Lectures are not understandable.

Can't understand her lectures since English is not her first language. Often misinterprets questions asked in the class.

She is very knowledgeable, however she could be rude and uncaring at times. A lot of times, she would tell me to forward my concerns to the course coordinator, and as a result, I could not engage with her directly when I needed to.

Awful

Her lectures are useless as its hard understanding her accent.

She's so nice but she is genuinely terrible at teaching, switch out while you can.

A really really caring and kind-hearted professor but really struggles to teach the necessary techniques to solve certain kinds of problems encountered in assignments.

It would have been better to have gone to see the Pelé movie...

Good luck trying to pass with her. It's not simply hard, it's DARK SOULS level of HARD. If you take a class with her get ready to give up on others if you wish to get a passing grade!

Not really good at teaching

A teach that is constantly annoyed with her students for the wrong reasons.

Karina is helpful in some perspective but she did not so good in supporting students on piazza. She does not have patience to answer question. Also, some of her answers are very disorgainzed and lack of logic. The teaching team is also a mess. Some of TAs just do not show up in their office hours.

Misleading and contradicted instruction.

lots of attitude coming from her.

bad teaching abilities and tends to blame students for her poor teaching abilities / responsibilities

Messing up the data so these numbers will never be reliable!

It's easier to run

She tried to ruin many students' lives by falsely accusing them of academic misconduct over tutorials that are worth barely anything. Please avoid her if you care about your mental health.

For someone who teaches how to communicate Mathematical statements and logical statements into English and vice versa, she has shockingly terrible communication skills. Lectures are not engaging. Excessive homework.Please assign students to teams instead of leaving it up to them, as many students are forced to do the assignments alone otherwise!

She didn't seem to care at all about students learning. I went to office hours and she presented herself resting her head on her hand and frowning at me. I was not given any useful feedback and was told what I should have been doing instead of what I could do to improve. Lectures are also not helpful because she isn't good at explaining concepts

bad prof

does not care about student learning

Her examples in lectures are so confusing, I have to spend an eternity outside of class just to understand the content by myself. IMO the pre-class quizzes completely made the lecture useless, however you have to attend the lecture. Her voice is so annoying that I wanted to leave every class.

unprofessional and can't teach at all. Assignments and exams are full of typos and mistakes. Some of the questions and grading rubrics don't make any sense, due to her poor English and lack of logic. She is rude towards students. Students are just numbers. Grading "seems" anonymous but it really isn't. 1 word to describe this course? Contradiction.

Literally so bad, ignoring the correct solutions to midterm questions and only living in her own world. Doesn't grade properly.

She can't grade stuff correctly and is often incoherent in regrade request discussion. Multiple other students have pointed this out. Also her English is subpar and does contribute to a suboptimal learning environment.

Her lectures are long and she speaks in a condescending way when you ask something on piazza. We had 5 short exams and a final. Did not give any prep material for the final, told us to study tutorials then the final was nothing like them. Absurdly difficult. Had an A in the course, but failed the final. I pray I don't get her again.

This professor conducts herself in an immature and unprofessional manner. This professor speaks condescendingly to students, prides herself in 'answering quickly', in a mass produced low-quality way. This professor puts herself as above the students, in a position to corral the students and provide rebuttals instead of working with them.

Professor has horrid grammar and very low-level english speaking/communication skills. Very defensive when it comes to receiving valuable and constructive feedback. Concepts aren't explained thoroughly and the final exam is absolutely nothing like the tutorials (which she recommended to study). The 5 star reviews are botted -- Please ignore them

You could have better learning outcomes by spending money reselling rep rollies rather than spending money on this god-forsaken course.

"You really don't need anything else besides what we give here, and if you are doing well in all tutorial questions, that is a good thing, and you will probably be fine! Don't drive yourself crazy!" Famous last words (2 days before the final)

Hard final, if you can't pass it you can't pass the course. And all the parielearn thingy is just confusing and diturbing. hard course.

She does not care about her students' well-being, you can probably lose a limb and she wouldn't care. Extreme circumstances won't get you an exempt, you'll just get laughed at in front of the class. We were also extremely unprepared for the final and there was no way the supplied tutorial questions were enough to help us succeed on the final.

absolutely terrible professor, used the 2023w term 2 class as lab rats while trying to implement a new system of auto graded examlets and final exam to compensate for her laziness and unwillingness to do her job. so so many bugs happened due to the autograded questions and she did not lift a finger to fix almost any of it.

