I've had Zeil for CS252 and CS330 Both become huge busy-work classes with unclear parameters (especially CS330 - a DESIGN class) CS330 is just CS250 all over again with an intro to Java at the end; he'll catch you on the small stuff and with assignments

Horrible!

disgustingly hard, programming assignments make no sense. they're separated into 30 files and he expects u to fill in a few lines. very smart dude, just bad at teaching....

Really smart but the worst teacher I ever had. There are no words to describe my feelings. DONT TAKE ANYTHING WITH HIM. No matter how good you are, he will hurt your GPA.

Same thins as CS361. Really smart but the worst teacher I ever had. There are no words to describe my feelings. DONT TAKE ANYTHING WITH HIM. No matter how good you are, he will hurt your GPA badly.

DON'T!!! The others are right, he will kill ur GPA for sure!

this teacher needs to be impeached

Horrible

I used to have Zeil for my CS 330, and believe me, you should consider yourself in hell when you're in his class. Zeil is very arrogant. He will not respect you unless you're as smart as he is. This, however, is impossible because you're not a teacher. I am a guy so he does not treat me as bad. But for female, he will not like you at all.

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He doesn't teach! He doesn't help! He doesn't even respond to emails. His classes don't explain the material. His grading scale is too anal-retentive and assinine.

Arrogant and useless, after the first class nothing is comprehensible, automated code grading is a joke and there are always bugs in it. Avoid Zeil for this class if you can. If he says trial hybrid course during the first class, find another class.

Dr. Zeil is a tool. He's probably the biggest geek I have ever met. He treats his students as if they were Cattle. So does professor Brunelle. If you ask me, Zeil is one of the biggest problems of the ODU CS department. We need more teachers like Dr. Nelson and Professor Morris. They are what's best in the ODU CS department.

worst teacher i have ever had. teaching style so horrible a public middle school would fire him. he is the only prof that teaches 330 a mandatory course. single handily forced several students out of CS on 330 and i know of one who transferred to NF state just to avoid taking 330 again, worst teacher ever. he has ruined CS with 330,terrible teacher

has to be the worst teacher i have ever taken. the group assignments have no clear guidelines for a right or wrong answer, and his test are horrible. when asking him for help on an assignment he offers open ended questions for answers with no useful help what so ever. seems like he does not even care to help you when you ask for it. terrible teach

His assignment descriptions are so long that you have to read through them at least 5 times to basically understand what he's asking for. He uses auto grader to grade the assignments. The auto grader is very unforgiving. He grades very harshly and does not allow for partial credit. Sometimes you don't even know what hes going to test the code for.

Easily the worst professor I have ever had. Fails students without telling why - is arrogant, and will not explain anything, but refers to his very poorly written notes. It's not that he's "hard, but you learn a lot" - he is altogether a terrible teacher. Avoid at all costs.

This is not a "work hard and pass" or "whine and fail" type situation. He is honestly the worst professor I have ever had. He refuses to answer questions and his code is written so poorly that you spend most of the assignment trying to figure out what he is doing instead of actually doing the assignment. Avoid at all costs, if you can. So bad!

I work as hard as I can on the assignments. I got an A in cs150 / 250 /252 as well as 270. Zeil gives very little supplementation to learn something. He's always rude in email. This time he regraded several assnmts stating they weren't graded propperly 6 days before the end of class. That basically drops everyone's grade at least one letter. RUN

I don't think CS 252 should be considered a 1-credit hour class, it's more like a 2-credit hour class because quite a bit more material than that. The notes for 252 he gives are sometimes lacking in clarity. Auto-grader can be a pain sometimes. Dr. Zeil is more of a textbook writer than a teacher.

Awful.

All I can say is this professor is by far the worst professor I have ever had.

The worst professor in the computer science department. He does normalize the grades so that students can actually pass his classes; however you never really know where you stand until you get your final grade which is very stressful. If at all possible DO NOT TAKE ANY classes with him.

