ASTR 1210

Murphy is a brilliant professor! He is super engaging (so lectures are great!!!) & loves to meet with students during office hours. There are 3 quizzes and a final. The material is tough but definitely doable. He curves grades at the end if the class as a whole doesn't perform as well as expected. He records his lectures so you can refer to them before exams. There are also in-class clicker questions and observatory labs which give extra credit, and a chance to better your grade. Very interesting course. Don't graduate without taking a class with Murphy!!!

If you're not interested in astronomy and take this class, God help you. You must have at least some interest in basic astronomy to survive this class. I'm an econ major but thought learning about basic astronomical concepts would be cool. I took it in Chem 402 and the lights were off as Professor Murphy went through slides at 2pm, right after lunch. You will fall asleep unless you have the slightest interest in the material.

Anyways, the class was fairly straightforward. I honestly wish I tried harder in the class because I probably would have ended up with an A or A- rather than the B+ I got. Here are my recommendations for the class:
- Take MasteringAstronomy seriously. Don't BS it. Actually read the textbook and take the time to make sure you get every question right. It's a fairly significant portion of your grade over the weeks and it adds up.
- Take good notes in class using a pen and paper because there are graphs and charts.
- Form study groups and go through ALL of the material from lectures and in the textbook. I didn't think any material went untouched on the exams overall.
- Study your butt off for the final.

Professor Murphy is a great guy. Very approachable and willing to help. Some say they don't like how he goes over current events in Astronomy but I thought it kept the class interesting.

The quiz questions are very random and are not connected to the topics that we learn. I would not recommend this class to people are looking for a science that is low key.

Professor Murphy is an amazing professor. He enjoys what he does, and makes the material interesting. I have absolutely no complaints about him. However, the class is harder than it should be. If you are looking for an easy A, do not take this class. The quizzes are pretty difficult and almost impossible to study for. Thankfully there are a lot of easy ways to boost your grade. Homework is easy and worth 200 points, clicker questions are also easy and are worth 100, and there are two ridiculously easy pass/fail labs worth 50 points each. Don't waste time studying for either of the labs. Because of these grade-boosters, getting a B is pretty easy, but the quizzes are brutal.

If you are looking for an easy A, this class may not be for you. While Murphy is extremely competent as a professor, the material covered was sometimes very dry. Class participation is nice in that you only need to answer about 50 questions right to get full credit, but this led me to skip half the lectures. To study for his quizzes, simply go over his notes, homework, Learning Catalytics, textbook readings, and the concept/reading quizzes on MasteringAstronomy. Other than that, you really just need to know how to answer his questions, as they may be tricky. Although I got an A-, this class should be a easy B/B- if you put some effort into it.

This was recommended to me as an "easy" science credit. However it most definitely is not. The exams are all multiple choice, which sounds easy but the questions are tricky and very elaborate for multiple choice. The concepts on the quizzes were not at all reflective from the class lectures. The lectures were boring and did not prepare you well for the exams. The best way to study is to use the mastering astronomy practice questions.

He is really passionate about astronomy and so he makes the class enjoyable but the material is very dry and boring. I would recommend taking this class only if you actually care about this class. This class somehow got the reputation of being easy but that is not the case at all. There is weekly homework graded on accuracy and there are three "quizzes" but they are basically three midterms that are 50 questions long and the only way to study for them is to memorize the homework and read the textbook and go over his powerpoints. There are two very easy labs that are meant to boost your grade. The final is cumulative and again I would go over the homework especially and maybe the textbook and his powerpoint. If you are taking this class for a science requirement but you don't care about the class, then do not take this class.

Great professor, if you like this course consider taking his other course on the origins of everything. I will say that the “quizzes” are more difficult than I would have expected, and he at times writes poorly worded questions, which is very aggravating.
He makes it really interesting and explains everything very well.

Professor Murphy is a really, really good lecturer. He's super energetic and extremely passionate about the subject. He was on cloud nine following the solar eclipse. I enjoyed the class a lot, but it's definitely not as easy as I was expecting. Your grade consists of online homework, clicker questions, 2 pass/fail labs, 3 multiple choice midterms and a multiple choice cumulative final exam. Online homework answers are on quizlet, so that's an easy 100%. Clicker questions are also an easy 100%, because you get full credit if you reach a certain amount of points. Labs were actually pretty difficult in my opinion, but they were graded super easily. If you passed, you get full credit. If you fail, you just go back and do it again for full credit. The exams were not easy at all. They are based on conceptual understanding of the material. You can't just get by with knowing what stuff is. You have to know how and why it works. I always felt like I did well on exams, but ended up getting in the 70s most of the time. To study for exams, memorize the questions on the online homework, because some questions are pulled directly from there, and focus on actually learning the material. That's what you have to do in order to do well on the tests. Overall, I'd recommend the class, because Murphy is awesome and the material is interesting, but don't take it if you're simply looking for an easy A. That's what I did, and I didn't get it.

I thought this course was really interesting overall and I learned a lot about astronomy. Don't assume that this class will be easy because it requires a lot of studying. Most of the graded assignments are easy 100s: in-class learning catalytics questions, homework problems, 2 easy labs. Btw, I studied for the constellation quiz lab and it was a complete waste of time. It's so easy; the answers are basically provided for you. The labs are really fun and interesting. However, the exams can be very tricky. Make sure you study a lot for them. My best advice is to study the Mastering Astronomy questions and the learning catalytics questions. Make sure you actually understand the material; don't just memorize the answers to the question. I found the final to be very difficult (99 questions). Everything is fair game. STUDY A LOT. One thing I hated about this class was the fact that we were always behind in the syllabus (I don't even think we got to half the material). It seemed like he was trying so hard to squeeze all the information in the end and was going so fast. I never went to office hours but maybe that would help. Although it was very interesting to hear about, I think he spent too much time (sometimes half the class) talking about current events that weren't even going to be on any exam. I ended up with a pretty good grade in the class (the easy grade boosters really helped). Overall, I would recommend this class but be prepared to study really hard.