David D. Chao

I found Dr. Chao to be friendly, humorous, helpful, and flexible. He makes his own lecture slides, and while English is not his first language, his programming examples have everything you need to complete the assignments. Download the slides and study them.

There were 7 assignments worth 18% and 2 projects (basically, harder assignments) worth 7% total. Each assignment took me about 10 hours to complete. There are no group projects, but you can pair up with one (only one) other person to do the assignments and the projects.

He grades assignments very leniently. If you have many errors, you get 8 points. If you have one or two errors, you get 9 points. If you have no errors and your program runs, you get 10 points. If your program runs without errors and you add extra features, you can get 12 points! And unlike other professors, he doesn't deduct points for not following his programming style.

There were 2 non-cummulative tests worth 75% total, though other semesters he has 3 tests worth the same amount. You can have a half-sheet of paper with notes on one side only during the tests. The tests were not hard or tricky in any way. You don't get to keep your tests; he hands them out for you to look at, goes over the questions, and then collects them back.

He assigns a number of books to buy, but frankly we only used one, the "Starting Out with Visual Basic," by Tony Gaddis. You don't need the other books because you can look up the stuff on the Internet.

Dr. Chao is unlike any other ISYS teacher in that he actually knows how to program, and he can demonstrate it during class unlike past teachers I had in the ISYS department.

To fully appreciate his lectures, you'd have to read ahead in the book. That's probably the best advice for anyone taking his class. It's nice to see what you read demonstrated during class.

Homework is not hard. All his lecture slides are posted online, and you can do your homework by cutting and pasting code snippets from the slides.

My problem with him is that he doesn't explain concepts very well. Its obvious he knows what he is taking about, but communicating what he knows isn't always a success. He will sometimes depend too much on demonstrating how to do something but not go in depth about why its done that way.

DR Chao's class was one of the easiest classes I've had. His teaching method was practical and straight to the point. He didn't waste too much time explaining the concept. Even though I've had previous knowledge of Excel and Access, I still learned a lot from him.

His exams questions were a bit tricky. You have to understand the formulas well because he will ask you to write those in the exams. Exams were worth 80%, but the final exam was optional. There're homeworks every week which was pretty easy. They're only worth 8%, and the 12% went for group project. You have to create a database project, a simple website and present it using Power Point and write the project report as well.

The textbooks were absolutely useless. Just read his Power Point slides, take good notes, do his homeworks and you'll do fine. He's also a very kind person. He gave stickers to everybody who wanted to add the class.

If you have a understanding of excel prior to taking this class, it may help you a bit. I took this in the summer session and I think i would have done much better if it were in the f/s. He is mostly straight forward when he is explaining how to do the excel formulas, but i notice on the exam is that he put formulas in the test that he didn't cover thouroughly in the lecture. So you have to be carefull when your are taking notes and ASK QUESTIONS!!!!!!! HW is not that bad also. Make sure you study because his tests are tricky because he will start mixing formulas up and that can throw the student off...

Professor Chao is teaching an easy class in a hard way. No one would ever have to write out an Excel formula before inputting it into the computer. If you have any understanding at all of how to use Excel, you know that you can isolate the errors in your formula by testing the answer your formula produces. On paper, you cannot so you would just have to mindlessly memorize a formula without ever understanding how to troubleshoot it. If you do not know much about CIS, you will learn how to approach easy stuff in the most difficult conceivable way. My concern is that students who are not yet computer literate will be put off by the overall difficulty of his teaching method and erroneously think that simple programs are too complex for them to learn. If you do know CIS, you will do badly because you are not doing it his way, therefore it must be wrong. His exams do not test you on your understanding of Excel or Access, but rather on how good you are at passing his exams. It is a shame because this should be a fun class which imparts marketable skills to students, rather than one which teaches them to do easy computations in ways which make tracking down their errors impossibly complicated.

Prof. Chao is very enthusiastic and knows the material well. It was unclear to me at first, but there is a method to his teaching. You just have to trust that he will teach you what you need to know to use the software and do well on the exams. He can be hard to follow, but in the end he makes sense. The books are unnessary, and he will tell you this in class. A better use of your money would be to purchase "Dummies" guides for the respective software. The textbook is just a load of jargon.

