I saw how bad his reviews were, but I was still willing to go in with an open mind. From the very first lecture, I knew it would be a long quarter. As previously stated, he is one of those old fashioned people who doesn't like technology, which means that he writes everything on the board. That makes it very hard because he taught in a large lecture hall. His unwillingness to use technology also makes his presentation insanely disorganized. I basically went to the TA's for all my questions because they explained the material much better than he did. As stated in a different review, he didn't even show up for his last three lectures, making the TA's teach it. During the very last lecture, one of the TA's did a power point presentation, due to popular demand. He than apologized on Minor's behalf, saying that Minor is very old-school. Guess what, old school does not cut it. I try not to blame my grades on the professor. But it is because his style was so awful that I ended up with a C in his class.
My advice is as follows: If you can, avoid Minor (though it seems that all the teachers who teach 110 are lousy. Go figure. Just choose the one with the most favorable reviews).
If you can't avoid Minor, than my advice would be to get a seat up front, take good notes, record his lectures, and most importantly, GO TO THE TA'S!!! It is because of them that I was able to understand any of the material at all.

Dr. Minor really isn't that bad. Yes, it sucks that the class is at 8 am and that he only writes on the board instead of using PowerPoint. But if you ask him to clarify what he wrote or said, he will happily do so, and he also answers student questions after every topic.

To succeed in this class:
Record and listen to every lecture
Don't just memorize what the experiments are about, really understand the purpose and results, why it was important in the first place
Go to discussion and take good notes- 20% of the grade is from discussion so you kinda have to go anyway
Go to TA OH (Thank you Evan, you're the best)
Ask questions in lecture if you have them- Minor will answer them and not make you feel stupid for not understanding
READ THE BOOK- sorry, this is a must. People slack on this because there is a lot of material and then complain that they did not do well. The person below me noted that the chapters don't line up with what is taught, which is true. But that's even more of a reason to read. Also when you're in med/grad school, you're probably going to have to read a lot more than this class required, so might as well start reading now.

Yes, the exams were hard. But there is a curve for a reason. I got a 42/50 on both midterms, don't know what I got on the final because it wasn't posted, ended up with an A in the class. This definitely was not my favorite class at UCLA, but it wasn't the worst either (looking at you Chem 14D). It is possible to do well in this class if you study smart and hard. Good luck!

I know it is sometimes hard to find a clear and honest review of a class or professor. But I need you to read this before you enroll in this class with Minor. I am going to give you an extremely honest review and you should take every single word seriously. You may think "oh this guy is just one of those students who didn't study or pay attention, we can't trust him." I have a 3.9 GPA as a psych major, I work hard, I tend to get A's in all my classes. THIS CLASS IS BY FAR, THE WORST PSYCH CLASS YOU CAN EVER TAKE AT UCLA, and it is 100% BECAUSE of Professor Minor. Professor Minor is here for research and is most likely forced to teach a class now and then. He may be up there spewing out information, but he is by NO MEANS a teacher. Lets start with the structure of each lecture. The class takes place in Lakretz 110 (a fairly big lecture hall, you may have had Psych 130 or Psych 120a here). In this lecture hall of approximately 200+ students, Minor does not use powerpoints, does not use technology, and instead writes everything in illegible hand writing with marker on the white board. If you sit behind the 5th row you will barely be able to read what he writes down.
The lectures are not podcasted so you MUST record each lecture or you are screwed, trust me. There is absolutely NO structure to the lectures and the direction of the class. His class requires a textbook and he pulls ~30% of the 40-50 exam questions from the book. The problem is, the assigned chapters are not properly aligned with what we are learning in class. For example, for our Exam 1, we were assigned chapters 1,2,3 but what we learned in class appeared in the book in later chapters like 5-8. So that means you will be memorizing new and irrelevant information from the book for each exam. It feels like he is using a much older version of the book in which the chapters are in a different order than ours. Additionally, questions from chapter 4 popped up on our first exam unexpectedly and the whole class was shocked. The Ta's excuse was "We're sorry, but hey the class is curved so its okay." No, its not okay. There are 3 exams and a short paper. Almost every student in the class was struggling and in tears before and after each exam. The Avg on exam 1 was 64%. The Avg on exam 2 was 60%. He even said "not to worry, that's expected." They had to bump us up 2 letter grades with the curve and we still got LOW B's. On exam 2, we had to memorize over 170 pages of text across 5 chapters, and almost all of it was information we never talked about in class. It was by far the hardest out of the 3.
Professor minor is almost never there to respond to emails or questions. He just doesn't care. Even the TA's told s they had trouble reaching him. He just comes to class with 2 sheets of paper with lecture notes that he has probably been using to screw all the students in the past 20-30 years, and then just walks out. In fact, he didn't even show up for lecture in the last 2 weeks. The Ta's had to teach the class (honestly was a blessing in disguise, because they did a much better job than him). Its just amazing, because he is not some bad or evil person. He is actually pretty funny: he makes jokes and goes off on weird tangents like many professors and he seems completely normal. But at the end of every single lecture, you are gonna be left with "Ummm wtf did I just hear. I am completely lost." That is not an exaggeration. Every single lecture will leave you like that, it is just a matter of how well the TA's explain it in discussion or how many times you go to OH to ask questions. (I had Evan as my TA and he is great! He knows everything and knows exactly how to teach it to you! Plus he is hilarious - Make sure to put away all your "snapchat machines" while he's teaching though)
So I think thats everything. I looked at all the horrible the reviews written before me as I enrolled and was scared but thought I could manage it and just assumed these other students just didn't study well. Nope. I made a horrible mistake. I hear Blaisedell teaches the class well but all his exams are True/False questions (like 50 T/F questions). Idk how true that is or not, but even if it is, TRUST ME, it is better to take that class then this one. This guy does not deserve to teach at such a fine institution. He might be an excellent researcher, and has made wonderful contributions to the field of psychology, but he has failed every one of his students as a professor. He doesn't deserve Tenure and because he has it, it means he can do whatever the hell he wants to do apart from stripping off his clothes and taking a piss on a student in the front row (which is what he did to us metaphorically). Avoid him at all costs.

