CS 2120

If Elizabeth ever decides to teach this class again, I would definitely recommend her. She's a bit eccentric and her teaching style wasn't the most effective for me, but she was so so passionate that it made me more motivated to learn. The subject itself isn't the most interesting but she was always energetic and would make lectures entertaining. Attendance was required but since the slides were pretty confusing I would usually just use lecture time to write my own notes. She encouraged us to use ChatGPT so I used it to explain concepts to me and help with the homework. Grade was made up of groupwork, participation, homework, tests (which were more like quizzes), and the final exam. The homework was the most challenging, tests were slightly easier and based off the homework, and the final exam was the easiest. We were allowed cheat sheets for each test and for the final, and there were also review sessions. The content is pretty simple, it can seem confusing/tricky at first but once you understand it it's pretty easy. I would definitely recommend writing your own notes, but besides that the workload for this class is not bad at all. Elizabeth really cares about her students and wants them all to succeed!

#tCFS24
Reviewing the practice materials and homeworks helped prepare me for the exams. Going to office hours was really helpful, as well as having a group to do and check homeworks with. The material all builds on itself throughout the class and the final was kind of like the 4 exams taken throughout the semester combined.

I wouldn't call this subject an easy A, but it wasn't super difficult either. Lectures were a mixed bag—Elizabeth is a fun professor who often goes on unrelated tangents and rushes to get the content in at the last minute of class, and she overexplains some things, plus the lectures were mandatory (with attendance checks) and I think she forgot to record them a few times. I'd also agree with the other reviewer saying that she really gives a lot of attention to those who participate.
The grading structure doesn't really afford any room to mess up: 2.5% for 8 homeworks each, 12.5% for each of 4 midterms (yes, there is a midterm on the last week of class), 20% for the final, 7% for "participation" (just show up to class), and 3% for in-class group activities (if you were in class to do them, you'll almost certainly get a perfect score for this category). Probably my biggest tip would be to make sure you are confident in every homework answer (e.g. go to office hours and whatnot), because I didn't go to office hours and lost a few points on each assignment, which really added up.
For the midterms (which I feel are medium difficulty), TA review sessions are provided (which could've been better because the TAs seemed out of sync with what the course covered now) as well as practice questions, which had errors and touched on stuff that the course did not cover. The final was much easier than the midterms.
Overall, I think this course is fine if you vibe with the content. #tCFS24

Prof Orrico is one of the most disorganized and all over the place profs I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. Her notes are nonsensical meanderings that are barely legible, lectures are hard to grasp and very poorly put together. Content is not the most difficult, however given the style of the class it can easily become confusing. The grade breakdown consists of mostly exams, which means do poorly on one and it becomes tough to climb back up. I would not take this class with Orrico ever again she genuinely made this class unbearable to take and as much as she parades around as a friendly figure her class is catered towards few students and barely does much for the rest. DO NOT be fooled by the positive reviews from before the class structure was changed. If you must take the class with Oricco make sure you're on top of your assignments, and try your best to absorb the lectures, you can still do pretty well if you try hard enough as like I said before the content is not the worst thing in the world.

This is indefinitely Orrico’s last semester ever teaching, but I felt it necessary to leave her a review. She is genuinely one of the most passionate professors I’ve studied under. She advocates for students and is fairly flexible about test rescheduling as long as you’re timely and kind about it. I've loved our conversations and her willingness to provide advice and insight. This semester saw a lot of controversy over how she handled cheating during exams and on attendance checks. However, I personally am grateful for a professor that takes honor seriously and gives out consequences as needed. I hope it sets a necessary precedent for other professors in the department. As for the class itself, it’s pretty manageable content, and there are a lot of resources available if you don’t understand lectures, including TAs, practice problem sets, and Orrico herself. It’s honestly pretty fun course content, and you'll have a good time if you apply yourself.

#tCFS24

Orrico is one of the weirdest teachers I've ever had. She's a bit much sometimes. She often goes on tangents about random topics completely unrelated to her lecture (talking about her life or other such topics). Or she'll dive really deep into an example or application of what she's teaching and completely derail the lectur.

She's an okay teacher. Her lectures are very disorganized, but DMT isn't a hard class to start with so it really doesn't matter too much. She covers all the concepts pretty well but tends to overexplain everything (which is better than under-explaining).

