As a senior getting ready to graduate after this term, I have been subjected to a handful of positive and negative classes that have shaped my experience at Oregon State. On a positive note, the classes that left a lasting impact and that I saw as beneficial heavily outweighed the experiences that were negative. An extremely positive course experience that I have had includes my time spent in Lean Construction which is an upper division engineering elective for civil and construction engineering degrees. The aspects of this class that made it so positive starts with the organizational aspect of it. The course, taught by Professor Pestana, had an outline and plan everyday that we came to class with a learning objective that was easily realized every single class period. This was ultimately due to her teaching strategies and implementation of group simulations that progressively integrated lean strategies to produce more effective outputs. Additionally, the availability from Pestana made the class much smoother. All questions were answered promptly, analyzed and elaborated on to provide the most all encompassing, yet concise educational opportunities. The tasks that she integrated into the class and that we completed in class connected the material to the bigger picture and allowed for improved understanding of lean subjects; very important in my field.
On the other hand, one particular class that I was subjected to was Estimating 2. This was a very important class that I wish my peers and I had an opportunity to learn more in and apply to the bigger picture. This class was notoriously unorganized and ultimately resulted in teacher changes for the following term. Resources needed to complete assignments were not provided, wouldn’t be addressed until it was too late and left many of us stressed and confused. Additionally, the professors teaching strategies were ineffective for a majority of us and resulted in us all piecing together work that we were unsatisfied with. The professor consistently was in and out of the state, severely limiting his interactions and responses to us, a recipe for disaster as this class has a lot of material to digest and implement in a 11 week period. Ultimately the organization, teaching strategies, material implementation and overall availability of the professor made this class an absolute nightmare and resulted in a missed opportunity to learn key components my peers and I need to utilize in our futures.