No tests at all. He's a pretty new teacher and pretty nice. He has a very exaggerated bubbly personality. His class lectures are engaging. He gives us 10 minutes to type up responses to random prompts he gives us and email it to him. He then opens them up in class, and we all critique them together. He also assigns readings from this WPA Guide he's the editor of or something. Most of his readings are boring, but he likes them a lot. They usually aren't very long. We only talk about it a little in class. He asks what line pops out at you and why. Sometimes I didn't read and hoped he didn't call on me or I would look for a quote real quick. He gave us 3 essays to do. In my opinion he doesn't grade easy. I got only B's. He doesn't really prepare us for writing. He just makes us write random prompts. His classes are chill, but the essays, you're pretty much on your own unless you go to office hours or something, which I didn't do.

One thing to know is that every class he assigns small prompts that you have 5-10 minutes to write and e-mail to him. Then he reads them out loud and criticizes them in front of everyone (he also asks the students to criticize). Initially I dreaded going to class because of that but at the end of the quarter I felt comfortable with other people judging my work.

Prof. Kipen is very helpful if you ask for it, but otherwise, he can be very confusing. He is a pretty average grader... I wrote a pretty mediocre paper and got a B. He has you read some boring passages from the WPA guide to California that he tells you about in the first lecture, but if you skim, you get the gist of whats going on. Professor Kipen can also be a little disorganized and forgetful, so if you schedule a time to get help from him, remind him before the appointment. Overall a nice guy, lectures a little disorganized but not a bad teacher at all. Would recommend the class if you're a creative writer and you don't need much assistance.