David Woodward

School: University of Minnesota-Duluth
Department: Anthropology
Location: Duluth, MN
Overall Rating
rated by 1 students
Helpfulness
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Rating Comment
Overall
Helpfulness
Clarity
Easiness
I had Woodward for Prehistoric Cultures. Let me start by saying that he's a really nice guy and seems to have a ton of real life experience. However, he isn't that great a teacher. His lectures are pretty dull; he works his lectures from power point slides that ramble on, they contain lots of personal photos from his previous field work, and he gets side tracked a lot. His tests are horrendous. I attended every class and read every chapter, I reviewed all his study guides, took almost a whole notebook of notes, and I still thought the tests were poorly written, not reflective of what was emphasized in lectures, extremely nitpicky and more often than not ended up guessing. Also, he assigns no homework and gives no feedback on the tests unless you schedule an appointment to see him personally, so you never actually know what areas you aren't understanding. What's worse, is that your grade for the entire class is based on 2 tests, a final which make up 80% of your grade and one "paper" for 20% of your grade that requires you to observe primates or monkeys at the zoo. So, if you really bomb the tests you're kinda screwed. He does offer to lead study sessions before tests & the final, which I didn't attend because they were always scheduled when I had other classes or work, but I heard that many students still struggled with the tests even after attending the study sessions. Also, I was really disappointed with this course because I thought it would be about Prehistoric Cultures, as that's what it was called. We only spent about 3-4 at the very end of the semester actually talking about "early humans," and Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens on to modern man was crammed into the last two weeks. The rest of the class was about archeological methods, the scientific method, primates, and the theory of evolution. I feel like this was not what I thought the class was going to be, but I don't know if Woodward designed the curriculum or if that's the way he had to teach it. Anyway, he's a nice guy, and if you want a class where you don't have to attend lecture and you don't want to do homework, this is it. But, it doesn't mean an easy A, those tests can be brutal.

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