Kusenko is great! The class is very interactive because of the in-class practice problems you do online for credit, and the grading scheme is nice because he gives you the higher grade between a curved grade and a raw grade. He definitely cares about student learning and is willing to answer any questions!

Review for 1A: Amazing prof in every way, class is little too easy however

This is the review for Kusenko's Winter 2018 Physics 1A class. Alex is just an extremely nice and friendly human being. He is also an engaging lecturer and his tests are easy, which means he's everything you'd want from a professor.

Kusenko is a good professor. He is genuinely excited by the subject and therefore holds plenty of demonstrations in class. He assigns HW on an online portal called KUDU which makes life easier for everyone. You are allowed a two side cheat sheet for all of his tests and the tests are fairly simple and straightforward. One can do extremely well in this class with minimal efforts. Also, watch out for his infamous goofy laugh!

Meh. Basically the entire class.

I'm not really a physics person, and this class didn't change that. This was my first physics class at UCLA so I might be dragging Kusenko a little more than I should (he's probably a much more interesting professor than some of the others), but I personally found the lectures boring and hard to follow either because I couldn't see anything or because lots of calculus was going on and I couldn't really catch up. So if you're the kind of person who gets easily distracted in class, you won't learn much here.

There's an online textbook in this class which you have to pay $20 for or something, and the text/assignments on it aren't like the questions on the exams. The midterms in this class are very fair and nothing to stress out about if you study, but the final in this class was admittedly difficult and on a much higher level. So don't underestimate the final!

On a final note, this class has "mandatory" attendance in that there are (sometimes) in class quizzes that count towards participation. I'm not sure how much they're actually worth though because I missed two of them and was still able to get a good grade. Kusenko clearly wants his students to show up early though, because he started making the quizzes at the beginning of class to punish students who sleep in like me.

After taking 1A with Corbin this class was a walk in the park. Except the TA who graded two problems on the first midterm messed a lot of us off by taking points off for the "work" when we had the correct answer messing up final scores. Tough to get below the average when you get every answer right but oh well. Kusenko himself is funny and clear. He doesn't use complex math like Corbin does. The kudu online textbook is cheap and convienent since it is always on your laptop. Overall would take again.

I came into Kusenko's 1B after taking Corbin's 1A, and naturally found Kusenko's lectures to be less engaging, and the tests to be much more straightforward. Nevertheless, his demonstrations are interesting and he genuinely cares about his student's learning. Instead of an iClicker, he uses a software called Kudu which acts as both an online textbook, a tool to measure in-class participation through quizzes, and a homework portal.

The policy for the quizzes is as follows:
- If the student is on the border of two grade levels, he will look at the quizzes as extra credit. Otherwise, they don't count for anything.

The policy for homework is also nice:
- If a student scores above 50%, it counts as 100% on that homework, and below 50% rounds up to 50%.

As for the tests, the midterms are very doable, and have very high averages/medians. In Spring 2017, the stats were as follows:
Median = 85%, Standard deviation 14%.

However, the final was quite tough and had a substantially lower average. I wouldn't say it was not doable, but surprising given how easy the midterms were. The stats for the final were as follows: Median = 68%, Mean = 69%.

The breakdown of the final grade is
40% Midterms, 40% Final, 20% Homework.

Given that it is easy to score 100% on the homework, the final grade basically depends only on the final and the midterms. Personally, I scored 97% cumulative on the midterms, and 80% on the final and ended up with an A. My advice in doing well in this class would be to do the Kudu homework problems and the textbook problems that Kusenko provides.

Kusenko does a lot of fun demonstrations in class and works really hard to make the lectures fun and engaging. That said, he doesn't present the material as clearly and deeply as Prof Corbin does. We had an online textbook and homework through Kudu.com. That textbook and homework was pretty bad. Physical textbooks are much better. The homework wasn't too similar to the tests.

I'd say overall he's a good teacher but make sure you practice the in-class examples and do more practice problems from a good textbook to supplement the homework.

Professor Kusenko seems to really care about his students. He has now switched to using an online textbook, Kudu, and gives homework on there. His midterms were fair, and the final was much more difficult but not totally crazy. Compared to other professors, I would recommend taking him because of his very cool demos, sense humor, and overall fairness. (: