Do not take the class with him. He is awful at actually teaching the material in a comprehensible way- basically copy pastes very dense chunks of information(straight from the textbook) that are going to be extremely hard to decipher.

Sebastiaan does not take the time to make sure any students are actually learning the material and uses slides that are straight from the textbook. He knows what he is talking about but could not explain it for the life of him. The homework and examples he gives are nothing like the tests and even the TAs for this class knows you will struggle.

Joosten seems like a decent and intelligent guy, but the class is simply awful. You learn essentially nothing from his lectures and will have no idea how to do any of the homework afterwards. His 2011 makes me miss Calc 2 and physics.

One of the worst professors I've ever had. Basically just uses everything from the book with no original material with the possible exception of the exams. Everything is fast-paced with no in-depth explanation. He blasts through the examples without checking if the class even understands what is going on. Also, tests are 75% of the grade!

Tests are worth 75 percent and he "teaches" you by showing parts of the textbook and racing through it all. Everyone in the class is extremely lost and he went the whole semester ignoring raised hands and continued to keep rapidly going through examples. Would prefer to teach myself and just read the textbooks since that's all he teaches. dont take

Awful at teaching, awful course structure, and words questions on exams in an extremely confusing way. Avoid at all costs.

Professor Joosten seems to think that since he understands the concepts he's teaching, they have to be easy to understand and he won't have to spend much time explaining them at all. His lectures go at light speed brushing over essential topics that he won't bother to explain, then assigns homework every lecture so that you have to teach yourself.

The lectures in this class are comically bad. Every class he copies and pastes huge chunks of information/proofs from the book that nobody in the class will be able to follow and absolutely not be able to understand. As an added bonus, the class moves at an extreme pace with homework after each lecture (which you probably won't be able to do).

Joosten puts walls of text copy and pasted from the book on the slides and then goes through them at light speed. he assigns homework after every lecture that I have to teach my self because he cant teach. It's clear that he's a smart man but he is the worst teacher I have ever had.

This class is nothing short of torture. Homework assigned after lecture basically amounts to flopping around for hours at a time, because you will know next to nothing useful about the material after Joostens lectures. Some problems are many many steps, and Joosten demonstrates none of it.

Complete incompetence as an instructor. You will have to teach yourself EVERYTHING. The lectures are so useless.

Jootsten you seem like a decent bloke but man is your class awful. First off your lectures are almost entirely pointless. It seems as if he takes the exact words from the textbook and puts in a slideshow and calls it a day. Secondly the lad has the audacity to make tests 75% of our grade even though he teaches niche in class. Not a proper lad!!!!

awful class. Joosten is against curves for silly reasons. He also has no conception of how to actually TEACH.

Professor Joosten does not know how to teach. He also said does not believe in curves for dumb reasons. DO NOT take 2011 with him.

Joosten really does have no redeeming qualities as a teacher. He cannot teach- lectures are so bad its laughable. These terrible lectures lead homeworks to be very difficult and exams the same. A possible solution to counteract his own incompetence in teaching would be to curve, but Joosten refuses to do this.

Please save yourself and do not take 2011 or any class with him.

At this point, if your only option for this class is to take with Joosten, do not take the class. Just wait for another semester. It is seriously not worth the pain and GPA hit that you would inevitably get by taking this class with him. He is terrible at teaching the concepts and will not curve. You will give maximal effort and still get a C.

While obviously an amazing computer scientist and mathematician, Professor Joosten is simply out of touch with mere mortal students, and what should be an enjoyable relatively straightforward course has become the bane of the existence of many prospective programmers' technical GPAs. Shrugs off D+ midterm class average with no curve offered.

Ruined my semester. He doesn't teach, he screenshots the textbook and reads it to us, never going through hw problems or potential test questions and showing us how he assesses us. Thus lecture is useless. I have taught myself everything through Youtube. Grading is inconsistent across the TA's. This class should NOT be as hard as he has made it.

Genuinely the worst teacher I've ever had. He also refuses to curve and has very ambitious expectations for problems you are expected to complete. Just avoid taking him at all costs.

I have never once understood what this man is trying to explain. He seems like a great guy and is very smart but he does not know how to teach. At all. The subject matter could be interesting but he makes it so confusing it's terrible. Don't take this class with him.

It shows that he's a very passionate guy about his field but his teaching methods made me want to pull my hair out.

Sebastiaan is a great guy and all, but this guy can not teach. Luckily this course is not too difficult so I am able to get by, however, I spend lots of time reading the book since I do not understand anything he teaches in this class. Please save yourself the pain and do not take any courses with him teaching. I hope he gets fired.

