COMM 2010

I took a writing workshop at UVA. The last day of class half of us were practically in tears. Our professor had not only taught us how to bleed our hearts out onto the page, but also created an environment in which we felt comfortable doing so. I’ve never been closer with classmates or a professor at UVA before. All of us were pursuing different majors, but our professor had revealed a passion in many of us we didn’t know we had.

I recently learned that English professors at UVA are often given only yearly contracts in order to prevent them from unionizing and asking for higher wages or benefits. Due to odd application timelines at many universities and only year or semester long contracts, many English professors face job insecurity.

And then there’s Roger Martin: instructor of the FOUNDATIONAL courses of one of the top business programs in the country- well, “best” according to US News and World Report. Here’s what Rogers’ class entails: a $100 online textbook which you will teach yourself each chapter from, a practice/homework set of problems, and then an online test every 2-3 weeks. Oh and then some pre-recorded videos that are reused every semester. So here Roger Martin gets to sit on his fat tenured bippy doing practically nothing. Oh, I take that back. Not nothing. He does take the time to construct carefully framed emails tied up nicely with a cute little accounting pun to compensate for his passive aggressive tone. He also holds weekly review sessions in which he doesn’t even bother to come up with new problems, just pulls from previous examples from the problem sets. But, you can bet your bottom dollar *duh dunce* he’ll rip you a new one on the tests.

To those taking Roger’s class: really rework problems until you genuinely understand the concepts behind them; take your success in the class, or lack thereof, with a grain of salt; and consider how this introductory course may be reflective of your possible future experience at McIntire. Although, if you do get into McIntire you’re guaranteed to be raking it in after graduation. If you’re lucky enough, you might be able to join the ranks of Roger and make as he does. If you don’t make it in, however, there’s plenty of other opportunities- just don’t become an English teacher at UVA as you likely won’t earn what you deserve and may not have a job after a year.

The course was totally online and challenging. The exams were online but open notes, but still very challenging even if you are allowed to have your notes. I liked the course and thought that it was interesting - the assignments and were online and mostly inputing numbers into a "spreadsheet" on a system that gives you practice/homework questions. You pretty much have little to no contact with the professor or TA's unless you reach out to them directly.

Accounting makes sense to me, so I didn't have the experience as many of the other people writing these reviews. If accounting is not your thing, this class is definitely going to be a pain in the ass. Roger doesn't give any leeway in his policies, so you have to be on top of how the class works. Pay attention to how the work load works and don't forget the extended topics in the later part of the semester. I never read the textbook. I just went ahead an answered the smartbook questions an only consulted the textbook when I had to, but I did take an accounting course at NOVA before, so I don't think this is necessarily a viable strategy.
The first test is not that bad, but the get progressively harder and harder. There will be questions on the exams that were not on any of the practice problems and you will have to work out based on your understanding of accounting. There is a curve at the end of the class, but I don't know how generous it is. With a raw score of a 936 I got an A+. I would recommend this class to ECON majors who are interested in the language of business, and anyone interested in understanding the basics of finance.

I didn't empathize with any of the harsh comments here until the final exam. Beforehand, the tests were very similar to the practice tests and homework problems. There were a couple of problems on the final exam that had not been brought up before, so the average was a 71.
I received an A in the class by simply doing all of the work. I highly suggest making good notes of the textbook to refer while doing your homework and taking the tests (because the tests are open-note). The other most helpful thing I did was take the practice tests he gives the day of a test so that the information was fresh in my mind, as problems on the test were often similar to the practice problems and sometimes even the exact problems.
I never interacted with the professor or a TA, but I liked the flexibility of an asynchronous class.

While the course is abysmally unfair in many many ways, Roger did give a decent size curve at the end of the course that bumped me up a grade level. As literally, everyone else who has even taken this course before has said: Comm 2010 is awful because the exams are poorly designed. Notice I didn't say "difficult". The course simply doesn't prepare you for around 50% ish of the content that will be appearing on the exams. The different parts of the course feel like their material is completely isolated from every other part. For example:
-I read the textbook chapter for the week.
-I answer 40 questions based on the non-quantitative parts of the chapter (90% never comes up ever again)
-I do a quantitative practice of around 15-20 questions
-I do a quantitative homework of around 10-15 questions based on the practice
-I do a practice exam that has application of the textbook and the quant stuff, but its stuff I've never seen before. Like, I technically have around 75% of the information needed for me to solve the problem, but since I've never done anything like this before, I can't be that sure that I'm doing it correctly. Especially since the problems are multiple-choice now, when all the homework had been working with tables and stuff.
-I do an actual exam that has A LOT of new content not seen on even the practice exam. That's right. The content on the practice exams is almost completely different from the content on the actual exam.

No amount of studying will make you better in this class. Roger actively encourages students to "guess new ways" he could ask questions on the exams. By his own words, sheer hypothetical guessing is the only real way to prep for an exam. Its honestly unlike anything else at this university.

