STAY AWAY AND TAKE ANOTHER CLASS FOR YOUR CORE REQS. SUCH. AN. UNNECESSARILY. DIFFICULT. CLASS. I wish I read the reviews for this class before taking her. It's my first year here (I'm a transfer student) so I wasn't really familiar with BruinWalk, nor did I think such a prestigious university would hire such an unprofessional individual. She does offer a generous amount of extra credit, which is awesome... But damn, if it weren't for the insane amount of extra credit, my GPA would have been much more damaged than now. Honestly, it's the least she could do considering her unclear lectures and lack of consideration for her students. She is clearly well-versed in her field, like another review mentioned. But she does not seem to realize that the jargon she uses is brand new to most of us. Most people that take this class are familiar with the basic concepts of behaviorism/neurosciecnce/research psych that are incorporated into the material, but definitely not the vocabulary that is used specifically in this class. I don't know, maybe it would have been better in person. One good thing is that she gives you almost 2 whole days to complete an exam. What sucked is that no amount of studying was enough. Professor Sharpe, as bright as you are, you are a terrible teacher. You may be an excellent researcher, but sharing your knowledge to undergraduate students, some of whom are only pre-majors, is definitely not your strong suit. Either reevaluate your teaching skills, or the department should reevaluate employing you. As you'd love to sign off on your condescending emails: cheers!

Where could I possibly start? This professor is by far the worst professor I have ever taken at UCLA. I was a senior therefore had no other option but to continue in this horrible class.

First off: She does NOT know how to teach, making her a horrible professor. But not only this, some professors may not be good at teaching but AT least are decent human beings. She is NOT. Sharpe was rude, condescending, and even caused a girl in class to have a mental breakdown.

Professor Sharpe made inappropriate remarks on American undergrads in her twitter about us caring too much about grades (She is Australian). Note to Professor Sharpe: Students care about their grades because we at UCLA have worked really damn hard to be here, and that was not done by NOT caring about our grades. Also, grad schools, employments, and medical schools require a good GPA. Our future is on the line.

Her exams were by far the hardest exams I have ever taken in my entire life. Her slides were all over the place, with literally no words just a picture of a rat cartoon and cheese. Thank GOD for TA’s they were the best and made this class a bit more doable.

During Covid-19: She literally emailed the entire class saying she will not be looking at her emails because she will take care of her baby all upset and mad since many students were nervous and emailing her due to a PANDEMIC. As if no one in her class had families or babies to attend to, right?

This class seriously affected my overall well-being, and I am a person that studies hard and is dedicated. Please do not take this class, however I really do hope she no longer teaches here. UCLA is a wonderful school filled with great professors she does not belong here. Professor Sharpe needs to be a better person before considering entering a classroom ever again.

CHEERS!

I do think this class and professor has potential, so maybe, in the future, it will be better (so pay attention to reviews after Winter 2020), but short-term, AVOID this professor. To establish some level of credibility, I have a near 4.0 departmental GPA as a psychobio major, and despite applying myself the same level I do to other classes, I received my first ever C at UCLA. Here is some info that I spent way too much time typing out, so you can make an educated decision on whether or not to take this course.

//The professor//
- Non-COVID-19 related/ NEGATIVES: The other reviews have already discussed several major failings of Professor Sharpe and several events where she demonstrated fairly egregious behavior. After our first midterm she posted a tweet in which she made a sarcastic comment about our class and grades, which honestly I did not care too much about, but did demonstrate her lack of understanding of why students care about grades and provides some insight as to why she doesn't care about student input when creating her exams. (Hint to Sharpe: very few people inherently care about grades, but when grad schools (PhD programs, Med school, etc.) and future employers look at GPA to evaluate students, of course people will be extrinsically motivated, since this can actually affect one's livelihood. Don't be so callous about it.) A small issue for me: I felt like she treated the students in the class as little children during the lectures, providing us with over-the-top validation. I guess you can consider that to be nice, but the manner and frequency with which she gave it seemed a little condescending to me.
- Non-COVID-19 related/POSITIVES: Professor Sharpe was nice during lectures and was happy to questions in class; she frequently encouraged the class to ask questions. Furthermore, she is clearly knowledgeable about the field of associative learning and has a tremendous passion for the field. It's unfortunate that this doesn't translate into her teaching.
- COVID-19-related / NEGATIVES: Sharpe sent an email in the midst of the COVID-19 situation, in which she said that she will no longer be responding to emails. This triggered a lot of students, and frankly, understandably so. This was a difficult time for many students and Professor Sharpe added a lot of undue stress on students in the class. Furthermore, she disregarded the Academic Senate's strong urging to make the final opt-in, instead opting to just have it weigh less than the other two exams, which makes no sense to me because if she felt that the COVID-19 situation was severe enough for her to reduce the weight of the exam, since so many students were disadvantaged, why would she not just make the exam optional prior to us taking the exam or retroactively make it optional, where it can only help your grade. Out of all four south-campus classes I took, she was the only professor to not do opt-in.

