COMM 3200

Very useful class no matter your major because it teaches you about the work that goes into making sure projects run smoothly, despite all of the things that can go wrong. Consider taking this even if you're not a COMM major. I have a CS background and a couple people in my section are in the E school as well.
Maurer is a great lecturer. I never skipped class because I knew I'd have something valuable to learn from him that a book or website would not be able to provide. He is also really willing and wanting to help you succeed in the class/understand the material. He met with me for an hour making sure I was ready for the test, even though I'd only requested a 30-minute meeting. There are just 3 group case study write-ups and 2 take-home quizzes. The rest is just easy, interesting reading. Worthwhile class. Take it with Maurer! Also ask him for a joke or two or ten!

Professor Maurer is a fantastic lecturer. He articulates concepts and ideas so that they are easy to understand. I came into the class not knowing much about project management, but now I have a broad understanding of it. Not only is he knowledgeable, Professor Maurer is a really caring professor. When I was sick, he reached out to me to keep me updated on what happened in class and what I had to do to prepare for the next. I really appreciated that.

The exams and reading quizzes (only 5/6 the entire semester and each requires ~10-20 min) for the class were easy, and I am pretty sure most people in the class did well on them. You get to choose a group to work on the case studies with. If you have a good team, they will be easy to knock out.

So I'm not sure how useful this course was. It felt like a series of TED talks along with a regurgitation of Systems from Fall ICE. Maurer is a great guy, but the material is not very difficult - which just means he grades way too hard to compensate and not in a very particularly fair fashion on exams. He provides a rubric for most assignments so make sure your group follows them EXACTLY and you'll be fine. His weekly quizzes are okay but it is really hard to get all the questions correct since some refer to extremely specific information from articles - which may not be the most important parts (I had an issue with this). Random cases and activities were pretty fun - overall okay class.

This class is an easy way to make progress towards the Management concentration. Prof. Maurer is a cool guy and can be funny. Class is discussion-based, so you definitely want to do the readings. He gives quizzes weekly but they are always super easy and quick. The material is very term-heavy - so if you're not into memorizing, beware. The case studies were probably the most interesting part. Overall, not sure how useful the class will be but it is definitely one of the easier classes in Comm.

Alright so as of this review I'm talking about the Spring 2020 version of the class. It's not easy to get an A because there's a lot of things that you have little control over. You have group projects and your group members might bring down your grade and thereby bring your overall grade in the class down a percent or two. Individual quizzes are fine if you study overly thoroughly. The exams suck tbh. I thought this class was going to be easy given the grade distribution but the midterm basically killed by ability to get an A in the class just on its own, so basically you have to get amazing grades on the exams and that's all that really matters. Essay writing is tough. It's frequently unclear what they want you to say and even harder to figure out which resource you're expected to use to answer a given essay question. Also they have a habit of pulling random questions out of nowhere. You could get a question that comes from one obscure paragraph in one of the readings. You also have to straight up memorize the slides which is weird. Oh and you'll never have enough time to do your best work for either exam, particularly the final. Class is fine the professors are very sweet but honestly I should just break it to you that unless you're naturally good at this class, it's actually quite difficult. Ultimately it just was an unenjoyable class.

I took this class being joint-taught by Maurer and Wright. They are very competent professors who make the class fairly easy with not too much work. I was also in it half-online because of COVID , and they handled it better than any professors I had. There are weekly reading quizzes that are pretty specific, so read carefully. Additionally, there are 4 pretty large group projects that only take a few hours each. Finally, the two exams(including the final) are pretty tough, but manageable and mostly an essay so they will give you partial credit. I enjoyed the material a lot and think its simple but pretty interesting.