Oh boy... I saw the incredibly divisive reviews for professor Koh on 105B and it prompted me to give my experience on the class, even though I've never written a bruin walk review before. Everyone is right in saying the class and professor Koh are unorthodox, especially for a history class. That comes with pros and cons, and I'll list the cons(at least the cons most people had) first:

1. For anyone that joined the class expecting a course dedicated solely to the historical material it centers around, professor Koh did not provide that. Arguably most of the lectures consisted of writing and grammar lessons rather than the actual history of the Middle East.
2. Many of those writing and grammar lessons involved reading other peoples homework papers. She kept it anonymous of course, but I can't help but feel as though it's a bit degrading for someone to sit in silence as their paper gets read and professor Koh points out all its mistakes as an example of how not to write a paper.
3. The in class lectures felt like being back in high school, as someone here already mentioned. She cold calls, assigns seats and groups, and has silent reading during class(She told me to put my head back down to read one time when I lifted my head up to stretch my neck).
4. Her grading mostly centers around writing and grammar rather than the historical content. She graded in 3 categories: Language, organization, and content. In other words, the means in which you wrote your paper primarily dictated your grade, as opposed to how well you retained and summarized the historical information from the readings.
5. The class was EXTREMELY tough. She's the harshest grader I've had so far at UCLA. I've generally never had any issues or substantial critiques with my writing since I got here, but it seems as though no matter how hard I tried, professor Koh always found a way to dock points. I think the highest I got on an assignment was a 13/15, and I averaged around an 11/15.

To my understanding, those are the primary criticisms people had of professor Koh and her class. As a result, a lot of people seemed to hate the experience and cite it as their only B at UCLA. However, in my experience, professor Koh made 105B one of if not my absolute favorite classes so far at UCLA, and here's why:

1. I think most people missed the point as to why she emphasized writing so heavily. She was trying to tell us how, as historians, our ability to know historical information won't do much good if we don't know how to convey it through means that most people can understand. Because of that, she wanted to teach us how to effectively structure and explain our knowledge in a paper, and that's why she was so strict on the writing and dedicated a large portion of the lectures to it. I understand that most people didn't join the class to learn about writing, but that's actually why I respected professor Koh's message so much. I think a lot of people were under the impression that knowledge of historical events is all that matters in history, but professor Koh wanted to help our ability to relay that information so people will actually take us seriously.
2. The class environment, while often tense with cold calls, was incredibly friendly, social, and fun. I made some lasting friends in professor Koh's assigned groups, since we had to communicate and prepare with each other for when she called on us to answer questions.
3. Professor Koh genuinely cared about us and tried to help us with our work. She was super approachable and helpful anytime I needed clarification, and she always had great feedback on how to improve.
4. While her grading was harsh, it was not without reason. Professor Koh doesn't give perfect scores to people who did 'well enough', she gives a perfect 5 when she believes there's nothing that can be improved upon, which doesn't happen very often even for the best of writers. Her grading pushed me to become a better reader and writer, and I'm extremely grateful for that.

I think most of the controversy of this class is how it seemingly marketed itself as a run-of-the-mill history course, so it was a shock when people started getting low grades for their writing when they already had an extensive knowledge of the material covered. With that in mind, I totally get why people were upset with this class and professor Koh, and I would agree that if you're looking for a class where the primary focus is the Middle East, it's not the course for you. However, the experience and knowledge professor Koh gave me is something I haven't experienced in a long time. I genuinely feel as though I emerged from the class as an improved writer and historian, and I would absolutely take professor Koh again in a heartbeat.

I have taken Prof. Koh for two classes (neither of which are listed on Bruinwalk) and I would just recommend trying to take other professors if you can. Her classes do not give an overview of the listed title when you sign up for the course, they're very focused on what she likes researching, which I have never had an issue with other professors. But the problem is that she gets very much in detail about those specific things, i.e., minting coins, roads, etc., and then as students, we don't really understand the big picture concepts. She's nice and flexible with deadlines, available for as much help as you need, and incredibly knowledgeable. This is not a review against her by any means, but if you enjoy learning history from different aspects and taking a class that is genuinely fun, I would not recommend her classes for that. If you have no other choice and you have to take her courses, do it, but know that it won't be fun or particularly engaging.

This is the first time I felt inclined to write a bruin walk review to add a third opinion to the two very polarizing reviews for Hist 105b. I also took it winter of 2023 and based on my experiences I would have to agree more with the description of the longer poster and wish that I would have read that person's post before enrolling. For background, I am or at least was a straight-A history major until this class. It was a very unique class experience from day 1 the best way I can explain it is that the class felt very high school. We have assigned seats and constantly have group work where she will cold call us.

I would disagree with the poster who said that it was light reading as I recall having to do way more than 10-15 pages of reading each week. She did go over the readings but would spend about 10 minutes focused on the readings and the rest of the class would be tangents on punctuation, or the class would get into fiery debates about something else. The reviewer who wrote about debating the usage of hyphens was not lying!!! This was a weekly thing we had to listen to. I think she lectured on the course content for only 3 weeks. The other weeks were filled with busy work. Each week we had to do a mini-essay which was stressful because she was an extremely harsh grader. Yes, she curved enormously, but that was because the average was a 9/15... everyone would fail her class if she didn't. I would look for a more structured class because this one honestly felt like a grammar/writing class. We wasted a lot of time going over grammatical structures than the actual content. I don't think going to class and turning in all the assignments will be enough.

