Chen was the BEST professor to take this class with. Her class gave us over 6% extra credit -- extra credit that was merely based on completion (and tbh I didn't even need this extra credit at the end of the day). The only homework due were reports based on the papers she assigned, but the TA discussion slides posted explained these papers so well that the reports were a breeze (and graded very generously too since I got 100% on most). Reports were also very short -- only 2-3 questions/1-2 pages double-spaced total at most. Exams were all take-home though timed (midterms were 2 hours, final was 3 hours). The exams were a bit of a time crunch but consisted of a good balance of 50% MCQ, 30% T/F, and 20% FRQ. The exams were a bit tricky at times since the answers to choose from all seemed quite plausible (and spanned multiple units even within one question), so it's important to have notes to easily refer to during the exam to. I will note that her lectures are not mandatory to attend but did have extra credit iClicker (not location-based) every so often at the very beginning of the lecture. Her lectures also weren't that beneficial to attend IMO -- she answers questions very wordily and all lectures were recorded -- everything I studied was from the notes she posted (a life-saver) and all slideshows (good for visual representations of what we learned).

Overall, I loved taking this class with Chen and recommend it again! She is so understanding of our busy student life, which is reflected in the online exam format and generous extra credit.

Dr. Chen is really sweet! However, it was very hard to follow along during her lectures. She would keep jumping over topics constantly, referring to past lectures and not what's on the slides. Some lectures can also feel very redundant. She also has an accent which can make it difficult to understand what she says sometimes, but it's not too much of an issue. Her TAs are amazing and very helpful and there are so many extra credit opportunities in this class! Attending lectures is not mandatory, but she does do iClickers sometimes, which can count towards 10 extra credit points. We get 6 points every week just to do an assignment based on completion, which adds up to 60 points, so a total of 70 for the entire quarter. We have 2 midterms and one final (all online). Grades are also released in a very timely manner which is always great! The course wasn't too bad workload wise either. We had 5 reports (2 pages, double spaced) that were basically the only mandatory assignments in the gradebook aside from the exams and discussion attendance. Highly recommend Sumaiya as a TA if she's still there!