It really is unfortunate that Joosten is so bad at teaching, because he does seem to be a decent guy. You will likely be able to follow the first two lecture slides, and then after that he will completely lose you. The homework is basically impossible to do on your own. It's amazing how you can be more confused after lecture than you were before.

Sebastiaan Joosten can make addition seem complicated. He finds the simplest concepts such as BigO Notation and explains them using the most complex definitions without explaining examples or what it actually means. Avoid him at all costs and I pray for this man to get fired. He is a great man but he should stick to research not teaching.

Just not a good teacher

Good luck with this one. He clicks through his slides and expects you to just know the material.

The only way to understand the material is by having a good TA

Sebastiaan makes his course demoralizing. He sets the bar so high and never checks to see if maybe he's moving too quickly or if he should provide more examples to solidify learning. By the time you think you begin to have a basic grasp of any one topic, you'll be whisked away to another. Even the most passionate CS students will suffer.

The guy simply cannot teach. Take the class with anyone else. The entirety of your grade is based on exams for which you will be ill prepared, and then to make it even better, Joosten is against curves!

this man can not teach. good luck!

The class with Joosten is simply miserable. I really cannot advise anyone else hard enough to STAY AWAY.

The average score on the first exam was 69%. This exam was worth 25% of the total grade and there was no curve because the professor "does not believe in curves".

If you don't have to, don't.

Quite possibly the worst class/professor in the Computer Science department, maybe even the school. He teaches as if he is speaking to robots who can remember infinite theorems in incomprehensible notations. There is no instruction on problem solving, nor do most of the TA's provide good insight on this.

If you happen to be a mathematics major taking this CSCI course, I'm sure you will be fine, if not good luck. Sebastiaan is too smart to teach this class. He makes everything much more complicated than it has to be, and teaches a lot outside of the typical discrete math curriculum. If it were up to me, he should just go back to Dartmouth.

Professor Joosten is a nice guy. However, the majority of the class including myself taught ourselves the material through a youtube playlist from a different professor at another school. His lectures were useless but his tests weren't unpredictable. His tests were almost identical to the practice exams he gave. However, the material is difficult.

Just terrible! Avoid this guy

Hes nice though but not worth the stress. He just finds someone else's slides and reads them I think because there is always mistakes on slides and he just says oops. He confuses me more than I need to be. I had to just watch random people on Youtube and Khan Aca. AVOID if you can.

This guy has ruined my summa cum laude gpa. Plz don't take him! He's is terrible in teaching.

Very mid. Honestly try to take someone else if you can. Lectures are super boring and useless, YouTube will teach you more.

First he is a great guy, but please do not take him. He has unclear direction on many of the homeworks that even TA's could not explain to me. His lectures are useless compared to the discussion sections. Even for a discrete course the questions are extremeley difficult. Only really good thing is the practice exam is similar to the exam.

He is a nice guy, but very disorganized. Get ready to spend a lot of time outside the class with TAs. I found lectures not helpful at all for homework and midterms. Homeworks: not returned in a timely manner, no solutions posted which made it hard to prepare for the midterm Midterms: 50 minutes, not enough space, too many questions No extra credit.

I would strongly urge you to avoid this professor. The lectures are boring and unorganized, the exams are difficult and have no correlation to the course content, and the average exam score is always around 20/30. Do yourself a favor and not take this professor's 2041 to save your gpa.

Pretty bad. Second time having him. Lectures are a messy and the final project was unbelievably confusing. TA's didn't even know what to do.

Just please don't take him for the sake of your mental health. CSCI 2041 is meant to be the easiest class in computer science and he makes it the hardest class ever with every homework as big as full projects. And he doesn't know how to teach at all (thinks everyone knows everything).

This professor has made what should've been one of more easier classes in the major, into a massive struggle just to pass the WEEKLY HW's, much less the exams. His lectures are VERY unclear, and the TAs can barely keep up as well. I was unfortunately forced to take him since he was the only one teaching. Don't take him if you have the option to.

Joosten is a nice guy, lectures are basically useless even though they are required for a grade. Along with this the homeworks and final project have very little information. He basically tells you to do something while giving you 0 starting point and not even explaining how you would even think about starting.

For many of us new to functional programming, it's hard to follow him when he doesn't start explaining from the most primary building blocks, refuses to go through code in greater detail, and expresses his thoughts in a confusing way. His homework are often too hard/vague for the amount of time, esp the final project that even TAs dont quite get.

Terrible! Never take him! He does not know how to explain any concepts, and expects you to know everything. The final project for his class is way too hard for a 2000 level class.

From the beginning of the semester, it is only getting worse. Homework becomes more challenging and confusing. The final project is a complete mess. One and only one thing this class will give you is a depression.