I tried to take Garfolo for BICS 363, but that wasn't gonna work. What a jerk! However, all is not lost folks. If you are willing to take BICS 363 during a summer session (which I and many others were), then David Chao is your man to take for this class. He is very cool and very energetic about what he is teaching. His exams were very fair and his homework was even better. The project was, honestly, not that bad. But if you don't believe me, go to his home page to see a list of the grades from his summer session class. There are many A's and B's. Oh, I guess I should mention that I learned a lot as well. An incredibly enjoyable experience.

I had Dr. Chao for BUS 782 in spring 2001. He is a really decent guy, whose only trouble is that he is a non-native engish speaker. As a result, his lectures can be a bit of a wild ride.

His homework/projects are very useful and they ultimately force you to grasp the concepts. You'll spend many hours outside of class doing the projects which unfortunately only count for 15% of your grade.

His exams though are tricky despite the pre-exam reviews he gives. Most students received A's and B's, but you do have to work hard for them.

All in all, this class is extremely important for those with little computer experience and you'll learn many useful topics. If given a choice on this course, take Beckman, with Chao being a close second.

He is a nice teacher with easy-going and knowledgable instruction. He is always ready to answer the question that you may have regarding the learning and he is always available in and out of the class on internet. The most important thing is that what he teaches is absolutely USEFUL in your future caree!

I don't have many complaints about Chao's class. He's a nice guy, sometimes goes over topics quickly and is not the best at answering questions during class, but if you ask him by email or after class, he is very helpful.

His grading is fair and on the lenient side. He tries to make his lectures interesting and makes jokes. He gives homework to help you keep up and gave extra credit for those who didn't do very well on the exams.

All exam material is from his lectures and he gives a review before the exam and practically tells you exactly what he is going to ask - but the exams are still hard because you're doing computer stuff on paper.

Mr. Chao Is an intelligent man with a good sense of humor, but his english is often difficult to understand. It is important to attend his lectures because you wont find any of it in the textbook which makes me wonder why he bothered with the textbook at all. Another thing I can't understand is why this class doesn't meet in the computer lab. It's an Excel class for Christ's sake. Why is he lecturing off the blackboard? Students learn by doing.

Also, the tests are very difficult. Remember every little thing that Mr. Chao talks about in class because it will appear somewhere on the test.

He is very punctual and starts class whether the students are there or not. His lectures cover most of the topics on his tests but sometimes he will ask some obscure question out of nowhere. He doesn't give too many questions on the tests so if you miss one then you are in trouble because you just lost a lot of points.

The book for this class is horrible and don't even attempt to read it because it's not written for normal people.

He is very lax with homework assignments, but maybe because they only count for 5% total. You can turn them in very late, and very wrong and you'll still get full credit.

Overall a good professor. The only gripe that I have is the format of his tests because it is very selective and even if you know most of the material you still might not do well.

Very Good. I learned a lot in his class. Grading is easy. He is not a very good lecturer though. If you have no clue about computers, take his class; at times it was a bit boring for me. His assignments truly help you to learn. His exams are actually challenging but he is flexible in grading. He is also flexible in class structure; he actually made last exam optional. I loved the project; you can do what interests you as long as it is building a database.

Dr. Chao truly cares about his students learning the material. He is willing to spend as much time as necessary to make sure that you understand the material. Testing is fair. My only complaint is that he is not a very good lecturer and it is difficult to understand him at times.

I have learned a great amount of very useful information in D. Choa course. He assigns various homework on relevent topics, and is very lax about late work, he will accept work late without penalty. He is also willing to spend time to aid his students that may need extra help, after class. D. Choa is always prepared and puctual to class.

Prof. Chao is a very terrible professor. Firstly, he does not know and does not care whether you understand his lectures at all. I have to commend him on his punctuality though. He comes to class at least 5 minutes before each class but has a huge problem with communicating to students. His assignments are easy to get a good grade because he only seem to glance through them. Whether the answers are right or wrong, he doesn't seem to know. The worst thing is, he has a tendency to talk to himself and when he is teaching s complex topic, he lack confidence and dislike to answer students questions. I feel that Dr Chao knows what is or is not important in the class but lacks the clarity needed for projecting an understanding for students. His tendency is to speak faster when teaching a complex topic and speak slowly when teaching a simle concept. So, if you want to take his class, make sure you know the difficult topics and forget the easy ones. "Try figuring this out yourself - he can't answer questions".