COMM 1800

Kemp is a character and to be honest is kind of entertaining, however the course material he teaches is NOT. This is a COMM school pre-req, so take it if you have to, but if you don't, this class is NOT an easy A. That being said, it is a VERY Easy A- or B+, what distinguishes A's from the lot is their ability to memorize extremely arcane facts taken from online videos that seem incredibly arbitrary while watching the videos. Essentially, every question that is not inspired from the textbook is flawed. My tips for success would be: memorize every vocabulary word in the text and be able to recite every video he assigns to you verbatim.

I agree with many of the other reviewers that this class is pretty useless. I came into this class with a decent amount of business knowledge unlike many of the other people who jump on the pre-comm bandwagon. Because of this I assumed it would be an easy A. The material is very easy and not hard to understand, so Kemp puts silly questions on his tests to make sure everyone doesn't do too well. The tests are ridiculous, with 80 questions from the textbook and 20 highly specific questions from a bunch of videos and articles. Don't let the grade distribution at the top fool you either, the class must have been much easier in previous years as the averages on the three tests that make up almost all of your grade were 87, 82, and 85. Even if everyone got 100s on all of the homework that's a B average and there is no curving or rounding. Ended up with a B+ in the class. If you need to do well some things I wish I had done were watch all the videos twice, and take notes on each one, take the practice quizzes until you get them all correct, know all the material from the slides of guest lectures, and listen for his take-aways for current events. It's highly unfortunate that this is most people's first exposure to business as nothing truly meaningful was learned through this course and I hope something is done about it in the future.

Do not this class unless you absolutely have to. It is not an easy A at all. You learn absolutely nothing and cram study for tests just to forget the content the day after. Class is pointless and Kemp is very boring. If you do practice quizzes and read the book it is easy to get a B-B+ on the tests. With that being said obtaining higher than that can be very difficult even if you watch videos and get takeaways because the questions are so random. Class is not an easy A, but an attainable B+ or A-. Ended up with an 89.7 in the class which did not get rounded up which is another thing that sucks about Kemp.

This was by far my least favorite class. My upperclassmen friends told me that the takeaway/additional readings were only 5% of the test, but ended up being 20% of each test. Unless you spend HOURS and HOURS reading those stupid current events, videos, and additional readings, you won't get an A/A-. Also for problem sets, the average for each was around 92% but as long as you BS your way through it, you should be able to get at least 96% on them. For TA's, pick Melissa Sauders, I personally thought she was generous when it came to grading the problem sets.

As a pre-determined non-pre-comm student, I really regretted taking this class at the beginning of the semester due to the dry material, repetitive lectures, and various assignments that seemed to be busywork. Although none of those things changed, I found myself enjoying the class more when I realized I was in fact gaining a foundation in business, and I am now able to understand more about business than I have in the past. The biggest piece of advice I would give is to not take this class as a joke/easy A. A 95 is an A, which means you cannot get lower than a B+ on any of the exams in order to get an A in the class. This is attainable as long as you study and do the practice quizzes, but will not be handed to you. Professor Kemp is a nice guy, but will not adjust his grading for you whatsoever.

I'll preface this by saying that I did relatively well in the class (solid A-), I'm not writing this to brag, but to emphasize that many students who do well (by current standards) also notice significant problems with the course.
By talking to older students and reading older reviews it's pretty evident that this class has changed substantially in the last couple of years. If you added the mean test scores and project averages you ended up with a B, not an A- as the distribution above would have it.

Why? I believe that there are two reasons, the first is straightforward, I read below that the grade requirements have simply gone up for each letter grade. The second has to do with the course design. Our TA told us that Professor Kemp has redesigned the course so that it does not align as much with the textbook anymore. I think this is the key to explaining the lower averages. From what I've heard (and Professor Kemp essentially said as much) in the past it was sufficient to simply read the textbook and you would essentially be guaranteed an A/A- if you could retain the material, lectures were optional but not necessary to perform well. In an effort to drive up lecture attendance Professor Kemp now discusses current event "take-aways" (basically how a current event relates to something we have talked about in class) that will be on the exam. I personally felt that these were relatively straightforward on the exams, but if you don't go to lecture, you won't get those points , so it's an important change. The second and more irritating change to the course is the "additional readings", basically various videos posted on the class website that range from a few minutes to up to an hour long. Several times professor Kemp said "This is the only take-away from this reading" or "Nothing in the additional readings this week will be on the exam", only to put a really arcane aspect of the additional readings on the exam. This is the part that I believe has driven down grades the most, in that it's not enough to have watched the videos and understood them, you have to retain EVERYTHING in order to do well, given the volume of videos, this is difficult to do even if you watch them all just a few days before each exam. The take-aways combined with the additional reading questions make up about 20% of each exam, add in a few misses on standard textbook stuff (they're bound to happen for essentially everyone) and it's easy to see how the average grade for the class is now in the B range.

Professor Kemp is a a nice enough guy and the class does provide a limited and basic understanding of business, but I believe that the exams ought to be redesigned and either completely cut out the additional readings or reform those questions to reflect main themes rather than minute details.

Workload isn't too bad, usually 1-2 chapters of reading a week (at 1 hour/per chapter) with 1-2 hours of homework on average (more when you have assignments due a lot less when you don't).

Unless you're pre-comm, don't take this class. Professor Kemp is a nice guy, but this is not the easy A/A- advertised in the distribution, so don't come here looking for a grade boost.
Some advice if you do take the class: Go to lectures, you need those take-aways to do well. Also, do the online practice quizzes, Kemp pulls questions from them verbatim and puts them on the exams. Don't go overboard with the discussion blog posts, you can do one in 10-20 minutes, just make sure you fulfill each requirement, but don't go overboard, you'll still get points. Apply the same policy for the bigger assignments, do what's required but don't turn it into a research project (real footnotes etc.) it's not necessary and won't get you extra points. Finally, do the official course evaluation on Collab, it should get you a couple of extra points on the final exam.

The grade distribution above does not reflect the averages on the tests which constitute around 80% of your grade. Test averages are generally a b depending on the test. The class is not very difficult, but some questions are ridiculously detailed. A b+ or a- is doable. He does not round grades. Read the book, watch the videos, do the practice tests like he says and you'll be fine.

I don't want to write a long review because I don't want to give this man anymore of my time. Worst class I have taken in my academic career. Hard to study for the exams when you don't learn anything except for arbitrary information from random youtube videos. Class consistently made me want to cry, would only recommend to people I don't like. Robert Kemp is actually a pretty nice human being but his class made me stupider.

I took this my first year because I didn't know what else to take and figured I should learn something useful like commerce. BIG MISTAKE! I literally learned zero commerce in this class. You HAVE TO buy the textbook - maybe not this edition but all of his editions are basically the same anyway, just a different color. No need to go to lectures unless there's a guest lecture. Everything else comes straight out of his textbook, including his test questions. Tests aren't hard but unless you read the textbook and remember all his examples and everything you won't get an A - especially because an A is a 95. So basically, don't take this class unless you're pre-comm and you have to.

Worst class I have ever taken in any form of schooling in my life.
Only take if you are pre Comm.