I A STD 1
Introduction to International and Area Studies
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Introduction to international and area studies from interdisciplinary framework, covering themes related to international politics and markets, as well as international societies and cultures, to illuminate and clarify profoundly international character of world we live in and to introduce set of contemporary issues and challenges that cross borders and affect every region of world. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2022 - This class felt like literally the biggest waste of time I've had so far at UCLA. Professor Ali put nearly half the class to sleep each lecture and just spoke without giving any actual substantive information. His lecture slides are just a bunch of quotes from whichever reading is this week's with some photos. He doesn't record lectures, and his posted lecture slides have very little information. This class feels very discombobulated, disorganized, and incoherent. While the topics are relevant and oftentimes interesting, I felt like there was little connection between topics. Participation is a huge percentage of your grade, and because of this, people seemed to have just spoken in discussion just to get the participation point without actually saying anything relevant. I definitely do not recommend this class if you want to feel like your tuition money is being put to good use.
Fall 2022 - This class felt like literally the biggest waste of time I've had so far at UCLA. Professor Ali put nearly half the class to sleep each lecture and just spoke without giving any actual substantive information. His lecture slides are just a bunch of quotes from whichever reading is this week's with some photos. He doesn't record lectures, and his posted lecture slides have very little information. This class feels very discombobulated, disorganized, and incoherent. While the topics are relevant and oftentimes interesting, I felt like there was little connection between topics. Participation is a huge percentage of your grade, and because of this, people seemed to have just spoken in discussion just to get the participation point without actually saying anything relevant. I definitely do not recommend this class if you want to feel like your tuition money is being put to good use.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - Unfortunately, I would not recommend taking this class as a GE. The entire grade is based on a group project, final, midterm, and discussion participation, and as a result, there is no clarity to what your grade might be. You’re expected to memorize authors and ideas of multiple 30+ page readings, that only have like 1 key idea related to the course. While I really appreciated my TA and her discussion section, the amount of participation needed was extremely unclear. Slides discussed in lecture were extremely vague and didn’t help much in terms of the final and midterm.
Winter 2024 - Unfortunately, I would not recommend taking this class as a GE. The entire grade is based on a group project, final, midterm, and discussion participation, and as a result, there is no clarity to what your grade might be. You’re expected to memorize authors and ideas of multiple 30+ page readings, that only have like 1 key idea related to the course. While I really appreciated my TA and her discussion section, the amount of participation needed was extremely unclear. Slides discussed in lecture were extremely vague and didn’t help much in terms of the final and midterm.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Overall, this class wasn't very difficult. Our weekly homework was a 400-500 word paragraph responding to a question the professor asks about the lecture material at the beginning of the week. We have until Saturday of that week to respond, which was a very reasonable deadline. Our midterm and final were actually oral exams with your TA and they were open note, so if you prepare well, it's pretty easy to do well on those. The lectures themselves are engaging and professor Moore does a good job of condensing some pretty dense reading into something much more easily understandable. Overall, it's a very interesting class and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a fairly easy GE.
Fall 2020 - Overall, this class wasn't very difficult. Our weekly homework was a 400-500 word paragraph responding to a question the professor asks about the lecture material at the beginning of the week. We have until Saturday of that week to respond, which was a very reasonable deadline. Our midterm and final were actually oral exams with your TA and they were open note, so if you prepare well, it's pretty easy to do well on those. The lectures themselves are engaging and professor Moore does a good job of condensing some pretty dense reading into something much more easily understandable. Overall, it's a very interesting class and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a fairly easy GE.
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