This guy is the worse professor I ever had, honestly. I will never take him for another class. I passed the course but I learned zero from him. In the future If I need to take a course and if he is the professor teaching I will wait to take the course by a different professor. He does not know how to teach. He is very out of touch with people.

You probably wont pass the class because : uses autograder, replies to your questions with a question, doesnt review your work, incomplete lecture notes with broken links

Literally throwing darts at a grade book and recording whatever sticks. Don't bother asking why you got your grade unless you're fine with getting a response 2 weeks after the semester ends.

Studying and working hard and knowing the material won't help you.

By far, the worst professor I have had at ODU. He answers your question with a question, so don't bother asking. He expects you to read thousands of pages. Zeil ruined my life and made me hate this major. No clear instructions on what to do for the group project. If you can take someone else, do that. I don't care who, they must be better than Zeil

Lectures are impossible to follow, and you can expect very little help other than a link to his F.A.Q. page. He was forgiving enough to allow me to take a mid term late, but otherwise, not helpful. I learned next to nothing from this course, and, grade pending, will likely have to repeat it. I do not recommend taking this class with Zeil.

Zeil's classes are a scam. His Unix course is required for Computer Science majors, but is automated with no support from Zeil. One assignment required a specific output, which I received. I used the wrong function to receive the correct result. Zeil refused to explain this to me, causing me to fail. I paid a few hundred for an online quiz.

Don't take him if you can. He likes to make students do all the work. He's only there by email, which means never. He'll make students read the textbook, his lectures and never gives any help. Either you get an A or you'll fail. No partial credit. He likes to sit back and relax while watching his students learn on their own.

I would not recommend taking any class set forth by this professor. I have gone through two of his classes, and both have been horrible. The professor does not teach. He sits back, behind a vaguely written website that barely contains enough information to understand what students need to do for any given assignment. CS 252 was not as bad as CS 350

Avoid taking his classes. I guess i cant honestly say he is a terrible teacher since he doesnt actually teach. He just throws up his awful online lectures and calls it teaching. He expects you to know things that he never mentions and when you ask for help he is super rude. AVOID!

Videos I found about the topic online were my best friends in this course. The textbook (and by extension, his notes) are extremely dry and make problems more difficult than they need to be. The book only makes sense after you understand a concept you learned on your own (usually through outside courses). Very confusing/frustrating experience.

Taking CS350, have taken 2 other courses of his, the only reason I have him for this class is because no other professor offered it! Very condescending, not good at communicating or helping with assignments whether that means guiding you to get it right or to find where you went wrong. Does not provide the info needed for assignments.

Avoid When possible! Just listen to everyone else that has rated him because they're all true. Its just a fact of life if you attend ODU and major in CPU science that you will have to take him for a course, so best of luck to you when that happens friend. Were all pulling for ya. Also, CS252 is pass/fail I put B as the grade because its middle.

Terrible professor. He doesn't really help when emailed and his assignments don't work.

This man is a true horror. This man's material is so outdated that it might be as old as him. It's written with no true care and very little applicable information for the assignments. Later on in the class, it is even worse when you have to implement more in-depth items within the build gradle file, utilize javadocs, and create the stupid graphs.

Worst teacher every, no help what so ever, sent him a whole paragraph asking for help and got a one sentence response saying "don't over complicate things". Possibly couldn't program himself out of a paper bag,

Do not take Zeil for an online class if you can avoid it. He claims that, as an online class, his role changes from an instructor to a tutor which is ridiculous. As a CS professor he has the potential to upload lectures talking about the material rather than 2 minute videos briefly telling you nothing. You also get no feedback on grading.

