2.0
Quality4.0
Difficulty12%
Would Retake83
Reviews12%
Would Retake
83
Reviews
Rating DistributionOfficial
5
9
4
7
3
9
2
13
1
45
What Students Say
“Professor Judi is generally an approachable person”
CIS2430 - 1.0 rating“Nice person, however terrible at explaining things, extremely complicated and somewhat impossible projects, with extra things being added at the last second”
CIS2430 - 1.0 ratingClass Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
28%
Textbook Required
41%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-0.71 avg changeRatings by Course
CIS2500
4.1
(7)CIS2750
4.0
(1)CIS2520
3.3
(3)CIS1500
3.1
(7)CIS4450
2.0
(1)Difficulty by Course
CIS2750
5.0
CIS2430
4.3
CIS3760
4.3
CIS4450
4.0
CIS2520
3.3
Reviews (83)
Very approachable and friendly, willing to help, enjoys teaching, hard marker with unclear assignments
Great professor. Clear about content. Provides constant advice on course message boards for those having trouble. 10% of your mark is clicker questions in-class, so you might want to attend. She took the class outside onto Johnston Green to build snowmen to demonstrate the concept of linked lists.
Judi is a great prof looking to help you all the time! She will test you on your ability to program throughly. Her exam was fair, and was manageable as long as you studied. Assignments can be difficult at time, but are do-able.
I suggest not to take her course if it is not mandatory. Her marking is tough and requires at least a 30-40 hours of work on each assignment per week.
She is awesome but her exams are pretty hard... Her assingments are crazy hard too. Goodluck :)!!!
Fairly easy course IF you put in the time and go to class. Generally gives the answers to assignments and exams during class.
An incredibly useful course, but requires more work than you are used to at this point in your degree. That is not a bad thing, it will just seem more difficult than it actually is. She is interesting and engaging, very approachable, as with most Guelph CS profs.
Arguably the worst lecturer I have ever heard in my 4 year's at the University. She frequently changes assignment expectations weeks after the assignment is assigned, she changes her policy on labs as the semester goes and is incapable of putting together coherent lectures. Its a shame people like this are in our educational system.
Judi is one of my favorite profs ever! Her lectures are not boring and she really cares about her students! If you have a chance to take a class with her do it!! She Rocks!!
Clear in class, a geeky sense of humour, which is cool if you enjoy that sort of thing, but it at least keeps things somewhat casual. She's easy to get through to if you use the class forums online.
So far, she is the worst prof. that I have had.
she's horrible. stopped going to lectures - they were useless. intensity picked up quickly. she's really awkward and too geeky for her own good. annoying voice and mannerisms. The assignments were interesting but she was terrible. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.
Judi is great at helping you if you go visit her during office hours or message her on the forums. However, her assignments were always ambiguous, and further, she would change the requirements often a few days before it was due. Lectures were often pointless and "google-able". The material was not difficult, but it was easier to learn on my own.
Judi is extremely helpful if you go seek her help with a positive outlook. Computer science is very challenging to teach and it's hard to make everyone happy but she does her best. Great Prof!
Judi is a great prof and continue to teach us more everyday.
EXTREMELY STRICT
Assignments and Lab Exams are extremely vague. All sections in my semester couldn't even start on the major assignment until about 5 days before it was due as the core components of the assignment were not covered until week 6 of the semester. While she has lots of office hours and responds on the course site, often hard to get a straight answer
The assignment papers are extremely ambiguous. In the forum on the website for the course (moodle), it is loaded with questions, while Judi responds to them, often the responses are fairly vague. The first assignment paper is disorganized and looks unfinished.
Overall she is a nice Prof. however when it comes to school work nice doesn't always cut it. Her assignments are horrible in the fact that they are extremely ambiguous and most of her responses to questions concerning assignments are brief to none. Would definitely not recommend her to anyone wanting to take CIS*2430.
Seems like it was her first time teaching the Object Oriented CIS2430 course. Assignment outlines were vague and require clarification both in and out of lectures. First assignment is nothing short of a dumpster fire. Lab Exams are easy if you know your stuff. Hard to fail, but be prepared to work for a decent grade.
