take class at own risk.

irresponsible and lack effort to help students.

God forbid you try to participate in one of her classes. She is obviously so much more intelligent than anyone on Earth that it is an insult to teach us mere pions. She does not allow a student to finish asking a question before answering it. She posts homework with errors, and expects students to notice. Office hours are pure hate.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS. I have had her for CSC225. It was the biggest waste of time in my life. She is very good at losing students' attention. I hated this course. A lot of people who I talked to said that it was because of the prof. Just avoid taking csc225 with her.

This class was a waste of time because this prof is always unorganized and non-engaging. Avoid at all costs.

Poor lectures/tutorials/tests, no online notes, awful teaching skills, answers phone in class, and much more. Val puts absolutely no effort into teaching. She is terribly unorganized and scatter-brained, and is frankly the worst CS teacher I've had at UVic. I am trying to think of positive comments, but I honestly have none. AVOID. THIS. TEACHER.

unorganized, confused, takes things for granted(she knows it so the class knows it hence does not explain or teach the easy stuff), very hard exams and assignments

Do NOT take a course with her if you value your GPA or your sanity. The worst prof I have ever had, by a mile.

Whoever hired this teacher needs to be punched in the face repeatedly. By far the worst teacher I've ever had - like by a distance not even John Lennon could imagine. Unorganized and doesn't care. Gives incomplete AND incorrect proofs in class. Srsly. Avoid at all costs.

The material in this course can be real complicated; it doesn't help that she explains it so poorly, and only offers 1 hour of office hours a week (which, for us, was spent requesting remarks on our improperly marked assignments). Be ready for an applied discrete math, and picking up a lot of it on your own. The Youtube lectures will help.

Disorganized. Gets lost in her own lectures. Terrible at teaching and produces garbage lecture notes. Supposed to have 4-5 assignments and two tests by now. After 2/3 of the semester we only had 2 assignments and no tests. Most people failed both of these assignments. Worst teacher I've ever had. Needed this course to graduate but had to drop GG.

Spends a large portion of class trying to figure her own work out. Gets lost in lectures every couple minutes. Makes you feel stupid if you ask questions. Avoid at all costs. My grade is suffering due to poor teaching

Gets confused in lectures on her own notes. Messes up when explaining new material and then tells you to just read it online on your own time. Tests and assignments are tough beyond words. Trick questions everywhere, and has material never even taught before. Avoid this prof

Awful prof. Her extremely poor explanations make the class somehow harder than it already is. She also gets angry if you don't understand something and ask a question. She is easy on the eyes, though ;)

Lectures confused the class more than they helped. Basically self taught myself every aspect of this course. She spent a lot of time in lectures standing in front of class asking why we didn't understand her teaching. She made it really hard to pass this course. She tends to fumble and get lost in class, then tell us to look the material up online.

I need to quote a previous review because they really hit the nail on the head. Wish I had heeded the advice. "Spends a large portion of class trying to figure her own work out. Gets lost in lectures every couple minutes. Makes you feel stupid if you ask questions. Avoid at all costs"

Valerie? if you decide to take her class, then, good luck A selfish lady only cares about herself, never ever tried to enhance her teaching skills. And never reflected on the teaching approaches. Never considered why the average mark of her class is so low. Try to avoid her class if you can.

Valerie is a tough grader, and often gets confused while teaching the material. Based on personal experience, I would not take a class with her. I self taught myself for the course.

Valerie is a very tough marker. So far we have not got part marks (you are either right or wrong which means you can lose about 40% from one question in the exam). She is inspirational because of her qualifications, but if the teaching is bad there is no point. I would not recommend taking this class with her.

Strongly advised to take 320 with another prof than Valerie. She is a tough grader when it comes to assignments and exams. You must use her methods, learning from other sources will give you 0 or part marks (this doesn't encourage us to learn). Overall, so many mistakes on her slides which she corrects in class. Seems like she doesn't care.

Her explanation is so poor that makes course material harder than it actually is. She made so many mistakes on her slides, and got pretty pissed off when someone asked her to post fixed one. Would not recommend her.

Avoid at all cost! She is by far the worst prof to teach an algorithm course, she has a hard time explaining some of the proofs and makes it harder than it actually is. The fact that she "encourages" students to ask question is LAUGHABLE, as she continuously rude to the people that asks question or pointed out a mistake in her slides.

