I loved Professor Sumner! She was very accommodating given the circumstances and I really learned some interesting and valuable information. If you watch the lectures and take notes, you are almost guaranteed a good grade. She has almost weekly assignments due as well, but they are not hard to complete and usually about an interesting topic. Take this class if you can!

This class is still a free A, so I would recommend taking it if you are looking for an easy upper div to take/need to finish out requirements for psych or psychobiology. There are a few main assignments in this class. Throughout the quarter, there are three journal club worksheets, each making up 10% of the final grade, graded on completion, so these should be free points as long as you turn them in on time. There is also a research reflection assignment due at the end of the quarter that is worth 20% of your final grade. As long as you follow the checklist, you should get full points (the mean for Winter 2025 was 19.81 with a median of 20, lower quartile of 20, upper quartile of 20, low of 0). I would recommend going to office hours and just having it quickly glanced over by the TA before turning it in if you are unsure. The exams in this class, unlike previous quarters, were in person. They were around 40 multiple choice questions each, each exam being worth 25% of the final grade with only 2 out of 3 exams counting so one exam effectively gets dropped. Lastly, there is a generous amount of extra credit in this course. You have 2.5 points guaranteed, with an additional 0.25 or 0.5 extra points depending on what percentage of the class completes the end of course evaluations. You get one point for participating on campuswire (125+ reputation points), one point for getting at least 3 SONA study credits, and half a point for doing the end of course evaluations (as stated previously, if 80% of the class does it, you get an additional 0.25 points, and if 90% of the class does it, you get an additional 0.5 points). To study for the exams, it is sufficient to just look through the slides and memorize as much information as possible. Honestly, I barely put any effort into this class and still ended up with an A+ and didn't have to take the final.

Such a great professor, this class is amazing

Really easy class. Professor gives great lectures. There were a few written assignments and 3 exams (lowest dropped) and a final paper (easy article review). SONA and course eval extra credit.
Honestly I felt like this class was so easy that I honestly didn't learn as much as I would have wanted to about this topic (but that's my fault since I was focused on other things, you def have the resources to if you are interested). However, I still got an A+ despite not learning much from the last third of the class since I dropped that exam.
This course was legit easier than many community college psych courses I've taken before (like literal tens of hours less work). You could totally take this as an easy upper div, I wouldn't plan it into your schedule as a hard psych upper div, like you would for most psych column A/B classes.

Professor Sumner could be one of the most prominent professors you would have in your time here at UCLA. Her lessons are very engaging and could apply to your everyday life. She offers a variety of extra credit options and always helped students with their questions. I thought her exams were pretty straightforward for an online formatted exam.

Amazing professor, one of my favorite classes I've taken!

This class is by far the best class I have taken at UCLA! The content is interesting, the structure of the class is forgiving, and the professor is incredibly knowledgeable/kind. For reference, the class is structured as:

- Exams: 50% (best 2 out of 3 - lowest dropped)
- 25% per exam
- Journal Club Worksheets: 30%
- 3 worksheets (each worth 10%)
- Final Research Reflection Assignment: 20%
- Extra Credit: 3% offered

The exams were online, open-book, and were made available for a 24-hour window (meaning you could take the exam whenever you wanted within that time frame). This was such a relief seeing as I had exams that often fell on the same days. From my experience, if you attended lectures, did the readings, and took decent notes, you would do pretty well on the exams. They were very fair and were similar to the examples used during the lecture (which was recorded). Many questions were application-based. A good measure of how well you are understanding the content is how accurately you respond to the practice questions during the exam review sessions. These were usually recorded so there was no trouble if you couldn’t make one of the review sessions. The professor also posted practice questions that covered all of the major topics. The best bit about the exams was that the exam in which you got the lowest score got dropped. This also meant that if you did well on the first two exams, you did not have to take the third exam. This can be a huge relief during finals week and can allow you to focus more on your final research paper. Overall, the teaching team gave students all the tools they needed to be successful. This professor is not one that is out to trick you, she genuinely wants you to succeed and gain something from the class :)

The journal club worksheets were about 2 pages in length and were meant to help you reflect on one of the readings (usually a research article). It’s like a worksheet with printed questions that you write about 2-3 sentence responses for. There were three of these and they were not very tedious. They were not necessarily graded on correctness, they were more used to show that you interacted with the text and summarize parts of the study. The articles used for these assignments were usually pretty important for the exams (with a couple of questions asking about the findings).

The final research assignment is where students are asked to find a research paper related to a topic we covered in class and write a 3 paragraph paper about it and how you would expand it. This assignment is meant to show that you have learned something about how to identify empirical studies, how to interpret their conclusions and come up with ways you could take the research further. In my case, I received a lot of guidance on this (I met with TAs several times to verify if my article was acceptable and if my ideas fit the objectives of the assignment). Overall, this assignment was very fair and, again, was a measure of how well we interacted with the research material.

Overall, this class is absolutely incredible! This professor is incredibly knowledgeable and the lecture is very interactive. I usually walked away from lectures learning something new/interesting. The readings we had to do before every lecture were one to two pages long and generally covered interesting materials. It was easier for me to stay on top of my work because of this. TAKE THIS CLASS!!!

take this class

This class is great! It's interesting, relevant, and manageable. You won't be bored in this class, almost all of the material can be applied to one's own life! The class is recorded, with straightforward slides and the professor answers any questions you may have. This class was one of the most enjoyable classes I've had at UCLA. I would take a class with this professor again! She's amazing!

Professor Sumner is such a good professor, so I highly recommend taking a course with her! Her lectures are very clear and engaging. You just need to answer a few questions embedded throughout the lecture video sections, which are divided into managebale watch times. This is when CCLE was used so it may look different on Canvas or "BruinLearn". These questions are based on the articles assigned for the lectures of that week; the articles are short and intriguing. The exams were online, there are no trick questions, and you have enough time to check your notes. You do have to pay for the "Packback" assignment system, which is a little inconvenient. This is basically an online discussion forum with "curiosity points" determined by AI. Getting the minimum points on the system isn't a challenge and you write a question and responses every week. They are basically graded for completion as long as you get the required curiosity points for coming up with a question based on the content for the week. Overall, prof Sumner is great so take her class!