All things considered, I enjoyed this class. I can definitely see why it left some students frustrated though. In my opinion, Dr. Murray is a good lecturer and a nice/approachable person; with that being said, her exams were quite challenging. They were open note, but some of the questions were pretty jargony and/or required a decent chunk of extra intuition/thinking, which resulted in an okay average for the midterm and a low (especially for the Psych department) average on the final. You definitely need to study.

We learned all the intricacies of vision and a decent amount on auditory perception, which I found pretty interesting. We had two projects/papers as well in which we read scientific articles related to either somatosensation or audition and made comparisons to lecture content on vision. I feel like this was a great way to get some extra practice for scientific writing, but many students found the projects quite boring. If you are a science-oriented person who likes to understand the fine-grained details of perceptual processes, this class probably won't be too bad. However, if you're somebody who only really enjoys the social sciencey part of psych, you're in for a wild ride.

Overall, you definitely have to work for your grade. I took Psych 115, and I would consider this more difficult. Even some neuroscience/premed people were struggling with the exams, which I feel speaks to the depth with which you need to understand the material. Dr. Murray was kind enough to change our grading scheme to unweighted, so people did not do too bad overall grade-wise. If you want to learn a lot (even though the content might not seem to have much real-world applicability) and are confident in your test-taking abilities, I don't think this class is nearly as bad as other students portray it to be. However, there are definitely easier classes to take.

I definitely recommend taking this class with Dr. Murray! She is extremely accommodating (open note online exams, opportunity for 3% EC for sona studies, and gave the whole class an extension when some students had power outages). Honestly, sensation and perception aren’t my favorite areas of psychology/neuroscience, but she presented the information very clearly and her exams were fair (she even added points to make up for a couple unclear questions). Discussions are helpful but not mandatory, and there is an included grade boost for online “minilabs” graded on completion. The other aspect of the gradebook is a two-part project that involves reading a total of 6 research papers on either auditory or tactile perception. This project is time consuming (definitely space it out!) but not graded harshly — I didn’t edit mine at all and got 100%. Some students were frustrated when she changed the bruinlearn gradebook to accurately reflect her syllabus grading scheme presented at the beginning of the quarter, but she was very receptive to student feedback and reverted to the more lenient scale presented on bruinlearn. Though the content was challenging at times, I learned a lot in this course and thought the expectations were very fair.

This class is a hit or miss however, I really enjoyed this class. Professor Murray is a first time professor but she did her best this year! She is really understanding when it comes to assignments if you reach out to her with appropriate timing. The assignments consist of mini labs which were graded on completion, two exams, and two project assignments. Her exams are hard so you do have to study but she allowed open notes! The two projects I admit were time consuming but not difficult to complete. It consisted of reading 3 articles and writing 2 page essays for each article giving a summary of the article and connecting it to lectures. There was the whole situation with her making a mistake on the weighting scale and causing a shift in grades the last week, but she was willing to hear from students despite feeling all the heat from stressed out students and changed the scale back to the original. Overall, Professor Murray was understanding and a really nice professor.

This has actually been the worst class I have taken at UCLA ever. W/ it being her first year teaching she really needs more practice. Gave terrible projects that were supposed to deepen our learning on sensation and perception but were timed terribly with the midterm and final and were boring and time consuming. She is dry, boring, and does not explain anything better in class or in OH. She fucked up our grades in week 10 and got upset when all students asked for a change back and she took out her anger by not helping us in OH SHE HOSTED and TOLD US TO COME TO!? Rude, hard to follow lectures, hard exams, bad grading scale-- please do not take this course with her, take it with someone capable like Andrew Frane, at least he knows what he is talking about and is actually funny.

Prof Murray is overall a great teacher and I had a very enjoyable experience in her class. Lecture content is framed perfectly and I found it very straightforward. Her slides are some of the more digestible ones I've found here at UCLA.

She's also very kind and cares about the learning of her students. She's always willing to help!

I thought this course was great! I feel that lectures were easy to follow and the way it was presented made it stick really well. My only thought is that I really wish we got to go more into the fundamentals of other senses, rather than just reading research papers for the projects.

Lightest class ever. I recommend taking this class with Prof. Murray! You only need to memorize what was on the slides and nothing more, readings weren't really necessary.

I really appreciated Professor Murray's organization and clarity; despite being her first quarter teaching, I never felt at any moment that she was just rambling or felt shaky about her lectures. Now on to the actual class: no mandatory attendance or discussion sections, one in class midterm, three article evaluations, weekly discussion sections, and an in class final. This class is mostly memorization based so it helps to make a big Quizlet or practice set of her slides when it comes to exams. Don't wait to do the article evaluations until the last minute! They're a slog to get through, but they can really sway your grade. You can earn up to 3% extra credit by either doing SONA studies or writing research article summaries. The final was non-cumulative from the midterm onwards.

I highly recommend Professor Murray for anyone taking Psych 85!

This is the first time Dr. Murray taught this class, and she did an AMAZING job! I might be a bit biased because I really like cogsci, but I genuinely felt like this class was designed in a perfect way to keep us engaged. The course consisted of 2 non-cumulative exams (with the higher grade weighted more), weekly discussion questions based on lectures + readings (which are actually pretty fun), 3 two-page article evaluations, and SONA extra credit. You do have a bit more writing than most other psych classes, but it isn't too much to stress about. The discussion question responses were entirely completion-based, and the article evaluations (in my opinion) were graded relatively leniently (just make sure your summary is organized and you provide justification for your critiques). Because the first exam was relatively challenging (she ended up curving the average from a C a B), she ended up giving us a much more straightforward final that most people received As on. Grading aside, Dr. Murray is a great lecturer who definitely knows the content super well and is always willing to elaborate/answer questions. The slideshows are relatively long, but the way she organizes them makes them super easy to follow along with. Dr. Murray really cares about our learning, and I'd say she's definitely the Psych 85 professor to take!