This class is HARD. You learn soooo much material with so many intricate details about signaling pathways and processes and it's super difficult to keep track of everything and put it together into one cohesive picture. The papers every week were also really challenging to get through and I found the weekly paper quizzes to be a bit too specific (reading the paper one time through is not enough to do well haha). The exams were intense... all multiple choice but very detail oriented and you have to have a pretty deep understanding to answer the questions well. There is just soooo much memorization. Professor Hartenstein is such a sweet and gentle person - he is very helpful and receptive to student concerns and he definitely makes this class better - but the nature of the class is just that it's gonna be difficult regardless of which professor you take it with.

I took this class remotely for Winter 2021, it just won’t let me select it as an option. It was one of the hardest classes I have taken. Not because the content is difficult because it is straightforward, but there is just SO MUCH CONTENT and little details you must know in order to do well in the class. The class has 1 midterm and 1 final and weekly quizzes on the papers. There is also group presentations during discussions but they’re really chill depending on your TA. Dr. Hartenstein is a really kind professor and he is super nice. I think developmental biology is just a topic that has so much information it is easy to get lost in a lecture that is more than one hour.

Make sure not to fall behind as each lecture builds on the other. I recommend writing everything he says since exams were very detailed, though multiple choice. I thought the final was hard.

I really love the topic of developmental biology but was honestly disappointed about how this course was taught. The lectures were disorganized and unclear and I sometimes found discrepancies between what the professor said and what the textbook said. Dr. Hartenstein is really kind, is willing to help, and will take suggestions from students. However, I felt like he didn't really know the material really well or at least he was not clear when explaining it. I got the most out of the papers we read each week and discussed in office hours.

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This class is quite difficult. As a beginning course into the MCDB major, it makes this class seem even more confusing due to first learning new terms necessary to understand developmental biology. I took this course during the COVID-19 pandemic so everything was online. We had weekly quizzes on readings (that were not tested on the midterm or final) and had weekly group presentations in discussions. All quizzes and tests were on CCLE. The lectures were on zoom twice a week, but lecture is not mandatory. All of the zoom meetings are recorded. The material is very confusing and his questions are specific so you must truly understand the material to achieve a good grade on your work.

I walked into this class right after switching from PHYSCI to MCDB, and I automatically knew that this was the perfect field of study for me. Dr. Hartenstein is sooo passionate about what he studies for a living, and it really shows through his lectures. He made what could have easily turned into a tedious subject something that was interesting and applicable.

This class is definitely a lot of material, but I found it very manageable and a very good introductory MCDB upper division course. Your grade is determined by in-discussion quizzes, mini figure presentations every week in class, and the midterm and final.

Suggestions: Read the course reader before class, and it'll definitely help you understand the concepts that he goes over better. Bruincast if you don't understand anything, and write/type down everything he says in class because he doesn't have text on his powerpoints. This will really help you when you're studying for his examinations, which aren't easy!

This class is challenging but by no means impossible to do well. The previous posts have summarized what I wanted to say so I won't post anything here. The course readers hartenstein posts are extremely useful (albeit sometimes goes more in depth than needed for the tests). I recommend to learn the importance of each slide rather than memorization. The tests do not emphasize rote memorization (has some pure memorization questions though).

In addition to all the reviews that have been written, here are my opinions!
I felt that even tho the second portion of the class was much more detailed and covered more material, the final wasn't as hard as what I expected. He is very willing to help you if you ask him questions and go to his office hours! His slides can be messy but use his readers to help you create the big titles/outlines.
I felt that this class was hard for me personally because 1) I am really bad at directions, so it was hard to keep track of where each signal was when I can't even tell left from right in real life. 2) It was also hard to visualize some processes because there arent that many good animations out there. 3) The developmental biology field itself doesn't have the answers for some of the questions that my classmates asked in class so as a result, you'll just have to "know" the facts because the reasoning that links these facts is still a mystery, which made it hard for me to "connect the dots."
Overall I thought it was a very very interesting class!

The class has a presentation, weekly quizzes, a midterm, and a final.

The presentation and weekly quizzes are in discussion. Every week, there is a different scientific paper that you must read. The quizzes are the exact same format and questions every time. In fact, the TA will tell you the questions and format of the quizzes during Week 1. Basically, all you have to do is write a response to the question beforehand, memorize it, and regurgitate it for the quiz. For presentations, you are split into groups of 3-4, and each group does a presentation on the week's paper.

Hartenstein's lectures are hard to follow because he jumps from slide to slide, and it's hard to figure out what he thinks is important to focus on for the test. Even my TA said she found the lectures hard to follow. However, he is always available to answer your questions. Also, he provides course readers on CCLE, which follow each lecture. Everything that he goes over in lecture (and more) will be in those course readers. READ THEM.

All in all, it's a class that requires a lot of hard work, but getting a good grade is doable. I barely listened in class, and I never relistened to the audiocast. HOWEVER, I did read all of the course readers and I took diligent notes. In the end, I got an A.

NOTE: His midterm and final are very uneven in terms of how much course material it covers. The midterm covers about 4 weeks while the final covers the last 6 weeks. To put it in perspective, my outline for the midterm was about 25 pages long, but it was 50 pages long for the final

Hartenstein is a great lecturer. He has a soft accent that is engaging (in my opinion) and he is super approachable and gentle. I would describe him as fragile almost lol. He lectures from his slides, but his slides are ONLY DIAGRAMS. NO TEXT. So you have to take good notes, and the class isn't podcasted, only audiocasted. Audiocast sucks though cuz it's hard to tell which slide he's on. However, he has a reader that he posts on CCLE that is basically a review of each lecture, and it's really helpful. There aren't any required materials to buy for this class and you certainly don't need the textbook, it's just optional.
He has one midterm and one final for this class, and both are multiple choice. Don't be fooled though! They are pretty difficult because he will ask specific questions about the genes and pathways, etc. There is a lot of information to know in this class but I think that is why he makes the exams multiple choice.
You have to read weekly scientific journal articles and there are weekly quizzes on the papers. This definitely took some time for me to complete every week. Additionally you have to complete a group presentation over one of the papers once during the quarter. So this class does have a lot of work, but the information is really interesting, Hartenstein is a pretty good lecturer, and overall I would recommend it.