Professor
Hung Pham
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Fall 2016 - Grading scheme for *****LS 4*****: Midterm - 125 points Final - 250 points Class participation - 37.5 points (5 lowest scores dropped) Discussion quizzes - 35 points (2 lowest scores dropped) Online quizzes - 37.5 points (3 lowest scored dropped) Professor Pham: This class was done in a "flipped classroom" way. We had to watch lecture videos (which did not feature Professor Pham, but another guy) that were previous podcasts. Then before each lecture we had to complete a three question multiple choice quiz on CCLE. And then in lecture we mostly went over clicker questions along with some more review of content. My lecture was MWF, but the other one was TR and they had two midterms for some reason while we only had one. Professor Pham was in my opinion a really great professor. He's actually really hilarious and really cares about his students. His accent is not even that bad to be honest. May be jarring at first but it's really easy to overcome. In lecture he is pretty entertaining and is really understanding. I really liked having him as a professor. TA Ashot Papikian: We had discussion sections once a week for like a little over an hour. They were structured differently between each TA, but we did a discussion quiz for the first 10-15 minutes of class and then went over a series of questions from the textbook. My TA was a little bit dry, and no one was very participatory, but he was generally pretty helpful. He's a little monotone but you can tell he tried to help us as much as he could. PLF Juliana Smith: If you're in AAP and Juliana is a PLF, I highly recommend having her. She really helped hone in on the concepts of the course and gave a lot of great examples with extensive explanations for the answers. She is very nice. A little bit awkward, but a really great educator. I feel like I owe a lot of my success in this class to her. Midterm grade: 113/125 So I went into this midterm really really confident. I understood all of the concepts and went over a handful of past midterms (Pham provides literally all his past midterms on CCLE) and then went over the answer keys for the rest of his past midterms because I got tired of doing them. Pham does a lot of the same or similar questions, so it's pretty essential to go over his past midterms. I fucked up with the instructions for one of the questions, which is why I got a lower grade than I expected. Final grade: 231.5/250 The final was a little bit more difficult, but not by much, because it covered a lot of the material from after the midterm and a little bit of material before the midterm. It was still manageable if you studied his past second midterms and practice final questions. Again, the questions are to be expected based on what he gives you. So study the past questions and you should do well. Class participation grade: 37.5/37.5 The clicker questions during lecture were not graded on whether you get the answer right. It was just counted as credit if you answered at least 50% of the clicker questions from that lecture. The number of questions varied from a few to a lot. The lecture slides were posted before each lecture, so I just retyped them. It also included the clicker questions, so I completed those before class as well. I think it's a good idea to really try on clickers as much as you can, because they're good practice. Discussion quizzes grade: 35/35 Each TA made their own quizzes for their discussion. I heard that some TAs gave really hard quizzes, but Ashot made really easy ones, so it was pretty simple to get full credit on them. The quizzes consisted of one question from the book. If you want, you can do all of the assigned problems in the textbook, but it's not graded or required. Since my TA's quizzes were easy, I didn't need to do the book problems beforehand to do well on the quizzes. Online quizzes grade: 37.5/37.5 Each pre-lecture quiz was three-multiple choice questions on CCLE. Sometimes the third question was just an opinion-based one and not graded. But you could try on the questions as much as you want, but you will be graded accordingly based on how many tries it took you to get the right answer. These were pretty simple if you watched the lecture videos carefully and took good notes on them. Overall grade: A Overall, I'm a big fan of the flipped classroom method. I thought it was really helpful for me to watch the lecture videos at my own pace where I could rewind as necessary, And going over a lot of practice problems in lecture were also really helpful. I find it much more efficient and effective than trying to squeeze all the content in 50-minute intervals.
