Historical instructor

MARK NELSON

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.50/5 from 4 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

DS 501
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
Such a disappointing class. His grading system is unbelievably knit-picky and there is practically no partial credit. It's all or nothing friends.
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DS50119 · course not matched
Quality 2/5Difficulty 4/5
A required 1-credit DESIGN course yet we were assigned a 4-page SINGLE-SPACED paper as if we were English majors. I'm not saying that it was hard by any means, but it was ridiculous if he expected us to complete that much work for a 1-CR course
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DS50121 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 5/5
I tagged him as having a clear grading criteria but for this very reason he is a ridiculously hard grader. If you don't follow his expectations to the letter expect to receive 0 points for that section. After a while we simply copy-and-paste his requirements into our Powerpoint slides and spend our entire presentation answering these questions.
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DS 501
Quality 4/5Difficulty 1/5
DS 501 Contemporary Designers. One of the easiest classes I've ever taken. Mark is a really nice guy and is really passionate about design. Lots of interesting material, just very easy to do well overall. I recommend!
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with MARK NELSON

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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