This professor is awful, she was extremely rude and condescending in her responses to student emails. Her lectures we unorganized and she basically read off the slide without further explanation. There was a lot of human error and discrepancies in the quizzes due to the fact that TAs made the questions themselves and often made mistakes. All the exams and quizzes were sequential (could not go backwards) even after all the negative feedback she got from students. The quizzes and exam were proctored online through Respondus which just added unnecessary anxiety for students. She was not accommodating in the slightest for any reason during the pandemic. I highly discourage taking this course with this professor.

Professor Kennedy, as someone else said, seems like a kind professor but consistently shows little to no care for student understanding or learning. She was inconsistent in uploading Zoom lectures, even when she was recycling lectures from previous quarters, and her lectures were riddled with contradictory material and information.

Exams were difficult and truly required memorization of every image and word on her slides (each lecture had around 40 slides). Exams are sequential, meaning you can't go back and change test answers once they've been submitted, and the tests were proctored using Respondus.

Quizzes were more straightforward, but I thought it was strange that each was written by your respective TA, meaning the class wasn't tested on the same questions. They were also through Respondus, and they were probably my least favorite part of the class - it took away from discussion time, and my TA had to get through 80 slides worth of material in around 35 minutes because of the time it takes to get through the quiz, log onto the Zoom, and then review the answers at the end.

All in all, this class comes down to brute memorization of a ton of information that hasn't been taught cohesively or in a manner conducive to learning. Needless to say, I would not recommend taking this class with Kennedy.

This class was extremely stressful and tiring. There is a lot of material that is covered and that you are required to memorize and the info can often be confusing or contradictory and it is extremely difficult to memorize everything that is on the slides. On top of this, the questions on the tests are made to trick you with answer choices like "a and b", " a and c", " b and c", " b and d" " none of the above", " all of the above" all on the same question. The first test was not as difficult, the second test was extremely difficult and after the whole class complained about the second test, she made the final a lot easier in my opinion. All the tests are on respondus plus they are made sequential, meaning you have to answer a question and move on and you can't come back to that question. The good thing was that she did not require textbook and the exam material was only from what she lectured. The weekly quizzes are also on respondus and sequential and they include 6 questions about the material covered in the previous week. Compared to the tests, the quizzes are a lot more fair and straightforward (at least for the TA that I had). I would recommend enrolling in a discussion that is later in the week because you will have more time to study the previous weeks' lectures. Overall, if you put a lot of time into this class and study really hard, you will probably be fine. Good luck!

This professor seems nice but its only just a front. If you stay away from her, only communicate with the TA's, and avoid asking her any questions even content-based you should be able to get through the class with minimal stress. My interactions with her were not great and a few times she was extremely patronizing to me. I told her that I felt that one question on the final was ambiguous and I could talk to her about it to explain things. I then went on to compliment her and thank her for her work in the class (even though it wasn't deserved) and she responded with an extremely condescending response of "well you got it right, do you want me to change this because it was too ambiguous?" Of course not... but she felt that this was an appropriate response to me. The content of this course is tedious and what you expect from it, but the professor's attitude and behavior bring a lot of stress into this class. Do not take her during COVID. She's not accommodating and believes that all students should be able to succeed despite her not changing anything to fit with distance learning. This class is supposedly not any harder now than it was pre-covid, but this shouldn't be the case since there are so many things keeping students to be able to perform at their full potential, but she doesn't care.

I hated this class. Worst and most difficult class I took at UCLA. If I could go back I would not take it. Very tough grading and it's just memorization so you don't learn anything. You are expected to memorize A LOT and it's very very hard to get a decent grade. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS.

