Professor Givvin is such a gem. This class turned out to be one of the most interesting classes I've taken so far at UCLA. Each day in class, you review 1-2 articles of studies or literature reviews about educational topics. Some of the ones I remember off the top of my head are if professors providing powerpoints affects students' exam performance and how gender stereotypes affect working memory capacity. Professor Givvin makes each study manageable to understand and makes sure everyone's questions are answered. Her dog Jake is super cute too.

Class is 15% participation, 25% each for two midterms, and 35% final. Her tests made sure you understood the studies she went over, but there were no trick questions and she was always willing to clarify question during exams if you were confused. If you take this class, you will definitely take away lots of valuable information! It's (by far) been my favorite psych class.

Professor Givvin is easily one of my favorite professors at UCLA. She is an incredible person: funny, engaging, down-to-earth, and just GETS students. Her knowledge of educational psychology shows: she understands how to structure a class effectively to maximize learning while still making it fun, approachable, and interesting. She is just amazing! I will take any and every class she offers. She does not post lecture slides, which forces engagement with the materials in lecture and means that you cannot slack off. Clicker quizzes happen every class, which forces you to keep up with the material, which makes studying for the exams a piece of cake because you have been doing the work all along! Readings are research articles on different topics in educational psychology, which I always find way more interesting and engaging than a textbook. This also means that all the materials are free (besides the clicker). I wish UCLA would offer more education and psychology courses because I think they are just fascinating and so applicable to us as students. Bottom line, Professor Givvin is a wonderful person and I am so glad that people like her get to to teach at UCLA.

As someone who took this class for the grade distribution (and not out of interest), I actually found this class pretty interesting. The topics are all relevant and presented in an interesting way. Givvin is funny and has a very upbeat attitude. I would definitely recommend this class.

Grading Breakdown:
40% Midterm (Multiple-choice only)
45% Final (Multiple Choice + Short Answer)
15% Clicker Questions (3 points per class, lowest 2 scores dropped)

Exam Tips:
- She's not big on small details at all. It is mainly overarching questions and conclusions.
- She rarely focuses on method questions. However, know the articles that are only "literature reviews," as opposed to experiments.
- For the final, most of the short answer questions focus on the benefits of the article's topic. A question would be: name 3 benefits of x...
- You don't need to know the names of the authors, but it helps.
- We did not have one definition question all quarter. Again, it's just mainly themes and conclusions.
- Once or twice an exam, you'll get a question that lists words that come straight off the slides. They are easy to identify if you have read the slides enough.

With a little bit of studying (i.e. reading the slides a few times before each exam), you can easily attain an A/A+.

Givvin has to be one of my favorite Psych professors. She cares about her students, and the studies you learn about are actually very interesting! Most of them you can even apply to your daily life. I thought this course was very inspiring and I learned a lot. If you want an A, I wouldn't say you have to work too hard for it. Her questions on the midterm and exam come directly out of lectures, and she NEVER asks tricky questions; they are all straight to the point. That being said, she does give you a quiz via the iclicker at the beginning of each class. However, if you just skim the readings or simply read the title & abstract, you will most likely be able to answer all of the quiz questions which are again not meant to trick you. She also drops your two lowest quiz scores. I highly recommend her!

Professor Givvin is AMAZING.

I truly loved taking this course and would take more classes with her if I could without a doubt. All reading materials are online. They were daily quizzes! (Just 3 mc questions that are based on the reading used via CLICKERS). Please do not miss your chance taking it with her.

Karen is very personable and concerned with her students' learning, she has been my favorite Psych professor so far. Psych 133F is a great diversity/major option to take! The material is relevant to everyday life, and the workload is more-than-doable.

This class is easy, but at the same time, it's hard to get an A. You literally have to make zero mistakes because each exam is like 30 multiple choice that's worth 45% of your overall grade!! That means if you miss just ONE question, you're already down to a 98.5%. On the final, she made each multiple choice 2% of our overall grade. So even if you got a 100% on the midterm, you could only miss 3 multiple choice to get a solid A in the class. As you can see, there is zero room for error in this class.
The best thing about this class is there is NO TEXTBOOK and literally no homework aside from a weekly 5 page article you have to read. This class has had the lightest workload out of ALL my courses at UCLA.
As for the professor, Dr. Givvin, she's AWESOME. She's super nice and funny and pretty good-looking for a 50+ year old! One of my favorite professors at UCLA!

AMAZING LECTURES and a wonderful class!! I genuinely learned a lot about cognitive development, pedagogy, and ways to improve as a student through this course. The research is intriguing, the quizzes are rarely too difficult, the exams are fair, and I was interested in each lecture. The only unfortunate part is that her slides are not posted, so in verbatim laptop typing is a good chunk of the course. Getting an A is doable 1000%; attendance is mandatory (on time too because clicker quizzes begin at the start of class on the dot) but people typically get them all right (and she drops the lowest score), TAKE HER CLASS!!

The word on the street was this is the "easy" psych class to take. Maybe being my first quarter at UCLA and coming from community college, my idea of easy meant literally no work at all and I underestimated the fact that it is still UCLA and will be easy compared to other rigorous classes. It wasn't a difficult class and part of why that is so I think is because the subject is interesting and you can see that most students are genuinely attentive and interested. Also, she uses as slide show however she doesn't post them so you pretty much have just the notes you were able to take during class along with the 2 research article readings you need to do for each class (and there is a clicker-quiz on the readings every class) I would say there are a total of about 30 research articles you will analyze and read for the whole quarter. Just take good notes ad study in advance because its very easy to underestimate this class since during lectures and while reading it all seems fairly easy- but the midterm and final are tricky and can be easy to overthink- would say this is the reason for the A- and not the A as there are also no other assignments just the clicker quizzes, midterm and final.

Very helpful professor. Clicker quiz every class meeting. Many of the topics she taught about were applicable to the students. Tests were definitely harder than the clicker quiz questions. Test questions were often tricky.