DISCLAIMER: I took this class when it was offered as an online course.
This class was super interesting but it was a lot more work than I expected. We were required to do a weekly discussion post, attend our discussion sections, a weekly quiz on our readings and lectures, and a weekly lab assignment. We also had a final paper due week 9. The first few weeks of this class were very technical as we were learning about climate, the carbon cycle, and other stuff. Later in the course, the material was a lot easier as we discussed population growth, environmental injustice, and other interesting topics. This class does require a lot of independent work but it is not too bad as long as you keep a consistent schedule. Participation is also really important in your discussion sections! Overall, I really enjoyed the class and would probably take it again. Just make sure to stay on top of your work and you will do fine.

This class was a real pain. About halfway through the quarter, my TA decided to tell us that the team behind Geog 5 was tired of people taking it for an easy GE (as almost everyone in the class is) so they were intentionally trying to make the grading more difficult. I found this to be extremely annoying especially considering I really did put a lot of effort into every assignment including all the labs and class activities and found myself getting grades that I felt were really harsh. The actual class itself is not difficult (if you took APES in high school you already have learned more than half the class content), but I found the grading to be overall much harsher than it should have been. The class is all online regardless of COVID, so lectures are just prerecorded videos from Prof. Cavanaugh which is nice to do on your own time, but I felt little connection or engagement with the professor overall. The class structure includes a discussion post weekly on Wednesdays, a discussion section, and a lab due on Sunday night. For my section at least you had to participate in the discussion. The last four weeks or so of lab assignments are all relating to the final paper (including a fully-fledged rough draft) which is nice, however, I thought my TA half-assed feedback on all of these assignments (for example, giving feedback on my rough draft in a voice memo format... and also giving no feedback on the detailed outline I made but being really harsh feedback on the 1600 word draft I had when a lot of the content could have been changed based on the outline before I spent a few hours writing a rough draft... ) and lacked some clarity in what she was looking for in a final paper... By the end of this class I (as a strong north campus major) couldn't wait to get the hell out... even though the content was really straightforward I don't think the constant busywork was worth it...

I wasn't the best student (in terms of discipline and punctuality) and neither was I particularly passionate about the material, but Iet me try and give an unbiased explanation of why I didn't really enjoy this class.
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1. Workload/Learning
The material is EASY. It was like middle/high school level easy. SAT concepts were way harder. No complaints there, but the workload was definitely disproportionate to the difficulty. Every week, there were 3 things to submit: (1) a 20-30 question quiz (2) a 200-300 word response, and (3) a lab report. The lab report was the most time-consuming, and involved either playing around with some interactive data or doing independent research on an environmental issue. Maybe it's just me but I found that my reports ended up being 1000+ words long in order to answer all the prompts, and some were 10 pages long because of all the diagrams and charts I had to include. The lab reports were easy as they required almost no thinking (literally just following instructions and regurgitating class material) but god were they tedious. Now, there isn't an inherent issue with the workload, but for such an easy class (content-wise), I couldn't help feeling like I was spending so much time just to not learn anything new. For reference, I'm a STEM major and this class took more time commitment per week than another lower-div STEM class I was taking at the same time.
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2. Strict grading policies
Warning, this class has a strict 'no late work' policy. Once I submitted a big assignment a few seconds past the deadline and got a zero out of 100 lol. Again, this isn't an inherently bad thing, but be warned. This is a class that has 3-4 things to submit per week (30+ deadlines over the course of the quarter), so if you're a procrastinator like me, you might want to reconsider. Likewise, attendance and participation is also graded pretty strictly. We were told that participation points would be awarded weekly, based on the number of times we each spoke during section, not including single-word responses to others. (My TA was Lisa Martinez for reference.) This resulted in people fighting for their turn to speak, even when they didn't have anything new to add to the convo. With section being ~45 mins long and 15-20 people just waiting to jump in and get their participation points in... it was bad. Because of this, section was a stressful time as well.
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Overall, this class is alright. The textbook and lectures were concise and easy to understand. The class was well organized, and the assignments had clear instructions. If you manage your time well and are willing to put in several hours a week to study/write reports, you should breeze through it. Personally, I prefer taking classes where I feel like I'm learning something new and am able to comfortably manage the work, and the work should reinforce my learning. This class didn't really have those elements, so for that reason I kind of hated it. If you're like me, maybeeee consider another class. Hope this review helps!

