Zoller, David  

Don't take this class for a ge, it is a lot of work. I did fairly well in this class, but that is because I spent a ridiculous amount of time doing work for it.

COFFEE + Philosophy = Zoller

Professor Zoller is a reasonable teacher and better than most of the other philosophy 230 and 231 teachers who I have heard very negative things about. I took his class in a 2 hr lecture twice a week format which definitely felt long if you struggle to pay attention at all with teachers who spend a lot of time lecturing (there were usually multiple kids asleep in class). Class always went the full two hours and was run in a facilitated discussion format. The reading was very heavy for this class and it is easy to fall behind and difficult to catch up if you are not on top of it. My biggest knock on Zoller is he did a poor job of explaining how you should take notes with the reading. (Highlight and write your interpretations of the reading of anything that strikes you as important, much harder to go and take notes later!) Also there points were poorly spread throughout the course; there were occasional quizzes worth about a percent of the grade each and general participation points but otherwise the other 85% of the course was earned in two individual week-long overloads. About week six you will have a paper and a midterm due that hold you accountable for all the prior weeks' reading and the same in dead week/finals for the post midterm material so it is difficult to know where you stand in the class. Zoller's tests are fair in that they ultimately just come down to knowing the main ideas of the philosophers that are covered and being able to apply their ideas to different situations. He grades his papers so that almost everyone will get a C+ or B- on them with a few exceptions for outliers. If you do not mind heavy reading on tough-to-interpret content then this is a good option for your philosophy GE otherwise if you struggle with that you may want to look for an option that is lighter on the reading.

Great philosophy teacher!

I'm writing this before I receive my grade so I don't have any bias in my review. Overall, the class structure seems pretty easy: daily reading with a "pop" quiz usually once per week, which are dead easy if you've even looked at the reading, 2 discussion board posts of 300 words each, 6 response to other students posts which are like 1 to 2 sentences each, a participation grade, and no out of class essays. And there is both a midterm and final both of which are in class essays. That being said I felt like he graded the essays way harder than what he actually taught us about the material in class and I felt like the grading was completely arbitrary. The problem with his teaching is that he honestly didn't teach us anything in class. Instead what would happen is that he would put up his powerpoint slide with some sort of ethics scenario from the reading and then rely on students to start a discussion with other students. From time to time he would chime in and basically summarize what a student had said and maybe put a term or something. I'm not sure if it was because the class was in the late afternoon or what or if it was because this is how he teaches his classes. So, I would stay away from Zoller and from this class. The class may seem easy on paper but due to his very subjective grading it was far from it.

In contrast to the review below me, I thought Zoller was a very fair grader. I left the first midterm feeling like I completely bombed it and ended up walking away with a B (which never happens to me). Ethics is a tough concept to teach because the ideas of some of these philosophers can be abstract. I thought Zoller did well presenting this information and an even better job clearing up any questions you had. If you still have questions after lecture he was even more helpful during office hours.

This is the second philosophy class that I have taken at Poly. First one being phil 231 with Lynch, I didn't learn much in that class and ended up getting a B- in the class. In Zoller's class, I actually learned a lot and ended up getting a B+ in his class. I thought Zoller did a very good job presenting the material and made this class a very interesting class. To begin with, the material for this class is HARD BUT it is very INTERESTING. Nextly, I took his class at 7am and having taking 20 units and did a great job in his class, learning alot, stuff that still sinks with me every single day now. I found the material in this class mind provoking and more or less affected my worldview. If you enjoy deep thinking and want to learn stuff that is hard to understand and maybe mind provoking, I highly suggest you to take this class.

Dr. Zoller is a really cool dude. Were I not a philosophy major but rather a student looking to take a Phil GE I would definitely want to take a class with Dr. Zoller. The reading is always really easy and he simplifies everything. It gets really boring but I hate normative ethics so that's probably why. Going into the midterm/final make sure you have a philosopher in your head that you definitely want to write about. I did really terribly on the midterm and I know he was disappointed in me but ended up doing well on the final. The class only involves those two essay tests and some forum posts. I love Dr. Zoller and plan on taking several of his classes, he is not nearly as rigorous as other philosophy professors which I think is nice for ethics.

Zoller is an energetic, enthusiastic professor (mainly due to his rampant caffeine addiction) and his class was great. He doesn't spend as much time lecturing on the material as other PHIL professors (and definitely less than in other departments' classes) but he is amazing at connecting and communicating with students. He is able to make complicated, culturally relevant topics understandable, is very approachable, and is great at understanding where students may be having trouble.

Zoller was a pretty cool guy, was really approachable, and was able to present really confusing information in a way that made it understandable. With that being said, the class itself sucked. It was a HUGE amount of reading, due every day, which made no sense because it was ~20 pages of nonsense until the last page where the writer told you their point. The final was not cumulative, which was nice though. Overall, the class would be much worse had Zoller not been teaching it, as he did a great job turning a boring, difficult subject into something understandable.

Zoller simplified a lot of boring and tricky information. Classes were mostly interactive, with a few classes that felt boring and slow. There is assigned reading before every class, which is often quite a lot of reading and very hard to understand. There are reading quizzes that are very easy if you opened the reading whatsoever beforehand. Zoller was a VERY hard grader with both the short and long paper. I put hours and hours into both and brought it in for revision and still got a B. The midterm and final weren't too bad. He doesn't use polylearn to post grades to it's hard to know where you stand if you don't go into his office hours and discuss with him. Also, the final essay and final exam grades were never posted because he doesn't use polylearn so it is a mystery what grades he gave. Good teacher, lot of work for a GE, but then again it is a C4 and upper div GE.