I would love to say that she cares about her students, but I genuinely don't know. She's friendly to the students who actively participate in her class (which is like maybe dozen per class) but doesn't really engage with the rest (60+ students). I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing because she treats active participators extremely well (helping them with career stuff, internships, and TA positions). At the same time, she did say that she enjoys schadenfreude (taking pleasure in others misfortune) when going on a rant about how people were cheating on attendance checks, and used some choice phrases like calling us "spoiled brats" who "worked at daddy's firm".

So... I don't really know what to think of her. If you ignore her quirks, you'll do fine in this class.

The content isn't interesting, but Prof Orrico tries her best to keep people engaged. The homework can be difficult, but you can work with anyone and you have a week to do them. The content itself can be difficult because it's really different from anything that I've learned before, but going to TA hours helped a lot. The tests are significantly easier than the homework.

The attendance policy was kind of wack (i.e. attendance was MANDATORY), but I think the lectures were helpful for understanding the content, so I didn't skip many.

I'm sad she won't be teaching next semester because she's a good prof and genuinely cares about her students. #tCFS24

just mid overall. orrico is a little quirky but its dismissable. concepts are pretty easy to learn but you should make sure you understand them for quizzes and what not. weekly homework and that's it.

To be honest, she talks a lot about non-sense during class which made it hard to focus throughout the entire duration. Luckily she records her lectures so you can skip through the off topic discussion yourself but sometimes she would end up having to rush the last bit of her slides. The quizzes weren't hard and we didn't get any significant homework. Other than that, the class isn't too hard so long as you take notes and pay the best attention you can during lecture.

WOW, I LOVED this class! Orrico is the best CS professor I've had so far, because every class was both entertaining and useful. She is a great teacher and really cares about all of her students learning and participating in class.
The format of the class has changed. There were 8 HWs (2 for each unit), and 4 unit tests, and 1 final exam. The content itself wasn't too difficult, and the unit tests were mostly similar to the HWs and any hints she gave us before the exams. The final was essentially a slightly easier version of each of the unit tests combined.
The HWs took like 2-3 hours max, and she encouraged group work and use of chatGPT.

Despite her wittiness and jokes in class in an attempt to make the class more light-hearted, Professor Oricco rushed through slides quite often, trying to cram information in at the last second of class, making it hard to understand the course material. She often contradicts herself, and the tests and homework just do not accurately reflect what Oricco highlights in class. Furthermore, this semester, she made the course harder and wanted students to start doing worse in this class compared to previous semesters. She audibly voiced her concern to the class that she wanted to be more respected as a teacher and as a woman by making her class harder for students to do well in, which I respect, but could have come about in a different manner. Class difficulty and instructor respect, do not necessarily correlate. Our grades are based solely on 20-point tests and tricky homework graded on accuracy. She offers no opportunities to increase your grade in the class, while in previous semesters, she let students retake tests and offered more leniency to do well in this course, as well as no final exam. This year, we have a final exam for the first time in person when previously this consisted of retakes. I worked really hard to do well in this class, and I still did not do well on the tests. I often go to office hours to get help which is very helpful on the TAs parts, but they have admitted to me that this course is very difficult now, and they apologize for their struggles in not knowing how to do some of the problems. I've talked to several students, and many of them agree that it is unfair the way the class has operated this semester, and it is unfortunate that our grades will reflect this. When signing up for a class, you read the reviews to help manage your courseload, and she has completely changed those reviews now. Definitely try to find a different section of this course if you want your efforts to succeed to be reflected in your grade. Do not listen to any review for this class written prior to Fall 2023 saying this class is "easy," because she has completely restructured the course. I wish you all the best of luck in this class and other CS courses at UVa!

While she is an amazing person and has the right mindset about teaching, I find the restructuring of the class to be detrimental to the students. She often contradicts herself and the tests seem disproportionately weighted on a question-to-question basis. I don't feel like the lectures provide adequate information to properly aid you on the homework or the tests. Talking to my peers this seems to be a commonly held opinion within my section. I would recommend attempting to find another section unless you plan to fight tooth and nail for a decent grade. Other previous reviews were done before the restructuring of the class and I would disregard them entirely. Retakes as well as previous commodities are a thing of the past in this class.

I LOVE Orrico!!! She is one of my favorite professors I've had so far. She is so funny (maybe a little bit cheesy at points), she is always willing to help her students, and she genuinely cares that everyone has a solid understanding of the material. I feel like she gives the class a really good difficulty, to where the quizzes can be challenging but rewarding. She is a great professor in my opinion, but I could also see how other students may not like her.

