Honestly just take anyone else. She dipped out on the final and won’t respond to emails probably because she knew everyone was going to be mad at how it was not at all how she claimed it would be like. I still some how came out with an A or A- depending on how I did on the Final but her class overall was very poorly structured and taught. She does not prepare you at all for her tests and quizzes everything is self taught practically. TAs were really nice though.

Montoya was cool, but you definitely had to use the book (online built into Canvas) and do the homework to know what was going on. If you like to learn from the person speaking to you, you probably won't get a lot out of lectures. If you do all the work from the book before going to class, her lectures help clarify things for sure.

One thing I liked is that she was super receptive to feedback. A lot of students were complaining about things like content difficulty, and she listened and in some cases changed what she was doing.

My opinion might not be the same as other students (who didn't like her), but I did, so here's my review:

Professor Montoya cared about helping her students learn psych stats using R. She was very responsive to the student concerns, giving us deadline extensions for homework and sending out emails to clarify her grading scheme. She also discussed everything related to the test during class so we wouldn't have concerns about what would be covered. I don't understand why other students don't like her; she actually tried to help us learn. Overall, she was a nice professor.

The textbook was free, and you need to use it to succeed in this course. Disclaimer, though, I might have had an easier time in this course because I knew a little bit of coding in other languages and got a 4 on the AP Stats exam 4 years ago in high school so I still had some stuff stashed in the back of my mind.

The textbook had problems and activities integrated into it, which I liked, because that way you could use what you learned as you learned it. It was free and online on Canvas.

Extra credit: the professor offered points for participating in psych studies and for filling out the course evaluations.

Emails: responsive. People in the class were freaking out because she said she would use 2 grading schemes based on our grades on the quizzes but after a couple students emailed her she sent out a mass email saying she will use whatever scheme gives us the highest grade. She also ended up giving 2 homework extensions.

Quizzes: lowest one dropped. I got A's on the first three quizzes and a B (85, lowkey fell asleep a little bit during that one) on the fourth, so it was dropped. Cheat sheet allowed and she gives you an R cheat sheet so no need to memorize codes.

Midterm: like the quizzes. Studied by reviewing past quizzes and textbook, cheat sheet allowed, got a 95.

In class: fell asleep most of the time (it was an 8am). Poll Everywhere questions used for participation, the website is free. 2 total group activities that were collected, they were simple worksheets. Kind of fun.

Discussion sections: fridays. Every other week we had a quiz, and the ones where we didn't were review sessions. Didn't attend last 3 review sessions because the 2nd one was kinda useless. Heard some drama went down during the 3rd review sessions because TA's couldn't solve midterm problems in 1 minute but students were expected to.

As of right now I have a 95. The final is next week, so we will see what my final grade is, but with extra credit it should hopefully stay as an A.

Overall: nice class, didn't understand why people thought so negatively of her, didn't attend office hours because I didn't need to. Her overall grade dist. was higher than the other professor's section for 100A. Take it with her if you can :)

I hated this class. Nothing made sense no matter how hard I tried. I had to get a tutor to help me understand this class, and even then, I had no idea what was going on...neither did my tutor. Why did we have to learn R? I have no idea. If you can take this class with ANYONE else, just do it. Even if you have to wait another quarter. I must say however, Professor Montoya did hear us out and understood that the majority of her students were REALLY struggling which is why she curved the class up so extremely. This class in general is painful, but having a professor that can explain the content is essential.

This class was pretty easy for me given that I took AP stats in HS. If you haven't taken stats, I still think that prof. Montoya gives a really thorough intro to stats and connects the ideas well so that even if you know nothing about stats you can understand the material. it's really important to do the homework, which can be a lot of work per week, and start it ahead of time. I'd recommend splitting the homework between 2-3 sessions per week so that you're not doing psych homework for like 7 hours straight. The lectures were recorded video modules which was really good for me personally, and you can make up the discussion sections by filling out the weekly discussion worksheet on your own. The quizzes were also super easy, one quiz a week and it's basically what was on the homework. this prof also allows for a lot of leniency (ex. dropping lowest quiz grades, a lot of EC opportunities, etc). Lectures were very engaging with lots of relevant images. I only rank it lower on workload and easiness b/c the subject matter can be difficult if you haven't done stats before and the homework is quite time-consuming.

