Prof. Rissman is a great guy, and he is a good lecturer. He cares about you doing well, and his design of the course is very fair. If you need a column A class, take him if you can- use your first pass. Compared to other column A classes/professors, he is among the best and easiest.
The only thing I'd warn you about is don't sign up for this class IF you don't want to study consistently. I'm usually the type of student to start studying a week or so before an exam, but w/ this class I had to study almost everyday, because of the daily quizzes. The quizzes are only worth 15% of your grade but that's still a good amount, especially if you're shooting for an A. But they are pretty easy, just read over the slides the night before and you should do fine. I took it during the summer so there was no bruincast, and I just read the slides the night before and did fine on the quizzes. On top of the quizzes, he also has you answer non-graded clicker questions, where you get participation points for just clicking in. This means you have to show up to almost every class (I think he lets you miss one or two classes w/o penalty).
The exams were fair imo. A couple tricky questions, but overall they were not hard. I think there were 2 questions from the book, the rest were all directly from lecture. So read the book if you can, but it's not necessary. I only skimmed through it a couple days before the exams and got an A in both the midterm and final.
The only thing is sometimes he can speak in a monotone voice, and since I took him during summer the lectures were pretty long. So there were instances where I found the lectures to be a drag. But all in all, the material is pretty interesting and Prof. Rissman explains things in a way that is easy to understand. ]

I took this course as Psych 124K (Legal, Ethical, and Societal Implications of Cognitive Neuroscience). This class was one of the best experiences I've had at UCLA! All students had to email Dr. Rissman prior to the course to express interest and we received an email with a PTE number should we be chosen.

The class was a seminar style with 24 students. While Dr. Rissman lectured during our class meetings, he encouraged a lot of discussion and left plenty of time to allow for this. The lecture material was a great sampling of the various topics involving the ethics of neuroscience. I think he went into enough depth to get a good understanding of the material without it feeling shallow.

Overall, Dr. Rissman is an incredibly nice guy. He's always willing to answer questions. The class was graded based off of class participation, two papers (one short paper and one longer paper), and a short-answer/paragraph final. Everything in this course was very fair and you can tell that Dr. Rissman cares more for sharing his knowledge and educating the students than meeting quotas or enforcing curves.

Professor Rissman is one of the best professor at UCLA. Although lecture was pre-recorded, it was pretty straightforward, engaging, and enjoyable. I was worried as I had terrible experience with Column A classes, but this was one of the class that I truly enjoyed and really learned a lot!

This class uses zap which is very helpful in learning and there are some fun experiments as well. It is pretty easy to get good grade as well. There are several quizzes after each lecture which will be open book with unlimited time so it is easy to get good grades on the quiz as well. The rest of the grade beside zap assignments and quizzes are based on discussion section, written paper assignment, and 2 exam. I took this class for P/NP because I was taking other summer class and had life obligation, but I think you can easily achieve A if you put in effort. The exam was administered through Respondus, but he will break exam into 3 different session with approximately 3hr to complete the exam. This allow you to take break and go to bathroom after finishing 1 session which was nice! Professor Rissman is quick to give feedback on grade (posted 1-2 days after exam) with mean, median, and standard deviation. I felt like test questions were pretty straightforward and fair. He uses campuswire instead of discussion section which I personally disliked, but he respond quickly and seems to check daily as well. You should definitely take 120A with Professor Rissman!

Professor Rissman genuinely cares for all his students. He makes great effort in making sure that the material is crystal clear. I walked out of this class retaining every single concept and information he has taught throughout the 10 weeks! The reason is because of his teaching style. He uses images and funny cartoons to get the message across and those are impossible to forget.
His exams are very very very fair! If there is a discrepancy in a question he will consider voiding it and that is very nice of him to do. If you listen to lectures and take good notes you will do very well on his exams.
Participation is of great importance. He uses clicker questions/quizzes to make sure people come to class and pay attention. This helped me a lot because I would feel prepared for the exams. I am so thankful to have taken this course with him! I also took his other course, Psych 124K-Social, Legal, and Ethical Implications of Neuroscience which was a great class! He is a GREAT professor!

So let me start of by saying I HATE the science based area of psychology and I was dreading taking this class. Rissman is an incredibly engaging, intelligent professor, and he’s great at providing examples so you understand the concepts. However, with that being said, the tests are HARD. Meaning the kind of hard where you walk out feeling like you failed. I got an 88% on the first test and a 70% on the final, but that’s because I barely studied for the final. In other words, study your ass off and you’ll be okay. Do the extra credit, visit the TAs for help on the paper, and participate!! This will save your grade. This guy truly does want you to do well. Just meet him halfway and you’ll be ok!

