Rich is smarter than any man i know, but he does not answer questions. He walks away from you without answering what you had asked. He also personally attacks people in front of the enire class.

He's a very intelligent man, but you will have no idea how he grades, until you get your papers back. He does not know how to explain what he actually wants, and changes his mind 160 times about projects. He really likes participation, you HAVE to be able to think for yourself, but think in a way that he does!.. its weird.

A great guy, & the information presented should have been extremely interesting. He's very random in his teaching, jumping from one thought to the next without making a coherent connection. He isn't clear on what he wants from you and does not clarify. It is confusing& I often felt stupid & frustrated. I DON'T RECOMMEND HIM.

Very easy if you basically are his slave and like to do things that do not make sense no tests just 3 papers he grades very hard average grade 17/25. Not including your group presentation, good luck or get out

pretty easy grading the papers.. our class has 3 main papers and no final exam. His African accent is cool but he has difficulty explaining directions. Easy to talk to but gets upset easily when no one speaks in class. Not too bad of a class, I would take him again.

I didn't get much out of this class. He was clearly very passionate about politics but most of his lectures were personal rants that made little to no sense. His standards were incredibly low and it would be easy to slide by doing next to nothing in his class.

This prof is very boring. He would go on rants about things not related to the class. He would say he would put reviews on blackboard and never did. He never tells you what your grade is throughout the semester and he never replies to e-mails. Goodluck if you take him!

He was extremely confused and not helpful at all. I'm leaving the class with a strong hate for sociology..

When we didn't do well on the first test, he decided to change his teaching approach. The problem, he did this for every test. The inconsistency made all of my studying pointless. I feel like he thinks this is a philosophy class, not a soc class. This interesting subject was became so confusing and frustrating. I do not recommend him at all.

Not only was I incredibly disappointed with this professor, I was even more disappointed with Grand Valley for hiring him. I hated this class with all my heart. He didn't listen to student suggestions and was unreasonable. His logic makes no sense and he couldn't even back up his answers sometimes. Awful, awful, awful class. Do not take!

A straight A student, I found this class incredibly discouraging. My major is Soc but Yidana made me dread going to class. Test questions were insanely confusing and he did not adequately explain anything. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. The stress associated with it will increase as the semester progresses.

Nice guy, terrible prof. Don't take his class.

I do not recommend this prof. he is very difficult to understand. Although he is pretty entertaining in class, it is not worth the confusion with assignments, tests, and grades.

If you want jargon and big words take this class. Presentations and explanations could be clearer. Exam made no sense, essay formats would help on exams.

I would not recommened taking Yidana as a professor. Although he is very funny, he is very confusing. During lectures, he tends to drift off onto another topic that has nothing to do with the subject and I feel as though the class was very UNORGANIZED. There were times when he was suppose to post up the exam study questions and would wait 2 days b4

Yidana is confusing, unclear, unprofessional, and disinterested in teaching our class. He is always late; he was an hour and a half late for the very first class of the semester. His PowerPoints do not make sense, the readings are terrible, and class discussions result in him criticizing our opinions when we don't agree with him.

I found his class difficult to follow and often times confusing. Every class is a powerpoint lecture. He barely used our textbook, leading to more confusion. His exams were pretty straight-forward in that if you reviewed the powerpoints you could do fairly well.

He has a very unorganized way of teaching. He bouncees all over with you tube videos and movies. If you like to stick to hard facts and less opinions then DO NOT take this course.

Overall this class was not that hard, like unbarable, but it was a challenge. My advice is if you must take him then for the Final TAKE THE EXAM NOT THE PAPER!!! EXAM YES:).. PAPER NOOOOOO:( I had to learn this the hard way.

I did not like this class, nor was I a fan of the prof. He is a very funny African man with his accent, but as a teacher he is unorganized and he makes his powerpoints very difficult to follow. Most test questions are so long that you don't even understand the question. Despite all of this, I passed this class with an A-, and so can you.

Professor Yidana....he was a very funny, nice, African American guy. Yet his teaching style wasn't proficient. He was all over the place with points and writing on the board. Any written assignment... Good luck. Grade is mainly on the 4 exams and final. Take a different professor if possible.

This class was difficult and confusing to understand. The professor's notes were not clear and all over the place. His powerpoints barely made sense and most of the notes he wrote on the board you could not read. His exam questions were too long and half the time I did not even understand what he was trying to ask. I do not recommend him at all.

Very unclear, misguided professor. Seemed to be all over the place both with the lecture and with the course schedule. Content and directions were inconsistent. Hand-written comments on papers weren't legible.

While Yidana seems very smart and knows sociology well, he criticized students who gave differing opinions and was very rude and cocky. I found it very hard not to literally walk out of class because of his attitude. I did well in the class by rereading all the chapters in depth. He also makes a 96% and A, a 93% an A-, a 90% is a B+

Prof Yidana is a great guy and very interesting to listen to during lectures, I believe he is very qualified and brings real-life experiences to class. Unfortunately, he is not clear about his grading criteria and his expectations for assignments like papers. He has left the entire class very frustrated with our end of term paper.

His is unclear on his lectures. He makes powerpoints but doesnt follow them at all but still expects yout to learn it. Not many options to get points so if you do bad on the exams you will do bad in the class. Overall, i would choose a different professor.

I wish I had looked at Rate My Professor BEFORE taking this class with Yidana. His lectures are unclear, and he has no organization when it comes to writing down notes on the board. He doesn't give a clear study guide, and when it comes time for tests he says to read the chapters again, which is not helpful at all. He has good intentions, though.

