The long evaluation preceding mine is just plain wrong. Is this a time-consuming course? Yes. If you cannot handle it, shame on you. Maybe you shouldn't have chosen UCLA.

The 3 hour iMovie thing could have been avoided by a.) simply emailing the Prof. Kernell and saying "I do not need training for iMovie; I am proficient in it." (I know how incredibly difficult that must be) or b0 fast-forwarding until you get the completion.

To say she doesn't care about students with disabilities or those with children/commuters is just plain ridiculous. She was one of the most caring professors. How many do you know that take the time to learn almost EVERY SINGLE PERSON'S NAME?????? She is the only Professor I have ever had to care to do this. Also, I have had SEVERAL courses that do not allow computers and if you are a Comm major, you will need to take Comm10 and Suman doesn't allow electronics either. Some professors due this based on RESEARCH that PROVES that students learn better by handwriting notes. Sorry that you cant go on facebook for a damn hour and 15 minutes.

She DOES NOT force you to buy a Mac.. LOL That is just insane to say. My specific group used iMovie, but she that if you are proficient on another platformt hat you could use that instead. Plus, it was a 3 person group and, at least in my group, only ONE person had a Mac and used it for iMovie.

You could have rented an iClicker and if not she gave you the option of taking the quizzes at the front of the class. Does that sounds like someone who does not accommodate her students? NO. Plus, one should be thankful that JUST CLICKING IN GIVES YOU 12 FREE PERCENTAGE POINTS. THAT IS GENEROUS. Most of the quizzes were easy enough to guess right even f you had not done the readings. Lastly, on this topic, she gives you plenty of time and even makes sure that each student has their clicker out before she starts the quiz. Then she READS THE QUESTION AND OPTIONS THROUGH FOR US TWICE. If you didn't have enough time, you deserve to lose those points. Again, these clickers are NOT mandatory if you for 2 minutes sit in front of class and take a paper quiz.

She was an excellent professor with excellent material and engaging lectures. She continuously allotted time for us to break into discussion groups and collaborate with our peers, another refreshing rarity on this campus. She had several videos that were fun and relevant to the material, which made class that much better.

I went to her after class, or in Office Hours a few times and felt she was genuinely helpful and caring! To say otherwise baffles me. She even cares to ask about your personal life and is encouraging and helpful if youa re at all confused. NEVER would she belittle someone.

Though, at times, the workload was a lot I would recommend this class because I think you will learn A LOT and be forced to think in a new way.

If you don't want to do the work and read a lot, then don't take this class. You don't deserve to. However, if you come to UCLA to get, oh, I don't know, an EDUCATION, then I urge you to take this engaging course with an AMAZING, CARING Professor.

Georgia Kernell should be placed under review by the Academic Senate Committee and considered for an AWARD. :) BAM!

The first response was a bit too dramatic and inconsistent with the actual methods and expectations of professor Kernell.

First of all the iClicker grade was primarily based on attendance and only 5% of that 17% went to class performance, (the in class quiz) which she drops two of them. You can also rent the clicker free of charge for the entire quarter at the library.

The course reader was only 70 dollars along with the textbook, totaling out to about 100 dollars and some change. That's not exactly breaking the bank. I've definitely spent way more money on other classes.

She doesn't force you to buy a $1200 dollar MacBook. That's your own doing. Again, You can rent a mbp from the library for up to eight hours a day. It's not that bad. Besides, the commercial project was the funnest part of this course.
The iMovie tutorial was optional and not mandatory. You just need to email her, she was very accommodating.

Yes I do agree about not using a laptop was a bit cumbersome, however she did post the slides on ccle so I don't see the problem. Yes, there was a lot of reading, but it's UCLA, what else do you expect?

Overall this course was freaking awesome! You really understand party division in the media and how that division plays in media and public choice. In addition, she had awesome speakers who came in like the former VP of marketing for Microsoft, a political strategies from RALLY who worked on the Marriage Equality campaign during the Supreme Court, and a director of new media who worked on the 2008 Obama campaign. This class, and Kernell in general is such a great opportunity. Yes she's a new professor, but I think she's doing a phenomenal job and if the opportunity is presented, then I would take another course with Kernell.

This professor never once considered the needs of the students. It began with basing 17% of our grades on the mandatory purchasing of iClickers and quizzes on nitpicky, minute details about the reading. Then she had us purchase an expensive course reader from a private company (it was not available at the bookstore), without consideration of where we may purchase books according to our financial aid packages, college funds, and scholarships.

She then decided that students would not be allowed to take notes on laptops and justified her decision on two articles she had read that show handwritten notes result in better information processing; maybe she believes this, but students have different learning styles and should be allowed to take notes in the way that best suits them. Not to mention, student note-takers for OSD could not take and submit effective notes, which directly disadvantaged disabled students.

Until student outrage changed her mind, Kernell mandated that we take a three hour course on iMovie, then use iMovie to complete a group video project, forcing students who are not Mac users to either purchase a $1200-2000 Mac computer or spend many hours stuck on campus, which may not be possible for parenting students or commuter students who are subject to bus schedules and traffic hours.

Time and time again, we saw her disregard the special needs of disabled students, parenting students, and ill students. Students who missed exams with medical documentation were given an additional essay to write for 10% of the midterm grades. Exams were unnecessarily fast paced. iClicker quizzes were conducted in approximately 20 seconds or less, so students could not think through the questions and had to hastily submit answers.

I, and several other students I spoke to, never felt comfortable approaching Kernell or the TA. She belittled our questions about grading styles and exam responses. She made us feel as though our input was unwelcome.

Assignments were expected to be completed in an unreasonably short amount of time. For a portion of our grade, when we had to spend three hours watching videos and taking short surveys, this professor gave us less than thirty hours between the time the assignment was assigned to the time it was due.

