Current instructor

Kaiser Pister

/5Adjusted rating
/5RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.00/5 from 15 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

COMPSCI 538
Quality 5/5Difficulty 3/5
Kaiser is super understanding and nice. Lectures are easy to engage with and he encourages interactions in the class. The homework's can be a little hard but he's super helpful at office hours. The exams are usually very similar to the practice exams so it's not too hard to study for them.
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COMPSCI 538
Quality 1/5Difficulty 5/5
He gives absolutely no resources to learn from. Lectures are useless and don't teach you anything to complete the assignments. If you want to pass, you will have to learn using online resources. He also doesn't know how to teach. He doesn't post practice exam solutions, so you don't know if your doing the questions right or wrong.
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COMPSCI 538
Quality 5/5Difficulty 5/5
this class isnt easy, i am not the smartest person in the world but i passed with a C, and i will tell you how i did that: kaiser is extremely flexible with deadlines and is very forgiving. he also is willing to sit down with you in office hours, as not many other profs do, and explain the projects and homework. Be for real
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COMPSCI 538
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
Kaiser is nice and fun but is a horrible teacher. Covers surface level content in class and then gives complex homework assignments that you willl be unprepared for. The final project was impossible without prior experience and students were told to "stop whining" after complaining on Piazza. You can ChatGPT a good grade, but don't expect to learn.
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COMPSCI 538
Quality 2/5Difficulty 4/5
Kaiser is not a good professor. He made the final project impossible, with content that was way out of the scope compared to lecture. I can't tell you how many people complained on piazza only to get told to "stop whining" and to "figure out how to test your code". He is unorganized, doesn't respond to emails, and has no clue how to use piazza.
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COMPSCI 538
Quality 2/5Difficulty 4/5
Kaiser is a nice and fun lecturer, he's a smart guy but it feels like he was just given this class to teach because it was an open role. The lectures and homework are almost two different classes, causing you to learn content outside of class to finish hw. He also doesn't know canvas on how to set up a course page or proper grading distributions.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Kaiser Pister

COMPSCI 639 is an undergraduate elective covering selected topics in computing, with specific content determined by the instructor for each offering.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026

historical GPA · grades

Spring 2022–Spring 2026

Recorded teaching history

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Fall 2026COMPSCI 639Undergraduate Elective Topics in Computing

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

Instructor identity & provenance
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