Good person but her assignments are so confusing and she does not explain well
Nice person, however terrible at explaining things, extremely complicated and somewhat impossible projects, with extra things being added at the last second. Even though I received a good grade, I worked much harder than most other classes.
Professor Judi is generally an approachable person. Unfortunately, her assignments really leave a lot to be desired. Once you finally wrap your head around what the requirements are, she quickly changes her mind on what you need to do, often times making it more complicated. If I didn't already know most of the material I would have struggled.
Judi is the worst professor ever! Her lectures are so useless and assignments are so unclear and she kept changing her assignments on the last minute! She's making us doing some impossible projects, and she can't even finish them on time!
Way to open ended in assignment instructions
2430 is a disaster of a class. Both assignments were so vague and didn't really explain what to do. I had to dig through discussion posts to figure what we had to do, and on top of that, she would change what was required and only say in discussions. Lab quizzes were also vague in terms of rules and computers we had to use were laggy af. 0/10 .
For A1 she was keep posting stuff until the last day A1 was due, and other people covered others stuff, just a bad prof in general
The course was set up in a way where students were teaching themselves and teaching each other in an attempt at learning collaboratively. Students got the freedom to program what they wanted and in what object oriented language they wanted. Course evaluations were set up in a way where students could attack each other's abilities/grades.
Horrible grading style. You get marked on your time management in a University level course! We aren't 8 year old's that need to be forced to follow assignment schedules! Nothing is explained well in class and it's a race to mindlessly try to copy everything on the board before she switches slides. I spent more time trying to learn DnD than java.
Judi is a nice person and very easy to talk to. Unfortunately she is a bad prof. Her assignments (60% of the course) are extremely vague, and have adjustments made on them everyday til the day they are due. Students are forced to scour the course website for any insight on the assignments. She makes programming stressful and hard
Very vague assignments, adds in new details to the assignments everyday, and you have to learn DnD to even know how to do these assignments. Very bad lectures and teaching style. Has a competence exam system which is very useless and stupid. Overall should never teach this course again.
Assignments were very vague and hard to understand. The expectations were not given clearly and the assignments were not outlined well. Judi lectures decently well, and was relatively accessible, could have been a great class if it was not for the assignment structure.
Last two assignments are work intensive and the exam can be a bit tricky. Lectures are instructive, and Judi is easy to talk to and understanding of situations. She answers her emails quickly. If you start early on the assignments you shouldn't have too much trouble.
This is a horrible prof that should be avoided at all costs. Final exam was badly written, making it impossible to do well in. Average on final exam ended up being under 60%. Grades were not curved. You will learn nothing valuable from this professor, and your GPA will suffer due to her incompetence.
Had Judi for CIS*2430 and she was by far my favourite prof at UoG. Genuinely interesting assignments that she designed to prepare us for the angel of death in the following semester (and yes, it did help a lot). She is easy to talk to and very helpful as long as you show interest in the course.
Judi has an inability to coherently answer any question posed to her. When her assignments are full of confusing messaging she simply says "Read the assignment" instead of helping. When much of the class was struggling she made a extremely hard exam designed to be hard to finish let alone to do well on. Just a class act all around
Horrible
Very sweet and approachable, but the assignments are a mess and the lectures are useless
Worst Professor I've had yet, ask her a question, she says she answered it.
This is by far my least favourite professor at Guelph. Her assignments are vague and you spend the majority of your time trying to figure out what she seems to want. The top of her course outline is a politically charged paragraph, which is completely unnecessary and unprofessional, especiially in an objective field like computing. Be warned.
Generally nice as a person but not a good prof. CIS2430 is normally only offered in the fall, enough people failed her course that the department had to try to scramble to offer the course in the winter to avoid too many people being behind a year. assignments were overly large and overly difficult.
Class was very disorganized, assignments were hard to understand and often left me guessing as to what she wanted. Grading scheme was bad too, felt like it punished small mistakes instead of checking if we understood course content. Judi herself was nice but the way she ran her course as a whole was extremely disorganized.
Assignments are very confusing, expect assignments to be constantly changed up to the due date. Content is not hard but trying to get a high grade with her marking scheme is. Generally a nice person and seems to care but this does not reflect in the work.