I went in to the year expecting an A. I got a B+ and feel like I know everything about accounting. Here's what I found annoying about the grading. There are four tests. 1) Martin weights the first exam at 15%. This is kind of bullshit because its the easiest test by FAR and he says he does it to let us get used to the format but that's honestly just cap because it's the same format as the practice exam. 2) You can't really check over your work on the exams. The time isn't atrocious but it isn't where you can re-work more than four problems on the exams. Naturally you will end up getting 1-3 questions wrong just from simple math or silly mistake errors. 3) That's basically it actually, 2 silly mistakes and 1 question you actually get wrong... you get an 85 on the exam and now you need a 100 on the next two to balance it out. Want an A? Don't mess up. I got a 94 on the first test, was mad at myself, worked harder, and proceed to never got above an 85 after that lol. If I were to do it again I would complete all homework and practice problems of the chapter twice when studying and that way you can blaze through the ones you know on the exam and have more time to figure out the ones you are unsure of since the exams are open note.

I truly cannot express how much I disliked this course. Everything is online, which is super ignorant considering how important accounting is when studying business. All content is "taught" from assigning weekly textbook chapter readings. Professor Martin doesn't provide supplementary lectures unless he's covering "extended advanced topics," but, in my opinion, these would be extremely useful. He provides weekly review sessions, but these are pretty generalized and don't go into much depth about course content. I recommend using Piazza for help on course content and weekly homework/practice problem sets.

The practice and homework problem sets are helpful at reinforcing basic course concepts, but they quickly become very repetitive and annoying. Personally, I dreaded completing them every week. I'd say they usually take 2-4 hours to complete.

The exams absolutely do not reflect the level of difficulty presented by the chapter or assigned problems. Professor Martin provides a brief review guide and practice questions (which I highly recommend completing) before them. But, let me tell you, almost nothing will prepare you for the exams. The exams are online and proctored over Zoom. After completing each test, I'd return a Zoom screen filled with sweating, red-faced students. That should say enough.

This class is absolutely a weed-out class, and needless to say, it weeded me out. I came into this class as an “A” student and ended with a C-. If you're conflicted about applying to Comm school, this class will be helpful in making your decision. However, if you decide you're not going to apply, I recommend you drop the class as soon as possible. I, unfortunately, made that decision past the drop deadline. The content gets much more difficult as you progress, and my grades certainly reflected that.

This is the hardest class I've ever taken. Keep in mind that I'm calc 2 as well and this class is multitudes harder IMO. It's very easy to fall behind in the work and have to cram the practice and homework problems Sunday night. One thing that's good is the deadline is 3 am instead of 12 so try not to have an early class on Mondays if you procrastinate a lot like me. I hit about the average on the first two exams, did amazing on the third exam, and did pretty decent on the final (B+). Don't ask me how I did the best on the exam with the lowest average, I really don't know. Using the search bar in the textbook saved me a lot in the exams. Like others have said, a big make it or break it factor for this class is your time management.

Roger Martin makes this class harder than it needs to be for absolutely no reason. Every week you have textbook readings, textbook questions, practice problems, and homework problems. These are all very time consuming and I find them to be busy work more than actually helping me learn. There are 3 midterms and a final. All hard. He expects you to use the practice and homework problems to help you study and then will put a similar concept on the exam but add an extra thing to the question that we never learned. Roger Martin could easily teach this class in person if he wanted to so I don't really understand why he chooses to keep it online. It is much harder to learn material without any in person instruction. There are in person review sessions once a week, but I don't find them very helpful. The best way to learn in this class would be to go to office hours where someone can actually teach you. Don't take this class if you don't have to #tCFfall2021

Prof Martin is genuinely a good person, and I feel like if he taught in person more, a really good prof. This class is 100% online other than an optional weekly review session and his OH. Like others have said, unless you are set on the comm school do not take this class. If you didn't like anything in comm 1800 then take that as a sign to not do comm, and if you want to go to comm solely for marketing remember that you don't need a marketing degree to do that. I cried at least 6 times over this class (like big, mental breakdown sobs), have had a (minimum) .2 decrease in my GPA, and have dropped comm along the way. This class is genuinely not worth it if you don't want to do accounting or finance, and if you don't like those take a look into the McIntire Business Institute or a business minor because I wish I sure had.
Tests are rather conceptual and the homework and practice doesn't prepare you for it. If you want to take this class and you're hesitant about comm, go for it. But if you get below a B- on the first exam AND are unsure about comm, please for the love of god drop the course if not for your mental health but for your GPA (this course gets much, much worse). Prof Martin will tell you to come to his OH to see how you can do better but I have a 90% guarantee that his advice will be to think more when you do your homework. There are a lot of TAs but every time I went they didn't do a good job at explaining how and why things are they way the are but rather take an is what it is approach to explaining things.
If you're only doing comm for the money, do CS instead.
#tCFfall2021