Reviews of professor Abdussalam Alawini

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
professor is fun, but he is also stricted. not like other professor in uiuc, he is not too friendly and will make you have some pressure in course. Course is named Database but you will have to make a full web application for final project. Doesnt make any sense, lecture was rough

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Terrible prof. Has deluded himself into thinking students love him. Assignments are complex and very vaguely worded, even TA's are too confused to help. Blames students "not starting early," etc. for struggling, refuses to listen to feedback. Course material is not hard, but figuring out what the homework even wants you to do is much harder.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Very unresponsive, would avoid at all costs

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Terrible group grading in this course. Raised concerns to the professor, who was often online but never responded. The grading system didn't seem fair and individual efforts were ignored (the so-called individual grading system did not work at all). The professor and TAs are indifferent to student concerns.
Avoid this course.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
The course material is great, but the management is madness. Don't take this over summer. So many inconsistent deadlines, random extensions, last minute policy changes, and so on. The professor first said on Campuswire that you can get points back by fixing in stage 5 presentation. Later in an email he said I have to include them in stage 6 report.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Absolutely rough course. No teaching in lecture, brought unnecessary and unclear lecture to class, he provided you lecture slide and ask you read it before come to class. when you attend in class, he just uses 2 example questions to teach you and ask you do GA after that. Final Project asked doing a ton of nothing and they re outside the course.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Wonderful professor and very well run class. Very doable if you put in the work. My advice is PRE's are not enough to do well on HW+quizzes so make sure you come prepared and listen during GA lecture+activity. And if someone in your project group does not know web dev you will have a very difficult time with that because they don't help with that.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Great professor. Lots of chances for extra credits. Workload is a little big.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
The instructor has a clear, humorous, and interesting teaching style. Abdu will discuss pre-lectures and extra practices during the lecture in detail.  There are even relaxing activities during the class lol. But the professor does not reply to my email :( By the way, TA should balance their grading criteria among critiques.