I had a high level of interest about authoritarianism before this class, and while I certainly learned a lot about the topic, I felt as though the class structure inhibited my learning a bit. While the subject is a fascinating one, I felt that Professor Roberts tended to be quite disorganized and the course sometimes felt a bit chaotic at times. In a bid to address student concerns, Professor Roberts utilized two separate grading schemes: synchronous-heavy and asynchronous-heavy, each with different weights and assignments. While I certainly appreciate that Professor Roberts tried to make room for student concerns, this just ended up making the course unnecessarily convoluted. The reading load of the class is fairly moderate in comparison with other upper-div political science classes, but there are a number of research assignments, quizzes, a midterm, a final exam, a final presentation, and a final group essay which just made the course more hectic than it needed to be. These assignments were graded fairly leniently, but I felt that a lot of the minor assignments were reminiscent of busy-work.

Professor Roberts is very open to changing the format of the class/assignments, but I felt that this class just contained too many moving parts. Were the course to be simplified in favor of fewer but perhaps more substantial assignments, I feel as though the course would function a lot better. As it stands though, the disorganized nature of Professor Roberts, and the multitude of what I felt were superfluous assignments made the course a lot more tedious than it should have been.

This professor is already very poorly reviewed that there's really not much more to say. I'd only like to add that students should believe what's been said about his teaching style. It is all over the place. There's an enormous amount of reading. Group projects are worth huge chunks of your grade and force you to cooperate with people who may not pull their own weight. The exams are extremely difficult, but at least they are curved. Overall I would not recommend this class even if the title of it sounds interesting. It's not really about authoritarian politics. Rather it focuses on scholarly debates between several academics about the abstract concepts of democracy and dictatorship. A tiny fraction of the class is actually about looking at actual regimes in the real word. Most of it pertains to several authors and their minute differences in their definitions of specific terms. There is also statistics involved so if you don't like math I would also not recommend this class.

Worst class and professor I have ever taken. DO NOT TAKE TYSON ROBERTS. He does not care about his students or the quality of education he is giving them. He miscalculated my attendance grade which dropped my overall grade by 10% at the end of the quarter. When I reached out to fix it, he never responded to me and never fixed my grade. Started the final exam by prefacing he would have to curve the test because he had written it poorly. The class following the midterm began with "what happened guys" because the average grade was so low as a direct result of poor teaching and exam writing. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS OR PROFESSOR.