Merrick Pilling

Merrick is a wonderful professor. He is extremely knowledgeable in the field of disability studies and I learned a lot from him. He is willing to meet with students outside of class and is very understanding and supportive (quick to respond via email too). You will need to write consistently in discussion posts but the course is very manageable.

Merrick has wonderful lectures for DST501. Lots of wonderful up to date information. Great spread of information across all disabilities. Tests are vaguely worded and you WILL NOT get to see them to see what you got wrong to learn from it. You HAVE to know your stuff. He reuses tests which is why you can't see your answers and marks directly.

The class itself is online, with the lectures being via Zoom and also posted. I found the content to be well-explained and there were a lot of resources, but grading at times felt unfair or harsh given the assignment outlines.

very hard marker for no reason.

He significantly cut down the readings on this class this semester, but there were still ~4 readings each week, along with weekly discussion boards. Generally unclear grading criteria. Exams are open book, but many questions were poorly worded/not about actual course concepts. Would only take again because I managed to get a good grade.

If you could take another disability studies class and this isn't mandatory for you, do that. Your final grade relies on one assignment with unclear grade criteria, a handful of discussion posts, and two exams. The exams have poorly written questions, and are based on random things passively discussed in class rather than actual learned material.

Very interesting lecture materials and assigned readings. Classes are online and asynchronous, but if you are able to participate in the live lectures, definitely do so because you will be able to engage with the material more easily. Merrick relies heavily on his TAs for marking, so if you have questions go to them instead of him.

Pretty simple class, but the group project is almost 50% of your grade, and the groups are quite large. Considering this is an online class, its difficult to stay in touch, and there's a lot of miscommunication. Overall, it was an interesting course, and you will succeed if you just follow everything. Very organized prof too!!

I took this as an open elective and the TAs graded quite harshly. I had to spend a lot of time on the weekly discussion boards to do well. The debate group project was also graded quite harshly even though my group spent a lot of time on it. The final exam was annoying. Overall, don't take this as an open elective there are much easier ones.