Need help- bad professors!

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I'm almost done with my first year of college (electrical engineering major) and I can say with confidence that I really haven't learned much physics. I managed to pull off an A- in Physics I with Calculus and that was with a lot of self-studying since I, along with many others, found the professor to be unhelpful and a very poor lecturer. Physics II with Calc has turned out to be the exact same, except with a different professor. I'm barely pulling an A right now and I really lack a conceptual grasp of everything I'm learning since I'm having to teach myself. </p>

<p>My issue is that next semester (Fall 2013), I will have to take physics III, which is electricity and magnetism. I've asked a lot of upperclassmen and they all agree that the professor is once again, pretty poor at lecturing. Ratemyprofessors (for what it's worth) agrees with them. I really don't want to teach myself the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism, because I know how incredibly time-consuming it can be and this is so important for my major. </p>

<p>So my question is, what can I do? I'm on very nice financial aid/scholarships at my uni, but they don't cover summer courses. A 4 credit course like physics can cost 3-4k at my uni, which is way too expensive. </p>

<p>I was thinking about auditing a class at a local public university. Is auditing just sitting in lectures and not receiving credits for the course? Would I have to pay to audit? The class I'm interested in attending would have 100-150 students in it. </p>

<p>Also, are there any online sources that could supplement me in any way? I've used MIT OCW on and off and it's helped me a lot for some topics and not so much for others.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance, and if I came off as complaining too much, I apologize. That was not my intention.</p>

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<p>Bump. Any advice would be much appreciated</p>

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<p>I sympathize but even with a good teacher classes are mostly self study. Get the P3 text and any other available study materials and have at it over the summer. A few hours of self study per week will go a long way to compensate for a bad instructor.</p>

4

<p>Khan Academy has more science than it used to. This sounds crazy, but my daughter, who has a minor in physics, used Wikipedia for more advanced physics classes when she did not understand a concept.</p>

5

<p>Check out iTunes U. Sometimes you can find whole lecture series on there. I don’t personally know if there’s anything that would help with physics, but I have used it for some subjects for clarification of concepts.</p>

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<p>You have to pay to audit. Colleges aren’t really in the business of giving things for free. With that said, in a 200 person class they probably wouldn’t notice. But it’s basically stealing.</p>

<p>There are plenty of online options, including things like massive online courses at coursera, udacity, etc.</p>

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<p><a href=“https://www.coursera.org/[/url]”>https://www.coursera.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This consortium of many quality universities is offering 337 courses online. I believe it is currently free, or very low cost. I believe they are offered as non-credit classes - but would be a great source to listen to high quality lecturers. Some universities are using this website as a marketing tool - and they encourage their most popular professors to participate.</p>