Fall 2016 - Grading scheme for *****LS 4*****: Midterm - 125 points Final - 250 points Class participation - 37.5 points (5 lowest scores dropped) Discussion quizzes - 35 points (2 lowest scores dropped) Online quizzes - 37.5 points (3 lowest scored dropped) Professor Pham: This class was done in a "flipped classroom" way. We had to watch lecture videos (which did not feature Professor Pham, but another guy) that were previous podcasts. Then before each lecture we had to complete a three question multiple choice quiz on CCLE. And then in lecture we mostly went over clicker questions along with some more review of content. My lecture was MWF, but the other one was TR and they had two midterms for some reason while we only had one. Professor Pham was in my opinion a really great professor. He's actually really hilarious and really cares about his students. His accent is not even that bad to be honest. May be jarring at first but it's really easy to overcome. In lecture he is pretty entertaining and is really understanding. I really liked having him as a professor. TA Ashot Papikian: We had discussion sections once a week for like a little over an hour. They were structured differently between each TA, but we did a discussion quiz for the first 10-15 minutes of class and then went over a series of questions from the textbook. My TA was a little bit dry, and no one was very participatory, but he was generally pretty helpful. He's a little monotone but you can tell he tried to help us as much as he could. PLF Juliana Smith: If you're in AAP and Juliana is a PLF, I highly recommend having her. She really helped hone in on the concepts of the course and gave a lot of great examples with extensive explanations for the answers. She is very nice. A little bit awkward, but a really great educator. I feel like I owe a lot of my success in this class to her. Midterm grade: 113/125 So I went into this midterm really really confident. I understood all of the concepts and went over a handful of past midterms (Pham provides literally all his past midterms on CCLE) and then went over the answer keys for the rest of his past midterms because I got tired of doing them. Pham does a lot of the same or similar questions, so it's pretty essential to go over his past midterms. I fucked up with the instructions for one of the questions, which is why I got a lower grade than I expected. Final grade: 231.5/250 The final was a little bit more difficult, but not by much, because it covered a lot of the material from after the midterm and a little bit of material before the midterm. It was still manageable if you studied his past second midterms and practice final questions. Again, the questions are to be expected based on what he gives you. So study the past questions and you should do well. Class participation grade: 37.5/37.5 The clicker questions during lecture were not graded on whether you get the answer right. It was just counted as credit if you answered at least 50% of the clicker questions from that lecture. The number of questions varied from a few to a lot. The lecture slides were posted before each lecture, so I just retyped them. It also included the clicker questions, so I completed those before class as well. I think it's a good idea to really try on clickers as much as you can, because they're good practice. Discussion quizzes grade: 35/35 Each TA made their own quizzes for their discussion. I heard that some TAs gave really hard quizzes, but Ashot made really easy ones, so it was pretty simple to get full credit on them. The quizzes consisted of one question from the book. If you want, you can do all of the assigned problems in the textbook, but it's not graded or required. Since my TA's quizzes were easy, I didn't need to do the book problems beforehand to do well on the quizzes. Online quizzes grade: 37.5/37.5 Each pre-lecture quiz was three-multiple choice questions on CCLE. Sometimes the third question was just an opinion-based one and not graded. But you could try on the questions as much as you want, but you will be graded accordingly based on how many tries it took you to get the right answer. These were pretty simple if you watched the lecture videos carefully and took good notes on them. Overall grade: A Overall, I'm a big fan of the flipped classroom method. I thought it was really helpful for me to watch the lecture videos at my own pace where I could rewind as necessary, And going over a lot of practice problems in lecture were also really helpful. I find it much more efficient and effective than trying to squeeze all the content in 50-minute intervals.
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Winter 2019 - People complaining about this man's accent are really trying to cover up the fact they didn't do as well as they wanted to purely due to their own incompetence. Pham's lectures are fast-paced, but he goes over the clicker questions very well, which are all that really matter. I never attended his office hours but every time I asked him something after class, he was nothing but kind and extremely helpful. The LS Core Curriculum have a specific way of explaining problems and he does a great job of explaining what type of knowledge is expected of us. I would go to his lectures to figure out what type of material will be tested and go to your TA's office hours instead because they offer much more personal help.
Winter 2019 - People complaining about this man's accent are really trying to cover up the fact they didn't do as well as they wanted to purely due to their own incompetence. Pham's lectures are fast-paced, but he goes over the clicker questions very well, which are all that really matter. I never attended his office hours but every time I asked him something after class, he was nothing but kind and extremely helpful. The LS Core Curriculum have a specific way of explaining problems and he does a great job of explaining what type of knowledge is expected of us. I would go to his lectures to figure out what type of material will be tested and go to your TA's office hours instead because they offer much more personal help.
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Winter 2022 - Pham is an extremely nice guy and knowledgeable. Very accommodating and always answers people's questions. However, classes were sometimes a bit slow or he stops to answer too many people's questions. We fell behind and had to watch extra recorded lectures. General course comments: Lab worksheets are boring, long, and don't really help that much. Exams were hard to understand, wording is so vague sometimes. Launchpad's aren't very useful in terms of exams and spending extra time on them is a waste of time.
Winter 2022 - Pham is an extremely nice guy and knowledgeable. Very accommodating and always answers people's questions. However, classes were sometimes a bit slow or he stops to answer too many people's questions. We fell behind and had to watch extra recorded lectures. General course comments: Lab worksheets are boring, long, and don't really help that much. Exams were hard to understand, wording is so vague sometimes. Launchpad's aren't very useful in terms of exams and spending extra time on them is a waste of time.