He has a thick Ghana accent, so he can be difficult to understand. No electronics are not allowed in class, he takes attendance daily and participation matters. He grades exams weird: there might be 40 questions, worth 30 points, so you can only answer 30 questions or 25 plus one multiple choice- if you answer one more, you get a zero on the final.

Very nice, cool, unique man. Has a worldly perspective sense he is from Ghana and has a cool/thick Ghana accent. It can be very difficult to meet his expectations. He is very unclear and very confusing. He explains things very poorly. He expects us to know what he is talking about at all times with little/no explanation. It is very frustrating.

Very unorganized. His tests are very difficult as they are multiple choice with "some right answers" but you have to pick "the best right answer" power points don't line up to what he is teaching, his writing are scribbles and all over the board. One of my most stressful classes

Professor Yidana was very confusing and misleading. He didn't understand students opinions very well. It always seemed like any students answer was wrong. He does give quite a lot of random extra credit and on one test he gives everyone a 100%. There is a lot of assigned readings but no homeowork.

He's very unclear with what he wants and his emails are quite pointless. He seems to be very cocky and didn't answer questions asked in email. Always referred you back to the syllabus which states very little about the class.

Probably the most intelligent man I have ever come across. Very lecture heavy and if you don't listen and process it, you won't pass the exams. He is unclear of what he wants and makes you figure it out yourself, not very connected with his students but has a swagger that makes you trust him. Intimidating but nice. Funny but serious. Hard class.

Very unclear on what he wants and when he wants it. Did not follow syllabus at all. Although class was difficult and dreadful, he was a very knowledgeable man and very passionate about what he's teaching. Tangents are a definite problem though.

Overall he is a great guy. But a professor not so much. He is very unclear with due dates and is confusing during the lectures. If you want to pass, make sure you show up to every class and read the weekly chapters that are assigned because he knows when you don't read them.

Doesn't give a clear explanation of what he wants, and his feedback is confusing and vague. If you don't understand a question he gives, often times he doesn't understand why you are confused, and may just assume you didn't read. Could be a great professor, he is brilliant, but poor at teaching. If you are a good writer, may not be what he wants.

He's a fascinating person but not the best prof. Grades intro level class like an upper level class and is very unclear of his expectations. Classes were usually discussion based and he didn't lecture much or say more than what students said which left lots of questions. All exams had a short answer and his grading on writing was very hard

I appreciated that he gave us full credit for a couple of assignments due to the circumstances of the pandemic. HOWEVER, each week we had hours of documentaries to watch and/or confusing powerpoints and announcements to read. It felt like he used a thesaurus to write everything and was often unclear of what he expected from us.

His expectations for students are very confusing, and he is unclear about every assignment. His tests are handwritten by himself with very confusing prompts. He will have you turn in summaries through email, which makes no sense because he can post assignments through Blackboard. Heavy lectures and very unclear about what he wants from students.

Professor Yidanna is an educated man & it shows. However he is not a good professor. Classes are not organized or structured to give students what they need to succeed. I think he knows that his teaching methods are awful and therefore assigns ridiculous and tedious assignments of little to no substance. Take someone else if you can.

He is not the most reliable professor in the world to say the least. You can tell he cares about the subject matter, Specifically technology and its sociological impact, but there's only so many times you can hear a man self promote his own book. Grading criteria is extremely confusing, he will go off syllabus (he had to have made it 4 years ago).

I'm someone who does well in school and generally enjoys classes, but this was unbearable. Yidana hardly ever answered questions directly, he graded people poorly because they didn't submit things exactly as he preferred (though he never made expectations clear), and his classes were VERY information heavy. He was a nice man, but I don't recommend.

Professor Yidana is a nice man but his class was very information heavy. Attendance is mandatory as tests cover his slides which rarely had information from the textbook. There were several small pop group projects as well. He writes tests himself and many of the questions are confusing or worded poorly.

Works well with students and taking their opinions on time needed for due dates. However, his grading is weird and I never really knew what he wanted completed each week. Every week something was changed from the syllabus and we would get AT LEAST 5 emails about change of plans. He does help if you need extra time for good reasons.

He was a nice guy, really respectable and it was very clear he knew what he was talking about. Like he really knows his stuff, but he's not great at teaching it. It was just hard to understand the main thing he wanted you to grasp from his lectures because there was so much stuff. He means well but is lowkey confusing

Avoid this professor if you can - his teaching is unorganized and his grading is harsh. However, Unstuck AI can be a helpful study tool to prep for his class. Overall, a frustrating experience.

Lectures are unorganized and are hard to understand. Test questions are worded weird and are hard to understand. He is passionate about his work but tends to go off track.

prof yidana has an interesting teaching style and his instructions are often very unclear. i have no idea what he looks for in assignments because he grades very soft, so if you want an easy A, go for it. but if you want to learn, go elsewhere.

Very confusing instructions, feedback is unhelpful, literally told me he rarely gives full credit for writing assignments, which they all are, grades with unreasonable expectations (example - one of his assignments is free write and he marked me down for not connecting ideas not in any lectures or book as if I was supposed to know to include it),

There is a lot of reading assigned, but I didn't do any of it. General themes can be gathered from lecture slides. All graded material is writing based. This is essentially a writing class with a theme of social issues. Do not miss any assignment or you will be knocked down a whole letter grade. whole class is only 450 points total.