I enjoyed this class and I recommend it for an easy GE. The professor was extremely clear about what you needed to do in order to get a good grade. As long as you follow his exact instructions, you will do well.

Best Professor Ever! Explains very clearly and homework assignments want you to actually engage in social circumstances rather than doing it as work. Also a very respectful and fun professor to work with.

There's no better way to knock out your science GEs than this class. Dr. Bassett is an incredibly engaging lecturer, though he only teaches half the quarter. The rest of the quarter rotated between a couple of less interesting but still fun professors. 40% of the grade in this class is devoted to a 5-page research paper you get nearly the entire quarter to write. Another 16% is "labs" which are done in section that are usually nothing more than Googling a few things and filling out an Excel spreadsheet. There are also brief reading responses as homework. Finally, weekly quizzes make up 24% of the grade. They're open-note, online, and mostly touch on material covered in lectures with some questions based on the reading. You'll want to attend lectures to prepare for the quizzes and hear about each professor's different perspectives on the subject. Though the general "food" focus can be a little repetitive, each professor mixes it up enough so it's still interesting throughout the quarter. There are so many resources to help you succeed in this class, from a peer writing specialist to extremely accommodating TAs. Essentially, the class is designed for your success. I recommend it to any non-STEM major who needs science GEs.

I loved Basset and I'm going to miss him so much. His lectures weren't boring and he talked in an engaging way. He would also say when to write an important thing down. He was passionate about the subject and even recommended books for us to read if we were interested. We had quizzes every week that were 10 questions and they were based off of lectures and some readings about certain people. I found the questions about the people in the readings to be the harder questions on the quizzes and they would be like "what would ___ agree with ___." The quizzes are all open note though and take home. We also got a second attempt at the quiz, but it takes the average of your two scores instead of the best score and doesn't tell you what questions you got right or not. Sometimes, it might be better not to retake it if you got a decent score because I retook it one time and got a lower score than my first attempt somehow so it averaged out to be lower. The discussions for the course would be other assignments and stuff and we usually worked with other ppl in the discussion, but it was like a 2 hour block and the second half would often just be work time so a lot of the times, my TA would let us leave early. We also had a research paper/writing project that was worth 40% of our grade, but the PRWS and TA's were happy to help and answer questions.

This class was great. As long as you do all the assignments, all the TA's and professors are really helpful and understanding. Would take again for this reason.

Spectacular, love this man and this class so so much, would totally gatekeep if there was any way to sneak in as a second year

Prof. Bassett is an insanely engaging lecturer who cares about teaching. He is a fascinating guy who is deeply involved in his field of study. I never missed lectures because he had fantastic anecdotes to share, and the lecture was often informative. Go to class because the weekly quizzes are mainly based on what he says in the lecture (some questions are based on readings), and if you aren't there to listen, you might miss out on some minor things he said. I could not recommend this class enough. If you attend lectures and discussions, pay attention, and complete the work assigned on time (which is extremely manageable), you are virtually guaranteed to succeed.

Dr. Bassett was a great professor to have my first quarter at UCLA. He only taught the first half of the course, & I thought this half was the most enjoyable. He is a very engaging lecturer and knows how to make his students feel comfortable/welcome. You have to read 2 small books for his half of the course, and they’re actually enjoyable and interesting. The workload is pretty light and very doable with more difficult classes. I’d definitely recommend this course with this professor!!

James Basset is seriously the best professor ever. His lectures are extremely interesting, and he always took the time to do some sort of hands-on demonstration. Jennifer Jay (the 2nd lecturer for the course), is also quite interesting, although her lectures can sometimes be monotonous.
Overall - take this class! Very enjoyable!

I did not know this going into the cluster class, but every 5 weeks we get a new professor. Out of all of the professors I’ve currently had for this cluster, I can easily say that Basset was the best one. Although all of the material was roughly the same throughout the year, Basset was the only professor who made the lectures engaging and interesting. He was passionate about what he would speak about, and engaged the class in multiple ways such as bringing in food that related to the lesson for the students to sample, or suggesting outside of class opportunities that pertained to the topics we were learning about. I also found his assigned reading “The Jungle Effect” to be really interesting and actually enjoyable to read. If you took AP Environmental Science in highschool, this class is basically extended APES. There is a lot of overlap in the topics.
The workload changes slightly with each new professor, but overall the workload for this class is very light and manageable. The one main assignment for the quarter is an end of the quarter research paper, but you have all quarter to work on it which gives you a lot of time.