- All in all, I still am a little confused about whether I would consider a "nice" professor because she seemed helpful and seemed that she cared about students and their learning, but her often actions demonstrated otherwise.

//The material//
- This is incredibly subjective. I personally was ambivalent towards the course material. Likely, as a psych/psychobio major, you've heard of Pavlovian/Classical Conditioning and Instrumental Conditioning and the class is a 10-week course in those subjects (associative learning). You begin the course with a review of Pav/Instrumental learning, which is why the course seems incredibly easy in the beginning (and deceivingly so, since Midterm 1 grades were very low for a Psych class), but after Midterm 1, get ready for incredibly nuanced and difficult discussions on specific aspects of Pav/Instrumental learning.
- Sharpe is really into neuroscience so you will spend ~20% of the course on different neural circuits and discussing lesioning studies as they apply to associative learning. The neuroscience not as complicated as material in Psych 115 or 116, though.
- Sharpe loves to use graphs/charts from other empirical papers to explain the topics of the course. Generally, if you understand what's going on in the study and the graphs, you will have a good grasp of most concepts.

//The grading (aka what you really care about)//
- 3 equally weighted and equally long exams, worth 80% of grade. Each exam consisted of 25 questions, which means each question is worth a lot to your final grade. The exams were awful, there's no other way to say it. I found her exams to problematic for a few reasons:
-- Professor Sharpe mentioned that she doesn't test on rote memorization, which is correct, but be prepared for her to test on you on some obscure information applied to a novel situation. One would logically assume that the professor would test us on concepts that she spent the most time in class explaining, but that was not the case.
-- One of the prior reviewers is incorrect, Professor Sharpe DID inform us that the exams were cumulative, but her syllabus was not as explicit in this.
-- The biggest issue for me personally (regarding exams) is not even that Professor Sharpe tested on obscure information, but that the preparatory material (the practice questions and the discussion quiz questions) for the exams did not reflect the difficulty and style of the exams. I really don't care if a professor tests us on material that wasn't necessarily emphasized in class (your viewpoint might diverge here), because that just means I need to study more intensely, but it does then becomes the responsibility of the professor to provide us with practice materials that reflect the test design. I scored 100% on 5 of the quizzes and 90% on the practice questions for the 3 midterms - this is no way aligned with my actual test grades, which is a problem.
- 6 discussion quizzes, worth 20% of grade (lowest quiz dropped). These are generally pretty easy so long as you paid attention in lecture, took notes, and did some light studying before the quiz.
- Extra credit in the form of instructor evals: 1% added to your grade if >50% of the class responds.

//The textbook//
- You can find the textbook on UC-Elinks (ask the librarian at Powell if you're confused) as an e-textbook. You can download and print each chapter.
- Overall, the textbook is pretty useless but it is helpful with understanding a few concepts like the Rescorla Wagner Model; since the textbook is free and accessible, you may as well access it and use it. The lecture material doesn't really align with the textbook after Midterm #1, making it useless except in a few rare circumstances.

//The TAs (Mary and Nancy)//
- Honestly, they carried the class and were absolutely godsends. Mary was a gem, not just because she was kind, which honestly isn't that important since we're here to learn, but she actually could teach the material in an accessible, easy-to-understand way. The psych department really should just let her teach the course, I probably would have learned more.

//Overall:// I don't think Sharpe is a villain and she does care about the course material but is clearly clueless about what it entails to teach at UCLA and does not demonstrate a lot of empathy towards her students.

Dr. Sharpe is very passionate about her field of teaching, which is why she is also incredibly knowledgable about the subject- but with that comes the curse of knowledge. aka, she is not very clear or sympathetic when we did not understand something that she has been obviously studying for a very long time. With that being said, she tried her hardest I think to chunk the class into sections that would be easy to group together when being tested on. The main problem was that she would tell us one thing in lecture and practice tests and then actually test us on way different things. I think being a new teacher is hard, especially on a new continent (she is Australian) so I don't think its fair to chew her out so hard. She definitely should work on being more approachable and self conscious about her teaching method though. Also my TA was the best and made this class a bit easier!

