COMM 1800

Professor Hoopes is a great instructor (speaks clearly/at good pace, supportive of students, gets main ideas across, brings in IRL examples of content) and the workload isn't too bad. Group projects can get frustrating, but depends on who you end up working with and isn't necessarily a reflection of everyone's experience. There's a 48 hr grace period for assignments, so as long as you stay on top of work there's definitely time to get everything done. Exams are basically all MCQ (some matching questions) and aren't bad if you read the textbook + pay attention in lecture.

Oh my lord, this class was atrocious. It was the most boring and useless class I've ever taken at UVA. Aside from the lectures being torture, the assignments are ridiculous, and they're not even hard; they're just busy work. She would ask you to write 700-800 words on a life simulation that you did for 30 minutes. I truly lost valuable time when I could have been doing anything else but that. My tip for anyone reading this is that you still need to get a good grade in this class, and it's very doable. The assignments just need time, and the exams are easy but tricky. There are no exam reviews, but don't waste too much time taking notes—go over the lecture slides she posts and make Quizlets or study guides. Don't listen to people on Reddit who say that the exams are easy and the final was easier. It's all cap.

The most important thing to note about this class is that it is a management course and does not necessarily stretch too much farther into topics, such as finance, HR, information technology, etc. Professor Hoopes makes this very clear throughout the class, but many students will still argue that the course did not cover the topics they had hoped. Personally, I took this class to see if business would be an interest of mine, so I was a bit disappointed by the lack of topic exploration, but again, that is very clearly stated in the syllabus and by the professor. Overall, I did not find COMM 1800 to be a difficult class, as the only recurring homework was small weekly textbook readings and open-note quizzes. We did have some more in-depth assignments, but Professor Hoopes is excellent at outlining expectations. Overall, if you follow the instructions diligently, this class will be an easy one for you.

Class was very streamlined. I was worried about this course from reading prior reviews but it seems like Hoopes has really figured out a fair and well-structured way to teach the course. Every assignment has unnecessarily long instructions and the study guide for the exams pretty much just lists everything we did all semester in class and for homework, but in general this course was not bad. I would recommend taking it with Hoopes because it seemed pretty fair, and she was good professor, even if the content was somewhat bland. Also, the bike simulation is so annoying.

I know she's gone, but she's a great professor. I heard a lot of complaints about her, like how she goes on tangents or doesn't teach well, but after taking her class, all of that was wrong. The tangents are more like practical examples and implementations of the concepts she's teaching and she does teach fine.
For the class itself, it's dense, but not impossible. Maybe it's cause I had more time as a first year, but the tests were on stuff I studied and it was a breeze.

Hoopes is a pretty boring lecturer although I'm not sure if that's due to her teaching style or just due to the content in the course. I probably didn't pay as much attention as I should have in class but I found the content and the project/paper didn't teach me much. I wouldn't take this class for fun or recommend it unless you're aiming for COMM or the business minor. #tCFS25