the exams.
you either love or hate Jeffery Ackerman, he does a great job of keeping students engaged by trying to be relatable or funny but it gets In the way of his teaching. I could tell you more about his kids and his love for Fortnite and Panera charged lemonade than I could tell you about what I learned in this class.
Really hard to succeed in this class, not much accommodations made. Exams make up the majority of your grade. SO much material and really hard to understand. The concepts are applied to one example an then your supposed to just understand it. I struggled in this class.
Econ is not my major so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I thought that he cared about students, was pretty funny when it came to the overall class period, but there is not much to base your grade off. There were the exams and the homework's that were essentially quizzes, nothing else really determines your grade besides the exam.
All he gave us for lectures were his old recorded lectures from 2020. The homework assignments took hours to do and hardly had anything to do with the lectures. The exams make up 75% of your grade, were very difficult, and were not given enough time to complete.
The only downside of this course is that exams are worth 70% of your grade. Prof Ackerman is great, but there is a lot of material covered on each exam. As long as you pay attention during class and do all of the practice problems before the exams you'll be fine. I found this class very interesting as a non-econ major, and would recommend it.
This class is absolutely horrible. The tests combined are worth 75% of your grade. The exams, which he writes himself, are the hardest things. He says to look over the practice problems he provides you to study with, except they are so easy and the test questions are nothing like it. He is a nice guy, but I do not recommend his class.
The asynchronous class for this was strictly video lectures and McGraw-Hill homework. Exams were most of the grades. Exams were also on lockdown browser.
These other reviews must have cakewalk classes bc this was neither hard or easy. Textbook isn't required but you can find it online for free. Attendance isn't REQUIRED but you're still graded on it. 1 of 3 exams is dropped. It's not supposed to be easy. I showed up 50-75% of time and got a 3.5... A 4.0 IS ONLY 89+ do the practice problems and hw
I took the online version of this class and all the homework was due the day before tests. The homework is through an online program that recycles the same questions over and over again so they're easy to memorize the answers for. However, the homework is no help for the exams and if you want to do well you HAVE to do the practice problems.
Good guy. Can tell he really cares. Course is not that difficult you just have to be on top of things and you will succeed. It is very easy to get behind so if you procrastinate you should take the in-person version of the class.
Nice guy, but his teaching is so bad. Most of the time he just reads off his PowerPoints word for word and doesn't explain. Homework assignments are graded by completion. Exams are heavily graded on and are way off from what the homework is.The study guides never match the exams.
Lowkey don't take this class in person or online. He is not that funny. To be completely honest he doesn't explain things. Most of the students that I've taken this class have said that their exam scores did not reflect their actual knowledge in the class which is very concerning.
Good professor that had light homework and easy to follow lectures. You need to show up to do well, if you do this class is extremely easy. Ackerman was enthusiastic about his material and wanted people to succeed, those who did poorly were those who did not attend lectures.
Very entertaining professor. He used TopHat to incentivize coming to class (it's a small part of the grade). 70% of our grade was midterm and final, so be sure to understand the material -it's easy to stuff don't sweat it cause you will get practice with the problem sets and non-graded exam practice problems.
You can tell that he genuinely loves teaching and tries to build a bond between him and his students. 60% of your grade is 4 exams (one dropped). He writes his own exams so you'll find that he often reuses the same questions he assigns homework give or take a few different numbers. He has helpful online lectures if you do miss class. I recommend.
Very funny, fun class, lectures were kept interesting through use of real life examples and his humor. Top 3 professors I've ever had.
May be a friendly and fun professor but I find him to be quite an unprofessional and rude person. He has continuously been extremely uncommunicative and unsupportive on email and he seems to care more about following what is exactly in the syllabus then hearing what you have to say and at a min, recognizing it. DO NOT TAKE if comm matters to you.
Prof Ackerman was a pretty fair professor. He explained things clearly and stopped to answer questions when needed. He made lectures very interesting and really tried to connect with students individually. My main concern was with exams. Since there were only 30 questions per exam, there wasn't much room to make mistakes.
I took this course online and thought it would be easier than in person. I was wrong. The homework assignments are not that bad but the lectures are longer than an in person class. The exam questions are worded weirdly and not easy to understand. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. You are better off taking Econ 201 or Econ 202 at LCC for less money and better
I took this course online and I shouldn't have. Powerpoints are confusing and super long. Homework is really easy, but doesn't prepare you for tests. Tests are only 30 questions and so hard. I don't think I would've passed any tests even if I had help.
