Feedback from previous students and other’s with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working.
2018 & 2019 Students’ Choice Teaching Award, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland
Rate My Professor: 4.7 / 5 out of 42 ratings and 98% would take me again.
Bolding comments, my emphasis, for which I’m bragging a bit more. 😉
Thank you so much for your passion and dedication to teaching! I feel so lucky to have a professor like you, finding the just-right challenge between pushing us to be better, encouraging us, and inspiring us as future clinicians. You are appreciated, and hope you feel encouraged as an educator and proud of the work you’ve don with our class!! YOU’RE AMAZING!!
— Zoey Chen [Teacher-Thank-A-Gram] (May’18) – INST 314: Statistics for Info Science @ Unv. of Maryland.
Thank you for taking me in to become an AMP for you this semester! It was a great learning experience for me. I got to interact and put my skills to the test. I got to learn more about myself and what path I would like to take for the future. There were times that was challenging and talking to other AMPs & TAs helped me a lot. I really appreciate the time you shared in our weekly meeting and discussed future plans. At the beginning of the semester, your previous AMP Ashley told me that it is going to be hard but luckily you were there to calm me down. I was a little bit nervous at that time but you checked up on me if I was having any trouble. I really appreciate that! Thank you for being my first awesome mentor!
— Peter Lim [Thank you card] (May’19) – INST314: Statistics for Info. Science; Unv. of Maryland
Extremely helpful and knowledgeable. Provided very useful websites and information that helped us with R.
Anonymous Student Feedback (Mar.’22) – KSB620: Analytics Practicum II, American University
Great! He is spectacular!
Enjoyed his feedback & support. Overall he was extremely helpful. Would recommend to keep him involved if possible.
Shawn Janzen was the absolute best! He helped us a lot in overcoming our challenges with R and ensured we understood each step.
Shawn was Fantastic and eager to help with hands on application. His help was truly appreciated.
Not only did he give us some coding advice, he helped us with our presentation. After we made the changes he suggested, our presentation was much better! It was great to get that second pair of eyes!
Shawn was very helpful in us understanding the feature engineering and any data issues
He is too much grateful for ideation, providing feedback on our ppt.
Shawn was very helpful and insightful.
Anonymous Student Feedback (Dec.’21) – KSB620: Analytics Practicum I, American University
Shawn was a good addition to the immersion.
Shawn was very knowledgeable and helpful. He helped our team with useful R coding which offered direction and saved us much needed time.
Shawn was incredibly helpful in setting our team on the right track. We wouldn’t have succeeded without him.
Awesome information!
Shawn was super helpful.
Anonymous Student Feedback (Jun.’21) – KSB620: Analytics Practicum I, American University
Shawn was awesome as usual.
Shawn was a superstar.
Shawn is always so helpful – my group really appreciate his guidance throughout the two practicums!
Super helpful.
Spent so much time with our group, trying to goose something useful out of several members. Patience
and help was amazing.
Very nice teaching style. Very interactive and professor makes sure the concepts are understood by everyone thoroughly.
Anonymous Student Feedback (Jun’19) – INST627: Data Analytics for Info. Scientists, University of Maryland
The course would have been better if the professor had been given a chance to use his own content for teaching rather than the content prepared by another person. The later part of the class professor used a lot of own content and there was good shift class participation. Certain content of the course were crammed and could have been better if the content was spread across for few weeks.
The professor went out of his way to make himself available for help. He was very responsive to questions through e–mail or the ELM discussion board.
Professor Shawn did a great job teaching this class. Datacamp labs were very helpful in implementing what we learned in the class. He went above and beyond to make his students understand every concept. He made sure everyone in the class is actively participating in each class. He held extra office hours to clarify our doubts. I would definitely recommend his classes to any graduate students.
Your slides were way more helpful than the slides that came with the book. Your YouTube videos were great and really helped me prepare for the midterm. I appreciate you bringing surge protectors to class and providing us with extra credit opportunities. You were my favorite professor this semester.
Shawn is an amazing teacher. He clearly has passion for the subject and helping people learn. He made time to meet with me every time I requested assistance and he never made me feel like I was a bother. I enjoyed the class very much.
Janzen is a kind and very knowledgeable instructor. He clearly is passionate about the subjects he teaches and does everything he can to keep a student interested and involved to learn the material. His creativity and effort really showed in all of the resources he provided (video lectures, extra learning resources). In fact, his videos were so good that they provided all of the necessary knowledge for each unit without even using the textbooks. The amount of time dedicated to the video lectures and required assignments didn’t allow for much additional learning opportunities but would absolutely would have been beneficial to a student in a full–length semester.
Anonymous Student Feedback (Jul’19) – INST314: Statistics for Info Science; University of Maryland
While the course was taught at a very high pace and the student workload was considerable, Janzen clearly put in just as much time keeping up with students’ needs, grading, and more. His communication and responsiveness was perfect to make sure you stay on track throughout the semester. He was honest in the amount of work that would be needed to get through this course so quickly but was also willing to help anyone that needed it.
I really enjoyed the way Janzen taught the course and I hope to have another INST class with him in the future.
