Not many people go to lecture, but I found it helped me stay on top of the content and Mike was a great lecturer! He was engaging and explained concepts in a clear way. He values student experience and listens to feedback, often interweaving humor into lecture. I would def go to lecture if you're new to python. Only negative is grade turnaround :(

The class consists largely of projects that are completion grades. There are three exams worth about 32% total but they are made very difficult to compensate for the easy grading elsewhere. Projects can take a while but late days and office hours help significantly. If your good at debugging/ reading code, you will be just fine.

His lectures are interesting and he always makes them interesting/fun. Class itself was not very hard but it could be if you have no prior Python experience before this class.

The course is lecture heavy but does not have any class recordings Also going to his lecture does not really help you learn the material well because he always likes to spend a lot of time talking about things that's not even relating to the class contents. To actually learn and succeed in this class, you just need to focus on the projects.

Doescher is an incredible lecturer and person. He very clearly explains the content and I had a good understanding of everything we did despite having no coding experience. He is very accommodating to his students and wants everyone to succeed. The projects take a really long time, but are manageable and office hours are helpful.

Mike is a very entertaining lecturer! He goes through many examples during class, but I learned best through the optional readings and projects. The tests are hard but the projects are weighted so heavily that I got a C on the first test and still had an A. The class suddenly gets increasingly difficult but the labs/projects really helped!

Mike was overall a solid professor. His lectures were engaging, but quite fast-paced and dense at times. He also coded on the spot, but often made errors and wasn't able to correct them during class time. Despite that, he's one of the most caring and empathetic professors I've had and clearly wants his students to do well.

Decent prof, his lectures were a bit dense and hard to follow sometimes but for the most part he's organized and knows what he's talking about. Sometimes he would start skipping through lecture problems which made it hard for me to follow, but the projects are well designed to supplement learning. Overall decent guy, and great for an intro class

Mike's a really nice guy, and I can tell he genuinely cares about his students and their wellbeing. However, the CS220 class in general isn't organized well but I feel like Mike does his best with that. It's a lot more homework than you would get in another elementary level class so just prepare for that, and do the readings, they're very helpful!!

He has a sense of humor, and the lectures aren't bad. He does live code during his lectures. The projects were 47% of your grade and exams in total were only 32%. Exams are all multiple choice, and the projects are time consuming. Lots of reading, but definitely beneficial if you don't understand a concept. Overall, Mike is great!

Great proff

Fantastic Professor overall. As a ME student who hasn't programmed before, he makes it easy to follow lectures. I recommend doing the reading and the exercises in the online textbook Python for Everybody through the first four weeks of the semester till you feel comfortable with the basics. Exams are pretty straightforward (do previous semesters).

Mike is definitely my funniest professor so far. I just thought the exams were not great because they required us to know very specific formatting of code which is hard to study for. I found his lectures weren't that amazing and I had to go to office hours very often. I will say that Mike did care about his students and was always willing to help.

This professor lied to me on the first day of class by saying it's a beginner level class, then proceeded to teach more challenging material (that are not in the syllabus) to make it more fun by rewarding the people who knew coding prior to enrolling to this class. I found this to be unfair as it confused me even more. Live coding errors-confused!

Mike is a nice guy. If you have learned some python before, it wouldn't be a difficult course.

One of the better CS professors I've had- I'm genuinely impressed at how organized this CS class is compared to what I've taken previously. difficult class for people just starting DS/CS but Mike does it well if you attend lectures (hard to learn on your own). He does do like a cringy standup bit during each lecture so brace yourself. he's a goober

On just the projects alone, I spend almost 20 hours a week. That doesn't include the weekly quizzes, labs, and the 3 exams throughout the semester. It doesn't help that the vast majority of people taking this class aren't comp sci majors or data science majors. He teaches quite well, there is just so much work that goes with it.

Mike was an awesome professor! He was funny, caring, engaging and knowledgeable. Every time I went to class he brought great energy and got through the needed material for each weeks project. As for the class itself the homework was long but not impossible, and the tests were all very similar to the ones from previous years.

Overall, Mike is an above-average professor. Lectures are chill, but make sure to pay attention as information is covered quickly. If you're taking this class, you can relax if you have him.

Mike is a very good prof for a class he clearly likes to teach. 220 is pretty difficult but the projects are a good way to learn the material. Mike live codes during lecture which is engaging but he does make mistakes. Worst part of the class were the exams, multiple choice exams for CS should be illegal. Quizzes also. Overall Mike was pretty good.