As others have said, sucks at explaining and can be rude to students when asking questions. I'm following all the course material on MIT Courseware's youtube and everything is explained so much better Her slides are riddled with mistakes and unclear, grading is 20% midterm 1, 25% midterm 2, 50% final, 5% labs. She is making LillAnne look great lol

She is awful. There no point going for lectures, as you are just going to get more confused. Avoid taking CSC 226 with her but if you have to... get ready to learn the material yourself. She is clearly intelligent and knows her stuff but is very bad at explaining concepts. Good luck, hopefully, you pass.

Can't explain concepts, slides are full of mistakes and sounds condescending to those asking questions. I have never regretted not dropping a class more.

worst class ever

She is the worst instructor, I have ever seen in my life.

Straight A+ student here that gets paid by UVic to go to class with basically a full scholarship because my grades are so good. I am struggling to pass this course (60%), which is the first time I won't get an A+ in university. She is rude, tough, and slides/solutions are full of mistakes. Valerie is objectively just a bad teacher. Avoid her!!!!!!!

Unorganized, forgot to assign 2 of the 3 assignments. Acts aggressive/defensive when asked a normal question. Gives no feedback on completed work and she rejected showing the midterm answers so that she can reuse the same midterm questions... obviously doesn't care about students learning the material.

Tons of mistake on her slides. Failed to explain the course materials in class. Very impolite if you are trying to reach her out of office hours.

Boring lectures, poorly organized slides, ambiguous tests, but was a dead easy course. Take it with her if you don't care about absorbing anything.

The worst prof I think at the university. Avoid at all costs, I don't care if you have to add another semester onto your degree. She can barely articulate concepts, probably because she doesn't seem to understand them herself. On top of that her office hours are useless because she doesn't respect students at all.

One of the smartest professors I've had but she does not know how to teach. Assignments were ridiculous and tests were beyond graduate level. Her brain is on a level so high that she does not know how to properly communicate her thoughts and insights to students. With 226 being a core course, I would HIGHLY recommend choosing a different prof.

The single worst professor I've had at UVic. She was incredibly disrespectful to students and showed a minimal ability to teach. Most of her assignments were significantly harder then examples taught in class and many concepts had to be learned again from outside sources. Assignment feedback was nearly useless mostly just told you it was wrong.

Never take a course with her, she is totally relentless in her marking, and makes sure you not pass unless you know almost everything. She expects every student to spend all the time in their lives on this course as if no other course matters. Never recommend her even to your worst enemy!!!! Worst CS teacher at UVictoria. So unhelpful and rude.

just saying things out of no where, doesn't help you building foundations needed for the course, refuse to share study resources. She talks about her own copy right, and we needed almost beg her to even get assignment and midterm answers. No questions allowed during exams, which were never welly designed timing wise, and many more.

The was the most unnecessarily hard course I have taken, mostly because of the prof. The tests and quizzes were impossible (I guess trying to counteract cheating because its online) but it was impossible. The lectures were so disorganized and expects 3rd year students to know everything like a grad student, also discourages questions D: char limi

I could probably write a 20 page paper on how bad this prof is. This lady can't explain concepts coherently, gets lost in her own examples (frequently) and belittles students when they don't understand. I never attended office hours, but I heard she belittles you there too. Avoid her at all costs

She's: 1) Rude 2) Frequently makes mistakes 3) Struggles to explain things 4) Extremely hardcore in grading I would seriously avoid this course and any course with her. She expects nothing less than A+ quality of work from students, so an OK answer won't work for her.

Awful prof. Run!

Extremely unprofessional towards students. She doesn't attempt to understand questions asked of her, and just insults your intelligence instead. If you need to take 320 and she's the lecturer, wait for another professor at a different time. Trust me, Its not worth taking it with her.

She is obviously very smart and versed in the subject matter, but she lacks the teaching skills to convey the material properly to students. Her lectures confuse you rather than help. Her grading criteria make no sense and sometimes it feels like she wants you to fail the course. For your own sanity, please avoid her.

Please Avoid Her. RUN!

Don't take her courses.

Getting through this class means spending hours each week learning the material from other sources outside of class. Yes she is that bad and she really doesn't care (clear by the quality of her notes). It is difficult material but she makes it so much harder.

