Melissa is a great professor, she explains everything clearly and concisely. Aside from posting her lecture slides, she also posts lecture outlines that you can add your notes to. Also, attendance is mandatory since you'll need an iClicker. However, we were allowed to miss three lectures. The content is not that difficult but there are a few assignments every week. This includes quizzes, lab reports (some are submitted on behalf of your entire lab group), and scientific article analyses. They aren't that difficult and they seem to be graded based on completion for the most part. The midterm was fairly easy after making flashcards based on the slides from the midterm review. The exam contained multiple-choice questions and a couple of free responses questions, then you get in a group to answer the exact same multiple-choice questions together to help your grade a little. I did not take the final exam since it became optional due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the final exam is cumulative and follows the same format as the midterm.

Professor Paquette Smith makes this class a very enjoyable experience.
Like people have said before, this course feels like more work than a 4 unit class, but all the assignments are straightforward and easy to get 100% on. She was able to transmit this course well into the online format, and she was always extremely helpful and kind during office hours. Her exams were also pretty straightforward as they were a similar caliber to the embedded lesson questions and the practice test questions making it very doable to get a high A on the exams.

Melissa Paquette-Smith has been one of my favorite professors at UCLA. period. She makes the material very easy to understand, and all of her lectures are very engaging as she does little interesting class activities throughout. If you didn't study for the midterm or final, it will be hard. But if you study, it was pretty easy. Her exams ask for you to identify a lot of examples so you have to apply the concepts from class to the questions. I absolutely loved her class (even though it was 2 hours and felt like a lot) and I wish she taught more classes at UCLA so I could take a class with her again. I love that woman

I think Melissa is an excellent professor. If I were a psych major, I I would definitely take her class again. She has turned the online learning platform into something easy to understand and fun to use. Her online lectures are interesting and engaging and the mini quizzes in between have really helped keep me on track. The only thing that I think is important to note is the amount of work given per week. I got more weekly assignments from this course than I have in any other course at UCLA. They were not necessarily difficult and they did help significantly in my learning. I would recommend taking this class with maximum 2 other course and make sure that those courses are on the easier side. If you are a psych major or actually want to LEARN, this is the class for you!

She was very accommodating during the first online quarter, and I could see how exams might be difficult normally since it's mostly memorization, but everything was pretty easy online. I'd recommend taking her.

Paquette-Smith is somewhat of a decent instructor. I feel as though she is TOO reliant on her slides, which contain an excessive amount of information to simply remember. I understand that this class is a GE; however, the amount of information she wants us to remember for the final is somewhat unrealistic. I very much disagree with her structure and way of teaching but I guess it is what it is for an introductory Psychology course.

Lectures were long, but she gives you a break during the middle to make it more manageable. Classes were interesting, but I did find it somewhat difficult to ace the midterms and finals. I studied a ton, but the material didn't overlap as I expected. The class is interesting, and the assignments and tests were reasonable, but I did found it hard to get A's which is why I finished with a B+. The final was optional because of the 2019 Winter Covid Finals situation so maybe she made it more difficult than usual. Overall the class has a lot of little assignments but was reasonable.

Professor Smith does a great job explaining the material and making it stick. However, I did not care for this class and found it super annoying. The individual labs and article analyses were completely pointless for an introductory psych class; it felt more like a stats class. They were super time-consuming and very annoying to complete. If you don’t feel confident with these assignments, use ChatGPT because the professor is supportive of you using it to help guide your learning, but not having it do the work for you. In fact, she makes you use ChatGPT for one of the article analyses, which was very easy. Or, use Studocu because you can easily paraphrase other students’ documents. Another thing I found annoying was the group lab reports. They are the worst and are almost worth as much as your midterm grade. The TAs grade them super hard because the professor expects you to be like a little Einstein. I had a 95 in the class after the midterm until I got a 78% on one of the lab reports, and it tanked my grade down to a 92%. About the midterm, it was pretty tricky but I somehow got a 92 on the MCQ by studying the day of, and a 4/7 on the free response since I didn’t study for that; it was free for others though. However, I just took the final and don’t feel confident at all, because I prioritized other finals and studied for those over this one. The final and midterm both have a bunch of lab/article analysis questions, as well as tricky questions on lecture content with extremely similar answer options. To be well prepared for these, definitely study in advance with good retrieval of the material and use the test bank. Some questions on the midterm and final came directly from the test bank and were free points. [Overall, the class is not bad but if you do not have to take it- like how I didn’t have to- don’t take it. Hopefully, I end up doing decent on the final and end up with a B or better.

This class is super introductory, but Packet-Smith does a great job of teaching you the information. There are lots of labs and group projects, overall a lot of info, but I liked the class and would recommend.

Really enjoyed this class. Prof was very engaging and explained concepts very clearly. It was a good intro as my very first psych class. It’s important to take good notes during lectures, review them and make use of the test bank website every few week. The website makes it very easy to do low effort spaced repetion with questioning.