Professor
Darin Christensen
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - One of the greatest classes I've taken so far at UCLA. Prof Christensen really knows his stuff, and I learned a lot even with this class being online for Spring 2020. Lectures were asynchronous and uploaded to Youtube so you can watch on your own time. There's short lecture quizzes to be completed after each one; they're super simple and taken directly from the powerpoints. The reading's can be a little long-winded especially as you get further along in the course, but I found them super interesting. He talks about some of them within the lectures as well, but you don't need to read them beforehand to follow along. Live discussions were required with your TA once a week; my group always finished beforehand. Attending gives participation points, with one absence excused. The one midterm (final was made optional later on) was pretty fair if you understand everything from the lecture. It's closed books/notes, but I definitely found it doable given all the discussion exercises you do. There was a small extra credit opt-in opportunity available centered around one of the class topics- no spoilers, but I don't think he actually ended up docking anyone/following through with the conditions. The midterm format was a lot of multiple choice/ T/F and two diagnosis problems (you write an paragraph based on social dilemmas and classification). 10% lecture quizzes (lowest two dropped), 20% midterm (extra credit can be used), 30% final, 30% papers (one op-ed and one policy memo), 10% discussion participation (one absence excused). The papers were definitely doable given the time frames, but there's no feedback given other then where points were taken off from the rubric. I can't speak on the final, but I expect that he followed the same trend of testing lecture concepts combined with a few T/F from the reading.
Spring 2020 - One of the greatest classes I've taken so far at UCLA. Prof Christensen really knows his stuff, and I learned a lot even with this class being online for Spring 2020. Lectures were asynchronous and uploaded to Youtube so you can watch on your own time. There's short lecture quizzes to be completed after each one; they're super simple and taken directly from the powerpoints. The reading's can be a little long-winded especially as you get further along in the course, but I found them super interesting. He talks about some of them within the lectures as well, but you don't need to read them beforehand to follow along. Live discussions were required with your TA once a week; my group always finished beforehand. Attending gives participation points, with one absence excused. The one midterm (final was made optional later on) was pretty fair if you understand everything from the lecture. It's closed books/notes, but I definitely found it doable given all the discussion exercises you do. There was a small extra credit opt-in opportunity available centered around one of the class topics- no spoilers, but I don't think he actually ended up docking anyone/following through with the conditions. The midterm format was a lot of multiple choice/ T/F and two diagnosis problems (you write an paragraph based on social dilemmas and classification). 10% lecture quizzes (lowest two dropped), 20% midterm (extra credit can be used), 30% final, 30% papers (one op-ed and one policy memo), 10% discussion participation (one absence excused). The papers were definitely doable given the time frames, but there's no feedback given other then where points were taken off from the rubric. I can't speak on the final, but I expect that he followed the same trend of testing lecture concepts combined with a few T/F from the reading.
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