Professor DeWitt is great at making super complex theories digestible and understandable. As long as you take notes in class, quizzes/tests should be fine, and they are online and open-note. Papers were graded extremely fairly, as long as you explain your reasoning and show understanding of the topic. The one issue I had with the class was that if you are taking it for the contemporary issues, those are only covered in the last few weeks of class. Majority of the class is background on Bentham/Kant.
Also, if you haven't taken a philosophy class (like I hadn't going into this) be prepared for students to want to voice their opinions. Like, a LOT. Normally I wouldn't complain about this, but it was certainly a new experience (that I didn't enjoy but maybe you will), as many people would try to outsmart the philosophers or act as if their own opinion was ground-breaking, or literally just repeat what the professor said without adding anything. People talked so much that it actually delayed our schedule by quite a bit so we had to sort of rush Kant.

This was a super easy philosophy GE I would recommend to any new people. I took this as a freshman in the fall quarter and honestly it was barely any work. Just show up to lectures and take notes because the majority of questions on your final are directly said in lectures. We had two papers and there isn't a page limit, but a word limit. I think the first one was like 600-800 words and the second was like 800-1200 which was not that hard to write. Also, I took this during the TA strike which probably accounted for the easiness because Professor DeWitt canceled some assignments towards the end of the quarter. The professor is really nice, but the TAs are the ones that grade your paper, which ultimately determine your grade.

This class is super engaging and relevant to any person. It is a pretty easy GE if you know how to write a philosophy paper, but the TAs and the professor don't really prepare you well enough to know how to write one. Basically, you're just showing that you're thinking about the prompt critically and logically using hypothetical examples to support your ideas. It doesn't even have to be conclusive, just... thoughtful enough?

Prof DeWitt is a friendly person and isn't afraid to share her opinions. The class is highly discussion based which can make it sort of slow and boring since she will take literally every question(most of which are not relevant to the content but the example which leads to long tangents) and thus fall behind in content, but that's partly because she does ask a lot of questions to interact with. Lecture can be hard to follow because of how technical it is, especially Kant since it takes a while to get to his important ideas, but she does write almost all the important information for the tests on the whiteboard. She is flexible with deadlines and will always give you a one-two day extension for the paper no questions asked. The texts are incredibly difficult to understand and she is strongly opposed to using online resources because "they're not always accurate" so she wants you to only take the TA's & her interpretation of the text which makes office hours super important to go to.

TAKE THIS CLASS! The professor is amazing and engaging and this class was definitely the highlight of my week. The professor does an amazing job of including people and honestly most of our class time was just philosophical debates (the professor is a very good devils advocate). The essays are short (1.5-3 pages) and they are super fun to write. The only reason anyone should avoid this class is if they get easily tiffed since we do debate moral issues.

Ok so I really liked this class, learned a lot from it, came out with a great appreciation for the material. I would recommend anyone with even a slight interest in ethics take this.

That being said I will say it's pretty funny to take an ethics course taught by an anti vaxxer. Not sure if she's trying to hide that fact but that's the truth :)

we got lucky... the strike def saved everyones grades bc prof was extremely understanding and made our final, midterm paper automatic As if turned in on time, and even got rid of an extra paper in the syllabus. however, the TA's of this class are literally brutal graders, even if they may seem nice at first. I am a 4.0 student and yes, i got an b+ which is fine, but the rigor was intense up until the ta strike. workload for the course (originally) was 2 reaction papers (completion grade, 10%), one paper assigned week 2-4 (15%- i hated this bc the class had just started, we were behind schedule, so stressful and poorly planned, students graded as if they were philo majors when this is an intro class and a GE for many sttudents) paper about kant (20% kinda the midterm in essence), midterm and final mcq (10 each) and final paper (35)

prof gave automatic 2 day extensions on everything to excuses needed. prof didnt know how to lecture, she just read off her notes which she refused to post up until we went online for the strike. her notes are verbatim her lecture and she has no slides. class notes where me legit typing her words. she needs a better lecture style. she would loose her spot and get confused and couldnt continue talking without her notes, like it felt like someone was reading an essay outloud. she bruincasted it thank god bc its so hard to keep up with how fast she reads and theres no slides or notes availible to help us. she tells us not to rephrase our notes because we might alter the meaning and confuse ourselves while we study. she knows our notes is literally transcribing her lectures. she was a sweetheart she just doesnt know how to lecture.. shes so accommodating and has a charming personality. she is a kantian (follows the philosopher kant) and out of everything we learned in that class, i think kant was the only person i learned about bc she actually could defend her positions on him and could elaborate more than just her notes.

