I have taken classes with Olivia before, but this class was simply horrific. The material was very interesting and could be taught so much better. The class was broken down into 3 quizzes, a group project, a final, participation, and points for filling out the teacher evaluation.

I have three concerns:

1. Olivia provides zero feedback whatsoever. You have no idea what you missed or could have improved upon for any free-response/essay questions on the quizzes and final. In Econ 111, the precursor to this course, she gave generalized feedback for the class, but even though this class only had ~35 people in it, she still refused to provide individualized feedback. She grades so harshly that you need to know what you did wrong, but that's impossible.

2. The group projects. The group projects took up 2 weeks of lecture time and there was no rubric to follow. The project is to evaluate a given economic development policy. That's it. There are no provided guidelines. When you ask her for a rubric or what else you should touch on, she was of no help and asked you to evaluate it. It's impossible to know what an A+ presentation would look like since she does not provide examples or direction.

3. The exams. I understand applying material from class but she expects more than that. You are expected to understand every nuance of economic development and the methodologies used to evaluate economic development even though it was never discussed in lecture, the textbook or other provided materials.

AVOID THIS CLASS! You will be left in a black box staring at your grades in disbelief and awe.

Do not take this class. It was one of the most ridiculous electives I've taken, and having had Professor Osei for multiple classes prior to this quarter, I was honestly surprised at how bad this class was. She broke down the class into two part, the first 4 weeks were taught by her and we had two quizzes that were kinda challenging but manageble (open note). Then, the rest of the quarter was GROUP PRESENTATIONS that were a significant part of your grade, and so many people I know got stuck with terrible groups and got pretty bad grades on their presenation. Not only that, but this information was on the final, and made up most of the final. So, she didn't even teach 60% of the course and yet we were tested on it. She also makes the class out of 100 points and doesn't curve. So, take with that what you will but I would avoid.

While Osei is clear and a good lecturer, the past two reviews of her W22 class are highly accurate. The class was graded very flippantly and the fact that student presentations took up half the quarter, while a novelty, made for redundant lectures. The final was also surprisingly hard compared to her weekly quizzes and also graded without much clear feedback. Honestly, I'm a little bummed because I really enjoyed the class and the content, but the way it was graded and the feedback I garnered was not worth the effort I put in.

I enjoyed this class overall. The professor is a clear and engaging lecturer. My issues with this class are that the student presentations got very repetitive (the same question was answered twice by two different groups) and the grading was very arbitrary. The quizzes and final exam had written portions which, in my opinion, were graded hastily and inconsistently. Since, they're a big part of the grade, this made it hard to do well, especially since we weren't given any feedback. The group presentations (20% of the grade) weren't graded until many weeks later and the grades were arbitrary with only 1 sentence of feedback. For those reasons, I wouldn't take the class again, even though I enjoyed the content.