COMM 1800

Leopold is a great professor and awesome guy, but he's still figuring out how to teach comm 1800. There's not a lot of work, but the material is unengaging and everything is seemingly self-explanatory until you get to the exams. He basically asks you to recall specific things he or the guest lecturer said in class that probably doesn't serve any importance to the course itself whatsoever. Everything else is obvious, but you'll spend 10 minutes trying to remember the explanation for a riddle he told you months ago. Don't take this unless you have to. For pre-comm kids, just pay attention to his lectures (and have a perfect memory) and you'll do fine!

Jeff Leopold is a fantastic guy, and most of his lectures are pretty interesting to listen to, but this class is just absolutely terrible. The assignments are a complete waste of time, you don't really learn anything. Worst of all is the grading -- it just makes absolutely no sense! Like I did well in the class, but I felt like grades were not at all a function of the quality or amount of work you put in, but were completely random. And the tests were absolute bullshit -- the final exam was horribly designed, its questions didn't even make sense and barely tested a student's intelligence, or understanding of the material. I honestly think that Jeff Leopold has amazing potential as the professor for the COMM 1800 class, but he needs some serious help re-organizing his assignments, tests, and grading. I think that once he has a few more years of experience as a professor this is going to be a great class, but at the moment it needs some serious improvements -- it will leave you extremely frustrated and for no good reason.

Jeff Leopold is a fantastic professor. He's super engaging and really enjoys teaching the COMM 1800 material. He has a lengthy business background and he's pretty knowledgeable about all the concepts. He's super approachable and just an all-around great guy. The class consists of 18 homeworks (you can skip two of them), three group projects, three individual assignments, and two exams. Most of the assignments are straightforward and just require a good amount of effort and quality writing. The grading system is a bit vague and there's not a lot of feedback given. What's good about Leopold is he responds really well to constructive criticism. Last year he had a grade for participation, but after lots of complaints, he removed it. He tries to make the course better with every successive semester so I think that in the coming semesters this class will be nearly perfect in terms of being a prerequisite for the comm school. If you're trying to apply to the comm school then you're gonna have to take this class but it's definitely worth it to take even if you're not interested in business.

This class is very blah and average. I didn't hate it but didn't love it. Material is boring and a lot of it seems like common sense. Exams are tricky because Leopold likes to put option e, which is a combo of 2 of the other options, so the tests are very tricky. Group work isn't hard, just a pain to find time to meet and actually do the project. Individual assignments are annoying and the homework is not really useful. Readings can be anywhere from 2-50 pages, and most of it is boring, and then you also have to take pictures of business concepts for every homework (waste of time). A lot of my friends ended up skipping lectures which screwed them over because the final consisted of many questions that you had to be in class for. Overall this class is very vanilla, not something to take if you aren't a pre comm student fulfilling requirements.

This class is literal garbage. Everything from how assignments are graded by TAs (which are HIGHLY inconsistent and variable) and other bs busy work. You learn common sense, every other post is true in that regard. I attended every class and still did mediocre. This class is not a measure of my intelligence, it is a measure of my patience vs. irritability. Don't take this class unless you have to. If you have to, may the odds be ever in your favor.

Whatever you do (unless you have to for comm school) do NOT take this class. A complete waste of time. You could know all the information on all the readings and lectures and it still won't reflect what you know on the exams. TAs are extremely unhelpful and everything is subjectively graded. Went to get help multiple times for group projects and spent a lot of time on them and my whole group still did mediocre.

Professor Leopold works really hard to make the class engaging by having a lot of guest lecturers which was cool, but the class itself is kind of boring. Most of the things you learn are common sense, so there aren't really any notes to take. The tests are all multiple choice and relatively simple, but it's easy to get tripped up because some answers are meant to trick you. The weekly readings can take a lot of time, but he goes over what you need to know in class so there's really no point to read them in depth, skimming them usually suffices. The discussion section was interactive and better than the lecture itself, and it more closely replicates what Comm School is like.

I enjoyed this class. It was interesting, we had cool guest speakers, and it really did give a good background in business. I will say that there are HW assignments due every Tuesday and Thursday, readings for case discussions, and a mini pre case discussion, as well as 3 big group projects (2 are presentations) in the discussion sections. It sounds like a lot but it is not too difficult and can be pretty cool, but I did want to warn to let you know that there is work. I would recommend this course to anyone with the slightest bit of interest in business at all.

First things first, Jeffrey Leopold was one of my favorite professors this semester; he's super approachable and makes an effort to get to know students. At the same, this class was a mixed experience. Initially, the course starts off with some fundamental business concepts like market cap, CVP, strategy, etc. which were useful and fun to learn about. After the midterm, though, you spend a ton of time talking about corporate social responsibility, creativity, sustainability, globalization, and other amorphous concepts that you can't really teach in a classroom setting. Lecture at that point got a little dull. As far as the grading, make sure you know the PowerPoints for the midterm and final because Leopold took his questions directly from them. The biggest time sink, I found, were the group projects. They take forever, they're graded a little randomly (Leopold didn't post a rubric for the last two), and they're only like 15% of your grade. You'll have to work for the A but this class is an easy A-. Not sure what you'd get out of this class if you aren't precomm so if you're looking for a fun, engaging comm elective go somewhere else.

If you are interested in business or the comm school then this class is a prerequisite and definitely offered a lot of information. I recommend it to anyone interested in business at all. I do think that the discussions and the grading are highly based on TA and also how well your projects go can depend on your group. The lectures were engaging and when we had guest lecturers they were fun too. The midterm and final were both multiple choice and the questions were kind of tricky and lots of times could trip you up so make sure you read the readings, do the homeworks, and try to understand the big concepts fully. Otherwise the course is ok, not an easy A though so put in the work.