I was honestly terrified to take this class after reading the reviews, but I was pleasantly surprised with how this class turned out. Professor Wassum is one of the most amazing professors I have ever had. She genuinely cares about student learning, and would often be found answering student's questions on the BruinLearn discussion board into the early hours of the morning. However, there are a couple of things I wish I knew at the beginning of this class:
1. You don't need the textbook. I didn't read it beyond the first week of class. I found her lecture slides & lectures to be perfectly comprehensive.
2. Take very, very detailed notes. Dr. Wassum talks superrrr fast. She knows her stuff. With that being said, I'd often leave in-person lectures feeling pretty confused at times, but I'd go home & re-watch the lecture video about a day later & take notes to fill in any gaps I may have had. This often took a very long time, since I would pretty much pause the video every few minutes to write anything important down, but this process was soooo essential to my ability to understand & retain the information. On my first exam, I didn't perform very well, but was able to get 100% on my last 2 exams simply because I started to re-watch lecture videos & take more detailed notes.
3. Make a study guide for exams. For my first exam, I kinda just winged it. I studied a little bit, but I relied a little too hard on just knowing the exam was open book. For the second and third exams, I made study guides that focused on understanding the experiments/concepts she presented during lecture. The exams focus heavily on your understanding of the concepts in an experimental/real-world context, so explaining each experiment (what it was testing, what happened, what the results were, what it told us about learning, etc.) helped me soooo much on the tests. My study guides literally consisted of just pages and pages of each experiment explained, and I referred to this often during exams.
Overall, Dr. Wassum is a great professor who cares about her students and wants us to succeed. I would take this class again.

This was quite literally the most mind-numbingly boring class I have EVER taken at this school. Not only was the material incredibly tedious, but it was also quite difficult to comprehend. Don't take this class unless you want to learn about rats pressing levers for 10 weeks straight. I will forever hold hatred in my heart for psych 110.

Lectures are recorded, which is helpful because Professor Wassum has a confusing lecturing style and you'll almost certainly need to re-watch lectures to have any chance at understading what she is saying. She barely uses words on the slides, talks extremely quickly, and utilizes an overly complex vocabulary that makes already dense material even more difficult to digest.

Grading scheme is: 3 exams, online, synchronous, open note/internet, multiple choice, not proctored, not cumulative, each worth 25% of your grade. To help illustrate how difficult this class is, the average for the first midterm (again, an online, not proctored, open note exam) was a C. There are 10 weekly short writing assignments (worth 20% of your grade total) and 10 weekly quizzes, graded on completion, worth 5% of your grade total. Prof Wassum does not give any type of extra credit.

I would HIGHLY recommend avoiding this class at all costs. If you have to take this class, take it with a different professor.

OVERVIEW
- 9/10 would recommend
- Personally didn't experience any negative interactions with Professor Wassum in discussions/office hours like other reviews have mentioned
- Very clear powerpoint slides, but requires viewing lecture to get full content
- No textbook— all sources are provided (bless up)

GRADING
- Midterm and final are essays. You are given the prompt ahead of time. Do not be lazy. Do not skimp on details. Better safe than sorry! These exams are not graded loosely— if you do not thoroughly cover everything mentioned in class and provide your own thoughts on the necessary questions, you will NOT get an A (learned this personally on midterm yikes)
- 3 research summaries/twitter threads. Given ~20 paper options. Some of the papers are definitely harder/longer to read, so choose carefully. These are graded less strictly than the exams
- Participation in discussion is mandatory. One free absence. You can do a short write-up to opt-out of discussion if you can't make it.

COMMENTS
- Professor Wassum was very clear in lectures/office hours
- Content itself is rather interesting
- Discussions require you to do reading/lectures ahead of time . Otherwise you will be lost and not be able to contribute.
- Workload is on the lighter side
- Only downside to the class is pacing— there's quite a bit of downtime during discussions while breaking off into groups

Kate Wassum is an incredible professor. You can really tell she takes time to precisely organize every lecture and slide. I especially benefited from her use of Break & Review slides every 10 -15 minutes, as they really helped me to solidify my knowledge of the material. She seems like a very intelligent person, and she even uses new and unique assignments, such as the option to post a twitter thread summary of a research paper, which I thought was interesting. Also, I found her on Twitter, and her page is pretty fun to read. Overall great professor, and great module!

