The actual content of this class was so interesting to me, so I wish the lectures had done it justice. The first midterm was about half multiple choice (of which some questions were REALLY easy and others were okay) and half free response. The second was more free response and less multiple choice, and was a lot more involved than the first.

Even though the first midterm was much easier, I did far better on the second one because I read the textbook and actually felt like I knew what was going on. I think that for this class, it's important to fully understand why something is happening/what the purpose of a pathway is instead of just trying to memorize what happens, which is where reading the textbook will help a lot. If you were to just rely on the lectures (which are pretty fast and don't clearly explain these "why"s) I think it would be much harder to answer the application/research-based questions that show up on exams and worksheets.

The weekly discussion worksheets weren't super hard but they were graded harshly sometimes if you didn't include the specific keywords they wanted. My advice would be to ask your TA and LAs as many questions as possible to make sure you have what they're looking for.

There's also a LOT of extra credit just from answering easy surveys after each midterm and from making "exam guides" (cheat sheets for midterms), so I think most people didn't need a super high score on the final because of all the buffering.

Overall, I think this class is reasonable in terms of grading, but you'll likely have to read the textbook if you want to fully learn the material.