Professor
Arthur Little
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Most Helpful Review
To all you who believe Professor Little needs to be called out on this, email his supervisor *************, he needs to hear more. I honestly was shocked at this guy. First of all, he is "funny", but his humor is derived from claiming he sees a therapist and has issues. Also, he not only plays favorites, but like many recounted, he gave A's to 14 people for FREE and exempted them from 35% of our grade (the final), because he believed they were great and deserved it. Free A in Upper Div English class? 1. what a joke, what does our degree even mean if you get a "gold star" freebee A? Or that you took the final? One of the two. 2. Illegal and Unprofessional 3. UCLA = joke. Professor Little shows grading in this major IS subjective through this, and that by kissing up and going to office hours it is possible to achieve an 'A'. Aside from having issues, putting down students (he does not agree with anything people say. Some kids in our class even read criticism and came to class claiming this stuff as 'their own ideas', when it came from professional minds, and he would knock it down within 45 seconds. IS LATE ALL THE TIME. Does not begin lecture for about 30 minutes because he is absorbed in talking to and picking on random students to make the class laugh. Out of an hour and a half lecture, the average the lecture would last was 40 minutes. This irritated me so much, especially because I am paying good money for my "education". I do not recommend Little in any way, shape, or form except as a court jester.
To all you who believe Professor Little needs to be called out on this, email his supervisor *************, he needs to hear more. I honestly was shocked at this guy. First of all, he is "funny", but his humor is derived from claiming he sees a therapist and has issues. Also, he not only plays favorites, but like many recounted, he gave A's to 14 people for FREE and exempted them from 35% of our grade (the final), because he believed they were great and deserved it. Free A in Upper Div English class? 1. what a joke, what does our degree even mean if you get a "gold star" freebee A? Or that you took the final? One of the two. 2. Illegal and Unprofessional 3. UCLA = joke. Professor Little shows grading in this major IS subjective through this, and that by kissing up and going to office hours it is possible to achieve an 'A'. Aside from having issues, putting down students (he does not agree with anything people say. Some kids in our class even read criticism and came to class claiming this stuff as 'their own ideas', when it came from professional minds, and he would knock it down within 45 seconds. IS LATE ALL THE TIME. Does not begin lecture for about 30 minutes because he is absorbed in talking to and picking on random students to make the class laugh. Out of an hour and a half lecture, the average the lecture would last was 40 minutes. This irritated me so much, especially because I am paying good money for my "education". I do not recommend Little in any way, shape, or form except as a court jester.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - Like many of the reviews say, I too have mixed feelings about Professor Little. His lectures offer unique and interesting perspectives about Shakespeare that I really enjoyed. Discussions were fun and workload was super manageable. The only assignments are one short-essay response midterm exam, one final essay, and an optional final exam. At the beginning of the course, he told us he would "reward" us if we participated regularly and made discussion engaging. It turns out the reward was making the final exam optional and adding a few points to our final grade as a "boost". We read about one play per week, which I could finish each reading in one sitting within about 3 hours. For how easy and engaging the class was, I was surprised to get a B. He graded the essays/exams very harshly in my opinion. His instructions were confusing and vague and it felt like there was no way to please him, and a lot of my classmates felt the same. His standards for the essays are very high and contradictory, he will tell you to "stretch" and "go deeper" than lecture, but then he will pick apart your argumentation and punish you for making interpretations that he doesn't agree with. Sometimes his feedback was very helpful and constructive but other times it just felt way too harsh. He absolutely plays favorites and I think he definitely graded the students accordingly. He is the kind of professor that wants you to write to ~his~ liking, so you have to figure out what ~he~ wants you to say and think. If you want to get an A: participate a lot in discussions, be a sycophant (flatter him and laugh at his jokes), and go to his office hours to discuss your essay prompt (he will shoot down all your ideas, but it will help you figure out a topic he will enjoy). Ultimately, I found this to be an easy and enjoyable class, but I was frustrated by his harsh and arbitrary grading style.