Honestly, I don't understand why Professor Minor gets such a bad rap as "one of the worst professors at UCLA". His lectures were a bit difficult to follow at times (especially at 8AM), but I found that recording and listening to them later on helped a ton. He did go off on tangents at times, but he was always willing to answer students' questions no matter how obvious the answer may be, even if he didn't know the answer himself. Maybe he read his Bruinwalk reviews? His exams were also pretty easy. All I did was record and relisten to each lecture, and do all the readings (the exams do have a pretty significant emphasis on the reading material) - I got within the A range for each test. Thankfully he curves the grades so all you need to do is score well relative to your peers. The only real qualm I have with this class is that the textbook is extremely dry and difficult to read through. Overall, Minor is NOT as bad as people make him out to be, and I actually enjoyed going over the material. Oh - and I'd suggest going to TA's office hours (My TA was Evan and he was great). They're really helpful.

I have never loathed a person more than Minor. I have a 3.6 GPA as a LS major and this was by far the worst class I have ever taken. The class material is not difficult but the tests might as well be written in ancient Latin. His lectures are insanely disorganized and he's incredibly unprofessional. He'll start cussing in class or talk about how he gets drunk with other psychologists. He makes the test questions so wordy that no matter how hard you studied you would never be able to understand. He made me question the entire field of psychology and he should be fired 100%. He does not know how to teach students nor does he even care about his students. To Minor, all that matters in the world is himself on a throne and views the rest of us as annoying undergrads with his sole goal to make you want to drop out of UCLA. He should be fired and never be allowed to teach again.

First review I have ever written but I feel its my obligation for UCLA student body to write about this class. This is the worst class I have ever taken in my entire academic career. I would call waking up at 8am to listen to the arrogant, condescending attitude of professor Minor pure unadulterated torture. He talks way to fast and when someone asks him a question he doesn't know the answer to (which is often) he gets angry and tries to humiliate the student. The fact that he teaches a class called "Fundamentals of Learning" is not only hugely ironic it is bafflingly hilarious. He takes pride that on each of his exams his mean is about 34% and gets weird, creepy satisfaction from it, like no one is near "his genius". In conclusion, this guy is a joke I feel bad for anyone in or around this class. Do not take this class for any reason, there are ways around this class to fulfill similar requirements. xGod speedx

Whatever you do, do NOT take 110 with this professor. Especially if it's only offered at a time when you are not likely to attend the lectures.

The material is actually so interesting, but his tests are based on his incoherent lectures about experiments that aren't talked about in the text book rather than the easy-to-follow material from the text and the discussion section.

The midterm and final were both comprised of only 30% textbook material and 70% lecture material. This wouldn't be a bad thing in most classes, but Minor's lectures are absolutely terrible. It's honestly unacceptable that he is even a professor.

First of all, he doesn't use powerpoint presentations, with the exception of one lecture on evolution and two on brain structures. The rest of the lectures are based on vague outlines that he writes (illegibly) on the chalkboard. The bulk of lectures consist of him rattling off the names of researchers and the year in which they conducted various experiments. He then draws a crude graph of the results of that experiment. He expects you to remember all of the very specific details of these experiments that he says aloud only once. Many of these experiments aren't in the textbook and don't even come up in google search results, so you have no way to find the material explained in a different way, or explained at all. He is not very responsive to questions, usually either misunderstanding them or saying that he refuses to answer it because it will be answered later (it never is).

Bottom Line: Just don't take it with him! Seriously, I read these reviews and thought I could handle it anyway, and I was very wrong! He just does not make it easy to succeed, and he revels in that fact.

The WORST class I've taken at UCLA so far. There's nothing more to say. Avoid him at all cost.

I dreaded taking this class because of all the horror stories I heard. Professor Minor's lectures were very disorganized, and he kept digressing on personal encounters he had with the psychologists he taught about. All of his lectures were based off of a chalk board outline, and most of the material was very dense and hard to follow because of his lack of organization.

If it wasn't for Melissa Fleischer, the master TA, I don't think I would've passed the class. She put up a typed outline of lecture notes every week and discussed the book material every week as well. She was also the one who wrote the tests. With her help (and consistent studying) I received an A, but without it I don't think I would've gotten anything higher than a C. His tests were extremely tricky, so make sure you study every word of the TA's outline!

Although I'm glad his lectures were not monotone, they were difficult to follow sometimes. Studying my notes I realize that I've left the end off of many thoughts because I had to move on. He takes pride in the fact that no student has ever gotten 100% on his test. This is not something for a teacher to be proud of. While it is possible to do well in his class, it feels like he doesn't want students to succeed. Seems like he's trying to weed out the herd of psych students...natural selection. "Anyone who's not as smart as Rescorla or myself shouldn't be a psych major at UCLA," or something like that. All in all, this was not a positive learning environment, and I would recommend taking from a different professor.