[COVID/Remote Experience]
I took this in my very first quarter here at UCLA and it was a great course! The asynchronous lectures made it easy to knock out a week's worth of learning in just 1-2 days, with a solid foundation to participate in lectures and the weekly lab assignment. The weekly quizzes are very easy if you've done the reading + watched the lectures, and my discussion sections helped connect the course concepts to the real world without adding much stress. The weekly lab assignments take a dedicated few hours to complete, but I had no problems with them. I've never seen Professor Cavanaugh in person or even in a live Zoom call, but his recorded lectures were put together nicely and he is clearly very familiar with the material. This class leaves me with what I feel to be valuable knowledge about natural ecosystems and their interactions with humans.

You were expected to complete five things each week: reading, lecture videos, discussion posts, lab assignments, and weekly quizzes. The lectures for this class were entirely asynchronous, pre-recorded, in my quarter. The lectures were very concise, resonating with the readings. The weekly quizzes came from both readings and the lectures and were not too hard because it was all open books, open notes. You have two attempts to do the weekly quizzes. For the discussion post, I felt like the first half of the class was a lot heavier than the second half. The discussion posts were graded based on completion. The lab assignments were the heaviest workload of the week. Sometimes I spent 5-7 hours completing them. Overall, you might spend five up to 10 hours for this class a week. This class had such a heavy workload compared to my other class; however, you did not have any midterm or final. You'll have a final paper that is quite long, but you will have three weeks to start constructing and thinking about your paper.

This class has a heavy workload, especially as a GE class. But, the content is very interesting; you'll learn from physical to human geography and their interactions. So, it is very comprehensive if you want to study more in geography; this would be a great beginning course. My TA wasn't very prepared for my discussion session, but it was very chill, just sitting in the class for participation points. My TA graded quite harshly, so hopefully, you get a good TA. Read instructions for the lab assignment carefully, especially the rubric if they have ones if you expect a good grade. Overall, take this class if you are interested in geography. If you do work (read instructions carefully) and complete everything by deadlines, you can expect good grades in this class.

I took this class asynchronously. The lectures were great, fun and interesting. The discussion sections were super helpful. It is a lot of info but nothing too crazy. I recommend this class.

I actually really liked this class. I thought the content was interesting and the professor had good lecture videos. I found that I could skim the textbook after I watched the videos and still do well on the weekly quizzes. But this class was a fair amount of work--we had weekly quizzes, discussion posts (due by wed), and short lab essays/assignments. We didn't have a midterm or final but there was a big final essay project that took a fair amount of time.

The content of this class was not difficult to understand and was just like the environmental science class I took in high school. Hearing all the positive reviews, however, I think I expected it to be easier then it was. The class was a good amount of busy work, with multiple lecture videos and weekly quizzes and labs. Again not difficult stuff, but you did have to consistently keep up with all the work. Also my weekly lab was mandatory and my TA made us keep our cameras on the whole time and we had to participate and prove we knew the content for a grade. Overall not too bad at all just a lot of little things that made me feel like I was constantly doing work, definitely formatted more like a high school class than college.

Prof. Cavanaugh and the TAs for this class are SUPER helpful. The course itself is really interesting and the lectures are really easy to watch. There was no final or midterm for the class. We only had weekly labs, had to answer discussion questions to make sure we were keeping up with the lectures, and had VERY easy quizzes. There is definitely a lot of work you have to do each week but compensating that with no final or midterm is definitely worth it!

Honestly, this was an APES class with a little bit more work. That's all. Really not difficult material. Professor Cavanaugh clearly loves what he does and I appreciated how he laid out this course in COVID times, as I was able to pace myself with the recorded lectures and such. Also LOVED the absence of tests and quizzes, I actually felt like I could learn without stressing over a test grade. The workload itself isn't too bad but in conjunction with other classes it did sometimes get annoying, so try to turn things in early. My TA (Furnaro) really engaged with us, too. Note that medical notes are required for discussion absences to be excused.