Definitely don't recommend his class. Unfortunately he's the only EC 202 prof which is why I got stuck with him. His tests are very hard and there is lots of homework worksheets. Your only graded on those two things and the tests are heavily weighted. So if you do bad on the tests your grades gonna be low.
Amazing professor, he offers a dropped exam and there's very little work for this class. The lectures are actually enjoyable to watch too and he does a great job at explaining topics that aren't initially straightforward. Just a really nice guy overall.
worst lectures ever. so boring and dont help with the homework. quizzes are confusing and exams are hard. he is really bad at explaining things and preparing you. too many concepts he doesnt go in depth and just reads slides. don't recommend, but couldve just been that class was hard.
Ackermann is a very funny and passionate professor. There is a textbook but you don't actually need it for the class at all so don't bother buying it. Attendance isn't mandatory either but the material can get confusing if you miss because he does to many examples in class.
I took this class online, but the lectures were very engaging where you really actually understand the material. Exams are locked down browser but if you study the practice problems it will be easy. He is a very nice professor!
Do NOT take Econ with Ackerman, he was by far the worst professor I have had. He only grades by tests and homework, so not much room to improve grades, and they're both super difficult. I tried getting help from him outside of class and he told me to find friends in the class then, but it's an online class... Avoid this professor if you can
Emailed him instead of the TA because it was an urgent question and the TA can take a bit to reply. Instead of simply answering my question, he proceeded to type out a paragraph of why I should be going to the TA instead of him and did not answer my question at all. I think that's pretty petty. Also makes unfair changes to course cutoffs at the end
Not hard at all just watch the video lectures and do the practice problems and the exams will be extremely easy as a lot of the questions are reused from the practice problems. Ackerman is a silly little guy also lots of lols to be had
In general, Ackermann is well-liked by most students. If you pay attention in class, complete all your assignments, and practice regularly, you'll be all set.
This class was SUPER hard to me and prof ackerman lowkey taught things very confusing. I was online so maybe the in person was different.
I took the class online asynchronous. It was fine all of the lectures are prerecorded from 2020/2021. Homework is pretty easy and the exams are fine too. Make sure you keep up everything because once you fall behind it's pretty hard to catch back up because every week there are 1 or 2 new units being taught.
super funny guy. enjoyed this class a lot, was a bit harder for me than my other classes and I would find myself confusing Micro and Macro a lot. Exams were simple if practice tests were done and you went to class. Final was at 8pm on a Thursday though, so that was a little irritating but great class altogether.
Professor Ackermann is hands-down, the funniest professor I've ever had. My top highlight was when he asked an open-ended negative externality question on the worst thing your roommate has ever done. After submitting my response, my roommate chased me out of class which ultimately resulted in me finally being able to switch roommates.
Before you read. No I'm not going on a tangent because I was lazy or didn't pay attention bc I passed this class with flying colors . .However you can tell this class was structured heavily by graduate students. Insane amount of typos on the homework, lazy test questions, asynchronous students left with no chance of ec, poorly made packets.
If youre someone that learns by teaching themselves the material you should be okay but he goes off on tangents a lot and uses lecture vids from 2020 that are to focus bc he talks so much about other things. If you can take an in person i would recommend it over this course!
i took EC 201 with him asynchronously and got a 2.0, but i took EC 202 with him in person the following semester and got a 4.0. it'll suck going to class three days a week but if you want to succeed in his class i'd recommend the in person layout. his asynchronous course videos put me to sleep every night but his in person lectures kept me awake.
For the online class he isn't bad you just have to actually watch the lectures and use the workbook pages to follow along. He updated almost all of his lectures so they're no longer just recordings from covid like some people said. That said, if you're a bad test taker don't take this class because they're 60% of your grade.
Typical tenure prof- all heavy lifting is done by graduate students and he doesn't even want you to email him with a question. He will say you can, but if you do he doesn't answer the question and instead directs you to contact the TAs...also has history of changing certain course cutoffs AFTER the last exam to make his "teaching" seem effective
I loved learning about economics in high school. Unfortunately, this professor has now ruined the subject for me. He somehow found a way to make it a mundane, boring chore. It is extremely lecture-heavy, and I felt he explained things in an unnecessarily complicated manner. Ackerman is extremely inaccessible as well.
Ackerman is a decent guy and can be entertaining, but I would not recommend taking EC 202 ONLINE. He did not keep up with posting the lecture videos and often left you hanging. Homework would often have mistakes as well. The class itself is easy, regardless, but the professor isn't the best. I would recommend it in person or not with him.