The professor had a good teaching style for a class that had a great amount of content. He was very knowledgeable in the subject and made sure to help any student who needed help in order to better understand the content.
Shawn Janzen is honestly a great professor, hands down. He teaches well, course is great, and I learned a lot.
Anonymous Student Feedback (May’19) – INST314: Statistics for Info Science; University of Maryland
The hybrid teaching style was definitely hard to get accustomed to, but by the end it became manageable. It definitely had its benefit in allowing us the ability to work on assignments in class. I definitely believe R should be introduced in a prior class. I feel that I neglected its value because of all the content that needs to be covered in this course. That being said, this class was one of the most fulfilling classes I have taken at the ischool and Professor Janzen is an excellent teacher.
Shawn was a great teacher, although the course work seemed to be on the heavy side he was always ready to help and help thoroughly; any time I asked a question the subject was explained meticulously by Shawn and his team.
Janzen really cared about the well being of his students.
Overall great course with a greater instructor.
Best Teacher for INST 314
Janzen teaches excellently. He is very kind, helpful, and funny. I also like how he is extremely passionate about stats and making sure that he is producing students who understand statistics.
I learned a lot in this class. The way you explained everything in class was really good. I kinda wished we did the live coding starting in the beginning of the semester because that was really helpful.
First felt very off with the flipped class but after a couple weeks I got used to it and liked it. I feel like most of us are lazy and dont want to put in the work so getting use to having a challenging class and watching the videos took a bit to kick in. Janzen is a really great professor and truly cares about his students. His class is hard but in the real world this is expected and he prepares his students for that.
I love the flipped class design of this class. It has allowed me to better schedule myself. Additionally, Professor Janzen has been my favorite professor while attending UMD. He is passionate about statistics and it shows. He genuinely cares about his students doing the best they can. I hope that I am able to take another class of his before I graduate.
At first I thought the flipped class design was overkill, especially because it required us to watch video lectures before class which seemed like double the work. However, having the lectures easily accessible on ELMS 24/7 is something I ended up really appreciating and I believe being able to go back and rewatch them allowed me to better learn the material. The video lectures that contained examples were SUPER helpful for doing the labs and projects. I think the labs were well–structured and actually prepared me for the exams. I particularly appreciated the 50% completion requirement, since this allowed me get a solid grasp of the material, while not taking up too much time. I ended up completing the other 50% of the labs while prepping for the midterms, anyway. The projects were a good learning experience that actually teach real–life skills. However, it was hard to evenly split up the work for the paired projects, and in my experience one person ended up doing most of the work alone. Lastly, and of course I’m speaking for myself here, having the professor walk around during class asking questions might give some students a bit of anxiety b/c it puts them on the spot even if they know the answer to what’s being asked. Overall, Professor Janzen was excellent and really cares about his students’ success.
Professor Janzen was, in my opinion, one of the best professors I’ve had since coming here. I quite enjoyed his class and without him I doubt I would be doing quite as well. That being said, the fact that this class gives lectures online and then makes you attend in person for discussion or further lecture, combined with the considerable workload should make it eligible for FOUR credits, not three.
This semester was the first time the class was taught in a flipped manner. In the beginning, it was difficult to keep on top of everything and I even considered dropping the class. However, Janzen recognized the difficulties his students were facing and adjusted accordingly, whether it be by extending deadlines, uploading videos extra early, or even shortening them. After that, the workload became tolerable and I actually enjoyed it. I feel as if I learned more in the flipped method than I would have otherwise.
First, I’d like to say thank you because of the effort you put into teaching this class. This has been by far my favorite class in the info sci major. I’ve learned a lot in this class, and I like the real–world projects done in class. I also loved how I didn’t have to use google this entire class. All the information that was needed to answer questions or do something in R was either in the slides or in the videos. It might sound silly, but wow that’s amazing to me. I have soooo many classes in the past were information wasn’t given or it may have been missed, so I had to use google. Surprisingly for a math class I didn’t have to do that. I think this is the best class in the info major because of all the little details and effort you put into it. Other classes in the major aren’t that helpful or just give a broad understanding of the material. This class is just different I actually had to try in this class and for the first time I didn’t feel like I was given an easy grade in the info sci department.
Prof. Janzen is one of the greatest professors I’ve had. His dedication to the course is unbelievable and he always makes himself available for questions. He truly takes into consideration students’ requests and advice and really cares for his students.
Professor Janzen is a great professor! Extremely timely in responses, very kind and willing to help students. I learned a lot from this course.
I thought this course was much more challenging than any of my other InfoSci courses. Prof. Janzen worked us hard from day one and laid out expectations that most people probably thought were overbearing. The first month of this course was hellish; I felt very disorganized, that the workload was far too great, and that I would have to visit each TA and AMP during each office hours opportunity to succeed. However, as we moved along in the semester, and things became more clear, I began to succeed and feel moderately less stressed. Professor Janzen and his assistants, I found, were incredibly helpful during office hours. The assignments were highly difficult, and I don’t think I would have been able to do well at them if it weren’t for the help from Prof. Janzen and his assistants.
Shawn Janzen is honestly a great professor, hands down. He teaches well, course is great, and I learned a lot.