Really tough class. I was expecting more at the start of the semester because of how nice and polite she comes across. But in actuality this class was so unorganized and created so many personal difficulties for me during COVID. The assignments were confusing and so hard to understand and the tests were horribly designed. Wish I took the other prof
A nice lady but the assignments are crazy hard with very little instruction. If you ask a question she just says to look more carefully or other vague unhelpful answers. One of the most stressful classes, tons of mini assignments/labs and has useless competence interviews. I should've picked the other prof
Judi is by far the worst professor I have encountered in my experience at the University of Guelph. She is nice but her teaching format is horrible. This year we were given an e text and there were no lectures at all. Her assignment grading is horrible and her instructions are so vague. You are always left with more questions after she answers them
The book and the study material were so confusing and they should do in-person classes cause the online method was messed up as they have 3 workshops every day at the same time and students could join any workshop. Also, this course is not as difficult as she has made it.
A nice human being, a waste of a teaching spot tbh. Assignments are super vague and aren't very clear at all. Interviews are completely unnecessary and bring down your grade. She has online workshops which also included TAs teaching us most of the concepts. Final exam was writing essays, but was made super hard and lengthy ensuring no one finished
James Fraser but make a x10 harder exam with no curve
Interviews are completely unnecessary and bring down your grade. The course was disorganized. Final exam was writing essays, but was made super hard and lengthy ensuring no one finished.
This course was a disaster. Judi seems very nice, but the way she structures her exam and causes extra stress on every one of her students is astounding. The exam was the final nail in the coffin for her course. 4 essays, to be written in 2 hours. One of the worst exams and classes of all time. The Workshop structure was terrible. 0/10 professor.
Judi is a really bad professor. Her assignments are crazy difficult for an introductory OO course, her course structure is horrendous, her textbook was awful and did not help at all with completing the assignments or keeping up with the course material, and the lack of classes and useful labs really destroyed this course for me. Worst prof at UoG.
Triggering
Assignments are crazy long, some can take almost 30 hours of work, only for me to lose 10% because I did one tiny component slightly wrong that would have taken 10 minutes to fix. Assignment instructions not always clear.
She's out of her mind with these assignments, escpically assignment 3, you have to create a whole GUI with thousands of requirements to the game which takes way too long. It takes way longer to complete an assignment of this nature as you don't really get enough time to work on it.
This class has been one of the worst experiences. It is NOT beginner-friendly. The assignments provided are simply not tailored for an introductory Java course. To make matters worse, the assignment instructions are incredibly vague. She has an extremely specific grading criteria, making it a guessing game to pinpoint where mistakes were made.
I believe this class is pretty easy in terms of the content given. The assignments is a different story... Definitely start the assignment atleast 2 weeks prior to the due date otherwise you won't finish. Even with this, the instructions are very vague.
definitely not an introductory course. Assignments are super hard with very vague instructions. She never gave us practice with the topics needed for the assignments
Fine teacher but uses a very strict autograder and gives ambiguous guidelines and very little support for resubmitting or testing before submitting projects.
Worst prof Ive ever had, doesnt encourage learning, makes things hard for her own ego. She acts friendly in class but one-on-one she has been very rude. Her assignments are unnecessarily hard, it's also very strict so it's not uncommon to get a 15%. Her class was also very unorganized as a whole.
Assignments are long and vague and prof is lazy.
The assignments are crazy
Says the class is an intro to object oriented programming but gives assignments that are no where near intro level. Gives very vague assignment instructions and autogrades assignments with a strict autograder that isn't very generous. She's also very condesending and passive aggressive when emailing her. She has made me hate java.
She seems very nice during lectures but is unforgiving when it comes to anything else. She does not teach any syntax during lectures. This is supposed to be an introductory course but her assignments are extremely unrealistic. Her autograder is very strict and your assignment can turn into a 20% for nothing. Worst class I've taken in uni.
Assignments are ridiculously hard. Judi is a nice person and is very responsive but the fact that these assignment instructions are the size of a novel and still leave you with questions is ridiculous. These assignments are not reflective of an introductory course in any way and always need extensions because they're too tedious to complete.