All I have to say is that, after reading the previous reviews, I was nervous taking this class, but this professor must have completely changed for the better. I did take this during covid so things might change. However, all of her exams and quizzes were open note, and she offered an opportunity for 12 points of extra credit (and this class is out of 100 points). She was genuinely super kind and cared for her students and I would truly recommend taking this class with her. She and all the TA's were super active on the discussion board for student questions. Of course, the exams had a few harder questions, but they were all multiple choice and pretty reasonable overall with pretty good averages. Professor Sharpe was a great and clear lecturer. I was a senior that needed to take this class to graduate, and again I read the awful comments before and I really don't write these reviews, but Professor Sharpe was an absolute gem this quarter, and with all the extra credit and open book exams on ccle with plenty of time, I thought it was on me if I flunked this class and that Prof. Sharpe really set us up to succeed this quarter. Btw this class was just 3 non-cummulative 25 question multiple choice exams (although concepts did build on each other), and 6 quizzes that were 5 multiple choice questions each. (w lowest score dropped).

Honestly, I was terrified to take this class due to past reviews. Though she may have not been extremely helpful in the beginning of COVID, Professor Sharpe has been a pretty good professor for an online psychology class. 12% of Extra Credit points were offered, and the textbook is very useful but not required (and can be found for free online in the UCLA library). I actually quite like her slides, they're easy to follow especially when watching her lecture videos. The TAs for this class were exceptional, and very clear at explaining concepts. The exams are fairly tricky and I don't know yet how well I did in this course, but it's not as bad as it seems.

I came into this class with heavy doubts after reading the previous reviews here, but I'm guessing Dr. Sharpe took the feedback from W20 seriously and really changed this class for the better, because I really didn't have any issues with this class. Lectures and slides were recorded and often uploaded days/weeks in advance, attendance was never mandatory (discussion attendance was extra credit), and I thought all of the exams were pretty straightforward and fair. If I recall correctly, some of the exam questions came straight from the practice questions, for which she posted the answer keys, so they were basically free points. In addition, Dr. Sharpe offered an insane amount of extra credit (5pts for discussion attendance + 5pts for 2h of SONA study credit + 2pts for instructor evals = 12pts/100 total) and with 90% being an A in the class, you could theoretically get a 78% on the actual exams and quizzes and still get an A in the class.

My only negative about this class was that I thought some of the lectures were kind of tricky to grasp - a lot of the concepts that were covered were explained through the actual studies that were done, which as an undergrad, got a little confusing at times. But, Dr. Sharpe and the TAs were SUPER helpful in promptly answering student questions on the discussion forum basically 24/7, and I really felt like she cared about her students this quarter.

This class is very challenging. I had to switch to pass/no pass after tanking the second midterm when I thought I did really well on it. The material is hard and it builds as the quarter goes on, so if there's something you don't understand early on, it's gonna be even more challenging for you. However, Professor Sharpe was super open to helping students out, as were the TA's. She also gives a lot of opportunities for extra credit as well. If you could avoid this class I probably would, but it's not the end of the world if you can't. Sharpe would probably make a better professor if class were in person and we could ask her questions in real time.

This was a really fascinating class. I appreciated Dr. Sharpe's positive attitude during lecture and could tell she was really excited about what she was teaching. Much of what I learned helped me come up with research ideas I'd like to explore in my doctoral studies! This class is tough, but if you're someone hoping to pursue a Ph.D, it does a great job refining your research literacy. Thank you Dr. Sharpe!

This class was alright, but my advice is to take another class. It was really similar to the content from psych 110 and the content was dry and not interesting. The workload was not too bad. We had 5 quizzes (she dropped 1) and 2 commentaries. Commentary 1 was worth 20% and commentary 2 was worth 40%. The quizzes were really easy as long as you study the lecture slides. The commentaries were based a reading of your choice that we discussed in class. Honestly, they were graded pretty harshly. She does provide exta credit for attendance, doing Sona studies, and filling out course evals. I think the max extra credit was 12 points. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this class because I didn't learn much and the uncertainty of your grade based on how she graded the commentaries was stressful.