Not very good at explaining concepts at all. I feel like he expects his students to get exactly what he is talking about right away even though he explains things so abstractly. His write ups for homeworks/projects/labs are always confusing. Usually takes a few read overs to even understand what the objective is. Lectures are confusing/boring.

I do not think he is a good explainer, and also not good at connecting with and helping students. The first part of the course you can get through if you pay attention to the textbook since lectures are useless for that part, and it is fairly easy. For the final project, there is really not any resources. It is very difficult. Would not recommend.

Whatever you do, avoid this professor at all costs. He has no clue how to teach and just goes through topics at breakneck speed. Also, the final project is nearly impossible to do because the TAs have no clue what is going on, and the professor doesn't know how to explain anything at all. For your mental health, please take another professor.

The professor was okay until the final project was released to work on. There has been little to no guidance on a project that is significantly different from the rest of the content in the course. The explanations, when there are any, tend to not help in understanding of what is supposed to be done for the project.

This class was okay until the final project began and has since become the worst class experience I have ever had. The information is incredibly messy and disorganized. Even emailing the professor has been in vain, as it seems he doesn't entirely know what is going on either.

Goes through concepts at lightning speed, TA's are clueless, professor was understanding however. This should be a graduate-level course. Everything derailed right about now when we had to do the final project. I wish we were given documentation for the final project or it was explained better. We were thrown into the sea with no swimming skills.

The best thing you can do in this class is not to take it altogether (if he's teaching). Its structure hinders TA's from providing assistance, and the project is overly complex for a 2xxx-level course. Seeking help from the professor adds to the confusion. The best part is this wasn't an issue in past 2041 courses, so dodge this bullet of a class.

While Sebastiaan is a nice guy one on one, the final project has been impossible to understand and is making many people fail and drop out of the course. I personally have gotten all As in my undergraduate career, and in this class I anticipate getting a C. If your grade, understanding, and mental health are important to you: AVOID THIS PROFESSOR.

Avoid this professor at all costs, especially if you value your grades and your mental health. He's nice but he's made one of the easiest courses in CS so hard, and it's so unfair knowing no one else has dealt with this. He's made a final project that's 5000-level coursework 20% of our grade, and has barely provided any guidance and time to do it.

His teaching style must change if he is to continue. Still dont understand how the university has done nothing after the initial wave of negative reviews of his. He is confusing, does not have a relatable, standard sense of communication, meaning he is just plain wrong with any of his convictions about a course. Needs to be fired!

absolutely awful, the projects are unbearable and make you want to question all of your life choices. the grading is unreasonbale and not clear, the homeworks are doable but way to complicated. if you're going to take this buy gallons of lube.

A terrible professor that just wants to sabotage your semester. There isn't much else to add here, since everyone else has said what I'd already say. Unless you're into hurting yourself, do me a favor and steer clear if you see "Joosten" as the professor for any class you want to take. I bet he'd even make a deadly project for a gym class.

Joosten is very kind and is a very intelligent professor. That being said his class is VERY difficult. The final project (which other sections do not have) is one extremely poorly setup, two way beyond the scope of a lower division course, three most TA's don't know how to help with the project.

His lectures are boring and unclear. HW and final project follow this theme as well. The Final Project doesn't have any structure. The writeup for the final project is scattered between 20 canvas pages and the TAs don't understand it thus getting help is impossible. Avoid him if you would like to keep your sanity and pass with a good grade.

for this sem, its still the same with whatever comments ur reading; except that this time, he decided to give a 20% final proj with unclear instructions and that none of the TA knew how to solve. his slides r bad for 2041. its just codes without much explanation. for the exams, idk what im doing. i just memorized the ans of the mock paper he gave

He is not well prepared for the amount of workload that he is giving to students. The class is fast-paced compared to other 2041 classes and homework-heavy. The final project was a mess. The TAs couldn't help with it and he wasn't uploading the instructions on time. He had to drop the final 20% of our grade because of all the complaints.

This guy will suck the joy you have left for computer science. His lectures make you think you're having a stroke because that's how bad they are. The homework assignments were difficult, but the midterms were not that bad. Overall, if you can avoid this class, do so for your own mental health.

worst professor i EVER had! he talks a lot during lecture but say nothing useful. i learned everything in this class on my own, final project has little to no instructions. he blamed it on him having a things going on in his personal life(which is fair)but doesn't excuse the fact that he wasted everyones time. 92.99 and refused to curve to 93 bsffr

Maybe it was stress, and I know being a new professor is not easy, but Joosten was bad. He was a bad lecturer but I went to every class anyway and asked questions, that is until the first exam. Pretty much everyone did poorly and the next lecture he blamed the students for it. Never went to a lecture after that and did better on subsequent exams.