Good guy and an okay professor. I think he's relatively new to teaching. Not always the clearest lecturer and has a tendency to fly through the concepts or problems. The material wasn't too complicated to self study, so his lecturing wasn't a problem in the end -- just keep up with the material. My grade suffered because I made this class my last priority and fell way behind before the second midterm.

He used an online textbook/homework system called Kudu this quarter, but he said that he wouldn't use it again in the future... it's a pretty bad textbook lmao. He mentioned that he'd just use University Physics in the future.

Tests weren't horrible, but since he just uses practice problems for most questions, partial credit comes from very specific parts of the answer, which is what got me in this class. I got hella points off on a problem because I didn't answer the way he did it in the practice, which is fair considering he gives us the solutions to all the practice problems. The grade distributions on the tests are very spread out, so the standard deviations are always large.

He gave 5% of extra credit for in class "clicker" questions. This was done through Kudu this quarter, so I'm not sure if/how he'll do it in the future.

Grades are determined from 11% homework, 6% pre-lecture questions, 21% each midterm, and 41% final. He grades on a curve, but he uses your raw score if it's higher than your curved score.

Honestly I'd take a class with Garcia again. He's only going to get better as a lecturer and cares a lot about teaching. You'll be fine if you study the practice problems and stay caught up on material.

Garcia is a really nice, caring guy. He's very new to teaching as a professor here, and as his first section of physics ever, there were definitely some rough patches, but he wants the absolute best for his students. Because of this, much of what is talked about for Spring 2019 is likely subject to change should he teach the course in the future. Here's what I'll say:
-Garcia tries to solve problems during lectures, rather than just prove equations from the book. This is very good, except the problems he picks are straight out of what he asks us to do ahead of time in Kudu or don't always reflect the homework.
-Kudu overall was not a good experience, but I believe he is eliminating it in the future.
-There were a large number of mistakes made in lecture, which is understandable, but definitely made learning difficult. Many of his explanations seemed convoluted to me, so feel free to look at old high school physics notes/mastering physics!
-Garcia encourages participation through in-class questions on Kudu, which provided extra credit.
-Homework was light and very reasonable, and ungraded homework often shows up on exams, so definitely look for them.
-In my opinion, the class itself often got kind of dry and most of it felt like solving integrals for very select geometries to determine different things.
-Garcia is a super approachable guy who really wants students to succeed and seems to be always open to input!

Garcia is a super nice guy and a good professor. He is pretty new to teaching a large lecture class though, and it shows in some of his choices. He used Kudu this quarter, which was ok, but not ideal. Kudu has basic online textbook sections and then about 10-15 problems each week, which varied wildly in difficulty; some of the questions were pretty impossible , and some were straight plugging in equations. His first midterm was terrible; it was way too hard, unlike any problems we'd seen before, and waay too long for the time we were given (5 full problems in 50 minutes, and it took 20 minutes to solve the first problem). I think he felt pretty bad about designing it so badly honestly. His next midterm was a LOT easier (I went from a score of 59 to 98) but it wasn't stupidly easy. The final was also pretty easy. He gives some extra credit (5% participation points from in-class questions). My final grade was an 88% but he curved up to an A, but that may have been just to correct from the first midterm. Overall, you will learn the material pretty well and have a nice time.