Mike loves to live code in class, and at 9am he isn't particularly good at it, so a lot of time is spent watching him trying to figure out his own mistakes rather than actually teaching.

Mike was a great comp sci professor and definitely the best option for CS 220. This class is very difficult if you haven't coded before, but if you have background in other languages you will definitely be fine.

This review is more of a knock on CS220 rather than Mike himself. The projects were unnecessarily difficult, and were made even harder by the fact that gradescope will deduct points even if you get the correct output. Get ready to wait in line for an hour at office hours if you want to do well. Mike does his code live which is excruciating to watch

Mike is great. He clearly loves what he teaches and cares about students. He's also very funny during lecture which makes it not as boring. My only complaint is that he goes somewhat fast sometimes, but I wouldn't say that really makes him worse of a professor.

I don't know why he gets all bad reviews on here. He was always upbeat and tried to keep the class engaged, and he clearly explained what he was coding during class. He was friendly and approachable, and clear and fair about grading. I had never taken a computer science class before, but he made the concepts very easy to understand.

He cares about his students, is always seeking feedback and tries to accommodate everyone's needs. I didn't have much coding experience but with the lectures and the provided textbook I didn't find the class too hard. He was not not the most organized, our class usually received test scores later than others, but I still enjoyed the class.

In my opinion, Professor Mike Doescher is one of the best professors for CS220. Although there were a few issues during the semester, he took responsibility for them and made necessary adjustments. He is a caring and knowledgeable instructor who goes above and beyond to ensure his students succeed.

Prof Mike clearly cares a lot about his students. Yes, there were a few hiccups this semester (grading mistakes, office hour lines, etc), but he addressed the problems and took action to fix them. The class overall is great if you have no coding experience. The projects are long, but you learn a lot. I would definitely recommend this class.

Most caring professor I've had. Stayed an hour after lectures and even helped me with a project at 9pm. You learn the basics in class, but as with any computer science class, you learn more by practicing yourself, which happens in the projects. There's a steep learning curve at the beginning, but once you get over that the material isn't bad.

Not the best professor. I would so much recommend Meena. She gets straight to the point and teaches more efficiently. Michael, on the other hand, likes to flex by writing up the code on the spot and always makes mistakes that need to be debugged. He also makes a lot of false promises, like the project help sheet he never made... anyways...

This is more of a review of Comp Sci 220 than Mike -- Mike is great. Super caring, transparent, knowledgeable, honest, insane, etc. The class itself is incredibly difficult. I went in with literally 0 coding knowledge -- never coded before in my life, and while they say it's an intro it is a very hard intro. Project based, at least 12+ hours/week

Mike is always loose. He really likes writing code from scratch in class, which wastes so much time and makes a tons of mistakes. Further, He doesn't know the stuff beforehand. Can you imagine a professor saying that he read the book yesterday for 5 hours to teach linking? If you want to learn stuff, never take mike's class. Though it is easy to A

The one thing you can ask of a professor is that they learn from their criticism. Mike definitely is more structured and considerate for his students than before and he retains being a great lecturer and being very accessible outside of class.

Professor Doescher is one of the best and most compassionate professors Ive had hear at UW Madison. His online lectures he put together for 354 are incredibly well done and I learned so much from them. He was very accessible outside of class and accommodating to me and my special circumstances. I dont think he deserves all these negative reviews.

Mike cares about his students and goes to great lengths to ensure they succeed. I struggled this semester with a very busy schedule but Mike was able to work with me outside of class via zoom and in-person meetings to ensure that I got a grade that I was okay with getting. He works very closely with his TA to ensure you get help even if its 9pm!

His handwriting looks like my doctor's notes. Flawed auto-grader for the assignments which was 55% of the grade. The average for the midterm and the final was around 60%. It is easy to fall behind in the class, and if you do, then you will have trouble. Regardless, I don't think he's as bad as people say if you aren't behind. He tries to do better.

Although the exams are hard, you can easily get full grades in your weekly activities and projects. Good professor. You can learn a lot from his lectures.

Very disorganized. Does not seem to care about the students. If you ever email him, expect to not get a response, or get a response a month later when the issue is no longer relevant. Seemed like he improved every lecture. Grades are not fair. Overall had an awful experience in his class.