Ignore the 5 star ratings, they are completely botted and anyone who has taken this course will know of it. The entire syllabus switched to online in a very unprofessional manner, almost every exam had multiple bugs and issues which would cause you to fail - and you wouldn't be compensated for their errors. Almost no useful study material provided.

no comment

Karina is very nice and kind. Until she realizes her average is too high. Final is pass to pass the class no matter how hard you worked during the term, WHO CARES! If you cant pass the final, you dont pass the class! OK it was a fair final but how do I study when we are not encouraged to search online and only use tutorial and in class worksheets

She made every lecture a joy to attend, her slides were entertaining and she clearly has passion for what she is teaching. The labs were clear and very fun to work on. However, she used this term's class (W2) as a test to switch testing entirely to PraireLearn, and every examlet we had had major flaws with the autograder.

gave us the easiest material to study, and told us it was academic misconduct to use past finals, then made the final incredibly hard. also changed to prairielearn, and inputting answers took 1/4 of your time away from answering questions. avoid at all costs, i don't know how this is allowed.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS. The midterms (examlets) were full of bugs and extremely easy, which made you feel like you had a grasp and didn't reflect the level of testing later. Course is pass final=pass course and the final was super hard and full of content of a level that we had not practiced during lectures or labs. We were lab rats for the course.

She changed the course to be on PrarieLearn, made most of the course pretty easy and then realized her mistake and then made an incredibly difficult final. The problem with the final was that it was only 13 questions with 2 of them being marked wrong. The autograded portion of the exam was marked in front of you which was incredibly stressful.

Extremely difficult to work with. Constantly complained about us, when in fact it was a "her" issue. Don't understand why she would not allow us to learn from our examlets when that is the only material we have to use to study for the final exam. Final exam was difficult completely different than the actually material learned in the course.

not good. teaching style in class is yelling.

course is difficult, requires a lot of effort. made examlets easy, final exam was completely dif

Was averaging around 80% until the final which I failed and immediately failed the course. Made examlets super easy and then decided to make the final extremely hard with questions we've never seen before. I wish she owned up to her mistakes instead of making such a harsh final to obviously get the averages lower. Don't wish my worst enemy to take

She does not properly communicate with students. She uses really disrespectful language to respond to students.

Avoid her at all costs

Interesting content, although hard to find applicable, unbearable lectures, and hard to find support outside of class.

Content is so interesting which makes it a real shame that she is awful as a teacher and person. She is extremely rude to students and unfair with mistakes in her examlets. I wish you could avoid her but just take the class and try your best to look past how she acts.

She could come off as quite passive aggressive when answering student's question although it could just be the way she communicates. However, she expected us to learn how to type special symbols in latex for final exam proofs which adds unnecessary stress for students. Didn't even try to confirm if copying from formula sheet works.

She wants everyone to fail. This is not a joke by the way, the final was nearly impossible. And she has a terrible attitude towards students, calling us greedy for marks.

Literally no study material and the final was impossible. She's rude and condescending and always trying to scale down and make everyone fail. She makes me hate One Piece. Take an electrical engineering class if you want to do well.

Insane final

For someone who graduated with a postgraduate degree in Teaching in Higher Education, you need to go back and retake that degree. When students ask questions she replies super condescendingly. She has no respect for students. She makes examlets super easy then makes the final extremely hard. Avoid at all cost. Worst prof ever.

I concur with everything said in past reviews. The final is ridiculous. PrairieLearn software is horrendous. Regarding Karina, specifically, she is really mean on Piazza :( Her explanations (especially the pre-lab videos) are often unhelpful, too. The course content is lowkey interesting, but do whatever you can to get a different 121 prof.

Karina's the worst instructor I've had in three years at UBC. She had an awful final exam poorly structured using PrairieLearn. She has unproressional communication skills as she's always in a rude/mocking tone. Her knowledge of the material is also suspect as I have repeatedly found errors in her Piazza posts.

Karina is one of the most inconsiderate proffestors ive ever encountered in my time at UBC. She is direspecftful to students, in lecture and on piazza. She made the examlets pretty easy and then went made the final insane. I am confident that everyone failed this year so unfortunately we will have to deal with her again next year.

If you want to use your student mental health services coverage - take this course. Save it all for after the final too cuz that's when you'll need to max it out. The psychological stress of watching your marks disappear each question and the acceptance that you can't pass regardless if you had a high avg really pushes ppl over the limit.

