Blank is such a considerate and friendly instructor. It's clear how much he cares about the content and how passionate he is about the entire field of cognitive science. Homework assignments were fairly heavy reading, but responses were majority completion based and the assignments got easier as the quarter went on. The class also had two group projects, which considering that the class was online, really weren't too bad. All grading was generous, and the lectures were clear. Blank was also super approachable at office hours and during lecture. Highly suggest taking this class with him if you get the chance!

Professor Blank was awesome. He was very responsive to feedback and seemed to genuinely care about his students. I went to many of his office hours, and whenever I had concerns, he would address them and find solutions. The way grading works makes it so that it's very easy to get an A because the professor didn't want us to stress about grades. Overall, I really enjoyed this class.

I think the class overall was fine. The only homework you really had was to read a research paper and then to meet with your pod to discuss the research paper (it had to be recorded on zoom and submitted). You then took a 5 question quiz on the paper, which was fine, but it takes a while to get used to the style of research papers and to figure out what is important to know for the quizzes. You also had assigned videos that weren't graded on if you watched them or not, but a few questions on the final referenced the videos, so it's in your best interest to watch them. Lectures are recorded, but only audio and you can't adjust the speed (like put it on 1.5x or 2x). There was quite a bit of extra credit throughout the quarter. No discussion section, which I didn't like because you're learning very new concepts but with little support from the professor or TA. That brings me to my next point: usually classes are taught cumulatively where everything builds on one another (think of a lego tower where each topic is a brick), but in this class, I swear it felt like a weird circle. The topics were loosely related to one another and sometimes it felt like whiplash when we switched topics. Go to office hours, make sure you attend class, and try to stay on top of lectures.

Idan is a nice and friendly guy, but I wouldn’t take this class with him again. Right from the start, he mentioned that grades don’t really matter in this course—but the issue is you literally can’t see your grade at all. There’s also no way to check the class average on quizzes, so you have no clue if you’re doing well or not. He also mentioned that he made this course difficult on purpose, so prepare to put in a lot of work.

Attendance is mandatory since he uses Poll Everywhere to track participation, and the final exam is all multiple-choice and short-answer questions based on lecture slides and assigned videos (you actually have to go to class to succeed). You're allowed to miss 3 lectures in the quarter. He does allow 3 double-sided cheat sheets on the final, but unless you make them really good, they might not help much. There is no midterm for this course.

Instead of a discussion section, there are mandatory learning pod meetings where you discuss a weekly paper with a small group to prep for quizzes. The quizzes are super-specific and kinda unpredictable, so even if you understand the readings, you might still get thrown off. Also, the papers don’t always connect with the lectures, which can be frustrating.

Overall, the class structure is engaging, but the lack of grade transparency and quizzes not aligning with the lecture made it stressful. Take him if he's your only choice, but I'd rather choose a different professor.

This was a hard class with a lot of assignments with different formats, attendance requirements, etc, but the material was thoroughly engaging.

Loved the lectures (wish it wasn't at 2PM though)! Workload was manageable, but definitely start the assignments and projects EARLY. I stayed up very late finishing up the group project, but this might be because my group members were very unhelpful. Final wasn't too hard because I had a cheat sheet with EVERYTHING written on it, but the exam covered content across the entire quarter so make sure you go through everything!

I looked forward to this class, but Professor Blank was a real disappointment. The positive is that he is knowledgeable of the material, but here is the negative:
- He really likes to listen to himself, not interaction in class.
- He stated the first day that he made this class difficult on purpose; why??
- The assignment is not connected to the lectures, and he said he gave very difficult research to analyze, knowing that we wouldn't understand them, and if we didn't, we should ask out peers, for sure someone will get them, not him, not once he said come to office hours for this matter.
- he said we had to figure it out by ourselves because when we are in a working environment, nobody will tell us how to do things, so we have to start now. But aren't we paying you big money to teach us, so that when we go to work, we know how to do things??
- No feedback of any kind on our work until after the final. I had the first grade of my assignment the day after the final; how was it useful?
- It felt like he had no time for us and he structured the class so that he had the least amount of work to do. There is no discussion class with a TA, so there is no hope of reviewing the material in a class environment.
It was a bad experience for me, I really wanted to learn something, but I really didn't. UCLA should use motivated teachers, not researchers that don't want to do their job.

Take this class if you want a free A. I took this class alongside 2 math classes and a PIC class and had little time to dedicate to PSYCH85. Despite what other reviews may imply, this is the easiest class I've taken at UCLA. For assignments you have 5 written responses, completing them alone gives 100%, then 2 are chosen to be graded based on content. These are graded not too harshly, but there are some unclear questions which lead me and probably others to be docked despite having what seemed to be a correct answer. Then there are two projects you do with a group based on studies, they are pretty interesting and the projects are very easy. These projects are not graded harshly, getting 90%-95% on them requires minimal work. There is plenty of extra credit too, I think I earned 3%. The "hardest" part of this class is the final. One important thing to note, the final covers specific examples from in class, it will specifically ask you what happened in this study we read in class. I missed many classes, but brought a cheat sheet to the final as allowed, but it was little help. That was because the final didn't ask for many definitions or to explain a concept. It was all MC and asked specific questions about what happened in this study or what would you expect to happen in this study (your expectation would come from remembering what happened in the class example). Many studies I remembered from class and still could not recall the expectation on the exam, I also did not study at all though because of other classes. I got 60% on the final and still managed an A. Finally, Idan is super nice, tries to be extremely inclusive, and is always helping students. Definitely take this class, it's a free A (or A+ if you don't bomb the final like me).

For an introductory course, this course was quite a lot of work. Idan is a very nice and outgoing person, however, I struggled a lot with his style of instruction. For one, during class, you aren't allowed to raise your hand to ask questions, you must rely on the TA to notice your question on the Google Forms survey. This, to me, was extremely unhelpful. I would often not get enough time to type in my question before Idan moved on. The coursework was fine, a lot of reading and answering questions. The two big projects were fine, but still heavy on the workload. All of the assignments are very strictly graded, and you can lose a lot of points for simply misreading the question or forgetting a simple detail. I felt this took away from my agency and creativity, and make the projects much more difficult. Additionally, the wording of questions in the homework was often very confusing, and I was only able to understand some after talking to other people in the class. Overall, if you have friends in the class, it's not too bad, but be prepared to complete a LOT of work, surveys, and projects.

This class was alright up until I tested positive for COVID-19 fall of 2020. While the professor seemed nice and accommodating during lectures, he became difficult to reach when I actually needed help and accommodations. Between my extreme respiratory symptoms and my inability to focus during the course, the professor was more or less unwilling to provide me extensions longer than a week while I was sick ( I was sick with COVID for 4 months after infection with a prior chronic respiratory illness ), did not help me with class participation credit and did not provide accommodations when it came time to taking the final. While I was nearly unable to participate in the group project (he didn't accommodate for that either) I maintained an A throughout the quarter, until the end, wherein he failed me on the final exam and politely wrote in an email that "it wouldn't matter in the long term regardless." While I was keen on reporting this to the dean of students initially, I just hope to warn other students of signing up for this class and maintaining any kind of contact with Idan Blank and his TAs.