Grading Scheme:
Discussion Quizzes 35%
Midterm 32%
Final 33%
Extra Credit: 2 SONA hours (2%), 60% of class completed evals (1%)
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Professor Kennedy:
So each lecture includes a LOT of information, with 50ish slides of material each time. Slides are posted before lecture on CCLE and lectures are audiocasted. Professor Kennedy is an okay lecturer. She somewhat expands on her slides, but for the most part all of the information is there. She explains some images and diagrams though. The material was interesting for me at times, especially for the second half of the class. Sometimes she would misspeak during lecture based off of the correct information on her slides and wouldn't correct herself. Overall she's okay. She's very nice though.
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TA Eric Harvey:
Eric was very nice. He would show these weird and close to random videos before discussion that kind of expanded on the concepts.To be honest I didn't really pay attention in section, so I can't speak too much on his teaching ability. But this quarter we had a lot of Monday holidays so quizzes were postponed and doubled up to the next week. So having to take two quizzes some weeks ate up a lot of time in discussion, leaving not enough room for actually going over content. He would also hand out worksheets once in a while, but again, there wasn't much time for us to actually go through it on our own or finish going over them. But that's not really his fault.
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Discussion Quizzes grade: 34.5/35
Essentially every week you would have a 10-question multiple choice quiz in your section based on the previous week's material. The TA's made their own questions and they were a bit tricky but generally easy to do well on even if you just start studying for it earlier that day. I'd say don't fuck around with the quizzes. There were these two girls in my section that would laugh loudly at all the answers they guessed wrong when my TA went over them after the quizzes. Out of 8 total quizzes, only 7 of the highest grades are counted, each quiz worth 5% of your total grade. So try to do well on them. For me, it helped to condense the lecture notes and study from those.
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Midterm grade: 23/32
So I really underestimated just how much studying I needed to do for these exams. I didn't start studying until literally the night before, so I obviously fucked up. The first part of the class has a lot of structures you need to memorize. There were 32 multiple choice questions. And essentially each question on each of the exams is worth 1% of your grade, so every question counts. She makes the questions quite tricky, so you really have to know your stuff. The grade distribution for the class tells me that most people were also in the same boat as me. It looked like a cut and paste normal distribution with about 3/4 of the class getting a C or lower. I got a 72% and the mean was a 71% (22.8/32). Really, really study.
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Final grade: 31/33
So obviously I realized my errors in studying and started working on the material earlier than last time. It helped that the final was on a Friday, so I started studying on the Tuesday. It was 33 multiple choice questions and each is again literally 1% of your grade. It wasn't cumulative and only covered the last half of the quarter. I pretty much rewrote my typed condensed notes and studied off of those. I think I did so well partly because the material was more interesting to me that the first half contained more structures to memorize. But also because I actually tried to study well. I dunno what the distribution of the scores was because it hasn't been posted yet, but I suspect more people did better than the first one hopefully.
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Extra credit: 3%
So if you complete 2 hours of SONA research studies you can get up to 2% added to your grade. I did it literally during First Week. Just get it out of the way for some easy extra credit. Also near the end of the quarter Kennedy announced that she would offer an additional 1% extra credit if 60% of the class completed professor evaluations. Also another easy thing to do. These really help your grade, especially since your grade is dependent on such few items.
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Overall grade: A-
I think I didn't get the grade I wanted because I really underestimated the class, the breadth of its content, and the amount of studying I needed to do to really master the material enough to test well on it. I'd say to progressively studying throughout the quarter to do well on the exams and quizzes. Alternatively you can also start intensive studying a couple few days before the exam to do well like I did for the final. Whatever you choose, make sure you make as many questions on the quizzes and exams work in your favor.

you have 4 or 5 weeks worth of slideshows to memorize that are 50 slides each, but then the midterm/final were only 33/34 questions. I enjoyed the class and the material though so it was fine. lectures were only audiocasted which motivated me to go to class bc she references diagrams and pictures a lot on her slides which is hard to pick up on via audio.

Based on previous reviews of this class w/ Dr. Kennedy, I was so nervous to take it. However, I was pleasantly surprised w/ how the class went. Dr. Kennedy was very clear about what we were going to be tested on, which made studying soooo much easier. All of her exams & quizzes were based off of the lecture slides directly, and I never even glanced at the textbook once & was able to get A's.
W/ that being said, there are a couple of things I wish I knew before taking the class:
1. It's pretty memorization-heavy. Quizlet became my best friend during this course. I seriously made a Quizlet with pretty much everything on the lecture slides each week, and it saved me through this course.
2. Lectures are audio podcasted. Normally, I would watch lectures after attending them to fill in the blanks.
3. Dr. Kennedy is very receptive to students' questions if they're posted on the BruinLearn discussion forum. She answered every one of my questions thoroughly & in a timely matter.
4. Your grade is solely based on 3, non-cumulative exams & weekly quizzes in discussion section. You are allowed to drop 2 of your lowest-graded quiz scores.
If you're looking for a column A class, I'd take this one. It requires a little bit of time & effort, but it's totally doable.

I think this class was very well organized and Dr. Kennedy was a wonderful professor. I read a lot of bad reviews on BruinWalk about this course before taking it and I actually had a very positive experience learning from Dr. Kennedy this quarter. There was a lot of material to cover and I think it was a hard class, but I do not feel like it was at all unmanageable or that expectations were unfair. The exam questions were worded in a way that made sense, and if there were issues with a quiz or exam question, she resolved it. It definitely isn't always THE MOST engaging of a class and she doesn't knock every single lecture out of the park, but overall I found it to be easy to learn the subject matter itself and there were many resources online to supplement my studying, so it really wasn't so bad.

This class is honestly insanely overwhelming. I have never worked harder or been so proud of a B in my life. I am lucky I had two classes that had a low workload because this class took all of my time. You need to be dedicated to this class or you will not do well. An insane amount of information is taught per slide, anything she says/is on the slides is fair game, she could mention it once and never again and it will be on the test. However, this class prepared me for every other class I took at UCLA. Because everything is fair game you need to commit to the material, but I have never referenced a class more in my life. I do not regret taking this course but it was a lot.