Material conveyed clearly in lectures. Throughout the term you are given false confidence through easy/fair examlets (biweekly) and labs (weekly) that match lectures. But the final exam would make a 4th year cry. Due to prof's unwillingness to accept feedback or help, your final grade will not match your level of understanding of the course.

evil woman i genuinely dont understand what she expects from us maybe we were supposed to get the cs degree first then do her final

Made the course super easy and the examlets (pseudo-midterms) basically pattern recognition, then proceeded to bomb everyone on the final. Gave pretty much ZERO practice material which remotely resembled the difficulty of the final. Everyone I talked to walked out of the final with a sub-30 autograded. Absolute clown of a final.

The course was straightforward in the start, with the examlets being easy and relating to the lectures. But then she decides to get make a final straight from the depths of hell. However you prepare and how much you prepare, you will never see questions like the questions in the final in your life and if you fail the final you fail the course.

Take this course if you have a death wish. This course needs to get rid of the fail-final-fail-course policy or nobody aint taking this class lmfao

Yells a lot in lectures. Made final insanely hard

Evidently the CPSC121 team did not learn at all from last year's mishap with Prairielearn. The all-or-nothing grading system is completely unreasonable. Why bother taking this course at all with a fail-final-fail-course policy when you make your final impossible?

Doesn't matter if you studied super hard because you'll do just as well if you never studied. Imagine working so hard the whole semester thinking that if you put in the effort for every lab, class, tutorial, OH, grind at home everyday and even harder for the final just to get

Worst instructor. The stuff you get in your final is nowhere near what you learn in class.

Honestly don't know what to say. The gatekeeping is strong with this one. Course material is interesting, labs are fun, and TAs are chill af. This prof is an enigma. Complains when we perform better than expected on the examlets and gives us practice questions that are minuscule in complexity when compared with the final.

she got mad because our average was “too high” and final was super hard (possible in order to scale us down) but the problem is the class is if you fail the final you fail the course.

Absolutely preposterous final. It is one thing to have a difficult final in order to scale down inflated grades, but it is another to do this when passing the class is reliant on passing the final. I truly don't understand the point of this format. Also,the practice final exam was quite frankly misguiding and should not have been released at all.

The professor clearly didn't learn from last year, where around the same thing happened in the final and then someone ended it after the final cause they failed. You think the prof and UBC themselves would fix this after like this happened. BUT no, they decided to do the same thing, arguably the final being harder this year.

The final exam was MUCH MUCH harder than any Examlet or practice material we were given. And the fail final = fail entire course policy is extremely unfair considering how difficult the final was

What a class this was…

Horrible Professor. Avoid her class at all costs. Attending all lectures, labs, tutorials, and doing all of the readings had no impact. Started prep way before finals, had constant office hours, and had multiple study groups for the course. Very doable examlets, with 75% of the final being extremely unfair, which is insane for a pass-fail final.

Simple, clear lectures. Horrible pre-lab videos that leave you confused. Unhelpful in office hours and piazza. Intentionally aims to lower grades. Insane final for a pass-fail course. No preparation. Avoid her.

Edit: I take back whatever I said. what was that final....

don't recommend this prof. Tough and uncaring

Avoid her at all costs! The course is all over the place, with things still being adjusted on PrairieLearn. The prof is very condescending and has a superiority complex over students. They gave us a final that was way too hard and gave us sample exams to practice that were nowhere near the level of the final. Tutorials were quite useless as well.

I don't recommend Karina. Unprofessional to students, made final exam way to hard. Avoid.

avoid at all cost.

The course was enjoyable, and examlets went well up until the final.This term's final was terrible. Most people I know failed it. It was so bad they removed the pass fail policy on the final for this term. Be careful, don't think you're safe because you know the course. I'm hoping for your sake that they learned from their CHOICES (not mistakes).

Karina turned a genuinely interesting and fun course into the most stressful class I have ever taken because of her poor organization and unfair grading scheme on PrairieLearn. Do not take this class unless it is required for your degree!

Horrifying. Many students failed due to how terrible the course policy vs. difficulty was. The prof was often rude and unhelpful telling people to "think outside the box." Either take it when Karina is not teaching or find a way to take only this course and master it to a degree that is not taught within it.

Horrible final exam

Genuinely the worse professor I have ever had. Way too many assignments, bad grading choices. Lectures were terrible, tons of misleading info. She was rude, condescending. She reported me to the undergrad director for "violations of respectful learning environment" because I submitted regrade requests. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

horrendous, dont know who let her start teaching.

DONT TAKE HER CLASS

Genuinely the worst professor I've had in 4 years at UBC. Frequent errors in lecture, and has incorrectly graded work which suggests a limited grasp of the course material (even tho shes been teaching for years). But I wonder how much of this is just a function of her poor English ability (far below what I'd expect from a prof at a top NA uni)