I think, overall, that your professor for 7A is not important. However, from my experience, Ko is an average professor. Some things clicked, others didn’t. She is also fairly new to teaching. 7A is a very independent course so as long you stay on top of everything you will be fine!

Professor Ko is very kind and understanding. She extended assignment due dates for the first two weeks because she recognized that we were adjusting to the course style. She also extended due dates for coursework due to the protests, recognizing that it was an emotional time for many students. Professor Ko is very compassionate towards her students and extended all extra credit deadlines (all 12 points) to the end of the quarter so more people could complete it. This class has a lot of cushioning, I did very badly on the second AoL and I was still able to get an A in the class. It does require a lot of time for studying and completing coursework. Overall, I enjoyed Professor Ko as a lecturer, she answered questions and cracked jokes. She is also very helpful during office hours and if you ask for a reasonable extension for an assignment you will most likely receive it.

I think Ko is a new professor, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Overall, this class is pretty easy, and it shouldn't really matter what professor you have, since they're all structured the same way.

I'll begin with Ko: She's enthusiastic and pretty funny, and she deeply cares about you. I never used CampusWire, which is the method she offered to communicate with her and the TAs, but I've heard she was responsive and helpful. Her lectures are purely slideshow, but she does a good job of interspersing the slides with clicker questions and she takes enough time such that it should be easy to understand. My only real problem with her was that she never offered us solutions to the tests after they were completed, and there were some pretty confusing wrong answers that my group would've loved to have cleared up. I also think that sometimes she didn't really understand herself why a concept was the way that it was, although I can't confirm that. But overall, she's a great professor and explains things clearly and engagingly.

The class itself, as I said, is fairly easy. It requires some work, but nothing outrageous. You'll have to complete questions based on textbook reading each week, and there's some fairly difficulty "practice AOLs" that you complete each week. There's also these pointless mental health modules every other week that really don't help with stress and just pissed most people off. The AOLs (basically just midterms and finals) are online, so take from that piece of information what you will. If you do your work and put in at least some effort to actually understand the material, there's a very small chance you walk away with a grade worse than a B+. If you struggle to do the textbook readings each week, or completely bomb an AOL or two, you might fare worse, but not too much worse. If you put more effort into this class than your other classes, then I'm sure you'll find yourself on top of the curve, with an A or A+.

This class has an inverted classroom setup, where you'll be doing pre-class readings and quizzes to get familiar with the material and then go into lecture to review certain aspects and work on applications. Professor Ko did try to make the lectures engaging, but I feel like the majority of the learning is done out of class. She's also very receptive to student feedback and helpful if you ask questions. The homework in pretty straight forward, but there are quite a few daily assignments. Some of these you can miss or not get full credit on until the end of the quarter, where points are given back (there's a system where a set # of points for each type of assignment will be given to you for free up to 100% credit). The exams are all online, which you take alone and then convene with your group to retake, with both parts being worth 50% of that respective exam's grade. The exam questions often try to trick you or psych you out, so it's helpful to read carefully. There was also a lot of extra credit so as long as you work with your group and stay on top of assignments, getting a good grade should be pretty easy.

I do not dislike Julie by any metric, but I do dislike the way the LS7 series is styled. I find the flipped classroom style ineffective and very much a pain. The PALs and PCRQs are kind of annoying to do and the points you lose do add up over time. However due to the maximum points set by the professors, you can mis up to 5 points on the PALs and PCRQs. The AOLs were all generally fair. However please make sure to study for AOL3. Many people neglected to do any form of studying and it very much reflected on their score at the end. Also I do not know how long the online style exams will continue, so if they convert to in person exams I do not know how much they would change the overall material of the AOLs.

The flipped classroom was not my favorite. I found the way that many small assignments were given for each class period a bit overwhelming and was constantly stressed that I was going to miss something.

The 7 series uses a flipped classroom, so most of the material had to be studied individually. So I feel the professor doesn’t matter too much, but Professor Ko was pretty engaging and made the lectures entertaining. She used daily concepts to relate to some of the matter which helped me understand it better. The class also had quite a bit of extra credit.

LS 7a was an easy enough class that is truly designed for you to succeed. It was taught by two professors (Ko and Maloy) who took turns leading lectures. I found Maloy to be a slightly better lecturer, and Ko moves quickly through the clicker questions (so be prepared). Participation is graded/mandatory in lectures (iClicker questions) and discussions (takes attendance), but you can miss a few classes without affecting your grade. In your discussion section, you are placed in a group of 4 that is your "pod" for the whole quarter and you sit with them in discussions/lectures. For the tests, there are two online midterms and an online final (called "Assessments of Learning"/AoLs). The two midterms were okay, but the final was significantly harder. Each AoL has an individual portion which makes up 50% of the overall AoL score, and then a group portion where you take the test again with your pod and you have the opportunity to change your answers (the other 50%). Lots of extra credit opportunities are provided as well.

I LOVED THIS CLASS!!! Professor Ko is an amazing lecturer and is super helpful during office hours--she offered both content and non-content OH this past quarter, which was amazing because you could talk to her about class stuff but also chat about life during non-content OH and get to know her personally. She never says that content is easy and lets us know that she finds certain materials challenging too, which is comforting to hear, especially in an upper division life sciences class. We used iClicker, but honestly I did not mind because lectures were always engaging so there was no reason not to go in-person.

In this class we used iClicker (participation), videos + video quizzes (flipped classroom), weekly quizzes, discussion worksheets, and Slack (to post questions and receive answers from other students, TAs, and the professor). Exams (two midterms and a final) were always fair--they covered content adequately, there was enough time to work on all problems efficiently, and the difficulty was just fine. They were open book as well, which helped relieve stress (I made a master study guide using all the learning objectives which helped me save time during the actual exam to look up anything in case I forgot a concept). There were exam revision quizzes too, which had similar questions from the exam (not the same ones, just similar), so they encouraged you to review your exam and if you did well on the revision quiz, you could earn some points back.

Professor Ko also offered extra credit, which was very sweet and super helpful in case you couldn't complete work certain weeks or needed to make up for any lower grades.

Overall I loved this class and would definitely take it again. Some of the material covered in LS107 is the same stuff covered in LS7B, but I feel like I understand certain concepts better in this class (like Mendelian genetics, nondisjunction, etc.) because Professor Ko would take the time to walk through each topic and question in a step-by-step fashion. Anyways, Professor Ko is just an amazing person and it was a treat to be in her class this past quarter. Wishing her all the best in her future classes <3

P.S. Big shout out to her organized and pretty slides and syllabus. Her slides were absolutely perfect--she used very clear figures and images so we obtained a visual understanding of material. Her syllabus had a table of contents and hyperlinks, make it easy to use and navigate. Considering she was fresh out of her PhD program and this is her first time teaching LS107 at UCLA, she did a fantastic job :)

She's very organized and very nice. It's really easy to know what is expected of you as a student because she makes her BruinLearn page super pretty. There are a fair amount of flipped-classroom stuff you have to do (videos, quizzes, etc.) but honestly that is the signature move of the LifeSci department and if you made it out of the 7 series you're chilling for this class.

She's really nice and has decently flexible policies for discussion attendance, late assignments, etc. She also gives a LOT of extra credit, including the ability to get points back on exams.

Fair warning that there is iClicker for this course, but it's honestly not that bad and she uses it in a way that really helps you prepare for her exams.

If you have to take this class, take it with her.