It's clear he does care, just struggles with organization and time management. Improved though from last semester and the lectures were fairly good and interesting. The exams were the biggest problem as they were much harder when compared to the rest of the class, average 58%. If he can improve that aspect going forward, think it'd be a okay class.

No structured reading materials. The exams are not always related to the course materials. I learned this course by reviewing the last semester's materials. Mike is a good guy, but not a good teacher.

Mike is a good guy. He is not very organized and is behind schedule all the time. But he learned from his feedback from before and the workload is fair for the last few weeks of the class. Though I wish he would stick to the schedule so we are able to learn more things from this class. Also always answer my question and fixed grading issues.

While Michael had a bad rap because he wasn't strict with releasing projects on time (Fall 2021). However, this semester he did learn from his mistakes. He still was late on releasing 2 projects but he made it up for us by extending their deadlines. He also turned the last project into a weekly activity. He's fair. The grading script are trash.

Mike is a good guy, but a bad professor. I attended 95% of the lectures, except when I was sick, and read the textbook. Most learning came from the textbook, on his exams, there was little to no correlation between HIS lecture, almost everything was in the textbook-ish. He is a good person, but he doesn't teach well, and is very uncordinated.

Michael deserves a -100/10. Worst structure for a class ever. Released everything super late. He gave us no model of how the exam was gonna be and that is why the average was 50%. He said the book is optional but you can not pass the class without knowing every single word of the book. Made all the students hate C.Worst professor at UW.

Horrid handwriting, mumbles in lectures, grading takes forever, poor communication and unaccommodating about grades. Lectures seem like he is trying to get through his agenda rather than teach us or show connection between concepts. Average of our midterm was a 57%. Complains about attendance to the ones who actually show up to class.

I actually liked 354 with Mike. Lectures were very informative and he's very kind in class. He's willing to repeat himself if students are confused, never condescending. But I understand where others are frustrated. Don't fall behind, because he is INCAPABLE of keeping to his schedule. You just need to refresh the page to see when grades/HW appear.

His lectures were meh. Not terrible, but definitely not good. However, the worst thing about this class was the grading. It took forever to get grades back. Project specifications were ambiguous. The midterm had wrong answers. He said he would do things and just never do them. Overall, just a terrible experience with the assignments.

I've had a lot of really bad CS class experiences. This by far has been the worst class, let alone cs class, experience I have EVER had. It's really hard to follow his line of thinking during class and his handwriting is near impossible to read. He gets out projects and grades so late. None of the students really felt prepared for the exam.

Worst teacher I have ever seen, procrastination. Garbage lectures, can't teach, not organized in any way. Can't learn anything and the scoring is very vague. Garbage writing, no PPT.

unclear grading, late grade posts, avoid at all costs

Mike doesn't take the most accountability when things go wrong, but he does adjust rubrics and deadlines when things do. His lectures are actually really helpful, and he uses a lot of examples to make sure you understand what's going on. Overall, Mike is good at teaching the material. Don't fall behind too much and you'll enjoy the content.

Michael Doescher throws passive-aggressive tantrums whenever people don't pay attention in his class, blames everyone for his mistakes, and even told his students to seek mental health services because his grading scripts were broken and gave an average of 60% on the first project. I'd say NEVER take this class, but it's a CS major requirement.

Unclear grading criteria. Professor and the TAs pretty much seem like they do not know what they are doing, and our grades suffer for it.

Worst professor I've ever had. Disorganized, procrastinator, awful communicator. Last 2 weeks of class had same volume of work as first 3 MONTHS + the final. Many students ended up working on those last projects during finals week. Mike ignored our concerns then "responded" by shifting the blame to us for "being irresponsible w our time". AVOID HIM

Ill be the first to admit that Mikes class is disorganized, behind, and can be frustrating to work through. Mikes health problems pushed the majority of the content of the class towards the very end of the semester, and the grading scripts for projects were often broken and/or delayed. Despite all this, I still enjoyed the course and the content

This class is unorganized and this is happens every sem: the prof dumping multiple projects the last 2 weeks instead of 2 months. Its unbelievable how inconsiderate they are. Tonight we have 2 proj & a final due & they aren't flexible by even a few hrs. If you expect us to be understanding to your health issues, then why not you to ours & our time?

