Wu, Xi  

Dr. Wu is a brilliant woman, however it was near impossible for me to understand her. She had handouts for every chapter and a quiz every other week. She never handed the actual quizzes back and she handed the homework back often times with only half credit because you got a problem wrong even if all your work was correct. She ended up curving her class to the extreme so if you passed the final you were guaranteed a C or better.

Xi Wu is great. She made dynamics seem a lot easier than statics. Her tests were fair. It wasn't an easy class, but Xi Wu wasn't the problem. Most of the class hardly showed for the lectures. I'd take her again

Wu gives out lecture handouts for every lecture, so there\'s no real need to take notes. Overall, the she makes the class relatively easy to succeed in. Put in the time to understand the homework, and you will get an A. Enough said.

Just to start, I am not bagging on Wu because of my D grade. I take responsibility for my shitty grade. I knew the material, but was unable to study for the midterms due to personal issues. Wu is an extremely nice lady so I feel bad saying this, but it must be said. She is probably the second worst prof. I have had at poly. She cares about her students needs, but is completely unable to convey any information. However, this has nothing to do with the way she pronounces words. Her heavy Chinese accent is for the most part understandable, but she has a very hard time putting the concepts into words. So for lecture, she ends up just saying what is on her prewritten lecture notes, which does not help since we are not blind. Even when asked one on one, she has a hard time figuring out what question you are asking. Also, she tends to randomly say loosely related words and phrases between sentences. For lab, when asked about how to do some of the procedures, she tends to get very frustrated very quickly with the students. The one time I got a bad attitude from her was when I asked her about something that was not stated in the lab manual, to which she replied that I should automatically know what to do and I am acting like a Kindergartener. I don\'t take shit from people, so ended up kindof letting her have it, but ended up feeling kind of bad cuz shes usually so nice. Anyway, great intentions, horrible instruction. Only take her if one of the following is true: you learn heavily from text, you are good at getting very small amounts of info and filling in the blanks, or you just like getting a kick out of Wu\'s goofy accent and bowl cut.

The things you should know about Wu: She has a heavy accent but it's not impossible to understand. She has a hard time understanding questions from students, and it's usually better to just ask the person next to you. The tests are basically plug n chug algebra.

Xi Wu...wow is all I can say. She is very annoying to listen to. I'm sitting in her lab period right now and have a raging headache. She gets wet off Adams and tries to teach you the intricacies of it even tho its not part of the course curriculum. She doesn't teach you anything about Matlab which IS part of the curriculum. So make friends with somebody who is good with Matlab. Sometimes it's kind of entertaining listening to her lecture full of "long-rotating coordilates" (non-rotating coordinates) linkages, "legtive lumbers" (negative numbers), "variables that are LONE" (known), "I will post scores tolight" (tonight),"arpha plus seta" (alpha plus theta), but it gets old after awhile. Her tests are straight forward but somehow I was able to bomb her first midterm. I wouldn't recommend her

Wu has the best intentions and she really wants her students to learn. She is enthusiastic about teaching too. But the bottom line is that she is not an effective teacher. At times it seems as if she makes things harder than it is supposed to. She gives outlines of each lecture which is nice, but I would rather have a teacher than taught better. She finds a way to waste time during class talking about ADAMS or something similar and hardly ever completely finishes an example problem. If you are a great self learner than she is fine, but otherwise take someone else.

There is a language barrier, but she gives typed handouts with pictures every day. Dynamics is hard, but she allows you to have multiple equation sheets for the tests. MATLAB is hard, but she gives hints on what to do, plus working with a partner made it manageable. She doesn't let you keep your tests, so the questions from the second midterm she re-asked for the final I don't think I did as well as I could of. Her test grading is strange too, I got 1/2 the points on a question I was BS-ing, then just over half on one I thought everything was right. She has a grader for everything except tests. Office hours aren't that good, because she likes to talk about other random things not applicable to my college education. Still, there are worse teachers, and the hardest part is listening to her speak terrible English.

