While I learned a lot from this class, the midterm and final exams required so much studying that I ended up using 50+ pages to fill out his study guide for the second quarter alone. Each week you have to complete country assignments (which are mostly based on completion) that are very helpful in writing your final essay on a country you choose at the beginning of the quarter as it is related to class concepts. I got a good grade on the essay. The midterm was extremely difficult but he ended up curving so the class average was a 77. Participation is also required as every class you take a PollEv which counts for your grade based on correctness (you can sometimes get away with guessing). Professor Roberts seems kind of unhelpful in office hours and doesn't respond to the discussion board which is his "online office hours." I ended up getting a good grade, but this is because I worked very hard towards the end of the quarter. The benefits of the class was I actually learned a lot about international development, Africa, and my country, and I don't think Professor Roberts is that bad of a lecturer. He records on BruinCast so you can go back and revisit the lectures. The textbook is required to do well in the class, a lot of test material is based on it.

I tried to drop this class in the first week but I couldn't get off the waitlist anywhere else so unfortunately I had to take this class for the entire quarter.

Roberts absolutely sucks as a lecturer. He just kind of reads off of the slides, and when he does go on tangents they offer nothing of value to the class. I'm not even sure he actually knows the material. He was also supposed to be broadcasting the lectures on Zoom but he sometimes forgot and then still marked down people for not "participating" in lecture (when many couldn't participate because he didn't even start the Zoom).

For the midterm, he gave us a list of things to study, but then it felt like half of the things on the test weren't on the study guide. For the final, he didn't even bother and just said "study the entire course", which is completely useless.

The only positive thing I can say about this class is that the weekly workload, for the most part, isn't too bad. The readings are long but the actual weekly assignments are pretty brief.

The weekly assignments are short little research projects that only take around 30 minutes to complete every week. This builds up to a final research paper that was one of the most frustrating assignments I've ever had to take at UCLA. I came up to him multiple times to workshop my essay and get his input on things. He often offer suggestions that were either A) not actually mentioned in the course readings, or B) were completely counterfactual to the evidence presented in the course material. Every time I went to his office hours I ended up leaving more confused than when I originally went in.

If you can, do whatever you can to stay away from this class. I promise it's not worth your time.