DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PHILOSOPHY. lectures were very hard to pay attention to since she just read off the slides. and there were students who asked very theoretical questions during lecture. my ta was joshua and graded very hard and was mean during office hours/discussion so I got low scores on all the writing pieces. the prof was very nice tho during office hours.

Going to the lecture is really important to understand the material and they are not bruincasted which kinda sucks. Professor DeWitt has interesting stories in lecture and she seems really sweet. She loves to interact with students during lecture and her office hours are very clarifying if you are confused about any topics. Grade is 10% participation (can be obtained through office hours, discussion, or lecture participation), 60% is two papers (which were a little harshly graded for an intro class but overall okay if you go to your TA and get their revisions), and 30% final. The final was easy if you went to lecture. You can get an extension on the paper based on circumstances which I really appreciated (I didn't even have to explain my circumstances to get the extension). Overall it was a fun class, the papers kinda gave me some anxiety though

Going to lecture is very important. I enjoyed Professor DeWitt's lectures as she often engages with the students and tells stories during lecture (which are sometimes funny). I have no background in philosophy, but Professor DeWitt did a great job of explaining the topics during lecture. The class is only graded on 2 papers (which are a little tough but going the TA is very helpful) and an relatively easy final. Overall, I would take this class again with Professor DeWitt.

DISCLAIMER:I took this class remotely in Spring 2020.
For this class, we had a midterm which was 2 essays in 24 hours, a final paper due Week 10, and a final exam that was multiple choice. The workload was not heavy at all but there was readings that I never really did. Her lectures were recorded and posted asynchronously so we were able to watch them whenever we wanted to. What bothered me about her lecture style is that she did not use slides. Instead, she would screen-share her notes on a word doc and would read off of them pretty fast. This made it difficult to pay attention because I found myself racing to copy her super long notes instead of listening to what she was actually saying. Her lectures were also usually over an hour which made is very tiring to copy her notes three times a week. The first half of this class was very boring but the second half was super interesting since we learned about abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, and gun control. I think I would have enjoyed this class more if her lecture style was more accommodating (for example, if she provided us with slides that we could annotate) so that I can actually pay better attention. The professor was really nice though and I do not blame her considering that we are all new to remote learning. Overall, this is a pretty easy class just keep up with the lectures so that you do not have to take notes for hours the week before the exams.

I LOVED Professor DeWitt. She is such an interesting person and gives engaging lectures, and is extremely fun to talk to during office hours. I took this class remotely, and while I think this class would be 1000x better taken in person, she did the best she could given the circumstances. My main grievances with the class was that she went over the allotted lecture time almost every class period, but she recorded all the lectures and kept them up for the whole quarter so its not as though I was time constrained by her taking them down a week later. The second half of the class is super interesting, talking about abortion and the death penalty and gun control, and you get to choose what you write about for the final paper. Her midterm and final were slightly challenging, but only if you didn't watch and write notes for her lectures. I made sure I took meticulous notes for each lecture since the exams were open note and I was a fine. Definitely would recommend this class!

Professor Dewitt knows her stuff. She just gets really distracted a lot, making us all behind on schedule. She lectures by screen sharing her notes on word, which isn't so bad. She lets you use her notes and your own notes for her examlets (basically just quizzes for each philosopher we get through Aristotle, Kant, and Mill).
I personally got bored with this class. She tends to talk A LOT making you get really bored from lectures. I gave up in the end and didn't decide to put much effort into each of my papers. Her examlets were pretty hard because she requires you to understand the theories. Most of the questions are found in her notes, but there are a few that require hard thinking.
She is pretty disorganized and it felt like we kept having to cram time because we were always behind, but we did still get through everything in the end.
Would I recommend others to take this GE? Maybe if you really really enjoy Philosophy. If you don't, don't take it. I liked it at first but now I don't.

I took this class thinking it would be an easy GE, but was surprised by how demanding the class ended up being. DeWitt assigns readings and they are very hard to understand, so it takes forever to get through the readings, much longer if you take notes and actually want to understand everything the philosophers are talking about. However, she also provided notes, which were the MVP. Her lectures are worth attending because although she provides notes, she expands upon the notes in lecture. I also found my discussion section to be very engaging. Don't over think the quizlets too much. Attend your TA's office hours for essays. The class is not easy, but it was pretty eye opening and I felt like I grew as a person through this class. Also, you really don't need to use the internet at all for her essays and you shouldn't.

I took this class as an easy A, it was most definitely not. The papers were not too bad but you barely receive clarity on any possible improvements that you can make, so there's not much to do. The examlets are also extremely hard and though there is supposed to be a curve, there wasn't one so that's doubly frustrating. Loved the teacher, but the way it's graded was just not it.

Professor DeWitt knows what she's talking about. But this course itself would only be really interesting to those who do really love philosophy. I thought I liked philosophy, after this class I realized not really, I found it a bit technical, like mathematics, and so I may stop taking philosophy in the future. But that aside, if you listen carefully to lecture and follow the professor you will know the philosophical theories well enough. The essays composed the bulk of your grade, I find it difficult to write them because I lack experience writing philosophy essays and struggled a bit. But for my Kant paper, after I talked with the professor about my ideas, she gave me really helpful advice and I got an A on the paper. At the end she curved everyone's scores up a little, my other two papers were A- and B+ and still I got an A in the end. So don't worry too much. Also, I actually didn't read any of the readings assigned because I couldn't really make sense of them, I only listened to her lectures (I didn't attend discussion either) and that's pretty sufficient for me to understand the material. Btw besides the three essays you need to turn in and three small exams (I find the exams super easy), there is no weekly homework or anything else.

Professor DeWitt is clearly very knowledgable about the subject and provides ample resources for us to develop a solid understanding of the content. I found that her lectures often get sidetracked with her drilling the same points over and over again using more anecdotes/examples than probably necessary, as well as spending a lot of time answering tangential student questions about the material. This isn't necessarily bad, as it helps deepen my understanding of the content to a degree, but it can be a little frustrating waiting for her to get back on track and makes it more difficult to stay focused. Luckily this doesn't turn out to be a huge problem as she provides her lecture notes on the class website, which are well-formatted and great study resources on their own. Also, the professor tends to introduce her own biases into the lessons on philosophy--not political/personal ones; moreso her philosophical preferences for or against certain schools of thought find their way into the lectures. I believe that being a little bit more impartial would better serve her goal of teaching us how to think for ourselves and critically analyze philosophy from our own points of view.
Despite the minor qualms above, I still came out of the class satisfied in what I learned about philosophy. I had never taken a philosophy class before and this class was a great introduction to the field. Besides a few papers and examlets, there is not much work to be done in the class besides studying. I'd recommend this class for those comfortable in their writing looking for a solid GE or introduction to philosophy.