This class is divided into two sections. Genetics is covered in the first couple of weeks, and I found that a little challenging because it was more statistics/problem solving. The rest of the class is evolution and ecology, which I found incredibly straightforward and pretty easy. I found this class to be easier than LS7A. I didn't read launchpad at all throughout the course, and I mostly studied for the exams by rewatching the lectures at 2x speed and I did fine. If you took AP Bio in high school, then you should be totally fine for this class. Prof Kane was an ok lecturer, she did seem interested in the later units though, and brought up examples from her own research, which was interesting.

THIS IS PRETTY LONG AND DETAILED SO BE WARNED:
To start off, Dr. Kane is an "average" professor. I can't really think of anything bad about her lectures, she was pretty clear most of the time, and if not, she'd explain the material again. The lecture material itself is pretty boring unless you are interested in ecology. However, Dr. Kane was pretty fun and nice herself. She definitely tried to connect with her students and make this a pretty welcoming environment. If you're having to choose between a professor who doesn't have any reviews on Bruinwalk, I'd definitely take the safe route and go with Dr. Kane. Nothing can really go wrong with that.

About the class itself, LS7B is everything that is wrong about the LS core curriculum. Launchpad is either too in depth and has nothing to do with the course or lacks material that we need to know for the course, which is honestly ridiculous. A complete waste of time. However, if you don't at least skim, the lectures won't make sense, and you end up guessing on all the clicker questions. The midterms and finals brought confusing wording to a whole new level. One benefit is that the structure is pretty similar to LS7A so it's not a big adjustment.

The point distribution is as follows for this quarter:
Lecture/iClicker: 72 points (80 possible)
Launchpad Assignments: 45 points (50 possible)
Launchpad PRQs: 45 points (50 possible)
Launchpad PEQs: 45 points (50 possible)
Lab Worksheets: 135 points (150 possible)
Midterm 1: 120 points (123 possible)
Midterm 2: 120 points (123 possible)
Final: 200 points

As you can see above, there is a drop for most of the categories, which was honestly really helpful for this class especially. The launchpad assignments and the PRQs were pretty standard and doable. However the launchpad PEQs for this class is where it all went to hell. Most of them are around 10-15 questions in an hour, and never had I actually taken up the whole hour for these PEQs. They were oddly (insanely) hard, especially the for the first four weeks, but they gradually got easier towards the last few weeks. Like LS7A, 7B is a point based class, so just try to rack up as many points as you can. One of the best parts about this class is that the midterms and finals aren't worth as much as they were in 7A since the extra bonus of the labs being worth 135 points instead of the usual discussion being worth around 80 points was really helpful, but I'll get into that a little bit later.

Now on to the midterms and the final. I had no idea what I sat through those 2/3 hours I was supposed to take the test. The tests got progressively harder, making the final the hardest test. The first midterm was alright considering the material was a bit easier in the beginning (despite the absurd difficulty of the PEQs). The second midterm was...rough to say the least. I know a lot of people did really well on it but it was the complete opposite for me, meaning I barely had a passing grade. HOWEVER THIS IS WHEN THIS CLASS COMES IN CLUTCH....THERE'S EXTRA CREDIT AFTER EACH MIDTERM!!!! You can earn up to 8 points extra credit on each mini midterm assignment that's assigned after each midterm. This really helps boost your score and gives you a slight buffer in this class. However, this wasn't an option for the final unfortunately, which also made the final so much harder. The final was the only test I seriously studied for and I barely managed to get a B. However with the help of all the extra credit from the mini midterms and the other small ec assignments (9 points total) and getting full credit on the other categories, I did manage to pull an A out of this class. This just really goes to show how much of a joke this class/this entire series is.

To save the best for last, my lab section was absolutely *chefs kiss*. I had an amazing TA, shoutout to Shomik. I highly recommend having him as your TA if he ever decides to TA for this class again. Unlike the other TAs, he graded the labs based on completion (which was basically a free 135 points) and completely disregarded that BS rule of having to submit lab/discussion work no later than 15 min after the section. I never understood the need to grade discussion work based on accuracy. As mentioned in the LS7B syllabus, students are supposed to cement their understanding of the material in discussion, meaning we are supposed to LEARN and not be worried what grade we receive on each worksheet.

So overall thoughts?
LS Curriculum itself: -10000/5 if thats even possible :/
LS7B itself : 3/5 (saved by my amazing TA)
Dr Kane: 3.5/5 (nothing bad or particularly outstanding, she did her best and she's a fun professor)

If I'm going to be honest, I completely finessed this class. Still don't know how I made it out with an A. I didn't go to a single office hour or problem solving session or run over the learning outcomes for each unit. This is a far cry from the amount of work and effort I put into LS7A. So if you are slacking this quarter, know that you can still do well in this class.

But the real question is, would I take this class again? Heck no, I'm not a masochist.

This class is deffinitely not easy, but I feel like it is doable. Launchpad is honestly just a waste of time like usual, but the thing I found the most helpful was making a study guide of all of the learning objectives because the exams are open note open book.
Not gonna lie the final was super hard, the only thing that saved me is that I did super well on the second midterm. Professor Kane is super funny and charismatic and her lectures are actually super interesting because she does worksheets in class so it isn't just lecture the entire time. She definitely gets distracted easily and showed us her dogs a lot, but overall it was a pretty good class.