I enjoyed this class a lot and Rissman is definitely a top notch professor and explains concepts well. The only annoying thing is that he has in-class clicker quizzes so you have to constantly keep up with the material but the exams are very fair and based directly off his slides. Definitely recommend this class, if you study the slides you will be good

This is the second time I've had Prof. Rissman, I had him for Psych 85 and chose this class specifically b/c he was teaching it. He's a solid lecturer, is very structured in his teaching/with the course, and is clear on what's expected from students to do well. However, there were some snags, which are probably due to shifting the class online, and I'll note that.

Overall, the class was a T/R lecture, pre-recorded, and he uploaded them in segments from 20 mins - 1hr to break down the concepts. He used slides and talked through them, provided slides and a transcript as well. There were also 5 question quizzes for some small percent (5%? I think) as "participation" as his lecture style in real life pre-covid was to have iClickers to answer questions from the previous lecture as a warm up for the class. So, with the quizzes, they were directly from the lecture/slides, not the textbook, and you just had to get that done before the next lecture day, with the lowest score beign dropped. The main complaint from students was the lectures not being posted at consistent times. Sometimes they were at the beginning of the day, or the day before once, other times it was into the late afternoon. It was just frustrating sometimes b/c it takes a lot of time to rewatch and take notes, and you had to be able to adjust and budget your time. People definitely brought it up and it got more consistent, but still, I think worth being aware of just in case.

We also had these short online modules (I think like 12 total?) that were 10-20 minutes to complete. They simulated some psych experiment talked about in the lecture that correlates with the concepts, and you got to see the classes' results, yours, and just answered short questions from a couple paragraphs of info it provided. Pretty straightforward, an easy way to earn points, and was kinda cool in compared to other online platforms I've used in the past.

We also used this online discussion forum, CampusWire, (that's free) to post questions, DM him or the TA's. It was sort of like facebook and reddit combined, was nice to be able to reach out simply and with things that didn't necessarily need to be a whole email. You got responses pretty quickly as all the TAs and students can also contribute. Solid resource. Even if you don't need to post often yourself, even looking at others' questions is helpful. They also were able to post update for the tests, like results or changes, grading, etc.

Midterm and Finals were equally weighted, not full coverage (first half vs. last half of the course material), multiple choice and fill in the blank-style, held on CCLE. He and the TAs gave us a list of names and concepts to study, 95% of which was covered in lecture, which made it straightforward as to what to expect.

Note, Rissman does use Respondus, which a lot of people in my class complained about. I found it fine, didn't really bother me personally. He set up the test to have 3 parts which we could take breaks in between of (you like close the Respondus session, then start a new one when moving on.) He was available if you had problems with your browser. This actually happened to me: Respondus froze after setting up, but before loading the test, as in it was a blank screen, and I wasn't sure if exiting out locked me out of the test. I was able to get on a zoom call with him and he noted my problems and let me back on the test. Worked out.

There's also (1) essay you do to analyze a cog psych study, critique it. Syllabus is clear, it's a 1200 word max so more pithy and less fluff is better. It's not due until near the end of the class (summer session week 5 of 6). I started mine 1 1/2 week before it was due, and gave me enough time while taking 2 other classes, and I ended up submitting it a couple days early, so definitely recommend starting earlier than you think b/c it just relieves the stress. Was able to teach out to my TA for questions on CampusWire, they were helpful for clarifying. You'll be fine as long as you took 100B since the research study structure knowledge is needed.

Lol super thorough b/c I have the time right now, but yeah, hope that helps!

One of my favorite psych classes! Dr. Rissman is a great professor and keeps his lectures engaging by having content that are relevant to the students. Easy A if you show up to class everyday and do all your assignments on time. He does participation points, iclicker quizzes, and online activities which I like because they are cushion points that are easy to get 100% on. He also offers extra credit through SONA! I studied for the exams by reviewing the lectures on Bruincast and make flashcards on the concepts. 10/10 would recommend! Best professor for the psych core classes hands down.

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Professor Rissman is a wonderful professor and 120A is one of my favorite classes. The class is extremely doable if you listen to the lecture and read the book. (more emphasis on lecture than on the book). Review your notes and the previous lecture before every class to succeed on the in-class quizzes. And be on time as the class quizzes start at the beginning of class. I would highly recommend this class!