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.

I was really excited to take this class based on the title, as I had really enjoyed the animal behavior section of EEB 100. Unfortunately, Professor Larison's boring lectures and poor class setup made it very difficult for me to enjoy this class. She taught mainly based on the textbook that you were supposed to read, making her lectures dry and boring. Additionally, there was a group project where you had to make a video of an animal behavior topic, which really didn't serve any usefulness in learning more about the subject, and instead everyone just completed last minute. As boring as this class was, if you have decent critical thinking skills, you can study the slides a few days beforehand and do pretty well on the midterm and final. The rest of the grade is just a couple of in-discussion quizzes on papers and clicker, besides the video. But overall, I wish I had taken a different class to fulfill my requirements my last quarter at UCLA.

I dreaded going to this class every week. The lectures were super dry and I always struggled to pay attention. Larison gave really unclear and boring lectures. Also, attendance was mandatory because of clicker questions.

I was only able to do well because she uploads her slides with her notes and her notes are better and way more helpful than her lectures. Avoid this class if you can.

Very boring avoid this class. There are many better classes. Lectures are completely uninspired.