I honestly tried to give Val the benefit of the doubt. I am a straight A student and failed my first midterm ever in this course. Errors in assignments and slides made things hard to follow and she did not record lectures. Her tone towards students is quite intimidating. I could go on but I'll summarize: she's a smart prof but a bad teacher. AVOID

Hey val. If you reads this, you are a good person but your exams are kind of impossible. Can you just let us pass like it's expensive to not pass for a lot of us. I've never put this much efforts into anything prior to this class yet I need 92% in final to pass. I tried my absolute best so can you please try to not fail 99% of the class. Thank you.

The moderators on this site won't let me post what I really want to say, but Valerie is simply a terrible person and has absolutely no respect for her students. I am indifferent to her teaching style.

For some reason did not want to provide zoom recordings of an online class. Links were hard to find and assignments or midterms weren't put into the calendar. Not so much bad as annoying. The course is difficult, not so much because of material but poor teaching. My grad student friends told me they had similar issues. Try to take with another prof

Wont take again

Sets dates for assignments on the fly. The quizzes and tests are terribly designed and worded. Will go from "everything is in the textbook" to "you can't rely on the textbook" at her leisure. Is famous among CAL staff for all the wrong reasons. Takes responsibility for nothing. The content isn´t hard, but her 0 test design skills make it hell

This semester I took my second course with Valerie and should have dropped the course when I had the chance. Fool me once, right? Anyways, nothing I say here hasn't already been said. Impossible tests, haphazard, error-filled lecture slides and incomprehensible feedback make this course very difficult to succeed in. Take at your own risk.

May the force be with you ��

Valerie is an absolutely terrible person and professor. The tests weren't as hard as they were unclear. Course material isn't the problem, she is! Bad teaching skills plus terrible attitude. Highly unclear grading scheme and correctness is based on her whims not the textbook material. Trust my advice and avoid this class AT ALL COSTS.

Here is my take as a visitor to the CS department at UVIC. Valerie is not a great instructor as many of you agree. From my own personal experience, she is a horrible person. This is the part that students may not easily see in an instructor. Also, I noticed is that students are often harsher in evaluating female instructors than male instructors.

Avoid this professor at all costs! Like others have said, Valerie is genuinely a bad person and professor. Her assignments are full of mistakes, she often times can't complete the proofs during lecture, and gets on tangents when teaching. Her lectures are pointless, you understand the topic better by watching a five minute youtube video.

I would not recommend this class to anybody. If you can take this class with someone else do that. DO NOT take this class if you have Valerie. The lectures are dry and uninformative, the lecture slides are just above useless, and asking questions in her class usually ends in getting belittled. I can't fit it all on here but there's more.

The most miserable, horrible person you will ever meet. DO NOT TAKE HER CLASS. it is worth it to delay your degree a year then to put up with her. Her level of professionalism is non-existent. VERY unorganized. DOES NOT CARE AT ALL. Uvic should be ashamed to have her teaching. Seen her yell at and belittle multiple students.

Very unprofessional prof. Makes many mistakes in-class and has many mistakes on the assignments. She also won't tell you when she makes a correction, you just have to go re-download the assignment and re-read it. She's done this the night before the assignment is due. Pretty much Uvic scamming you out of money. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH HER.

Midterm average? Failing. Assignments? Literally impossible. Class size? Halved. Letters to the Dean? Sent. Petitions to regrade? Circulating. Its like she's trying to fail students on purpose. Don't risk your sanity and just wait a year and take 320 with Ulrike. Valerie really be out here making people change their majors bc of this one class.

Worst professor I've had at UVic. When I ask questions during a lecture, I expect to get a clear answer, not be belittled and berated for my lack of understanding in front of my friends and peers. If you go into her class, I hope you enjoy reading textbooks because her lectures are very unclear.

Terrible professor, gave 2 courses worth of material in 1 course. 2 quizzes per week, 5 assignments in total, 3 midterms, 1 final, and special "semi-private tutorials" with extra worksheet. There is absolutely no reason for this much course work for this course, and her lectures make the already challenging material even more confusing.

I think she's nice as a person, but not as a lecturer. She berates students who ask questions, slides are full of mistakes, and lectures are disorganized. TAs are nice but tutorials teach nothing, just grading based on her flawed material. She wastes 10–15 mins each class fumbling with the projector. Overall, not a productive learning environment.