My class was asynchronous aside from the discussion section, so I don't know if my feedback would apply to future students. I loved how the textbook has practice problems embedded so you get both credit for homework and extra practice! However, I would read the online textbook before watching the pre-recorded lectures, and when I felt confident that I understood the book, it feels like I unlearn everything I just grasped when I watch the videos. I know a lot of work went into the videos and slides, but I chose to not watch because I don't want to end up second-guessing myself.

Also, I like how we can retake quizzes to earn some points. But you do not know what you get right or wrong, so I second-guess myself and feel like I am not actually learning anything and it makes me feel less motivated to look back or even study. She claims that this is an effective learning strategy backed up by research. I could be wrong, but doesn't immediate feedback actually help learning?

Professor Montoya is really good at accepting feedback, which is good because this class isn't great. The way that she explains things is mainly convoluted and she honestly makes things more confusing. This class is passable though, there's no final cause there's a group project instead which is helpful. You can imagine the pros and cons with that. There's a quiz every week which are okay and two are dropped. The class is not awful awful but I would think carefully.

I really liked the professor, she's very understanding, flexible, and overall nice! She is engaging in her lectures and tries her best to make statistics interesting and relevant. The class can be a bit time-consuming as you have to dedicate many hours weekly to completing the textbook homework.

Due to Covid, I think this class was made a lot more manageable than it usually is. Homework is based on completion, weekly quizzes are open note (there are no big tests), and the final is a group project. The class material is hard, but it is not difficult to pass the class!

TAKE ANYONE ELSE. SAVE YOURSELF AND YOUR GRADE!!! Professor Montoya was the worst professor I have ever had in my entire UCLA education! She was extremely disorganized, arrogant, ignorant, and completely rude. There is a reason her Fall 2019 grade dis isn't up and thats because 80% of the class did bad. She assigned 4 chapters of R coding before the first week which was extremely hard and look up so much like I spent like 30 hours in the first weekend trying to get it done. She does not go in detail at all during lecture about information from the book she has her own slides which don't correlate at all with the book. Its like your studying for 3 different classes to be honest. Her quizzes and exams don't correlate with lecture and textbook info so there is no way for you to study for them. She gives you an unreasonable about of time to code a question and answer it correctly during quizzes and exams about 20 questions for ~40 minutes which is not enough time at all. She also does not teach you how to code at you basically teach yourself which is extremely hard to do and the textbook is such a time waste and does't help you to code the amount of information we had to do for the quizzes, basically if you think you got the hang of the R coding in the textbook well you don't know it well enough for the quizzes or exams. She does not help during office hours you think she does but when you go back to look at the office hour notes and the notes you took in lecture they wont add up and thats because she doesn't know wtf shes talking about. For the final well she DIDN'T EVEN SHOW UP TO THE FINAL, we had another professor that also teaches 100A but he had NO IDEA what we were doing and could not help us and as for the TAs well THEY HAD NOT FUCKING CLUE WTF THEY WERE DOING!!! We had to basically teach the TAs what we were doing and they were still super vague. There was like 428 students in this class and everyone hated herI know about 30 students and complained about her to the dean of psychology because she was just that bad. LITERALLY TAKE ANYONE ELSE!!!! And for the students who took her in Fall 2019 and got a good grade and gave her a good review I'm sure they were high the whole time because this class gave me PTSD!

I have mixed opinions about this class and about the professor. On the one hand, the professor is very nice and friendly and is somewhat helpful but on the other hand, the quizzes and tests were very difficult and would contain tons of trick questions and things that she didn't even go over. This class heavily relies on R-coding even though other 100A classes do no R-coding. Also, the TA's were garbage when I took the class they had no idea what was going on and could never answer anyone's questions about the material I stopped going to the discussion section because it was so unhelpful.

I will say though that the way the grading scheme works in her class is very helpful for students because she makes the homework grade worth so much and drops your lowest quiz which is important because after about the 2nd or 3rd quiz the quizzes become more difficult. Now the midterm and final are just pure bullshit she amps the difficulty by like 10 for some reason so you will be sitting there wondering why the problems are so difficult even though you have studied and felt like you understood the material. It's like what you study is basic statistic problems but then she tests you on advanced statistic problems.

Overall I would say if math is your thing, you understand statistics, and you know some coding this will be an easy class for you, however, if you struggle with math, stats, and have no experience coding this may be a difficult class for you but is definitely passable due to the grading scheme.