Avoid this class with Mike like the plague. He saved all of our difficult projects for the last few weeks of the semester. This included three projects and a final exam in the final three weeks, after having 1 exam in the first month. Also, incredibly unresponsive and unorganized.

The course was nice up until the last 2-3 weeks, which were a disaster. 3 projects (was going to be a 4th optional, but ended up not being released), and final exams in a very short time span, no communication at all, in general everyone was lost and confused. Exact same issues were present last semester, which means he did not listen to feedback.

Literally had the worst organization of any professor I've ever had. Waited until the last 2 weeks of class to release 3 projects and then told us we needed to be more responsible. You'll probably pass the class but it will be much more stressful than it needs to be.

Don't even know where to begin. Mike was pretty damn good to start the semester. However, in the last 2 weeks of class we have been hit by a nuclear sized bomb of assignments. Many students expressed their concerns and were simply disregarded. Don't try to email as you won't hear back for weeks. He missed many lectures yet takes it out on us. Awful

He sucks. He fell behind and bc of that decided to dump 3 quizzes and 3 projects within the last 2 weeks of classes. Incredibly disorganized. He missed all of his deadlines which is his fault and is deciding to make us pay for it. Awful at communication. He is just ignoring all of the concerns and clearly has no sympathy for us as students.

Prof. Doescher teaches pretty well, but is extremely disorganized and a poor overall professor. He is often hard to reach by email, making him inaccessible. He also was gone a lot this semester (sometimes health, sometimes for trips) and ended up dropping 3 projects and 3 quizzes on us in the last 2 weeks before finals, which we have a final also.

Mike teaches his material extremely well. However, he can be extremely disorganized and sometimes we go weeks w/o a project just to have one and three quizzes dumped on us in the last 3 weeks of the semester (project and 2 of 3 quizzes due on same day). He is also very stingy with his extensions/accommodations, even when going thru a tough time.

The best professor I've come across in UW-Madison. Super chill and makes sure the students grasp the concepts that he's teaching.

Mike is a great guy, super caring, knowledgeable, and understanding. His lectures are awesome and engaging and his grading is extremely fair if you've paid attention during class. That being said he does assign a lot of work, you'll find yourself juggling quizzes, projects, exams, and readings all at the same time. However, that is how you learn!!

There were some issues with how the class was run. Information wasn't always in one place, sometimes scattered around piazza, also towards the end the release of the projects was way too much. However, he makes good lectures, and is very flexible with late work and grading. To be fair, he did stress heavily that projects needed to be started early.

Mike had a rough spring semester. His health wasn't great which caused him to fall behind on posting lecture videos and projects. However, he was extremely reasonable with the projects that he did give us. He shortened them and made them easy to complete within the time period. He also allowed for regrades due to the pandemic. Would recommend

Mike has amazing lectures, is super chill, and genuinely a good teacher. He is understanding, responsible, and cares about what his students have to say. He has had some problems due to his own health problems, but did more than enough to atone for them. Mike if you see this, you're an awesome prof, and don't let the other students get to you.

Mike has incredible lectures, and I sometimes watch them instead of my own 354 teacher's lectures. I hope that I'll take a class with him one day. He has been apparently having some health issues, so best wishes to him on recovering.

I want to like Mike; he seems like a really great guy and his lectures are always good. However, he straight up just doesn't post class material on time. We're 2 weeks behind the course schedule and have only had one project 3 weeks into the semester. I feel like I'm not learning what I need to learn from this class and it stresses me out!

Mike's lectures were great, and he ran the course in a very organized manner. He is also super accommodating and easy to reach.

My professor for this course was Meena, but I often watched Mike's lectures because of similar operating systems. Mike was enthusiastic, engaging, and quite clear in his lectures. He made me less afraid of learning a new programming lecture and gave me interest in a computer science certificate.

Professor Doescher is one of the best professors I have. HIghly recommand! He is very nice and helful.

He's a funny and entertaining guy. His lectures are put together well and he does a great job breaking down problems into their most basic steps in order to explain them well. I really enjoyed his lectures for CS220 and thought they were very effective

The class was very project heavy, but these projects really make you learn the course material very thoroughly. Lectures were really helpful and very clear!

He is a great lecturer, but the projects/exams really push the limits of even his teaching. He's also pretty funny and a chill guy otherwise (went to office hours). He is also very accommodating with regards to deadlines. Overall a solid choice who pushes your boundaries as well, give him a shot (but be ready to work really hard for that A).