Elizabeth makes this class as fun and engaging as she can and is a great professor, but the subject matter of DMT1 is very dull. Most of it is common sense and learning terminology, so the class is pretty easy. The homeworks are open everything (including other people) and you have a week to do them. Sometimes the questions are tricky but rest assured the tests are easier than the homework problems. The tests are pretty straightforward (you get a cheat sheet) and usually have a bonus question at the end that really tests for deep understanding.

Speaking as a humanities major who hasn't taken a math class since high school (and I'm a third year), this was manageable but not nearly as easy as everyone else says. Elizabeth is super nice and will make an effort to get to know you, but she's not the best at explaining things. She even confuses herself on her own quizzes, and she's said multiple times that she's trying to trick students, which I don't think is very effective teaching. She's much more helpful in office hours, though. Just keep in mind that if you don't go to class when it's not required (like me), you'll have a much harder time than the people on here saying it's an easy class. You need to put in an effort to get a good grade, more than people are letting on. While I thought Elizabeth was super nice, I think Prof Brunelle has better lectures. Fortunately, they teach the class together and have the same quizzes, so you can always choose whose lectures to watch.

I LOVE this class and I LOVE Elizabeth. It's not your typical Calculus-style math class; it's more logic and proofs. I found this really refreshing and interesting. But even if you don't personally like the course material, the course is still really enjoyable. Elizabeth is a fantastic teacher who is eager to hear from students and loves class participation. She tries to get to know everyone's names and build a relationship with each of her students, and by the end of the semester she's rather successful at doing so. I felt really confident in participating in this class and found myself wanting to learn within the class culture. So naturally, I highly recommend going to class (even though your grade won't really be penalized unless you miss an in-person quiz); you'll better understand the course material, you'll get to ask questions and benefit from your peers' questions, and it really can't hurt to have the instructor / TAs know your face, especially when you're looking for help in office hours. The paper quizzes are pretty easy as long as you have a decent grasp of the module, but the multiple-choice quizzes over the weekend are meant to be trickier; spend more time checking these over. I honestly found this class pretty easy when I put the right amount of effort in, and I highly recommend it! Especially with Elizabeth!

Professor Orrico is really sweet but she isn't the best at explaining the trickier material in this class very well. On top of that, she always went on tangents that made me lose focus and then wouldn't really finish her explanation well after said tangent. She really cares about participation though and it's really not hard to get participation points. There are four units with 3 quizzes each and a bigger quiz at the end of each unit that is optional if you want to replace your entire unit grade. EX: Unit 1 Quiz1, 2, & 3: around 75% each, Retake Quiz: 90% Unit 1: 90%. No final.

Prof.Orrico is sweet and helpful, but honestly the quizzes are way too hard compared to the lectures; be prepared to be tricked on every single quiz. She is definitely the best to take this class with other than maybe Brunelle, but the class just sucks in general. If you do not have to, please do not take this class for your own good.

Most confusing class ever.
The quizzes are designed to make you fail.
Course design is weird and Prof. Orrico sometimes doesn’t know what she’s doing tbh.

Discrete is not the most interesting material, but Professor Orrico always made the class more interesting. She would often go off on strange tangents and randomly crack jokes, which made lectures pretty engaging. The in class quizzes never got too difficult, just doing some of the online practice, and understanding the complex examples was more than enough. The course was organized into 5 modules, with 2 paper quizzes and 2 online quizzes for each. The in class quizzes never got too difficult, just doing some of the online practice, and understanding the complex examples was more than enough. The online quizzes over the weekend are also open note, although the questions were tricky, you have a while to do them. You also get to do a retake quiz at the end of each module if you didn't like how you did on the quizzes which will replace your grade for the whole module. Although not a free A, if you pay attention in class and do a little practice before each quiz you should be fine.

Weekly quizzes compose the whole grades. You will be given opportunity to make up any screwed-up sections on the finals. If you are satisfied with your grades, no need to take the final exam. Great lecturer, caring about her students, great sense of humor. She spends almost 10% of the time talking to her students rather than lecturing during class.

I took this class as a requirement and though the concepts taught really aren't difficult, they can get confusing and paying attention to detail is important. Although I liked Prof. Orrico as a person, she often seemed like she didn't know what she was teaching and would backtrack often when she taught something wrong, which got confusing. I liked the layout of the course in that it's split into 5 different modules, and this made it easier when it came to take the final because we only had to take it on one module at a time and only if we wanted to replace our grade for that specific module. I wish I would have taken this course with Prof. Brunelle instead, but he records all his lectures so I just started watching his towards the end of the semester.