MATH 3250

The lectures were very organized and it was clear that it was important to Prof. Abdesselam that everybody understood the content. All homework was on WebAssign and we didn't need to solve everything to get full credit for the semester, which really helped. Occasionally, things would appear on the homework that weren't covered in lecture. However, this was never the case with exams. In fact, I felt that the exams and even some of the homework assignments were too easy and didn't offer challenging problems that really tested our learning. Bottom line is you'll get a really great understanding of the fundamentals of diff eq with Abdesselam, but I guess other professors might challenge you more if you care about that.

[TAKEN ONLINE]

Professor Abdesselam's lectures were frankly very tedious and slow in my opinion. Many people in the class seemingly agreed with this sentiment as most people did not show up for the lecture, at least in my section. Most of the material can be learned by doing the WebAssigns and asking for help if needed in the TA-led discussions. All lectures were recorded, so the lecture felt mostly pointless. Overall, the class was fairly easy but a bit boring in my opinion

This course was standard for me. Make sure to read the textbook and not just rely on the lectures for information. Some of the material was difficult to understand, but due to the Zoom nature of things, rewatching the lectures and reading the textbook was very helpful. I found the WebAssign homework a bit annoying at times due to formatting issues.

This course is fairly easy and not too much work. The first section of the material is basically what I learned in AP Calc in high school and Calc II at UVa, and the new material in the first section related to what we covered in Calc III! The second section of the material is basically Linear Algebra, which I haven't taken before, but many students in the class did. I found this material very confusing for a while but once I sat down and worked through the homework to understand what I was doing, it wasn't too bad. Personally, I believe the course needs some restructuring so there isn't so much overlap in material...

Initially, I was wary of taking this class because the other reviews I read mentioned that Abdessalem was awkward and a bad lecturer. Once I started the course, I realized quickly that Abdessalem is actually quite a good teacher, one of the better ones I've had here. He's very attentive to explaining the material in a way we can understand, and whenever he hears someone talking behind him he turns around and says "Question?", which rarely anyone had (they were just talking), but it means he wants to address confusion during the lecture. Even though I think he's a good lecturer, I think he wasn't very good at explaining the physical representation of what we were doing, and because of this I was often confused about why we were doing what we were doing. We mainly focused on learning the process and mechanics of solving systems of differential equations without analyzing what it means to have a fundamental system of solutions, or what these systems could possibly represent.

As others have mentioned, the homework isn't too bad. There was usually one assignment a week through the online WileyPlus software. They usually took a few hours to complete. During our semester, we were allowed unlimited attempts to answer questions, but we were never explicitly given the answer as another reviewer mentioned. As a side note, WileyPlus might be the worst website I've ever used in my life. The interface is slow and unintuitive, and the website frequently had problems.

Exams were straightforward for the most part and if you study you'll do well on them. The first exam did not have a very high average, and as a result Abdessalem kind of panicked about us all doing poorly in the class. He curved the test, allowed us to have a cheat sheet for the second exam (which wasn't the policy before), and changed his grading so if you did better on the second exam and final, you could still do well in the class. Abdessalem really wanted us all to do well and over half the class ended up getting A's.

As a final note, I wouldn't say this course was very fun or fulfilling, it was just learning how to solve equations in a pretty dull way, so if that doesn't sound good, probably wouldn't recommend this class to you.

TL;DR: Easier class, many students got A's, professor is above average, not that fun

Course itself is very easy; homework is actually graded on completion. The lectures are often complicated and laden with proofs, but the exams are much more straightforward. Study the basics and you will be fine.

Fairly easy class, even though it seems difficult at first. I was seriously about to drop the class because I didn't understand any of the theory he was talking about in lecture, but thank god I stuck with it because it turns out the exams are pretty easy and almost half the class got As (not kidding). Abdesselam is not a great professor - he spends a lot of time on theory that you don't need to know. Most of the lectures just went over my head and I taught myself the rest either from the textbook (which is mediocre) or from paul's online math notes. This isn't exactly an easy A class, but if you put in the work to understand the hw examples, you will get an A. Exams were almost straight from the hw except for a trick question per exam (since the whole class got those wrong, he just curved up).
One thing though - the TA was absolutely horrible and useless : (

You don't have to pay attention in class much during theory and proofs, but examples are definitely helpful. The online textbook has a great solutions manual, and the midterm problems come straight from the homework (for the most part), so it's very easy to teach yourself everything. The exams were very fair and he is a lenient grader (compared to my other math professors at UVA).

I really have mixed feelings about this class. Abdemalek is a really nice guy, doesn't have a bad accent, and seems to really enjoy teaching. That being said he does seem newer to teaching but got better as the semester progressed. Sometimes I think he was just a victim to our textbook which was AWFUL. Actually one of the worsts texts i've ever read. Just watch the MIT opencourse ware if you don't get something. Not really a heavy workload class at all. For the online homework, you get unlimited tries and after five attempts it will tell you how to do the problem and the answer (no, I am not kidding). First two exams were fair for the most part but each had one trick question that threw people off then the final exam was extremely fair. He has a policy where if you get above a 90 on the final, it counts as your whole grade and frankly speaking the final was easy (you get a page front and back cheat sheet). Overall, be prepared to put in a decent amount of time teaching yourself the material and there were times when this course was frustrating but it is overall not very hard and sometimes enjoyable.

He is a nice guy and has good intentions but it seems he is very new to teaching. He expects us to know certain things like cosh or sinh that have not been covered in other classes and gets frustrated when we don't know how to do his examples. His lectures consist of mainly theory that we don't need to know so most of the kids are just on their cellphones for most of the class. Although pay attention when he does example problems because those are helpful. He is really disorganized and it is never clear what he will be testing us on. There's a dense textbook that has decent examples in it but they are much different than the test material. The software Wiley Plus that we use is nice for homework because it does not penalize you for answering the material incorrectly and it is a good way to master some of the techniques. He has gotten better as the semester progressed on so hopefully he will keep improving in his teaching and will be better next semester.

He's a terrible professor. He's awkward and doesn't teach well. He'll ask a question and stand there staring at us even if we don't know the answer. Then, he'll say something along the lines of "you all should remember this from (insert math class here)" and pull some random formula/theorem out of the air. The class is heavy on theory, and he barely does examples in class, which, compiled with no practice exams, make studying and doing homework nearly impossible. If someone else is teaching this, take them.