350 characters isn't even close to enough characters to explain how bad this teacher is. I'll use mostly adjectives: sarcastic, lazy, pretentious, material is outdated, lots of spelling errors, trick questions on final. You HAVE to take him to get a CS degree, so.. Kudos to him on his grading scripts though. Get paid more money, do less... clever

Worse professor I've ever taken. Hard class, only help you'll get notes online and a textbook. Extremely rude when emailed. At least be nice and try to help instead of sending a sarcastic email not explaining anything, acts like it's SUCH an convenience for him. Makes me want to quit this major completely.

Such a Dck professor. He wants you to follow his 'Try this' section but the actual section is outright useless.

Is often rather rude when replying to emails. Notes for each section are long, but somehow have no useful information. Very few examples and too brief explanations. Midterm and final exams were extremely difficult, the best score in the class did not pass the exam. Questions on these exams were not answered anywhere in the content presented to us.

useful class, but garbage professor

Prof. Zeil is an awful person and terrible teacher, he may be master in his own subject but clearly has no love for his students. I try my hardest to keep up with the the course, but my efforts were in vain, so I was force to withdrawn. He gives no clear direction of his lectures. For everyone's sanity, don't register his version of the course.

His online course was straightforward, but the lecture notes had very little uniformity to it. Your final grade is based on the very few assignments + your final exam grade, leaving very little flexibility to it. It was simple, but I would rather have taken CS252 in person with another professor

Zeil is your tutor not your professor. Lectures are on his personal website of infodumping. If you learn by example(like myself) too bad. He "shows examples" within the large lectures. Office hours can be helpful? The 3 office hours I had my questions were "too broad" followed by him sitting in silence staring at me.

Please avoid it , 1 credit class with 14 project and a final exam , if you send a question he will send you a full url that doesn't help and he will comment that you are not trying your best . The class is fully online but he want the answered as he want a comma will stop you from going to the next question , plz plz avoid him

Please avoid! Do not take a class with this monster. He will not teach you. He will give you assignments that are less about you learning the material than forcing you to do it his way, learning styles be damned. If you have errors, prepare for criticism, sarcasm, and biting rudeness whenever possible. Snide, arrogant, uninterested.

Working with this professor was a horrible experience. If you are not a CS major, I would strongly suggest avoiding this professor at all costs. He was extremely rude and sarcastic, as well as, generally unhelpful.

I have emailed this professor to get help for my assignments multiple times, and in only one of those was his advice actually helpful. The assignments you are given often force you to look up the answers outside of the content provided.

Yeah, avoid Zeil at all cost. I took him for Beginner's Unix, and I might as well have taught myself. I asked for help on one assignment via email, and he said the more "subtle reason for my failure was 'the average sentences is' not 'the average sentence is'". Rude, snide, arrogant despite not actually doing anything.

While I appreciate how knowledgeable he is, it is like work to figure out how to approach him for answers when needing guidance. He is sometimes very condescending and blunt which is a poor combination in a professor.

Glutton for punishment I must be. His courses are very text heavy, very detailed which is great, but when you are balance other classes on top of this one it's hard to find the perfect balance to succeed in his class.

He doesn't teach. He expects you to learn everything from his online notes that don't help with the actual assignments.

this professor is literally the worst cs professor I've ever had and I've never even had the displeasure of looking at him. id rather retake 250 and 150 where my teachers spoken english as a second or third language over this class again. he has literally created a curiculum that doesnt work if you chose to pick putty THAT HE PUTS AS AN OPTION

If you can avoid taking Zeil do it. Some of his courses are necessary and I recommend doing all of the practice assignments and sending him emails for clarification often. His courses take great focus and dedication. I think the unix course was helpful but the grading is impossible. Good luck!

Doesn't really teach and acts as if all questions are stupid. Lets just say if I have a question about class I'd sooner ask Professor Kennedy for clarity than Zeil.

taken him for CS252, 361, and 350. Made me question if I even had passion for CS anymore. Dozens of notes that are somewhat related to assignments then his autograders shred your grade, unfairly too. Nigh impossible to reach. Takes forever to grade so you don't even know if you pass until it's too late to withdraw. Take Kennedy or Morris

I've spent as much time on this course as I have on my regular 3 and 4-credit courses, don't let the "1-credit hour" label fool you. If you've been stuck on something for 5 hours, you must spend an additional 5 hours making sure you absolutely can't find a solution before having the audacity to ask for help. Read everything 7 to 30 times.

