[dj_money]

Hey everyone!

Dr. Dudley was one of the professors who taught the Biology 1AA3 course. To say that she was bad would be an understatement. Dr. Dudley would not post PowerPoint notes online for students to refer to. The biggest problem that students had with Dr. Dudley was that she did not follow the textbook. So, when studying for her part on the midterms/exam, we had to refer solely to our notes during lectures. Usually, I am a very good note taker, but I found that in Dr. Dudley's classes, I wasn't able to take notes and understand what she was saying at the same time. So, I had to sacrifice one for the other, and it usually turned out that I was paying attention to her more than I was taking notes. This was not a problem at the time, but I soon realized my mistake when studying for the miterms/exam. Yes, Dr. Dudley did post up Word documents with notes, but they were far from good. It was my misfortune that I had to refer to them in order to study for the tests. However, I got together with a couple of friends and we were able to teach other the important concepts. During her lectures, Dr. Dudley referred to her own research and the experiments that she conducted. In terms of the style of questions she asked on the miderms/exams, she would give you an experiment and ask questions based on analyzing the data (in the form of graphs) that was collected. Also, she was fond of asking questions that dealt with experimental setup. Overall, I did not like Dr. Dudley. She was not an effective communicator, and I often found myself stuggling to keep up with her lectures and understanding them at the same time.

Good luck to those in her class!

agree with everything djmoney said. Dr. Dudley was not a good lecturer. She keeps flicking her hair! she did it 14 times in one lecture (one of my friends was so bored of listening to her, he started to count how many times she did it, shows how boring she is). Her hand writing is very messy and yes she does like to ask questions alot about experimental setups. I found it extremely difficult to take notes while listening. So I concentrated on taking notes down because I knew i wouldnt' rmb everything even if i did listen carefully. one of my friends would sit and listen very closely to understand it. Then we would get together very often. i would share my notes and we would go through it together and try to understand it all. This helps caused my friend understood most of the concepts, but needed my notes to recall certain details. So it worked out well. also there was a ta that was specific for answering ppl's questions and has lecture hours, so i always went to him for help. he was a real life saver. I went to him and he explained alot of the dudley stuff to me and it makes so much more sense. So i suggest if you have troubles, try to go to your peer mentor TAs! i really did not like dudley.. avoiding her classes ever since.

yeah, I can see what Eva C is saying about going to your peer mentors...but often times they don't know anything about what we're being taught in lecture!!!

I have had Dr. Dudley a couple times and while I agree with everyone here, I found that I did well not only in her 1AA3 section, but also the plant course (Bio 2DO3), which she taught entirely.

The most effective way that I found of studying in her courses was this: during her class, tape the lectures if you can. I never did, but you might. Also, don't pay any attention to her notes; they're useless. They are jsut endless strings of keywords: pointless. Instead, write down what she says, which is FAR more useful. You will find that although she does it in a roundabout way, she WILL explain things eventually. I never looked up once during her lectures, because then I would drift off and stop listening (she is ridiculously boring). I found that looking straight down at my sheet and focusing on writing what she said rather than what she wrote allowed me to have really complete notes that were extremely useful at study time.

The recordings are a really good study tool to playback and go through your notes when you're studying. You will pick up lots of info that you may have missed the first time. Listening to the lectures again allows you to pick up on details you missed the first time because they seemed unimportant but you see the point in them after you know the 'whole story' ie. where she was going with her lectures.

I know this was longwinded, but setting yourself up for a boring, seemingly impossible course is pointless. She just has a very different style of teaching, but jsut remember to write down what she says (which means you can't rely on neatly set out notes and textbooks...it's gonna take active listening and note-taking.)

Originally Posted by Candy25

yeah, I can see what Eva C is saying about going to your peer mentors...but often times they don't know anything about what we're being taught in lecture!!!

during my year, i had a lecture ta that went to every single class and was hired to help students w/ any questions. yeah. the peer mentor ones don't know what is going on in class, so you'd have to be really specific when you ask them questions. dudley is just.... not good, but every first year taking bio1aa3 student will have to survive it through with her. have to experience good and bad profs.