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Spring 2019 - Hung is such a sweet guy so I feel bad saying this, but there is a bit of difficulty created by his accent and I usually have no trouble understanding accents (I do have an auditory processing disorder but it's never been this hard for me before). That being said, he is so kind and willing to help and always enthusiastic. My only critique is that he got fairly behind in the material by the end and had to breeze through quite a bit on the last day. As a whole, I would still recommend taking him, especially if he teaches with Khankan again. I would DEFINITELY take him over Pires or Kane.
Spring 2019 - Hung is such a sweet guy so I feel bad saying this, but there is a bit of difficulty created by his accent and I usually have no trouble understanding accents (I do have an auditory processing disorder but it's never been this hard for me before). That being said, he is so kind and willing to help and always enthusiastic. My only critique is that he got fairly behind in the material by the end and had to breeze through quite a bit on the last day. As a whole, I would still recommend taking him, especially if he teaches with Khankan again. I would DEFINITELY take him over Pires or Kane.
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This is class was not a easy GE course. I study hard for the midterm and and final and I got a overall grade B. The finals and midterms were all graded by the TAs so if you have a bad TA like me, you are in bad shape. Another thing about this class is that 12 hours of community service is require. So, if you don't do the 12 hour of community service it will be a big impact on your grade.
This is class was not a easy GE course. I study hard for the midterm and and final and I got a overall grade B. The finals and midterms were all graded by the TAs so if you have a bad TA like me, you are in bad shape. Another thing about this class is that 12 hours of community service is require. So, if you don't do the 12 hour of community service it will be a big impact on your grade.
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MCDB 60 is a relatively easy class. There was memorization required for both midterms and final, and he is a stickler for word-choice, but the tests themselves were very predictable. He gives you all the materials you need, and honestly, an evening of good study for each test will hold you in good stead. Creating a study guide helps with memorization of his mantras. There was almost no work, and the little work that we had was pretty interesting. Pham is a very passionate lecturer and encourages participation, and we had interesting discussions outside of class on topics such as race and intelligence. He is extremely compassionate, and while you may get very bored in lecture, you don't want to let him down. I'm a chemical engineering major, and I took this class for funsies my first quarter freshman year. It was honestly pretty easy. The juniors and seniors and pretty lazy, and the class isn't really curved so their performance one way or another doesn't affect you. For people who thought this class was hard or filled with work, they're probably the type of people who think that one hour of a homework spread out over a quarter is way too difficult.
MCDB 60 is a relatively easy class. There was memorization required for both midterms and final, and he is a stickler for word-choice, but the tests themselves were very predictable. He gives you all the materials you need, and honestly, an evening of good study for each test will hold you in good stead. Creating a study guide helps with memorization of his mantras. There was almost no work, and the little work that we had was pretty interesting. Pham is a very passionate lecturer and encourages participation, and we had interesting discussions outside of class on topics such as race and intelligence. He is extremely compassionate, and while you may get very bored in lecture, you don't want to let him down. I'm a chemical engineering major, and I took this class for funsies my first quarter freshman year. It was honestly pretty easy. The juniors and seniors and pretty lazy, and the class isn't really curved so their performance one way or another doesn't affect you. For people who thought this class was hard or filled with work, they're probably the type of people who think that one hour of a homework spread out over a quarter is way too difficult.
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Winter 2020 - Dr Pham is an angel given to us by UCLA. Never have I ever had a professor who cared about students this much as well as ensured that each lecture is very engaging and fun for the students. You can tell that he is very passionate about teaching and always wants to make sure that the students' mental health and circumstances are considered during grading and tests. The tests are not that difficult and the content is not that heavy. However, you still need to do the past papers and understand the material well in order to do well in the tests. There is no reason for anybody to not get an A in this class as long as you put in the effort and attention to the class. He is beyond fair in grading and is very understanding if you have any personal issues which may impede your ability to take the test. 100% would reccomend taking him for LS107. If I had a choice, I would take him for any other class he teaches as well.
Winter 2020 - Dr Pham is an angel given to us by UCLA. Never have I ever had a professor who cared about students this much as well as ensured that each lecture is very engaging and fun for the students. You can tell that he is very passionate about teaching and always wants to make sure that the students' mental health and circumstances are considered during grading and tests. The tests are not that difficult and the content is not that heavy. However, you still need to do the past papers and understand the material well in order to do well in the tests. There is no reason for anybody to not get an A in this class as long as you put in the effort and attention to the class. He is beyond fair in grading and is very understanding if you have any personal issues which may impede your ability to take the test. 100% would reccomend taking him for LS107. If I had a choice, I would take him for any other class he teaches as well.