Unhelpful professor: Initially responsive via email, this professor turned incredibly unhelpful after the drop period. Now only provides a useless link and displays a proud attitude. When I requested an assignment extension, he accused me of lying just to argue. Download Microsoft Teams solely for him. Avoid this professor if possible.

LEAVE ODU WHILE YOU CAN!!!!!!! Found better schools that care about you.

Like the majority of others stated, he is a horrible "teacher". Avoid him at all cost and use literally anyone else at ODU. Have fun finding your way through his "structured" course content with nested links to the material and good luck emailing him because "you should already know everything" or send you to some link he buried in his outline.

This is easily the worst teacher I have ever come across, particularly for and Algo class Instead of going by a book, like professors of his level should, he tries to approach it as though hes from Carnegie Mellon and writing his own textbooks.Which hes not at that level. His content and learning materials that were forced to use are horrible.

The course is only worth 1 credit hour and is P/F. Unnecessarily hard in terms of assignments and reading material. Material's writing style is convoluted and heavily layered. Professor is unenthusiastic and difficult to talk to. Most people have little to say about the course and even less about the professor.

I'd rather slam my fingers repeatedly with a car door than do CS252 ever again. This is bar none one of the most tedious and awful classes I have ever taken in my life and its a 1 credit course that is required for CS. May God have mercy on your soul. Being waterboarded with acid would be more enjoyable than this class.

much later in life, I went on to quite like unix, terminals, and terminal editors (emacs > vim). Zero thanks to this guy. :/ You're better off playing capture the flag (CTF) hacker games to learn unix.

I took year off from ODU just to fix my mental health as I cry myself to sleep everytime I do the HW and the exam, they're difficult mind numbing and most of all it will give u depression

His course is too much for 2 credit course. Sadly, no textbook for this course. Answers doesn't match up to lectures the assignment. Curriculum is outdated and need better things for Unix course. This class has been worst on my mental health. I wouldn't recommend the course.

This professor makes me want to break a window and stab my eyes with the shards of glass. As a 3-year ongoing student of computer science, not once has any professor made me as mentally unstable as this one. He is an extremely critical grader, his scale is inflated but that doesn't help when every grade he gives you is a 20%. find a prof who cares.

he hasnt taught this class since 2009 and it shows. he gives 0s with no feedback, asks questions not in the textbook/lectures, offers no exam guidance, the final study guide was useless, it was just module objectives like "At the end of this section, students should know…" his lowered grade scale hides his terrible teaching. TAKE KENNEDY INSTEAD.

Normally, I wouldn't write a review; however, this professor has stood out. This class is called INTRO to Software Engineering, however it requires knowledge of machine learning, and for you to already know how agile works. He does not allow you to retake anything, no extra credit and no curve. He is actively the most dfificult professor ive taken.

I have been an honored student for my entire 4 academic years, getting nothing beside A's. I may not be the talented or the brightest one, but I put everything I have into my studies with the thinking that I can be good, although I'm not a gifted one. Professor Zeil proved me wrong on that. No matter how much I put in, it seems to never be enough.

He gives absolutely horrible feedback and is plain rude.

I really hate this guy. Over the course of the semester he called me dumb for not understanding something, called me and my teammate idiots during a review session and hardly gives good feedback, if any. Don't take him if you can.

PLEASE RUN, do not take this guy. He is not a professor but a judge. He will judge you all the time no matter how good student you are. I never faced a professor like this guy. He is a joke. Really tough grader and does not really care about your feelings or emails. I have to take one semester off to just heal up because of how annoying he is!!!