Dr. Robinson was a great professor and lecturer. I felt she was able to teach the required materials in an organized and timely fashion. I appreciated her emails which provided details about the class and tests. She was kind to her students and welcomed us to reach out to her with any questions. Her tests were made well and were direct reflections of the lecture material, and I appreciated her study guides which gave a direct way to study for the test. I took this class during the first quarter online due to COVID-19, so grading was easier, but overall Dr. Robinson took into consideration the needs of her students and adapted the class as such.

This class is one of the best science classes to take to satisfy a GE!! The class was asynchronous, but it brought many benefits like prerecorded lectures that I was able to go back to rewatch when studying for the exams. We had one lab assignment per week and they are pretty straightforward. We got plenty of time to complete them and the species report. The topics are really interesting and not difficult to understand and the study guide is really helpful for the midterm and final exams. The professor does a great job teaching this class!!

Geography 5 is an interesting and fairly easy GE in terms of content and structure. However, I had a very negative experience taking it in Winter Quarter, 2021. Although Professor Robinson was the professor, all prerecorded lectures (made in winter 2020) were done by Professor Cavanaugh. Professor Robinson structured the workload and distribution of material, I believe.
The workload was VERY heavy for a GE and the requirements were very unclear and inconsistent. Professor Robinson was not accomodating towards any conditions that may prevent someone from completing their assignments (no late work tolerated- internet issues are not an excuse), which I find is very classist/ableist especially during a pandemic. My TA was accomodating, however.
Professor Robinson was very open to questions but replied in a seemingly passive-aggressive and rude tone. Since assignments were, again, inconsistent and unclear, students had very reasonable questions but the Professor's responses were accusatory and chastising. This made me wary of asking any questions necessary for completing the work. This was a general consensus among students.

I completely agree with the other review but I didn't think the class warranted 2.0! I personally found it super interesting but yes the workload was a bit way too much and requirements were pretty inconsistent.

I honestly loved this class. I’m an ecology student but took it to fulfill the lower div requirement for my minor, and I very much enjoyed it. Professor Robinson gave great lectures that were also recorded online, but I’m not sure if they will be when classes are in person again. She is a great lecturer and explained concepts very well; additionally, the slides are posted if you just want to take notes off of there instead.

A breakdown of the grading scheme.
-Labs: The class has a lab section, and most weeks we would do an activity (though it was often compromised due to classes being online, resulting in a lot of data being handed to us instead of collecting it ourselves), although there were a few weeks where we didn’t have one. We had a week to complete the activity, and participation was mandatory and counted toward our grade in lab sections. The activities were graded generously, and I got a perfect score on all of them without trying too much.
-Tests: Tests were a combination of multiple choice and short answer. Lockdown browser was required. If you took notes on the lectures you will be fine. I did well without studying too much, and the tests as a whole felt very fair. There was one midterm and a final, which were most of your grade.
-Report: We has a ~5 page report worth 25% of our grade that involved discussing the biogeography of a single species. We were assigned it during week 4 and had until the end of week 10 to complete it (I.e. we had a TON of time). The rubric was clear, and I feel as though it was graded generously if you obviously put a good amount of effort into it. This is a good way to boost your grade if you don’t do well on the tests.

Overall, I loved the class and professor. Tests were easy, content was well explained and taught, and you have plenty of time to get things done. Since attendance for lectures isn’t required (and they are recorded anyway), and you have 6 weeks to do your report, you have tons of flexibility to not work on this class for a while if you need to prioritize other things. Would definitely recommend with Professor Robinson if this class fulfills a credit you need.

I genuinely loved this class and Professor Robinson. I took this class first as a GE but really liked it and decided I'll be majoring in Geog. As a GE, I thinkit's a very easy way to fulfill the lab requirement. The lectures were pre-recorded and asynchronous, meaning you could watch the lectures whenever you wanted to, and could go back and rewatch for studying purposes.
The class was broken up into weekly asynchronous lecture, weekly discussion, weekly labs, a midterm, a final, and a species report (final paper). The discussion is blocked out for two hours but usually took no less than 50 minutes, and the labs were really easy to navigate (the data was already given to us due to covid). Labs were due Sunday at 6 pm and most days I would start Sunday at like 3 and got by just fine. Professor Robinson gave a study guide for both the midterm and final, and all the exam content was taken directly from the lecture material. If you just review lecture material enough, you'll do fine.
The species report was released to us Week 4 and was due Week 10, plenty of time to work on it. I started halfway through Week 9 and got an A+ on it, so it really depends on how fast you can work.
There was a "required" textbook for the course and I found it online for free, but it was never actually used. I read it the first week and never read it again and got through the class just fine since the exams were based solely on lecture material.

Professor was super kind and funny! I really love their teaching style, always engaging lectures!! I look forward to taking another class of theirs this fall 2020! :)

Professor Robinson is someone who knows what she teaches in class (the absolute boss!). It is an easy subject but the content was a lot (lots of new terms and concepts of biogeography). I enjoyed the lectures but it would have been better if she were to reduce the content of the syllabus for this class. Labs were a piece of cake and exams were generally easy. 99.9% recommended (0.01% due to the huge syllabus content).

Took GEOG 2 for the science GE + lab, and overall it was a fairly easy n normal class. It's on biodiversity, so it's very interdisciplinary. You get quick run throughs on the basics of lots of other studies. Not too difficult, so long as you listen to her lectures.

Professor uploaded her lectures, so it was all remote and asynchronous. I had Monica as my TA, and all I can say is GET HER. She is super sweet and understanding, and you have plenty of time to do labs with her and finish them on the day of assignment.
Prof also gave study guides which were VERY helpful. You can tell which questions on the guide are gonna be on the exam.

If you want the class textbook Biogeography: Space, Time and Life (brand new, first few pages lightly highlighted) contact litefuchsia@gmail.com
25 w/out mailing costs

If you need an easy GE, this is the one. It's asynchronous (although of course these things might change when the pandemic is over), lectures are recorded, and there are no group projects. There's a textbook, but the professor told us herself to focus on the lectures since they follow the book but focus on what's important for the tests. After I learned this, I didn't even read the textbook. The tests are mostly multiple choice (the midterm had some frq). But she gives us a study guide for both tests and the tests follow the study guides very closely. Just collaborate with people in the class to finish/answer the stuidy guides (it's lengthy) and you'll be fine for the tests.

As for the labs, their easy. Especially because this class is remote, we didn't collect any data or perform any experiments. So all the data was given to us which made doing the labs very quick. Lab sections will have like one hour of lecture and one hour of working on the labs. So basically if you have questions you can just ask the TA right there, and sometimes they'll just give you the answer. You can just finish the lab right there during lab section with confidence that you got most of the questions right (and they're not even that hard to do anyway). Although, the TAs will write their explanations on the slides and lab documents differently so some are more clear than others. I had Ben and his slides and instructions were always very clear and straight to the point.

As for the research report, it's not too hard. They give you all the topics you need to research and they teach you how to find articles on google scholar etc. and how to use and download the UCLA vpn.

Basically, don't worry about this class at all.