i took this to explore the possibility of being a philo minor, and it wasnt for me. overall, i wouldnt recommend this class bc based on how the TA's graded, I easily would have gotten a B. I admit we got lucky af because she gave us the final paper, the reaction paper, and the kant paper: all 100 percent completion BUT WOULD ONLY GIVE UP TO 93-96 for A???? Why no A+, she only wants to hurt her students. So we got handed literally 65% of our grade. my first paper on bentham got me a b-, and i would have assumed my kant one to get a B+ or A-?? idk if my writing ever improved bc we had no TA's so who is to say. In our circumstances, i would say yes take her. But knowing that 65% will not be partially handed to future students since the strike is over AVOID THIS CLASS and dismiss the 2022 fall grade distribution because it is heavily, heavily going to be curved. shes sweet, doesnt know how to lecture, but VERY accommodating. as a person shes awesome, loves philo, great to talk to, but lecturing isnt her thing and she doesnt post her notes which makes it really hard. the ta's are really harsh with how they grade (overall consensus from friends in same class w dif TA's and also other students on bruinwalk from previous quarters, so i guess its a consistent thing somehow)

anti vaxxer tho

Although this class is somewhat interesting, it was much harder than it needed to be because of the professor and TA. The lectures were so confusing and the Professor read verbatim off of the notes so attending lecture gave no further insight or help. The TA I had was also super unhelpful and the grading between TA's was very inconsistent. Overall I would choose a different philosophy class if you can and would not recommend this class.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PHILOSOPHY. lectures were very hard to pay attention to since she just read off the slides. and there were students who asked very theoretical questions during lecture. my ta was joshua and graded very hard and was mean during office hours/discussion so I got low scores on all the writing pieces. the prof was very nice tho during office hours.

Overall, Professor DeWitt is a nice person but her lectures were kinda unclear and this was a pretty light-workload class. If you're gonna do the readings, I'd take this class.

During lecture, she went over screenshares of a word doc with notes on it about the topic (Bentham, Kant, abortion, death penalty, gun control, etc.) Some parts were helpful, but when she tried to explain things in further detail, she'd repeat things but not concisely so they didn't make sense; it was like she was trying to explain it well by talking more but it didn't help that much.

The weighting sucked, I wish we had more padding assignments and that the final paper wasn't weighted 35% of the grade because philosophy is a hard class. TBH I didn't do any of the readings beforehand like we were supposed to so that may factor into why I was confused during lecture all the time. The mcq tests were also super easy because they were open note.

What I like about Professor DeWitt is that she was very clear that we could just email our TA for extensions on the papers, stating that in emails and in the prompt documents, and you don't really need a good excuse either, so I used all the 1-2 day extension opportunities. I got B- average on my papers, but to be honest I did them all last minute and I didn't really understand the concepts as well as I could've.

There was no collaboration in lectures, and only once or twice did we have to collaborate with others during discussion section.

Concepts were pretty vague and subjective, so it was hard to wrap my mind around things. I took this class as a pre-major req and because I wanted to find a good framework of morality for me to use in life, but I don't think it was that helpful in the latter aspect. I still managed to get a B+ even though I didn't prioritize this class, so I guess take this class if you are interested in learning about old philosophy ideas and their application on modern topics.

Overall, the class was fairly interesting and a good intro-level philosophy class. I don't really have any complaints, except that a lot of the readings were concentrated at the end of the quarter. That being said, I was able to do fine on the final exam and paper without thoroughly reading through everything. Just make sure to be familiar with the content on the prof's screen shares, which contain both the main points of the assigned readings and her takes on those points.