Ackermann is great, he just explains everything in very specific ways. If you take him I highly recommend you go out of your way to learn concepts in YouTube or any other way that will help you in specific!
Don't take this class online, as a matter of fact, don't take this class if you don't have to. Its hard to figure out what to study for the finals because instead of a practice exam, there are practice questions on every single unit, like I'm not going through all those questions just for only half of them to be on the exam.
I just thought it was kind of stupid that we couldnt use calculators or aa note card on the exam but in my micro class we could. idk the math is divison with big nubers and multiplication, just saves so much time when you get to use a calculator, and there are many formulas to memorize.
For the online class its tests and homework for correctness. Thats it. If you're not a good test taker, then don't bother.
Mr. Ackerman is great! He always has a positive attitude and presents his lectures in an engaging manner. He provides very helpful guided notes for lectures and great resources for studying, especially for exams. Overall, this course is difficult, but he makes the workload manageable and definitely looks out for the student's best interest.
He is one of my funniest professors, and is always energetic and excited to teach. However, you really need to do well on the exams to get a 4.0. Overall, fun guy to be around, and the class isn't terrible so long as you stay on top of things.
Its very hard to manage the workload while also trying to study and really understand the material. Ackerman is a nice guy! but the lecture topics aren't explained in a fully coherent way. It feels like every question on the exam has a double meaning and designed to trick you rather than test your knowledge.
DO NOT take this class online. If you end up in it, get a good tutor to explain everything he doesn't. He gives workbook pages to follow along the videos with, which is nice, but they are vague. The actual exams are different from the practice ones, too. He also says to not reach out to him, which is strange to me, as he's literally the professor.
The exams are very difficult and the way Ackerman teaches the content is very difficult to understand. The exams are also a huge portion of the grade so if you do bad on them it will drop your grade significantly.
test heavy (you get to drop one exam) so you have to do REALLY GOOD on at least one to get 4.0, this material and the horrible way he explains it gives me a headache every time I try and study
PROF. ACKERMAN'S CLASS WAS MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE! I highly recommend taking his class if you are needing an Econ credit. He is super funny and his exams are respectable, considering the course criteria. The workload isn't heavy at all, and he truly wants to help students succeed.
Literally the funniest prof ever. Such an amazing guy and you can really tell that he cares abt the class and has passion for what he does. I was undecided before coming to college but after taking his class, made me want to pursue an econ degree. Funny lectures, 3 midterms and 1 final exam but only 3 exam grades count, really helpful study guides.
He is better than all the other econ professors, very difficult online and he is not very accessible. Grading is easier than most other classes.
Took this class online and had a great experience. The lectures are easy to understand and connect well to the homework. Provided practice problems/exams are extremely helpful and usually pop up on exams. One exam drops and the grading is more relaxed than most classes. As someone who has never taken econ I really enjoyed this class!
do not skip the lectures or else you will know literally nothing. the exams are some of the hardest i've ever taken so stay on top of it. if you want a good grade you neeeedddd to do well on the tests.
Professor Ackerman was one of the BEST professors I have had at Michigan State. These comments saying this class is tough and he is a bad teacher, y'all do not know what college is. All of these comments saying this class was awful, you seriously have never taken an upper level class before.
Professor Ackerman is an incredible economics professor. If you pay attention in class, use the workbook, and actually study for the exams, you will have no problem succeeding. His comments in class are funny and do actually make sense if you are paying attention to the lecture.
Very nice and funny guy. Really like his teaching and personality. In his class however, he didn't allow calculators or cheat sheets like every other professor. His 3.5 was also 4.0 in other classes. Despite him being a very good teacher, I'd rather have easier access to a 4. Recommendation is to choose a different one. Attendance is manditory.
To succeed in this class I would review all my notes after the lecture and make my own sheet for each unit of all the really important concepts and definitions. I also constantly reviewed the homework's and practiced them as well as the practice problems and practice exams. If you study those a lot you will do good on the exams.
I would say that this class is pretty doable as a freshman. He gives a lot of resources and I believe that the homework assignments (both completion and accuracy) and especially the study guides both give a lot of information to help when it comes to exams. This class demands a lot of effort though so make sure you're staying on track.
Class Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
43%
Textbook Required
0%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Stable
+0.07 avg changeRatings by Course
EC201
3.3
(27)EC202
3.1
(54)ECON201
2.8
(4)Difficulty by Course
ECON201
3.8
EC201
3.3
EC202
3.3