Edward Lam

Lecture material is not hard.

What I do want to gripe about is that his test questions do not follow the lecture at all. He says he just randomly picks test questions from a small database of questions. Unfortunately, those test questions do not always reflect what he goes over in class!! It's frustrating to study your ass off for a test to find that no matter how much you study, you would not have been able to get that question correct unless you make a lucky guess.

For example, he lectured on materials from Chapters 1-6 and an answer to one of the questions can be found in Chapter 8!?! How fair is that??!!

Professor Lam isn't that bad, he's just weird. The first day of class he ran in and practically threw us out to get us to logon to blackboard... which brought out my worst fears about what I read on teacher review. But really he's semi-normal, his lectures are just incredibly boring. After that first day he settled down and tried to crack jokes and become a normal teacher. I think he is genuinely concerned about his students and their success and it's clear that he is into the subject he teaches. You just have to make sure you can keep yourself awake in his classes. If you read the book, print out the slides ahead of time, and do the questions at the end of the chapters you should do fine. It is a hard course and he prides himself in the fact that his tests are extremely difficult but no one failed our summer session course. Beware of the questions that he throws out from lecture on the exams or of things that he never discussed! Talk to him in his office hours and he may settle any problems with test questions that are unfair.

Everything the anonymouses have said may very well be true. But then again, you have to wonder why the hell they took this course. It is after all just an elective!

On the first day of instruction, Ed came in and said that he was surprised to see so many students. "You don't read teacherreview?" he said to everyone's shock.

By the last day of class, I learned the following:

- His tests are worded in such a way that you simply cannot memorize the information.

- He's always late. Deal with it.

- If you have a question, ask it. Don't accumulate "intellectual debt" as it will most likely show up on his test.

- If you want to learn the material, do the projects at the end of each chapter.

- On your group project, be as creative as you can, don't plagarize from the reading (as the information is most likely outdated or flat out wrong), and do your own research.

- If you don't like the way he teaches, withdraw.

After taking this class, my impression is that Ed's class will reflect the interests of the students. If they aren't interested, don't expect him to be.

I took him for a saturday class last semester so it wasnt so bad, but it is true, the experience you will get with this guy is terrible. he is arrogant, rude, and inconsistent. he is nuts. i dont even know why he is teaching here... he has no teaching ability and definitely no charm. his tests are from MCSE exams (or so he claims) and if everyone does well, he will make it harder the next time. whats up with that?? his standards are all over the place. STICK WITH ONE STANDARD MAN!!! so anyways, to the students.... DO NOT TAKE THIS GUY!! thats my advice.

dont take dont take dont take dont take he's a joke joke joke -=)

Phew -- where to start! OK, first of all he is very arrogant. It doesn't matter how much you know, or how correctly you answer one of his ridiculous questions, you will always be wrong and he will be right. If you know too much, then he tells you not to "go above the heads of the rest of the class" -- like we're all a bunch of idiots!

His tests are impossible -- the other reviews are spot-on when they say that what's lectured in class and what's read in the book is completely irrelevant to what you will find in the exam -- on any given test, without any previous knowledge of the subject, you will probably get only about half the questions. He does make an AWFUL lot of mistakes in his lectures and is constantly correcting himself which makes it confusing for the students. There is also a term project/paper, and he gives NO guidance whatsoever. He basically refers you to a page in the book and leaves you to figure it out for yourself.

Unfortunately, if you're a BICS major there aren't too many choices for this class -- you're lucky if you can get in at all! I'm changing my major now -- I'll go to a different school to get a post-graduate degree in the CIS field. It's a waste of time at SFSU.

First I agree w/ the person above, if you ever want to learn something, DON'T TAKE HIS CLASS!!!! I don't know where in the world the BACS dept. had found this guy. He is clueless what he's doing in class. He doesn't know what to teach. During a class he starts from one chapter then jump ahead to another chapter; then comes back to where he started. Even himself admit that he jumps around too much, and he expects us to put his lecture together. He doesn't have any confident in himself, in one class you'll hear him repeat 100+ time "DO YOU KNOW WHAT AM I SAYING?" What an idiot!! He's new teacher and he expects himself to be as good as Sayeed (another BICS 565 teacher). When you try to complain him something, he tells you Sayeed does this, that. Lam, if you were like Sayeed, no one would complain anyone. I'm so regret that I was in his class. I really want to say F**K lam

If you want to learn anything at all, do not take any class from this teacher. He follows no gameplan or any guidelines (although his syllabus does, big deal). His tests have nothing to do with what is studied in the chapters. His lectures, which he is commonly erroneous in, are uninfomative. One fact and definition after the other with no real way to grasp the concepts. He gives you no ideas on what to study for tests either..."Know it all" is the kind of bullshit you hear. Sooooo scatterbrained its amazing. Basically, you read definitions of terms from the books and then have to conceptualize yourself what it all means with no practical way to do it and THEN answer these practical situation-like questions on the tests that #1 have never been discussed before and #2 arent even related to the reading in the book. Want to learn nothing? Sign up immediately for a class with this one.