BIOL 251Fundamentals of Ecology

36% liked it38% easy44% useful

From 11 ratings and 5 comments on UW Flow. The most helpful comments, quoted as written, without names. Read them all on UW Flow.

• What a rollercoaster this was. Prof was meh, no problem with explaining content or answering questions, but those slideshows were so damn long and difficult to follow along with. You'd always be questioning yourself on what would be on the tests, not to mention she "provides" review questions by assigning a question dropbox (worth marks) to the class to create test-like questions. Oh but surely she checks these submitted questions to make sure that they are formatted correctly and/or actually make sense right? Right? NO. Multiple responses I looked through in the posted review questions were blatant AI slop with absolutely no repercussions... Unbelievable. The tests themselves weren't that…

  Jan 2026 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this

• Okay prof, good at explaining concepts, and is happy to answer questions outside of class. However, lectures are very boring and unengaging. Make sure to understand the concepts before memorizing; otherwise, memorization alone will be useless to do well on her tests, and you won't be able to answer the questions properly if you don't have a high understanding of the material.
  Her PowerPoints are very long and wordy, and a lot of the test questions were hard to follow and understand. Needs more clarity and less wordiness, especially since tests are ONLY 50 minutes. Not a fan of profs who try to be clever during tests/exams, just ask the damn question and word it clearly, especially for…

  Oct 2025 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this

• The content itself is nothing hard or anything special but the lectures are incredibly boring. 50% of your grade comes from 3 9% unit tests (that are online), 3% from some surveys and the remaining from an in person exam
  The other 50% of your grade comes from a lab that is quite frankly, boring and uninteresting. And don't even get me started on the marking scheme for the lab.

  Nov 2024 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this

• I took this course when it was offered for the first time. The grade distribution was good, 50% from lab, 30% from 3 lecture tests and 20% for the final.
  The tests are online but you have only 20 min to answer 20 questions (not enough time) and it's hard to get above an 70 on them. the tests are composed of short answer, mc, and long calculations, doing all that in 20 minutes is just unrealistic. The course requires a lot of reading time and lectures are not recorded with no annotated post-lecture slides. I would not recommend this course, it's not a bird course and is highly unorganized.

  Nov 2024 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this

• This is the first time the course has been run, and it certainly feels like we are guinea pigs. Professor Rooney doesn't do many practice problems, so when you get to the calculations for the quizzes, you're not sure if you're getting the right answer. She says this is because you do calculations in the simutext (~$100), and you really don't. She also doesn't tell you what the answers to the practice questions at the end sections of each chapter are, which would be a big help.
  Labs are a mess (we have them every other week, and they are always changing what we have to do), and since Rooney moved the test to Mondays, the Monday lab people have practically no time to study for and do the…

  Sep 2024 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this