I thoroughly enjoyed this class with Dr. Wassum. I think the material is very interesting, so that was a bonus. Dr. Wassum is VERY clear in her slides, but the material does have a lot of details and intricacies that could trip people up. She does require some amount of participation in class, which is not easy for everyone, but I found it very doable and I get very anxious speaking in front of classmates. As I mentioned before, the material is deceptively tricky, but definitely doable. You will learn about past theories and deconstruct issues with them. I think people may struggle with this class if they oversimplify the material and don't consider the detail to which Dr. Wassum is lecturing and is on her slide.

tldr; I would definitely take this class again. I learned a lot and I didn't spend a ton of time outside of class studying, just reviewing my notes from the week each week. She gives the test prompts in advance so you have plenty of time to prepare and show your knowledge. Would definitely recommend the class if you are interested in the neuroscience/psychology of learning.

This class is pure hell. DO NOT TAKE IT WITH WASSUM. I repeat, do not take it with Wassum. You have been warned.

I'll never forget going to one of the TA's office hours and being surrounded by other people who had studied so hard like me, yet were averaging C's on the exam.

Her class isn't based necessarily on what you know, it is based on whether you can decipher her answer choices that are designed to trick you!

This is my first C+, I actually have never received anything lower than a B in a class and usually get B+/A- in all my classes and yet, I am really thankful for this C+. I honestly thought I was not going to pass.

I would highly urge you to avoid taking a class with Wassum at all costs. She is by far the worst professor I have had at UCLA.

She constantly belittles you with her vast knowledge in what she teaches and then expects you to learn EVERYTHING.The midterm and final were more or less "write in a blue book everything we have covered the first 5 weeks". Including reciting 30+ lab experimental procedures/key differences and results ... pointless memorization.

THE CLASS SUCKED.

I didn't miss a lecture and ended up with a C+.
i verified that my view was consistent with my classmates.

This class was genuinely the worst class I have ever taken at UCLA and I also took Chem 153A in the same quarter. Professor Wassum used words that I have never heard in my entire life, causing me to have to stop the lecture recording to look them up so I could even comprehend what she was saying. Her lectures were recorded and posted in a timely manner on BruinLearn and that is how I watched them, however, I do not know how people who went to lecture were able to keep up with her at all since I need to pause constantly to either look up a word or take notes on yet the 50th rat-based experiment. With this, her lectures were all over the place with no organization in place. I felt like she was just speaking to fill time and space and her slides had no useful information. Most of the information was spoken through her lecture and my slides were full of handwritten notes in order to make sense of anything. Each experiment was so specific and tedious that you couldn't even miss one word when she explained them or you would be completely lost. There were 3 online tests, each one not cumulative which helped, and notes were allowed to be used. However, each test question was difficult to understand and had such long paragraphs on some that it took minutes to even understand the question. There was also a weekly assignment that was pretty straightforward and graded easily as well as a weekly quiz that was done for completion. However, I do not think that this class is worth it to take with Prof Wassum. Like I stated, I was taking Biochem at the exact same time and started to look forward to watching those recorded lectures just to get a break from Prof Wassum's confusing lectures on rats. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH HER!

Listen, Professor Wassum is a true scientist who knows her materials very very well. If you are serious about research or are just slightly interested in how to train your pets, take her! Whether you want to be a neuroscientist working in a wet lab or a psychologist working in a dry lab, Professor Wassum uses relevant experiments to support the concepts learned in class -- a way to see the experimental effect of psycholology. Professor Wassum's tests are challenging but fun -- as you get to read about Beyonce, Olivia Rodrigo, and Drake in her tests! She also posts weekly discussion boards that clarify confusing concepts and she constantly answers questions on them. And not I mention, the only assignments in class making memes about the class materials, and are weekly summaries that take less than 30 minutes to make!! If you just take the work to show up for class, ask questions to clarify concepts, take the practice exams, you'd totally be fine!!

I saw some of these reviews and was worried about taking this class but I found Professor Wassum to be very knowledgeable and willing to help. There's a textbook, but really everything you need to know is in her lectures (I never read from the textbook). The material can be difficult at times, especially since it all builds on each other. Discussions are not required, but very helpful to go to, since the TAs will cut down the lecture to the most important parts, and leave a lot of time for questions. The grade is based on a midterm, a final, and weekly assignments (which very simple and kinda fun because part of it is designing a social media post to represent the information [but don't worry, you don't have to actually post it haha]). The exams are both online during lecture time, and you can drop into Professor Wassum's Zoom room if you need clarification about exactly what a question or answer choice means.
I really enjoyed this class and unexpectedly actually got me really interested in behaviorist psychology as a career. I got a good grade in this class without working super hard either. I would just recommend keeping up with lectures and going to discussion sections.