Karla Fant - Portland State University, Portland, OR

Professor: Karla Fant

Department: Computer Science

College: Portland State University, Portland, OR

Rating # 1

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Intimidating 1st class. There's lots of opportunities to fail. That said, if you go to class and do the work it's easy. She sets up the material in a way that's easy to consume. She doesn't grade the homework though and her graders do NOT look at it that hard. I got 105% on a project w/mem leaks,a broken destructor, and improperly allocated arrays.

Rating # 2

Overview:

• Course: CS202
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Karla is an institution at PSU, most/all CS students will have her. Great teacher, knows not just what to teach, but when to teach it. She has a planned path for students from 162 to 202, so follow along and you'll be fine. Extremely responsive to emails. That said, if you have previous/outside experience, it will feel slow and boring a lot of time

Rating # 3

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: A+
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Took a while to get into the groove of her class structure but once I did it was pretty smooth sailing. Karla's a hilarious lecturer and really passionate about the material and her students. Assignments often have confusing requirements. Tests are challenging but she's a very fair grader.

Rating # 4

Overview:

• Course: CS202
• Grade Received: B+
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Karla is an amazing, caring lecturer. There were 5 programs: 3 in C++ using vi/vim/emacs, 2 in Java using IntelliJs IDEA IDE. Midterm and final worth 25 and 35%, two pass/fail coding tests, and two quizzes. Study the Prata chapter reviews and lab manual self-check quizzes. She makes exams by scratch and told us she uses both to choose questions

Rating # 5

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Assignments written by her tend to have unclear criteria, but she's responsive to e-mail. She's the type of teacher to obfuscate information you don't need to know about only to pull the veil back later (think the 1st-grade teacher who insists there's nothing less than 0 until it's time to learn about negative numbers.)

Rating # 6

Overview:

• Course: CS163
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Karla is phenomenal at designing a class to get you prepared for learning and understanding C++. Her tests are difficult to understand. Read the book. Just do it. Like seriously, half the exam comes from the wording of the book, and no one does it, but it really helps to study for the final and midterm.

Rating # 7

Overview:

• Course: CS163CS202
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

When I transferred I sucked at coding and thought maybe I'd chosen the wrong field. Turned out I just hadn't had the right teacher yet. Karla's passion, hilarity and unprecedented enthusiasm for CS transformed me. The demos are tough, but if she fails you, shes honestly trying to help because she thinks you'll struggle in upper division.

Rating # 8

Overview:

• Course: CS163
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 2.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

If you want to take CS at PDX, you'll have to go through Karla. If you have prior knowledge you will love the 4 hours a week of browsing reddit and hacker news, because attendance is mandatory. Assignments are not difficult if you have any level of prior knowledge, just very time consuming.

Rating # 9

Overview:

• Course: CS202
• Grade Received: A+
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

A lot of people say this class is extremely difficult. It is not hard; it is time consuming. Expect every assignment to take anywhere from 20-40 hours to complete. It is not that they are hard to do, there is just so much to do with them. They are large programs. Make sure to start your program as soon as you can and you'll be fine.

Rating # 10

Overview:

• Course: CS16XCS202
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Karla knows the material very well. She responds to emails almost instantly and gives plenty of opportunities for clarification, questions and extra help. Her courses are hard, but not too hard(except 202 is very difficult/time consuming). Her grading is clear and tests are easy if you review the Lab manuals. Use the TA's and tutors often.

Rating # 11

Overview:

• Course: CS163
• Grade Received: B+
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

For 10 weeks I received all As, but got an 81% on the final and ended up getting a B in the class. The final is definitely the toughest part of the whole class and is worth 40% of your final grade. Read the textbook on trees and learn some basic BigO on all the data structures.

Rating # 12

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: A+
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

You dont need the "required" textbooks. You can learn everything from the Labs. I got an A and personally thought the class was easy. I was usually lost when I first got to the lab, but asked lots of questions and was able to pick everything up. People that struggle do not ask enough questions. Do not be embarrassed to ask multiple questions in lab

Rating # 13

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: B
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Lectures were very fast, does not explain things too well to students who don't understand instantly. She is a very good teacher, however I see her as an upper-division teacher instead of an introduction teacher. Having a very intimidating teaching style and being so homework heavy I think scares some people away from continuing at PSU.

Rating # 14

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Much of the class is learned through labs and homework, I didn't find the lectures particularly useful. The tutors and homework recitations are fantastic when you become stuck. I would strongly suggest skipping CS161 prior to CS162, I didn't take it and had no prior knowledge of programming, seems like a waste of time for an optional class.

Rating # 15

Overview:

• Course: CS163
• Grade Received: F
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

While her lectures are very detailed (I recommend using note-taking with audio recordings), the fact that your entire grade can go down the toilet due to her proficiency demo questions being completely random is completely unacceptable. I get this is to mirror an interview, but my entire GPA shouldn't be held hostage because of a random question.

Rating # 16

Overview:

• Course: CS202
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

If you're taking CS at Portland State, you don't really have any other options for the freshman sequence. Karla is a fine teacher, though you will be treated like a bit of a baby in 162 and 163.

Rating # 17

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Karla is not bad but her style never really worked for me. To be fair, I didn't much care for the topic and will not be continuing CS classes. She is responsive to e-mails and nice, overall. There was an incredible amount of work, though, which is apparently the case for the rest of her classes.

Rating # 18

Overview:

• Course: CS162
• Grade Received: B
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

I learned far more from the home work then I did from the lecture or the lab. I would have been better off practicing on my own.

Rating # 19

Overview:

• Course: CS202
• Grade Received: B
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Took 163 and 202. Excellent teacher. Very engaging, in depth lectures. Love the fact that she put in labs, helps me practice what I learned in class. Responsive to emails! But if you fail ONE assignment, exam, or demo tho you insta fail. However I've graders are pretty lenient for programs-as long it works it basically passes. But exams are hard!

Rating # 20

Overview:

• Course: CS202
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Karla is a great professor. Her lectures are very informative and engaging. She's genuinely hilarious. You will learn a lot. Didn't find the class difficult but there is a TON of work. 5 programs, 11 papers, 3 UML diagrams, 2 quizzes, 2 exams, 2 proficiency demos (which suck btw). DO NOT get behind. Start your work early!!