The amount of time this course consumed far exceeded the amount of hours a four unit course should take. The overbearing workload kept me from completing the work for my other classes effectively.

Overall, students were disgruntled and upset with this instructor for the whole quarter. It was incredibly frustrating to try to learn under a prof who expected so much of the students, but was so disorganized herself and just read from the slides during lectures.

Georgia Kernell should be placed under review by the Academic Senate Committee for failure to consider the needs and learning styles of our diverse student body.

Kernell is a really nice professor and she's very passionate and knowledgable about political science. Her lectures are really just based off of the slides; the majority of the material on the tests are from the readings. The tests, I thought, were super straight forward.

Yes, there are a ton of readings that you HAVE to do, especially for a 4 unit class. Keep in mind she inherited this class from the previous professor, so the structure/demands are not her fault; she follows the exact same format as he taught it.

Overall the class was very time consuming, but it really did get me more interested in politics and news, when prior I zero interest.

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Really hard class, very unfair grader. Recommend against taking this with her. She's really strict too, not an engaging lecturer either

This class is practically useless. Honestly, all this course does is reiterate Stats 10, so I don't understand why that class is a prerequisite to this one. Personally, I have taken 2 stats classes prior to this one and thank god I did because this professor is not a good communicator. She is extremely reliant on her slides (once when the projector didn't work she kept having to refer to computer as if she didn't know her own curriculum) and also makes concepts much more complicated than need be. Often I would sit in class and think of different ways I would teach the class one of our concepts. When Professor Lamberson was a substitute lecterer, his classes were so concise and straightforward the convoluted teaching style of Kernell really became apparent. Kernell also caters to the lowest common denominator -- she takes so many questions in class that really should be directed towards office hours if people still don't get a concept. She also assumes everyone in the class is super slow and reiterates very very basic concepts/definitions way too many times. The expression beating a dead horse definitely comes to mind when thinking about her teaching style. This is even represented in the homeworks Kernell creates where she would make us calculate the standard deviation of a data set that is over 100 observations -- this is a skill I didn't even have to do by hand in AP Stats and most likely would never do by hand outside of this class. Also I never felt particularly comfortable asking for help outside of class. I once asked her a question after class because I didn't understand a homework problem and she was kind of condescending that I couldn't get the answer right away and put me on blast for having to say I don't know. I will say though that Kernell does create fair exams and (on average, excluding monotonous questions) the homeworks do help prepare you for the exams.

I like Professor Kernell. She is generally very knowledgeable and helpful. Her presentations were well-prepared and she fostered good class discussions. Lecture was a bit monotonous at times, but I think that just comes with the material. I also think lecture could be just a bit slower.

Your grade is based on a midterm (20%), final (28%), in-class reading quizzes (5%), participation (12%), and a group commercial project (35%).

You have clicker questions at the beginning and middle of each class so you can't really afford to miss; you'll get 12% for just showing up for each clicker question and the extra 5% comes from how many you get right over the course of the quarter.

I feel like the workload for this class was a bit much. We had a heavy amount of reading each week, in addition to the large commercial project we had to complete. It's definitely more than I have for my other classes, and I think this could be remedied with just a couple fewer readings each week. That being said, I understand that some classes just require more work and that this is a practicuum class so I understand to some extent why the workload is as it is.
The exams are fair but only if you study a lot for them.

You have a commercial project in which you have to make two 30-second ads; one positive and one negative about political candidates. I have mixed feelings about this project. I feel like I learned a lot and generally think it's a good exercise, but I think my problem with it is that our grade largely depends on our creativity, or lack thereof. That being said, both the professor and TA (if Joe is still TAing, he is so great!! We all loved Joe) and were willing to give advice and feedback so I can't complain too much.

Also, the reason this class counts as a practicuum is because you are supposed to learn video editing skills; the professor incorporates this by making you watch an online video tutorial for iMovie (which you can also test out of by proving proficiency).

My last note about this class is that I wish it was a little less about news/journalism and a little more about communication between/among officeholders. This is what I expected going in and was a little disappointed. I know there is some overlap, in terms of how the press covers the government, but I think to call it political comm and then discuss mainly the news is a little misleading.

This was one of my very first upper div comm courses i took and i loved prof kernell. She is super relatable, down to earth and really passionate about her material as well as teaches it in a way we can all retain. Never thought about politics much before this class but it was very insightful and i was way more interested than i thought. Tests are based of lectures and readings so i would make bullet notes of key points for each reading bc they were a lot and then GO TO CLASS. Also, just because kernell is cool but it will help a lot. There is also a group project where you are assigned a real time two candidate and you have to make a pro campaign and an anti campaign. A bit more work than anticipated but still fine

Personally I loved this class because I found the subject matter to be fascinating, but it was a crazy amount of work. The nice thing is that it was only once a week on Mondays, but I think I spent every Sunday trying to finish the absurd amount of readings there were and preparing for the iClicker questions. I didn't mind the workload because the readings were interesting, but if you're not interested in campaigns and other forms of political comm it might be a lot. Overall, I found the class to be very inspiring and it made me want to pursue a career in political communication.

I took this class with Kernell after hearing all the bad reviews about the other professors who taught this class. Honestly, I don't think she was any better. If it weren't for the TAs, I would have definitely done much worse in this class. This professor only relies on her slides and in her office hours, she is SO condescending. I am already not great at stats, but the lack of communication between the professor and the TAs made this class near impossible and SO frustrating. There were so many ridiculous requirements in this class and it was such a headache. Even the TAs seemed visibly frustrated with the Professor's teaching style and her condescending nature. I am sure she means well, but this class was honestly so hard and I feel bad for anyone who has to take it.