Historical instructor

John VALLEY

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 4.15/5 from 47 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

GEO100 · course not matched
Quality 5/5Difficulty 3/5
Professor Valley is an expert in his field and has a great passion in teaching Geoscience. Though the exams may be kind of hard, but as long as you attend lectures and lab sessions, you can get a good grade.
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GEO100 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 2/5
Overall I enjoyed Professor Valley's lectures. He co teaches with another professor and he is by far more interesting and easy to follow. The class is kind of dull but he is passionate about the topic which makes it more interesting. Tests can be difficult but if you go to discussions it's not hard to get an A.
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GEO100 · course not matched
Quality 5/5Difficulty 2/5
He is a super nice guy and really cares about his topic. He has a lot of experience in the field which makes him fun to listen to. While this class doesn't have study guides, he provides key terms and concepts at the end of his lecture slides, and that was really helpful.
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GEO100 · course not matched
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
Terrible class. Do not take
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GEO100 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 2/5
Valley shares his class with another professor so you do not see him a lot. He speaks clearly and his material is easy to understand with a basic science background. He is mostly interesting and funny, but tests are sometimes worded funny. Go to discussion and the worksheets are graded and study notes/read textbook for an easy A.
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GEO100 · course not matched
Quality 5/5Difficulty 2/5
Geology was my favorite class this semester because of Professor Valley. He does a great job connecting the material to his real-life experiences in the field. You learn so much about how the world works in this class, it's not just about rocks. Class isn't too challenging, but make sure to do the in-class tophat questions, they help a lot.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with John VALLEY

No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.

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Recorded teaching history

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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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