Winter 2022 - Like many of the reviews say, I too have mixed feelings about Professor Little. His lectures offer unique and interesting perspectives about Shakespeare that I really enjoyed. Discussions were fun and workload was super manageable. The only assignments are one short-essay response midterm exam, one final essay, and an optional final exam. At the beginning of the course, he told us he would "reward" us if we participated regularly and made discussion engaging. It turns out the reward was making the final exam optional and adding a few points to our final grade as a "boost". We read about one play per week, which I could finish each reading in one sitting within about 3 hours. For how easy and engaging the class was, I was surprised to get a B. He graded the essays/exams very harshly in my opinion. His instructions were confusing and vague and it felt like there was no way to please him, and a lot of my classmates felt the same. His standards for the essays are very high and contradictory, he will tell you to "stretch" and "go deeper" than lecture, but then he will pick apart your argumentation and punish you for making interpretations that he doesn't agree with. Sometimes his feedback was very helpful and constructive but other times it just felt way too harsh. He absolutely plays favorites and I think he definitely graded the students accordingly. He is the kind of professor that wants you to write to ~his~ liking, so you have to figure out what ~he~ wants you to say and think. If you want to get an A: participate a lot in discussions, be a sycophant (flatter him and laugh at his jokes), and go to his office hours to discuss your essay prompt (he will shoot down all your ideas, but it will help you figure out a topic he will enjoy). Ultimately, I found this to be an easy and enjoyable class, but I was frustrated by his harsh and arbitrary grading style.
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2019 - This was an online class taken over the Summer. Professor Little is an energetic professor that is clearly invested in Shakespeare. His lectures share his own critical perspectives on Shakespeare's major plays. The course itself is very poor. It's organized how you would expect for a summer course: video lectures, board discussions, quizzes, and essays. Though there isn't anything inherently wrong with it, the course is painfully plain. By far the largest issue with the course is the quizzes. Not only are the quizzes timed and monitored through Repondus lockdown browser + webcam à la Big Brother style, the quiz questions are nothing short of BS. According to our "course information" page on CCLE (a sham of a syllabus which this class doesn't have), our assigned readings are annotated versions of Shakespeare's plays. The questions asked on the quizzes, however, involve Shakespearian actor names and loosely related paintings that you might be able to answer correctly if you critically extrapolate from extremely minor and obscure details. Couple with that, the final exam is composed of these quiz questions and have a combined worth of 40% of your total grade. Almost half your grade is reliant on questions that feel less of an examination of your mastery over the subject matter and more of garbage trivia that you could probably look up in a second. All of this is overshadowed by your laptop's monitor and microphone turned on that stares you down making sure you don't cheat (Respondus has an eye tracker). Based on purely the quizzes alone, I cannot recommend this class to anybody.
Summer 2019 - This was an online class taken over the Summer. Professor Little is an energetic professor that is clearly invested in Shakespeare. His lectures share his own critical perspectives on Shakespeare's major plays. The course itself is very poor. It's organized how you would expect for a summer course: video lectures, board discussions, quizzes, and essays. Though there isn't anything inherently wrong with it, the course is painfully plain. By far the largest issue with the course is the quizzes. Not only are the quizzes timed and monitored through Repondus lockdown browser + webcam à la Big Brother style, the quiz questions are nothing short of BS. According to our "course information" page on CCLE (a sham of a syllabus which this class doesn't have), our assigned readings are annotated versions of Shakespeare's plays. The questions asked on the quizzes, however, involve Shakespearian actor names and loosely related paintings that you might be able to answer correctly if you critically extrapolate from extremely minor and obscure details. Couple with that, the final exam is composed of these quiz questions and have a combined worth of 40% of your total grade. Almost half your grade is reliant on questions that feel less of an examination of your mastery over the subject matter and more of garbage trivia that you could probably look up in a second. All of this is overshadowed by your laptop's monitor and microphone turned on that stares you down making sure you don't cheat (Respondus has an eye tracker). Based on purely the quizzes alone, I cannot recommend this class to anybody.
Most Helpful Review
Just finished taking 150C with him, which was on Shakespearian tragedy. He was an entertaining guy, and took extra effort to learn our names (there were about 25 of us), but it was a 2 hour lecture twice a week, and we spent a loooong time getting to the point. The class was discussion based, but we never seemed to get to the point until 10 mins left. We spent a lot of time just hearing what students thought and hardly any time looking at the plays themselves. When he did take over, point things out and write them on the board, I learned some interesting things, but that hardly ever happened, so I can't say I learned a lot in the long run. Overall I was disappointed in the class, because I was really hoping to learn a lot more than I did.
Just finished taking 150C with him, which was on Shakespearian tragedy. He was an entertaining guy, and took extra effort to learn our names (there were about 25 of us), but it was a 2 hour lecture twice a week, and we spent a loooong time getting to the point. The class was discussion based, but we never seemed to get to the point until 10 mins left. We spent a lot of time just hearing what students thought and hardly any time looking at the plays themselves. When he did take over, point things out and write them on the board, I learned some interesting things, but that hardly ever happened, so I can't say I learned a lot in the long run. Overall I was disappointed in the class, because I was really hoping to learn a lot more than I did.
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