While the whole LS7 series is not structured really well, Professor Khankan makes the best out of it. By always being engaging, funny, and very informative of the material, she makes this series not so bad after all. In all honesty, she is the best professor for LS7A!

Professor Khankan makes a boring class unboring. Took it with Pires the first time, BIGGEST MISTAKE I'VE MADE AT UCLA. If you are bored with Khankan, oof, try taking 7A with Pires, you will die of boredom (quite literally). But with Khankan, man, she actually makes me want to pay attention, she is extremely helpful and quite funny at times. She brings so many positive vibes to the classroom and tries to work with what she has. The class is not as easy as others but that is simply due to the LS department itself, which professor Khankan has no power over. Professor Khankan makes it so that you are not afraid of questioning things and making your own questions, to her every question is a great question. I would definitely take a class with her again.

Aside from the professor, the class itself is structured in a way that makes you struggle. There is no practice exam questions or anything that is LIKE the exam. The launchpad questions are a breeze compared to the exam itself. The exams are more structured as a "What IF?" and not a "What is" type. You really need to analyze all possible scenarios that could happen if things are missing in a certain part of a process. Some questions are really confusing because they are given as statements rather than as questions.

Prof Khankan was seriously a lifesaver for 7A. The material through launchpad is super dense and sometimes difficult to understand and apply, but Dr. Khankan does a great job explaining the topics and applying them in clicker questions. She's super funny and comes up with relateable examples to demonstrate and remember certain things. I honestly don't think I would have had such a good experience (considering the course) with any other professor, and I wish she taught 7B as well. To do well in the class in general:

DO ALL THE EXTRA CREDIT YOU CAN. The extra credit points throughout the quarter let me prorate the final, which I was definitely not in the correct mindset to take with everything else going on this quarter.

Do the launchpad. Some people can get away with not really reading through it, but for me, I read the text and took good notes every week, and it honestly helped me learn a lot.

For exams: all you need for prep is to go through the learning objectives (I like to write them) and the clicker questions again. If I have time, I like to go through the lecture slides too since sometimes there's some niche topics that'll pop up on the midterms.

I honestly LOVE Khankan. She is really good at explaining concepts and clarifies any questions you have. Before each exam she held on the hill office hours at like 10pm which I appreciated very much. The class itself is a lot of work depending on the type of student you are. For me, I need to read and review everything because I won't get it on the first try. I took a fair amount of notes on launchpad, reviewed clicker questions, went to PLF sessions and CLC sessions which made me succeed in the class. Exams are all application type questions so when she tells you to understand the concepts instead of memorizing small details, she means it. Would take her again.

Professor Khankan is incredible and teaching and really cares for her students. She made biology (a subject I hated in high school) interesting and exciting and her class made me excited to work hard because it would always show on the exams. I really appreciate this professor and for sure take her if you have the chance.

Khankan is super nice and a good professor but the tests are astronomically harder than the clicker questions and practice exam questions.

I feel mixed leaving a review since I really wish I could rate Dr. Khankan separately from the standardized curriculum of LS7A. As far as Dr. K is concerned, I absolutely loved her as a professor. She is very fair, understanding, easy to approach, and an extremely engaging professor. Her lectures serve more as a review of what you cover in the textbook, as per the flipped classroom curriculum, but I found it a bit difficult to take any meaningful notes on paper because she moves super quickly. I definitely recommend downloading the lecture slides and annotating them. Attendance is taken through iClicker. I found a pdf of the textbook and just bought the iClicker separately since achieve is not a requirement.

If you're used to a lot of structure in your classes, I definitely recommend this class as a first quarter course because it holds you accountable right away instead of realizing how behind you are once the first midterm rolls around. The workload is manageable, and I spent probably 8 hours tops on work every week outside of studying for midterms and finals.

As far as the actual standardized class goes, I'm not a fan. I dislike the note guides because I like taking my own notes, so I ended up doing notes twice. The exam questions test you more on how well you understand the questions than the actual material. The professors as a whole often do not fix mistakes on the grounds that they offer extra credit, so it shouldn't matter. There's a large section of the class that focuses on "growth mindset" and "interior locus of control", which is quite tedious after you finish the first set of reflections. This is the only class I took where I felt like I had busy work.

TL;DR if you have to take this class as a major rec, I definitely recommend Dr. Khankan. If you aren't a life science major and/or do not need this class, I'd skip it if you aren't good at mcq tests and don't like a super structured class with a lot of small assignments.

The professor is amazing. Everyone recommends Dr. Malloy / Dr. B, and they are great as well. Dr. Khankan is just as great in terms of willingness to help students and is also very engaging in lecture, if not better.

LS7A is a course that's exactly the same no matter who your teacher is, so honestly who you take it with doesn't matter beyond which professor you vibe with. All homework / tests is exactly the same across everyone, and it's honestly a lot of work. You get out of the course what you put into it - ie, you get a better grade if u did all the homework/readings than if you didn't.

You DO need an iclicker APP - don't get the physical remote you don't need that. You just need the app but just wait until you get the syllabus (week 0) before you buy anything. Book is Biology How Life Works 11th edition by Morris.

MY ISSUES: the midterms/final. They are called AOLs and they are the absolute worst. A lot of them are worded so vaguely and so many questions are literally wrong. But I suppose the TA strike might have affected this. You can still manage to get an A on the tests if you learn to think like the professors and you read through the iclicker questions and make practice questions for yourself. There's a group portion on tests too that lets you work with an assigned group of people on the exact same question set, so that's also nice to your grades.

Our final was a disaster; at the time I'm writing this 900 people signed a petition for a curve but that's a different story.

Professor Khankan is a good professor, She cares about students and is quite engaging. Every professor basically has the same tests for the LS7 series so don't bother trying to find a professor who is "easier", I think its all about how interesting they are and how well you learn from them.
All in all Khankan is a great Professor and always loves to talk to students and offer help.

Professor Khankan is a great and engaging lecturer. This is most evident when our lecturer switched near the end of the course; you truly realize how interesting she can make a long 1hr 15min lecture be in comparison to others. The lecture slides aren't very content heavy, and I didn't bother taking notes over them. The most effective method I found is to thoroughly read and take notes over the Launchpad readings before lecture, and have the lecture serve as a content review. Professor Khankan's lecturing is very clear, well organized, and engaging.

While I have the same complaints about wording and typos on exams, since the department and not the professor makes the exams this is essentially out of her control. However, the exams are still fair, and everything we have been tested over has been covered in either Launchpad readings or in class. I had no problem with time on the exams as well. There is a lot of content covered in one quarter, so I highly recommend that you stay on top of things and not fall behind.

You can tell that Professor Khankan cares greatly about student learning. She holds office hours four times a week, three of them are content office hours and one is for non-content office hours which is a great opportunity to chat with her and get to know her. During office hours she answers any and all questions very thoroughly and clearly to her best ability. Overall the LS7A class may have some flaws, but I highly recommend you choose her as your professor if you get the chance.