This class was sooooo laidback. There were quizzes, writing assignments, and participation in discussion as assignments. You could basically ask for unlimited extensions on the quizzes/assignments and they would be granted. Still, you shouldn't let them pile up, as I know several people did this and were left typing out 5 writing assignments in week 10, when everyone else was working on their final project. Dr. Knowles is super lenient, but could at times be passive aggressive and a bit unreliable, with them cancelling lecture one time and not even notifying us. Also, no one really knew what was going on for our final project, when it'd be due, or what needed to be in it, and Dr. Knowles acted like we had that knowledge. Still, my T.A. (Graham) was an angel and so helpful in this project. I should also note that if you plan on learning about aquatic ecosystems, you would be better off doing your own research. Most of Knowles' lectures consisted of reading off the slides, talking about the pictures, or rambling about something else. Still, if you want an easy A, I would recommend this class with them.

Professor Knowles is an absolute mess and the class is also one as a result. Yes, the class is immensely easy and you are able to get away with pretty much anything—deadlines are non-existent as a result of the extension spreadsheet, assignment grading is quite forgiving, and the lack of exams means you are not held accountable for knowing pretty much any of the taught information. This makes the class an excellent one to add to your schedule if you are looking for some free units that will require none of your attention, for instance if you have a particularly tough workload one quarter. However, be wary that if you are trying to actually learn some new information about aquatic ecology, this course will mostly be a waste of time and you could learn quite a bit more through several hours of dedicated Wikipedia surfing. The lectures consist of about 20% actual class material, 40% admiring the beauty of a particular picture of sea life (wonderful of course, except for the fact that doing so takes priority over learning anything about the actual creature and thus gets very old very quickly), and 40% completely irrelevant ranting from the professor about anything and everything from polls about the class's opinions on cancel culture to the same rehashed speech about how the world is ending soon due to environmental destruction (obviously very important for the class and would be quite useful if the professor bothered to then teach information that could be used by students to inspire solutions rather than repeating fatalistic doom and gloom). Professor Knowles was not using their own slides but rather those made by the previous professor of the class, Tonya Kane, and as a result they lectured (generous, more accurate to say improvised or ranted) as if they were seeing each slide for the very first time. They made it very clear that they wanted to get out of class as soon as possible, and made every lecture a race against the clock—keep in mind that even when in a rush to finish a set of slides, the ratio of relevant class material to irrelevant distraction remained consistent. Why this was necessary when the last few weeks of class were set aside to have no lectures with no new content is a mystery. The professor's favorite thing to remark on was how much the students wanted to get out of lecture and didn't want to be there at the moment. Evidently projecting, as the students were often engaged and asking interesting questions, and the only person that clearly didn't want to be there was the professor themselves. To add to this immense frustration-inducing lecture experience, the class's communication structure was absolutely insane. Students are not allowed to email the professor (and are not supposed to email TA's either, but props to the awesome TA's for still responding) and are instead required to post all of their questions on an anonymous google spreadsheet that everybody can view. A decent system, in theory, except that the professor did not check it frequently as promised and most questions went unanswered for days or weeks, at which point they were often no longer relevant anyways. The professor showed up late to most lectures, and even once did not show up at all with no forewarning (even the TAs were confused) or explanation afterwards. Then they complained that students stopped showing up to lecture... I wonder why. Knowles clearly just does not respect their students' time and assumes that the students all care just as little as they do and thus wont mind wasting several hours of every week. Somebody please inform them that college is expensive and important for people's future or something. Overall, I personally was seriously disappointed by the class because I'd hoped to learn a thing or two about aquatic communities, and instead I was just forced to sift through hours of Knowles' hyper-unfocused thoughts for a morsel of interesting information. Not exactly the most efficient way to learn things. If you don't mind this kind of class structure and need a course you won't have to care about, this is a perfect choice, but if you're excited to learn about the class topic and are expecting to do so through the course, my advice would be to steer clear if Knowles is the one teaching it.

Knowles is a caring professor who structures the class in a way that is super stress-free and chill! EEB 142 was one of the easiest and interesting classes that I took at UCLA. The class just consisted of weekly quizzes, logbooks, a final project, and discussion participation. Quizzes have 3 attempts but were increased to 5 attempts later in the quarter, and only 7 of the best quiz scores count toward your grade. There were 10 logbooks where you write about exploring and learning more about a specific aquatic ecosystem that you learn each week and only the top 7 best scores were accepted in your grade. Weekly discussion participation was required but you can miss a few where you just discuss research topics about specific aquatic ecosystems with your group. The final project was changed from a group project to an individual one where you propose some research to be done about any aquatic ecosystem. This class was really chill and we finished with content around Week 7/8 and then spent the rest of the time discussing our projects with Dr.Knowles and our TA. One thing is that people complained about how open-ended the class was with the logbooks and final research proposal but that is the beauty of it since you can get creative and do your own thing which made the class 100 more interesting and more engaging. You basically will get a good grade as long as you do the work and put in effort and their focus is to make sure you took something interesting or learned something from the class! I highly recommend any class with Knowles since there are no exams and they were very generous with extensions, grading, and just making sure that we had a good experience as students. As for lecturing, they were kind of slow at times where they would read off the slides when Dr.Kane previously taught the course but they were very funny and always engaging with us. Lecture attendance is not required and they will occasionally post the lecture recordings if attendance is high enough. Overall, HIGHLY RECOMMEND ANY CLASS WITH KNOWLES!!!! THEY ARE THE BEST!