I DO NOT blame Dr. Maloy for my low grade in this class at all. Maloy was very engaging, kind, understanding, and helpful, I just didn't take advantage of the resources available to me. However, I did not find the textbook very helpful at all. It was vague, difficult to understand, and briefly touched on subjects discussed in lecture and covered on exams. My only method of studying was to use the textbook (my bad haha), and I failed every exam. I do believe it would have been much more beneficial to have attended more of Maloy's office hours, as he workshopped difficult problems that would be covered on exams, dove deeper into abstract concepts discussed in class, and clarified any questions about the material. That being said, I would 100% advise someone to take this class, but please, please, please do not rely on the textbook to prepare! Take advantage of the numerous resources Maloy provides you!

Professor Maloy is great. He always makes it his mission that his students are familiar with the content at hand. That being said, the entire LS7 Series is all standardized to the point where It does not matter what professor you get when it comes to the content, grading, and exams. The LS 7 Series is structured horribly in my opinion, the upside down classroom is very frustrating to deal with and is not ideal. The exams are also unnecessarily tricky when it comes to wording and objective. The series basically tests you on how well you can take an exam rather than how well you know the content of the exam. TLDR: Professor Maloy is amazing, the LS7 Series sucks.

Professor Maloy is a great professor and explains things thoroughly. I think the way that the class is formatted, which I think is the general format of the LS7A classes regardless of the teacher, gave a lot of room for you to have bad grades on a few assignments while still maintaining an overall good grade. The exams have a group portion which really helped raise my test grades, and you're allowed to miss a week's worth of content in every category so that makes up for any days where you had a bad score on a certain assignment category. After my first test, I realized that it was much more analytical and required more critical thinking than I thought. It was definitely doable, but a bit challenging because I focused more on memorizing concepts like I did in previous biology classes. However, for these tests, you need to practice using critical thinking by studying the clicker questions, LA worksheets, making up your own questions about how certain processes would be affected if something was changed etc., in order to actually practice going through the thought process behind answering a question, not just skimming over facts. Also, don't just read the questions and their corresponding answers when you're studying and actually try to figure out the answer on your own so that it won't be as difficult to answer questions on the exams. The LA workshops were also extremely helpful because the problems are more challenging and it was helpful working with other classmates together in breakout rooms to solve problems together. Launchpad was an easy way to get points, but the readings could be somewhat tedious. Make sure you don't study or read Launchpad readings to heavily, since all you need to know is in the lectures and the tests focus more on analysis than memorizing facts. Discussion worksheets were pretty easy since the TA's give you the answers at the end even though it's based on accuracy.

Launchpad takes SO LONG. Also, I came in with solid AP Bio knowledge, but still found the exams quite tricky because of wording--I still managed to get an A on the midterms and final though. Your exam grades are an average of your individual attempt and when you take the exam again after discussing your answers with your group, which really helps your grade. My advice would be to go to office hours because his office hours are very helpful, DEFINITELY go to review sessions before the exams because the same questions show up on exams, and study the clicker questions (!) and PEQs because similar ones show up on the exams. Also, don't spend too much time on launchpad because the relevant stuff will show up on lecture slides.

I learned a lot in this class for an intro bio class. I am a bus econ major but was considering going pre-med so I decided to take LS 7a. The class overall was really interesting, but bio personally isn't for me. It takes a fair amount of work but nothing crazy at all (I hadn't taken biology since freshman year of high school for reference). Malloy was a really great teacher and kept class interesting. If you need to take LS 7A I would definitely recommend Malloy.

this was my first college class and dr. maloy has made it an incredible experience! coming in, i was a bit behind as i had neither taken ap bio like pretty much everyone else, nor was i a science major. but this didn't really matter because the class was taught from the basics of the basics and i quickly caught up with everyone else.

the material itself isn't very difficult in my opinion, but it is very content heavy, especially in the launchpad assignments. dr. maloy's lectures are very engaging and you get participation points for answering questions every lecture, which ends up being a lot of free points, since it's not based on accuracy. as for studying for the tests, i suggest ditching the heavy launchpad textbooks completely and just go over the slides he posts, the ta and la worksheets, and also, i cannot stress this enough, go to office hours.

Professor Maloy is extremely nice and helpful. He provides so many resources that it can seem a lot but when it comes down to reviewing the material for studying you can utilize your Launchpad notes, Lecture Notes, Clicker questions, Lecture slides, Campuswire, office hours, TA office hours, Discussion and Launchpad worksheets. Maloy wants you to succeed in his class. He cares about his students and when you communicate with him and the TAs about personal issues going on, they are very accommodating. I recommend this class to anyone. Just take good notes, review those notes, and ask questions if they come up.

Maloy has been a fantastic professor, especially for my transition into UCLA. He is very friendly and willing to point anyone to the right direction. He also hosted non-content office hours weekly, which was a great experience. It feels as though he cares a lot for his students. While the workload can feel like a lot at sometimes, I feel like the work done in class adequately prepared me for any tests.

EXAMS WERE SO HARD. Went in every test feeling fully confident and always got tripped up by tiny details. Loved the clicker questions and launch pad though so helpful. …

DR. MALOY IS THE BEST!! IF YOU CAN TAKE LS7A WITH HIM DO IT!! He is SUPER engaging and his office hours are the best!! You can tell he's truly enthusiastic and passionate about teaching biology and helping his students. He really wants everyone to succeed and was very accommodating when I came to my CAE accommodations and extenuating circumstances.
For the class, I overall found LS7A very easy. I received As on both the midterms and a big chunk of the grade in the class is through the self-teaching module called launchpad. YOU NEED TO DO YOUR LAUNCHPAD. Attendance to lectures is mandatory through clicker questions. Time-consuming class but overall not very difficult (especially if you have a background in AP BIO).