DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU HAVE NOT STUDIED ECONOMICS BEFORE. Frankly, there is no way you could survive. Its not because of Professor Rojas, but the fast paced nature of the quarter system. You learn the fundamental concepts of economics within a week or two, stuff that is generally taught over the course of a year in high school.
If you have taken economics before however, this course is not too bad. The first 4 weeks of material is extremely easy (concepts like supply and demand, opportunity cost, etc.), the next 4 slightly harder (trade, tax, etc.), and the last 2 are tough (competitive markets, calculating costs). Professor Rojas is overall a friendly person and a decent lecturer. He basically reads off his slides the entire time but since they're fairly detailed and self-explanatory, I didn't see much of an issue with that. He's always willing to stop and help students understand concepts better if they don't get it. I would strongly recommend taking this class online if possible. Mine was entirely online and it really helped a lot The grading scheme is a little tough with :

Homework - 15%
Midterm 1 - 20%
Midterm 2 - 20%
Final - 45%

So your grade pretty much depends on your final. Homework is an easy 100 as all of the answers are on quizlet, and you can use a checking feature on your assignment to verify if your answers are correct.

Discussions were optional, and went more in depth on how to calculate or find certain values based on graphs or tables which is generally what the format of the tests are, so I would recommend attending it. My TA, Palleja, was great. He recorded discussion sections at the beginning of the week and then posted them on Canvas, so I never had to physically attend a discussion.

Overall, not a bad class. If you don't have to take it, I would avoid it, but if you are an Econ major, this should be an easy class for you.

Professor Rojas explains concepts very clearly and makes sure to answer all of his students' questions in class, even if it takes a while. Because of this, I think he's a pretty great instructor! However, I do feel like he spent waaay too much time explaining super simple concepts and waaay too little time explaining some of the more difficult concepts. There is very little work required for the class, but if you want to have a strong understanding of everything I would recommend doing all the chapter readings. For the most part, the exams are straightforward (they're all multiple choice), but the second midterm was fairly challenging in my opinion. The overall class structure is a bit boring, but the content itself is actually pretty interesting if you're someone who really likes connecting intuitive ideas to the real world. Overall, I definitely don't regret taking Econ 1 w/Rojas!

I took this course online. I am genuinely surprised about his low rating. He seemed very sweet and my friends and I all liked him too. Econ 1 with him was easy, especially if you are coming in with some Econ knowledge. He takes time to explain every concept and terms which makes it easier for us to follow and understand. He made sure he answered all our questions too. The only negative thing about his course is how expensive the required online textbook (cengage) is. I remember it charged me about $160 on bruinbill, but it was a very helpful textbook/website. Even though I have not taken the final yet, the two midterms were completely doable if you made sure to know and understand the content. The weekly homeworks took like an hour to complete at most and they were all very good practice for the exams. Take his Econ 1 if you can!

Professor Rojas is a really great lecturer. Although it was online and that sucked, his explanations were clear and thorough and I got an A- putting in pretty minimal effort.

This class was very lecture heavy and Rojas does a good job of explaining the material. It does feel a little bit like you are on your own in this class as the one-on-one aspect isn't really there. I felt like I leaned on my other fellow students more for help than Rojas or my TA. The material isn't super engaging and the slides are pretty lengthy. Attendance wasn't mandatory but I learned the most from the slides. Exams were progressively harder but they were never too difficult.

Written from the perspective of someone who struggles with auditory processing:

Helpfulness: "5" because Professor Rojas was open to my questions and feedback on the course content.

Clarity: "5" because during the lectures he took care to enunciate verbal information and connect it with visual information.

Workload: "3" because the amount of homework assigned was fair and left me with enough time and resources to practice on my own.

Easiness: "3" because the course readings aside from the textbook were super helpful for getting me to consider the textbook info more deeply.

Overall: “5” because I believe Professor Rojas has succeeded in setting up a welcoming environment while encouraging critical thinking about economics.

The workload of the class wasn't too bad, but the material in the second half of the quarter was difficult to learn. The professor seemed really nice, but I stopped going to lecture because I couldn't pay attention for that long. I think lectures would've been more helpful if I skimmed the chapter before going to class. I found that reading the book at my own pace, watching videos, and going to discussion were good enough to learn the material.

My TA Fatih was extremely helpful in learning the material. During discussion, we go through problems and his explanations were very clear and helpful. I asked him for explanations on difficult homework problems during office hours and that was really helpful.

There was homework almost every week. It was all multiple choice, not timed, and there's a check your work button you can use before you submit. Homework can be long, but I basically learned the material as I did the homework.

There's two midterms and one final. All of the tests are on MindTap and all of the tests are multiple choice. The time frame was a bit short. I found the second midterm to be the hardest. You can choose to take the midterms in the morning or in the afternoon so there is a morning curve and an afternoon curve. To study for the tests, just do a bunch of practice problems on MindTap because all of the tests questions and homework questions have a very similar structure.

*COVID Review*
Rojas is probably the best econ professor for this class. Lectures and discussions were recorded and not mandatory and all of the materials were on Cengage. You had to buy a mandatory online textbook and all exams were on there so the question pool was all in the practice questions. The final (worth 40%) was more difficult than the 2 midterms and only one midterm was slightly curved. As long as you read the textbook, did the homework problems, and practiced questions before the test it was an easy A.

The only problem I had with this class was that Rojas was terrible at responding to emails, students had to wait for days to get a reply. Overall, if you want an easy A for the class definitely go with Rojas.

I'm an international student and I do not intend to major econ. I took this class just for learning about some basic concepts and approach that might be helpful for my other projects. And I DO NOT recommend any non-econ major student to take this course only because you are curious or want to challenge yourself.

Professor's lectures are not helpful at all (at least for me), because I could barely catch up without previous econ experience. So I turned to self-study with the textbook and practices on mindtap, which is expensive but helpful. Every week it took me about a day to read the chapters and finish the homework (not hard), so the workload is pretty light. And the tests are not difficult at all, although the professor does not care about time-zone differences and makes international students like me get up at 2:30am for final.

So this course, generally, is not hard, but I feel like it has no difference with self-learning. Thus, if this course is not a prerequisite for you, you are totally able to rent an ebook and learn by yourself. There's nothing hard. Do not waste your money on expensive materials required for this course.

this class was not too hard but a lot of material. rojas uses mindtap instead of ccle for homework and tests. lectures are dry but the professor just read off the slides. the material is introduction level so it is not too hard but there is minimal outside help from TAs and the professor