Brutal, assignments take a ton of time. Pretty sure she just likes bragging about her auto grader.
Judi is an engaging prof, however I'm convinced that she makes her assignments with the goal of encouraging students to drop out of this program. Get ready to spend 40+ hours on each assignment only to still fail thanks for her garbage autograder. Unreal that she does research at the university on "effective learning styles" and still pulls this.
The classes are okay but the assignments were the end of me. Im a CS major but this course did not feel like an "Intro to OOP"
Judi McCuaig is a very kind and passionate professor who genuinely appears to care about her students. Her lectures and weekly quizzes are fine. Her assignments are the problem. They are brutal for an introductory course and she gives very little grading criteria. The only saving grace was her more fair homework that can help boost your grade.
Judi, a paradoxical professor, balances kindness and cruelty. Her assignments escalate in difficulty, culminating in a challenging climax. With a diverse grading system, she ensures a holistic assessment, yet disappointingly neglects code style evaluation. Failure in Junit tests results in assignment catastrophe.
Worst prof I've ever had. Assignments are impossible to do well on, as they are graded strictly by an autograder which often results in a 30% or below on an assignment worth >=10% of your mark. Not to mention that these assignments are unclear and take around 40 hours to complete. Lectures and textbook are helpful however.
Judi has probably been the worst professor I've had since the end of my second year. Assignments 2 and 3 are incredibly hard and her descriptions give little details so you are left confused. Her lectures are entertaining and she is pretty nice, but a tough and unfair prof.
The lectures are ok, a little fast sometimes. She's good and caring but really cruel a the same time. I wouldn't have finished it if it weren't for extensions, although the last extension have penalty, which took most of my marks away. The assignments need more guidance, they were horrible but still fun. Organized moodle, I love an organized prof,
Assignments 2 and 3 took 25+ hours each, ended up getting a 55 on it without knowing what was wrong. Other than that, the rest of the course took less than 10 hours.
She gets worse ratings than she actually deserves. Lectures are interesting and she is a very informed and knowledgeable prof. Autograders are used and assignments aren't very clear sometimes, but as long as you follow the the guidelines and listen to her advice in class you'll do well.
Terrible professor. She was unable to teach or deliver assignment instructions adequately. She had a very unprofessional demeanour and was often passive-aggressive.
This was somehow the easiest yet most annoying 90% I've ever received. There's a ton of busy work, and Judi's very picky with marking. She loves to experiment so you'll be thrown in a new loop every week. Don't listen to her if she tells you she "doesn't care" how you do things - you'll get marks off for it later. Pray for a good group. Good luck.
Judi is a great person to be around, it shows that she legitimately cares about her students. That being said, the course was very poorly structured. The weekly workload is way too much even for a .75 course, expectations are very confusing, and the project will require a lot of self-study if you are unfamiliar with the technologies used.
Everyone who complains about the assignments being too long/hard don't realize they are in University. Autograder can be harsh, but you have the opportunity to resubmit once, so you should be fine. Most of the people who complain about the autograder are the ones who didn't read the assignment. Make sure you read the instructions and it's easy.
Horrible prof. Always has vague expectations on things and you lose grades on things you didn't even know to look out for. Course has more work than .75 credit course.Most of it was learning by yourself. TAs were absolutely horrible with the marking. Judi truly a terrible prof and I still do not understand why she still is a professor.
GigaKaren final boss. jesus christ..
crashes out in student discords 😭
For her first time teaching the course she's pretty good as an engineer. The lectures were decent. I liked the assignments and the autograder feature for the course. The roguelike game was sick. The exams were rough and difficult with the multi select (and fake multi select) midterms and the single select final.
Class Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
28%
Textbook Required
41%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-0.71 avg changeRatings by Course
CIS2500
4.1
(7)CIS2750
4.0
(1)CIS2520
3.3
(3)CIS1500
3.1
(7)CIS4450
2.0
(1)Difficulty by Course
CIS2750
5.0
CIS2430
4.3
CIS3760
4.3
CIS4450
4.0
CIS2520
3.3