COMM 1800

The information in this course was pretty easy and sometimes felt obvious and I wondered why we even had to learn some things. However, for an intro course, it felt like there was a little too much work. We had to do a reading and a homework assignment for each class, create a portfolio for a company over the course of the semester, and do a few simulations. It wasn't that hard to do all these things it just felt tedious sometimes. Some of the exams were harder than they needed to be as it seemed like the information should just be straightforward. Professor Hoopes was fine, I feel pretty neutral about her as a professor. This class was overall easy as long as you do the assignments!

I took this course as a potential pre-comm major in the fall of my first year. It wasn't the best and wasn't the worst for a pre-req. A lot of the content is common sense and I personally didn't find it too interesting. The work was tedious but doable; a major part of your grade is a portfolio you work on throughout the course. Again, it was more tedious than interesting. The course looks at the fundamentals of business through a managerial lens (organization, motivation, etc.) and is more of a survey than a course that gets deep into the topics it covers. The tests are very doable; they are multiple choice and only cover the content in the module (there are 4 modules). Prof. Hoopes also gives you a guide with topics the test will cover. If you do the readings, do your homework on time, and pay attention, the course shouldn't be too hard and is pretty straight-forward. #tCFfall2021

Dumbest class I've ever taken in my life. Literally the easiest material ever but makes the exams unnecessarily hard for no reason. The professor includes the most random questions that we barely spoke about in class, and the exam questions have almost nothing to do with material that actually matters for the real world. The selection of questions on exams, at times, can seem extremely ambiguous and you often wonder why she would include such heinous goonery. Honestly wish I didn't have to take this class for Pre-Comm.

Her teaching ability was poor at best, I did not improve on any facet of commerce throughout the course. Her grading was also incredibly inconsistent and there was little to no feedback provided by her or TAs. There were also no rubrics given or specific instructions for assignments which made it incredibly difficult to meet her skewed expectations. Furthermore. we had to do her and her TAs job by grading each other assignments on a generalized rubric that added nothing to our learning experience. Her lectures were redundant and were simplified reiterations of the reading. For what reason was a bike video game worth 10% of our grade. Absolute joke of a teacher and course. The exam questions had no relevance to the material or to the real world, she would pull absolutely arbitrary information from random discussions or pieces of the reading that were not covered in class. Would only recommend this class because it is a requirement for the COMM school.

Hoopes was a HORRIBLE professor that made the class unnecesarily hard. She briefly read through the slides in her lectures and gave a bunch of homework that was heavily tested upon. Her tests were horribly written, mostly focusing on small details that we barely talked about in class. She had a few projects in class that were interesting but overall they were a lot of work that felt unnecesary. The grading in the class was very hard and we got no feedback from the staff in the class which made it really hard to improve our work. They reserved a few good grades for some assignments but most students got C's or D's on assignments. If you are not interested in Commerce, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. It is essentially a waste of time and you do not learn much about business.

Worst professor I've ever had. The class made no sense. The material given was easy during lectures and readings but when it came to the exams it made zero sense. Homeworks also took a long time and they did not contribute at all to the course.

Hoopes is a really nice person but her teaching style just did not work for me. Her lecture would just cover everything we'd just read for homework basically without adding much new insight to it, though it was interesting when she discussed current events in business. But overall I strongly disliked the content of this class and didn't think it was interesting.

It feels like we spent most of the class covering very basic concepts that were presented straightforwardly in class, but the exams were so hard. You have to memorize really tiny details about basically everything, down to the exact phrasing of stuff. However, Hoopes did give a study guide with all the concepts that were to be covered in the test, which was really appreciated. She did try to give us the tools we needed to succeed. I think if I had studied more I would have done better on the exams, but at the same time some of the questions were just ridiculous IMO. There's no curve on anything but the averages weren't super low so I get why.

Mostly the class just felt really disorganized. I think this is Hoope's first year here so we were basically her guinea pigs to test out what worked and what didn't. She would change the difficulty of the tests drastically if the class did well on the last one, give seemingly-arbitrary grades on writing assignments (and there were a lot!) without a rubric half the time, etc. Plus the bikes simulation seemed pretty unfair because we were competing against other people in our class and your grade was mainly determined from your performance (and of course there are going to be people who come in last place, given that it's a zero sum game...). I had a good group that really thought about each decision beforehand, stayed after class to work on it, etc which helped but if you get a bad group I think you'd be screwed.

First off, I would like to say that Professor Hoopes is one of the nicer humans at UVA. It is clear that she is very well educated and is knowledgeable about the subject at hand. However, this class was nothing short of disappointing. As someone with basic knowledge in finance, I found the material assigned irrelevant and in most cases inapplicable to any realistic real-world scenario. While there were certainly exceptions, it was the way it was taught that hurt the students the most. Readings and class discussions barely connected to each other, assignments were busy work (at best), and to top it off, the grading of the class was baffling. Our exams were multiple choice assessments on collab that tested our skill to regurgitate useless information from readings (even when she never mentioned it in class) or obscure questions about surveys and conversations that took place during our 300 person lecture discussions. I learned next to nothing and felt as though this was quite a waste of time during my tenure here at UVA. If I hadn't been so determined to apply to the COMM school because of past experiences, I would've dropped this class 100x over and spent my time reading articles that actually pushed my understanding of finance and commerce. My only question that remains is: with topics that can so easily be engaging and interesting to Comm and non-comm students alike, why is this class so unnecessarily difficult!?

I think that was the hardest class I've taken and it did not need to be. Furthermore, Charlotte Hoopes was not at all accommodating for health emergencies or other issues. This is an Intro to Commerce course and honestly both accountings were a ton easier than this. I hope UVA chooses to hold their professors to a higher standard in the future and I hope this class doesn't completely ruin my chances of getting into Mcintire.

It's clear that Professor Hoopes knows a lot about the business, finance, accounting, commerce space, but the way this class it taught is absolutely awful and I learned nothing commerce or business related from the class. The lectures were dry, boring, and added nothing to my learning. All it did was restate the same things from our assigned readings, which were also tedious and non beneficial to most things business related. 90% of the work was just busy work and very tedious with no beneficial learning. Her grading also changed midway through the course, and she began taking off random points for no reason with no explanation "just because" There was often no rubric or guidelines to many of the assignments we did and there was little to no communication or feedback throughout the entire course. Why was a bike video game where she gave no guidance, rubric, or instructions worth so much of our grade, when it seems like nobody (even the teams who did well) completely knew what they were doing. Everyone seemed like they employed the same strategies, and it's like 10% of my grade was based on luck, and an AI generated score. She couldn't even give an explanation for what was happening. Also terrible communication and never answered questions on Piazza. She also made the course inactive so she wouldn't have to answer people asking genuine questions about the course and the grading. The course material was so easy, but the exams were unnecessarily difficult with random and obscure details being questions. I know this was her first semester teaching the course, but this was honestly such a dysfunctional course and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, unless you have to since it's a COMM school pre-req.