Total points:
Midterm 1: 120 (10 points extra credit, three within the exam and 2 as a reflection, and 6 as a mini quiz after)
Midterm 2: 120 (same extra credit system as midterm 1)
Final: 200 (no extra credit)
Lab: 135 (can miss one lab worth of points and still get 100%)
Clickers: 72 (based on participation and can miss a ton so easy to get 100%)
Launchpad: 45 (can miss an entire weeks worth of points)
Launchpad review questions: 45 (can miss a week's worth of points)
PEQ's: 45 (miss a week's worth of points)

Dr. Kane is very down-to-earth and treats her students like friends, so it's very easy to talk to her. She was a great professor. The class itself isn't bad. The first unit is genetics, which is relatively a bit more difficult (but also fun if you like solving puzzles), and then the ecology and evolution units are much more intuitive. The lab sections are not the best- you're always cramming with time and the worksheets they give us are very long. But overall, it's an interesting class and Dr. Kane was really amazing, especially if you make the effort to get to know her.

The style of the LS series is pretty bad, but I like learning about evolution way more than whatever was happening in 7A. Kane made 7B pretty fun. She's nice, and funny, and therefore relatively engaging. Her office hours are really chill, and she explains things pretty clearly if you ask specific questions, and she has review sessions during which she answers questions. It's really the content, more so than her teaching, that trips you up, especially for the first midterm, which was full of probability calculations. The labs aren't terrible, because whenever you get confused as long as you ask your LA or TA you'll do fine. At the end of the quarter, the final became optional (averaged out), but I took it, and I think it did a little better for me as a result. As long as you attend classes on time and complete Launchpad beforehand, you'll do fine.

I have taken 4 courses with Kane and have no clue what the reviewer before me is saying. Not once did she ever seem like she is trying to gain any power over students (whatever that is supposed to mean) nor does she give any preachy speeches like that.

Shes as chill of a prof as youll have here.

Have you ever laid eyes upon a Roman Goddess? Have you ever been in the presence of pure deity? Have you ever wondered where Azurik went after the portal closed on him during the Era of Evanescence?

The answer to all these are probably no and they will still be no after you take this class.

It's a lit class tho.
Kane cool.

I had to attend lecture outside half of the time because I had class right after this, so the wifi was bad and I would give up on listening to lecture halfway through. Kane was an okay professor, but the class was kind of boring. At least the tests weren't too hard, and it was open-book. Our discussion sections were almost 2 hours, but I often had to email my TA to let her know I'm going to turn in the lab worksheet a little late because I couldn't finish during class. They were ridiculously long, in my opinion.
In terms of asking for help, I would go to office hours and LA workshops, but the LA workshops were more helpful. When I asked Kane a question during office hours, she would sometimes get confused herself and tries to reason through it and take me in circles, ultimately giving a weak answer. The class overall wasn't too bad, though, so don't worry.

Professor Kane was nice, but not the best at explaining topics clearly.

This class is completely points-based. There are 774 total points: 120 Midterm 1, 120 Midterm 2, 200 Final, 135 lab worksheets, 64 clicker, 45 launchpad activities, 45 PCRQs, 45 PEQs.
Like 7A, Launchpad is just busywork. Try to find the PCRQs on Quizlet so you don’t have to waste hours clicking through the content, although not all of the questions are there so you may have to either guess on a few questions or actually read some of the content. Labs are also time-consuming and mostly done as groups, and only somewhat helped in learning concepts. There aren’t as many extra credit opportunities as 7A had, just the syllabus quiz, LA/TA/instructor evals, and mini midterms. Mini midterms consist of a reflection survey and a mini midterm that allow you to earn some extra points on the midterm up to 123/120 points. There is no mini final.
Kane uploaded prelecture slides at the beginning of the week, but she wouldn’t post a complete set of the slides she showed in lecture, even though she usually showed new slides so unless you wanted to watch the recording, you were left with an incomplete slideshow. Kane was also really bad at explaining anything and asking her questions often left me more confused. While she posted practice questions for the midterms and final, there was no answer key, and we were instead told to compare answers with classmates. Even the “feedback” you get on the midterm questions is useless; it consists of telling you the learning objective for the question and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll be told that the question is based on the week 2 lab. The grading for the midterms and finals took a really long time considering that the tests are all MC and done on CCLE which has the capacity to grade MC questions right away. Kane is also not an accommodating person and is extremely unapproachable. She’s often rude and expected us to have good wifi all the time even though she knew most of us were using unreliable wifi networks on campus. Sometimes in lecture, she’d have us go into breakout rooms and talk, but then she’d get annoyed if no one was sharing a screen even if we told her about wifi issues. She would also go overtime for almost every lecture and sometimes even have clicker questions for us to do after class was supposed to end so even if you left the zoom on time, you’d have to keep the app open to make sure you answered at least 75% of questions. Overall, I would strongly recommend taking this class with a different professor and only with Kane if you’re desperate to finish prereqs or have no other choice.