Dr. Wu knows what she is talking about, but she can't explain it to save her life. Expect to teach yourself most of the material. She took attendance in lecture a few times, otherwise I'd consider skipping. She uploads class materials at the last possible moment. She will say one thing as she is writing another - if you take notes by listening and writing watch out!

Wu's lecture notes are comprehensive and doesn't make the subject more complicated than it needs to be. If it wasn't for the MatLAb component of the course this would have been a great course. If you don't understand MatLab before entering this course don't waste time trying to learn it. Grad student teacher's are fairly useless and you will sink 10-12 hours a week into struggling with some random problem statement that they just expect you to figure out. Don't waste your time and just get the labs from a friend. Hopefully the administration will recognize how poorly constructed this 1 unit lab is and modify this component of the course.

Wu is great. Seriously you should take her for lecture. She makes up handouts for each lecture which the homework will be based on. Very clear, and the homework is only about 30mins a night. Her tests are somewhat on the long side, but no suprises. She grades very fair, and lets you make your own note sheet. When she found out her test was too long, she loped off a problem and made it extra credit. She rules...take her.

She is awful. Her inability to explain topics outweighs any advantages she has as a teacher. She repeats herself and immense amount, and just confuses students. She doesn\'t know how to speak fluently and simplify difficult concepts. Wu is not an effective teacher. I\'d much rather take someone who is more difficult and learn the subject than take her again. You may receive a good grade in the class but wont understand the subject. Budget cuts must have caused outsourcing...

Awesome teacher. She knows that students may have a hard time understanding her lectures so she makes all her material available on handouts so you can read it. This is extremely helpful for the homework and studying for the midterms. I would take her again in a heartbeat for any class. Much easier than Birdsong for controls.

Wu sucks. She spends the first half of every lab telling you what you need to know about the lab, except when you havent looked at the hardware yet "the little green light flashing" means absolutely nothing to you. She goes on and on and on and you get bored so you stop listening which is really painful to begin with because of her accent. Its not impossible, but it definitely takes work. Anyways by the time shes done talking, you have an hour to complete the lab. Which is impossible. She told us that we would probably have to come in after class every week on the first week. That was true. This is the first lab class that I havent been able to complete in 3 hours in my four years at cal poly and I 100% attribute it to her not shutting up and wasting half of lab every week. Everything is "beautiful" to her, except lab reports. I wish we had gotten a single lab report back by the end of the quarter... One of the questions on her lab final was one of the prelabs. That would have been nice to go over so that I would have any idea of if i did it right or wrong the first time.... oh welll, im just glad to be done with her. I think she has alot of heart and truly cares about her students but the crazy eyes she gets when she gets excited just really made me care less and less about her

Wu is a hard professor. She is hard to understand and frequently spent too much time talking so that we couldn't finish the experiments. It was really hard to figure out what she expected for each report/memo. On top of all that, she has a very heavy accent and is simply hard to understand. That being said, this is a very difficult course and she does seem to know a lot about the material, it's just there is a huge language barrier. I feel bad giving such a low score to her since it isn't her fault, but sometimes the truth hurts.

She is unclear with her presentation of materials but is really good at research. Not sure how valuable that is here at Cal Poly though.

Dr. Wu is a great professor. She teaches the lecture section very well so that the students can learn the material in the most straightforward manner. The lab on the other hand is tough and she recognizes that. As a result, try your best in the lecture, really do the homework and learn it thoroughly, then you will succeed.

ME 470 is the variable topics course. This course is basically about mechanisms even though it was called "design of machinery." The content of the class was ok, but the way she taught it was horrible. She is unable to convey material properly. If you have trouble with part of the lecture she gets upset that she wasnt clear, then repeats herself. This rarely clarifies. The class uses the program Adams, which does not work. At this point I have used a bunch of programs (SW, MatLab, Abaqus, etc) and can confidently say that Adams is riddled with bugs. I would skip Wu and this class.