Pros:
*The professor was very nice and not mean at all
*The final was just a revision of the midterm essay
*Since we worked in groups so much we all sort of bonded over this stressful class

Cons:
*Wouldn't change due dates even when it was a national holiday and we didn't have school
*Assigned seating
*cold calling
*focused too much on grammatical structures
*wasted a lot of class time
*unclear on how she would grade and be a super slow grader
*had to do 8 mini essays but she would only grade 4

I've never written a review in my entire undergrad (a senior now) but Professor Koh deserves the praise !! I took Professor Koh this Winter 2023 and despite what the awfully long (and misguided imo) review under this might say, Professor Koh was engaging, thoughtful, intelligent, and incredibly helpful the entire quarter. Her content was well rounded, and as someone with a background (personally and academically) in the Middle East, Professor Koh not only did the region justice, but has an experience and knowledge that made it a privilege to be in her class. Her 105B class is a (light) reading and writing based history class with no testing, but weekly assignments and a writing midterm and final (the final being to apply corrections she provides on your midterm).

As for coursework: Just do all of the weekly assignments--which were simple and short one assignment was even based on a movie. The readings were manageable and relatively simple (like 10-15 pages a week with no quizzes) which you go over in class in case you do not understand something. She grades on an extremely generous curve--I scored relatively low to start in the class and still finished with an A+ !

Professor Koh goes over all of the content with great detail so even if you couldn't do a reading (which happened to me at busier times in the quarter) you will be just fine. I suggest light note taking, and asking her questions if you are at all confused (she is one of the nicest professors I have ever met when it came to questions). As long as you submit your assignments (the bare minimum for any class really), apply her corrections, and show up you will be just fine. (:

HIST 105B DO NOT TAKE! just drop this course if you care about your gpa. these reviews lied because they were from covid and she is actually a horrible, harsh-grading professor.

average grade assignments were 9 out of 15 which is 60%, meaning most students got a D- on every assignment. She curved this to a low B, but did not become less harsh OR leave feedback for us to get better/meet her unrealistic expectations. She did not grade anything until two weeks before the quarter ended, once the pass/no pass deadline passed, and the drop deadline also passed, trapping us in this hell hole of a class. her lectures were non-existent because she spent all of class reviewing spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in our writing, spending upwards of a third of our class talking about the correct use of a hyphen.

Her grading scale was 5 points for content, 5 for style, and 5 for grammar, meaning the class was LITERALLY STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE. there is no reason that a history class focuses double the amount on writing style than actual learned content. Even after purchasing a Grammarly PREMIUM subscription, using a tutor to reread for grammar mistakes, she still fully was nit-picky and found small errors and took off .5 for every mistake. That means if you made 3 grammar errors, you lost 30% of your grammar grade. This fostered a lot of insecurity for English as a second language learner and gave zero support to ESL students. She also made the promise that we shouldn't worry about our grades the day of the drop deadline, giving us no other information than her word.

She changed the structure of grading within the course several times, made promises for an extra credit quiz she then canceled. she also changed her attendance policy midway through course after people could drop to be in-person mandatory attendance. and if you did not attend she refused to respond to your emails or set up office hours with you.

this class impeded on my mental health. and I genuinely hope no one has to go through the disrespect she gave us again. not to mention the inaccurate information that was biased on Islam... she had to apologize to our class for it

DO NOT TAKE! just drop this course if you care about your gpa. these reviews lied because they were from covid and she is actually a horrible, harsh-grading professor.

average grade assignments were 9 out of 15 which is 60%, meaning most students got a D- on every assignment. She curved this to a low B, but did not become less harsh OR leave feedback for us to get better/meet her unrealistic expectations. She did not grade anything until two weeks before the quarter ended, once the pass/no pass deadline passed, and the drop deadline also passed, trapping us in this hell hole of a class. her lectures were non-existent because she spent all of class reviewing spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in our writing, spending upwards of a third of our class talking about the correct use of a hyphen.

Her grading scale was 5 points for content, 5 for style, and 5 for grammar, meaning the class was LITERALLY STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE. there is no reason that a history class focuses double the amount on writing style than actual learned content. Even after purchasing a Grammarly PREMIUM subscription, using a tutor to reread for grammar mistakes, she still fully was nit-picky and found small errors and took off .5 for every mistake. That means if you made 3 grammar errors, you lost 30% of your grammar grade. This fostered a lot of insecurity for English as a second language learner and gave zero support to ESL students. She also made the promise that we shouldn't worry about our grades the day of the drop deadline, giving us no other information than her word.

She changed the structure of grading within the course several times, made promises for an extra credit quiz she then canceled. she also changed her attendance policy midway through course after people could drop to be in-person mandatory attendance. and if you did not attend she refused to respond to your emails or set up office hours with you.

this class impeded on my mental health. and I genuinely hope no one has to go through the disrespect she gave us again. not to mention the inaccurate information that was biased on Islam... she had to apologize to our class for it

I took this class online, so it might no longer be applicable in some aspects. Mainly in this class, we were only required to turn in two 800-word essays. In the class I took with Professor Koh in person, we instead had to turn in weekly reading responses. Otherwise, the course mainly revolved around student discussion. In each session, you're given questions based on that week's readings. You pick which week you have to present, which involves you creating the questions that the rest of the class has to answer. Overall, the course was engaging, and Professor Koh was extremely friendly and helpful. A good amount of my classmates in this class went on to enroll in the next class Professor Koh offered.