I would never recommend this professor to anyone, never go over any examples in class and lectures are hard to follow. Heard her talking to another professor that she goes over things quickly so she can get a break for herself in November. Be ready to be harshly marked, tutorials are mandatory but useless, as they don't let you use notes.

Hall Of Fame worst professor of all time; if you have her as a professor, do not take the course, even if the course is mandatory. All of the marks are based on her exams, and her marking is absolutely unfair. I can confidently say that this is the worst professor I've had in my entire life (including pre-school and up).

So like, Val sucks at teaching with all due respect. Removed assignments and made the class relying on exams. Thought it was chill at first but then her grading my exam felt like I was a pig getting prepared to be lechon for a pinoy fiesta. Not a cool experience. She should consider not teaching no more, she dootybooty at it (respectfully tho). Grr

UVic hired her for her resume plain and simple... cause she wouldn't be able to teach a fish how to SWIM if she tried. She is BUNS. It is time for her to hit the retirement home and quit teaching altogether, or just stick to the research, man. Terrible grading, unfair tests, incorrect answer keys, AND a bad attitude. Avoid at EVERY and ALL costs!

She has very confusing Lectures/slides, she will belittle you for asking questions in front of the whole class, and her marking is very harsh. 320 is already a difficult course and Valerie makes it soo much harder, she has been the worst professor I've ever had. Avoid at all costs,

Test's are worth a lot and they'll destroy your self esteem

By far the worst prof I have had in my entire life. It is impressive how bad Valerie is at explaining concepts and how little she cares about your success. Midterm averages were 30% and she was convinced that her teaching played no part in it. If you care for your mental health and academic success avoid her at all cost.

Worst prof I have ever had in my history at UVIC. Cant teach properly, makes tests insanely hard, and she barely responds to emails. A 35% average for a midterm is crazy, which she only scaled a couple points to make it a 40% average. Its clear she only blames students for these grades and not her teaching which is why I say avoid her at all costs.

I am sure she's a nice lady outside of class but by far the worst professor I've ever had. Lectures are all over the place, it's just random examples for the entire lecture and she doesn't teach foundations well at all. Also, taking notes is a mess because she writes on a chalkboard at 20% opacity. All I can say is avoid 320 with her at all costs.

As a colleague of hers now, I can say that she's an excellent teacher when you compare it to her personality.

Incredibly lazy teacher. 1) Made assignments worth 0% to avoid marking. 2) Went on vacation 2 different times before tests (no office hours). 3) Gives extra marks for leaving test questions BLANK just to avoid grading them. 4) Releases assignment answer keys 1-2 nights before tests. 5) Takes weeks to grade anything

Genuinely, wholeheartedly the most bottom of the barrel teacher you can have. If you ask a question in class, she humiliates you. Tests are 90% of the grade because she doesn't want to grade assignments, using AI as an excuse, she rewards giving up on the brutal tests, never responds to emails. Laziest, rudest prof I ever had. DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY

I have never had a worse experience with a professor. It seems like she is just there for the paycheck. She gets angry at students when they don't immediately understand concepts. She would rather you give up than attempt long-answer questions on exams, so she doesn't have to mark them, and assignments are worth 0%. I want my money back.

Avoid at all costs.

THE WORST PROFESSOR EVER IN MY LIFE.

You will think, "oh it cant be that bad, I havent failed anything before, and people are overblowing it." I thought that too. Genuinely the worst prof i've ever had

Worst professor ever. Lectures are messy and fast. She genuinely gets irritated at students when they don't understand the material. Constantly makes mistakes on the board when going through problems. 2/3 of the midterms had failing class averages. Took a week off of lectures and instead had the TAs do semi-private tutorials with everyone.

The material for CSC32” is already kind of confusing to get a grasp of so it's unfortunate that Valerie is quite bad at explaining topics. If you're someone who's very comfortable self teaching it's not so bad apart from very difficult multiple choice portions on tests. Otherwise I would recommend avoiding her for CSC320 at least.

The class average was a 54% for the course which should tell you all you need to know. The final exam was riddled with typos multiple of which influenced the answer. This shows a clear lacking in professionalism and general care. She'll respond to emails if she feels like it. She can also be borderline rude to students. Avoid at all costs.