Professor
Brenda Larison
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2015 - Dr. Larison is a fantastic teacher who is eager to share her enthusiasm for birding with her students. While this is not necessarily an "easy" class (there is a pretty good volume of information to learn), her birding field trips, approachability, and willingness to teach made this my favorite class at UCLA. I picked up birding because of this class, and it is a hobby that I've really enjoyed these last few years.
Spring 2015 - Dr. Larison is a fantastic teacher who is eager to share her enthusiasm for birding with her students. While this is not necessarily an "easy" class (there is a pretty good volume of information to learn), her birding field trips, approachability, and willingness to teach made this my favorite class at UCLA. I picked up birding because of this class, and it is a hobby that I've really enjoyed these last few years.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - This was by far the worst class I have ever taken at UCLA, an extremely stressful and disappointing experience. Larison is extremely, ridiculously unorganized (to the point even the T.A. was confused about the class most of the time) and not clear at all about anything- it was like trying to understand a foreign language with her (she would never directly answer questions and would want you to figure things out yourself. For example- students would ask a question in class, she would give a vague answer that no one understood, ask a clicker question about what she just asked, and the "correct" answer was the one least chosen by students). Her quizzes were stupidly nit-picky, and her first midterm was just a copy of those quizzes. So once I felt that studying the quizzes was enough for the final, what do you know- she actually puts in effort and makes a final not based on her quizzes and screws everyone over. Overall awful experience, I have literally gotten my first grey hair thanks to this class. Whatever you do, avoid this class and especially this professor at all costs- this single class felt like taking 8 am classes 7 days each week for the quarter.
Winter 2019 - This was by far the worst class I have ever taken at UCLA, an extremely stressful and disappointing experience. Larison is extremely, ridiculously unorganized (to the point even the T.A. was confused about the class most of the time) and not clear at all about anything- it was like trying to understand a foreign language with her (she would never directly answer questions and would want you to figure things out yourself. For example- students would ask a question in class, she would give a vague answer that no one understood, ask a clicker question about what she just asked, and the "correct" answer was the one least chosen by students). Her quizzes were stupidly nit-picky, and her first midterm was just a copy of those quizzes. So once I felt that studying the quizzes was enough for the final, what do you know- she actually puts in effort and makes a final not based on her quizzes and screws everyone over. Overall awful experience, I have literally gotten my first grey hair thanks to this class. Whatever you do, avoid this class and especially this professor at all costs- this single class felt like taking 8 am classes 7 days each week for the quarter.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2022 - This is a review for EE BIOL 100 since the page isn't listed. She covered the animal behavior half of the course. Dr. Larison is a very approachable person and she is conscious of students' learning needs, especially with the strike this quarter. She was accommodating and made the final online, which I appreciated, and made efforts to answer students' questions on the discussion board with the absence of TA-led discussions. The quizzes were all online in her half of the course, which made everything a lot more manageable. She posted all recorded lectures, and her detailed slides with notes, so participation isn't mandatory. She also posted learning goals each week to organize study, which was great. No textbook needed, only incredibly dense weekly papers that you have to present on one week. Dr. Larison seems like a very talented researcher and scientist, and I admire her vested interest in animal behavior. However, she is not the most engaging lecturer. Each presentation is 80-100 slides long, and organized in a difficult-to-follow manner. She includes a lot of examples with minute details and random bird facts (and you can bet they will be tested on the quiz/test). She did an entire lecture on why zebras have stripes, which was cool and all but I didn't know how that related to animal behavior or if it was the best topic to cover given how much time we have in a quarter. Studying for the class's exams was honestly a pain because it was so many dense slides to go through, and so many different studies on salamanders, damselfish, and other animals. The final was also more difficult than a lot of students expected (harder than the quizzes for sure). It was 40 questions MCQ, each worth 10 points. It wasn't excessively hard, since it was open notes, but some of the questions and answers were worded in a tricky manner (think along the lines of LS 7 series type questions) and you had to read carefully and study the material thoroughly beforehand. To be completely transparent, my opinion may be affected by the previous professor who taught the latter half of the course (on ecology), whose lectures I found a lot more engaging. All in all, although lectures aren't very engaging and the content is dry at times, this class is reasonable in terms of workload, difficulty, and pace. But if you're genuinely passionate about animal behavior, want to be inspired, and pursue this study further, maybe another professor would be best.
Fall 2022 - This is a review for EE BIOL 100 since the page isn't listed. She covered the animal behavior half of the course. Dr. Larison is a very approachable person and she is conscious of students' learning needs, especially with the strike this quarter. She was accommodating and made the final online, which I appreciated, and made efforts to answer students' questions on the discussion board with the absence of TA-led discussions. The quizzes were all online in her half of the course, which made everything a lot more manageable. She posted all recorded lectures, and her detailed slides with notes, so participation isn't mandatory. She also posted learning goals each week to organize study, which was great. No textbook needed, only incredibly dense weekly papers that you have to present on one week. Dr. Larison seems like a very talented researcher and scientist, and I admire her vested interest in animal behavior. However, she is not the most engaging lecturer. Each presentation is 80-100 slides long, and organized in a difficult-to-follow manner. She includes a lot of examples with minute details and random bird facts (and you can bet they will be tested on the quiz/test). She did an entire lecture on why zebras have stripes, which was cool and all but I didn't know how that related to animal behavior or if it was the best topic to cover given how much time we have in a quarter. Studying for the class's exams was honestly a pain because it was so many dense slides to go through, and so many different studies on salamanders, damselfish, and other animals. The final was also more difficult than a lot of students expected (harder than the quizzes for sure). It was 40 questions MCQ, each worth 10 points. It wasn't excessively hard, since it was open notes, but some of the questions and answers were worded in a tricky manner (think along the lines of LS 7 series type questions) and you had to read carefully and study the material thoroughly beforehand. To be completely transparent, my opinion may be affected by the previous professor who taught the latter half of the course (on ecology), whose lectures I found a lot more engaging. All in all, although lectures aren't very engaging and the content is dry at times, this class is reasonable in terms of workload, difficulty, and pace. But if you're genuinely passionate about animal behavior, want to be inspired, and pursue this study further, maybe another professor would be best.
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