Varley, Jason  

Jason Varley was a great professor. He did a great job of explaining the material, far better that the almost worthless (as far as expaining) book. He required us to make completely original programs for most of the assignments, which were difficult at times but also fun. The tests were based of of the lecture material and programing assingments and required that you knew how to program, not just what different things mean. He was also very helpful during office hours. Great class.

Varley graduated with a master's in CS from Cal Poly, and his qualification for teaching this class is his being founder of several marketing consulting firms. He learned alongside us. The book is necessary, as the midterm (15%), final (30%), and quizzes (9.5%) are based solely off the book (mostly vocabulary and broad concepts). Start making a list/flashcards of acronyms from day one because he tests disproportionately on them. There are weekly chapter readings, with PolyLearn quizzes due before the lecture day. You can find all the answers to the quizzes online, but try not to take that as a motive to not read. The bulk of work in this class is on the Marketing Plan Project (weekly section drafts 12%, final plan 12%, presentation 10%, peer reviewed participation 5%). You take a survey the first week and are assigned to groups based on your strengths. There is a lot of writing involved, and Varley gives rubrics and examples for each section (you get graded for taking notes on these handouts 4.5%). Work with the 'A' example and add a little more. You are assigned mentors that help you polish your marketing plan, and you should ask them questions because Varley doesn't know much about this class or his syllabus. My whole group put in about 5 hours a week the night before activity day, and got A's and B's on the drafts. If you get a group that slacks, that figure goes through the roof. Polish your Shark Tank presentations, not only because it's worth a whole grade, but also because the top three groups of each section get extra credit. This class is not representative of the marketing concentration and probably turned several students away.

Varley is a nice guy, but is an extremely harsh grader when it comes to the final marketing plan and pitch. He doesn't curve the midterm grades, and didn't prepare the class well for it. He had high expectations for an introduction to marketing class, and didn't provide very much feedback on how to improve the marketing plan assignments. The mentors did most of the work for him and he graded the assignments much harder than the examples he gave the class. The only homework is reading chapters and doing online quizzes but all the answers can be googled for those.

Varley grades the final presentations very very very harshly. Does not curve anything and his lectures are irrelevant to the midterm material. If you want to do well on the midterm, skip class and just read the book. He offers little to no feedback on assignments and the useless mentors that roam around doing BS are useless as well. I know this class itself is pretty stupid, but taking it with Varley will get you a bad grade and no knowledge. He is a very nice man and I have nothing against him except his inability to teach. He also puts himself to sleep before putting the class to sleep...