APMA 2130

I have never had as hard of a time grasping material as I did in this class. This is not a simple math class, however instead of lecturing Prof. Spencer just handed out worksheets and let assigned groups of 3 people try to figure it out. I always left class confused and frustrated. I hated this class with a passion.

Professor Spencer is one of the best math professors I've ever had! UVA has many brilliant math professors who really understand their subject, but very few who are great at teaching their subjects. Spencer not only really understands Diff Eq, but she knows how to explain it to you at your level and is always willing to help. She really wants her students to understand the subject and is genuinely a nice person. Her lectures are a little dry, but she mainly teaches through group worksheets that walk you through the methods and steps of solving the problem. If you learn best through working problems, this is a really great class. Also, if you talk with Spencer one-on-one she listens to how you're trying to understand the topic and corrects any misconceptions. Also, if you need any help on the Web Work, email her your questions. She typically responds to them within a few hours (sometimes minutes), and if she doesn't respond but the time the assignment is due, she sometimes extends your time so you can complete it after receiving help.

Professor spencer is VERY underrated on this site. You work in groups each class to complete example worksheets. Also, homework is done through webwork on collab so no payment required. Glad i took her class.

I absolutely loved this class. Professor Spencer is super nice and very knowledgeable of the subject. She was really good at explaining things in a way that made it fairly easy to grasp the concepts, and is very willing to help if you don't understand something. She also prints off the notes for each lecture so you can focus more on what she is teaching rather than worrying about writing every detail down. Lectures are a mix of her teaching the concepts through examples on the board and then working through problems in group work. She will then walk around during class along with the TAs and answer questions about the group work or material that you don't understand. The homework is all on webwork, and never took me overly long to finish. The exams weren't too bad, just study her notes and the practice exams and you should be fine. Overall, I highly recommend this class!

Professor Spencer is a great teacher and organizes her class extremely well and always makes sure everyone's on track. She'll always try her best to help everyone and the TAs are especially helpful. The tests are generally straightforward with no tricks involved. Would recommend her to anyone looking to take this class.

I found the difficulty of this class to be very subjective. Spencer's style didn't match with my learning style at all so it was a struggle. I learn best through lecture with a professor explaining concepts and working through examples with us, but Spencer teaches this class by lecturing for 10 minutes or less then handing out worksheets for you to figure out on your own. A lot of people did really well with this and were able to grasp the concepts extremely well through this method, however based on my learning style I found it really difficult. It was hard for me to extend from the basic examples on the worksheets to the challenging problems on her tests and quizzes when I was teaching it to myself and the textbook was basically useless. Spencer was helpful in office hours but she can't reteach everything in an hour. Overall, if you're really good at teaching yourself and learn best through just practice problems this class will be great for you. Otherwise maybe look into another option if you're not willing to add in WAY WAY more time.

Professor Spencer is a very nice teacher! She offers a lot of OH which is very great but most of her class time is like group work sheets. She spends about half of the class time to lecture and show examples and the other half is to work on our worksheets (in class). I wish that I had more practice with the materials we learned in the beginning because it was a lot to memorize. But great teacher overall and the TAs are AWESOME.
I was in Dorning's class during my first semester but I didnt like his teacher style so I pushed this class until this semester. Dorning's class is "easy" but all the works are on a paper (old school) which is good but I didn't like the fact that his notes were on a chalkboard where it is really not that legible as the class goes.

Love Spencer! She's the GOAT!

I absolutely love Professor Spencer! She is very enthusiastic about ODE and she has a lot of availability for you to get help if you need it. She is very approachable and she is very understanding. Her class can be a little disorganized, but the other factors make up for it. She has great TAs and I really liked the structure of the class. She lectures for the first part of class and then gives you a worksheet that you work on in groups for the remainder of the period. Some people like the worksheets and some people don't, but I liked learning this way instead of just lecture. We had 6 tests over the course of the semester and they weren't terribly hard as long as you studied beforehand. The post homeworks can be a little annoying to remember, but they definitely help with the understanding of the material. I really enjoyed this class with Professor Spencer and definitely recommend!

It's an interesting course, but it was by far the hardest class I took my first year. The first order equations typically weren't that bad, but solving equations with matrices was something that I found to be quite confusing. The professor was good, but make sure to set aside plenty of time to reinforce the stuff you were taught.