This class is a lot of work. There are 20-40 pages of weekly readings every week, two discussion posts, 3 short papers, a midterm, and a final. I think the midterm and final were fairly easy as long as you do the readings, pay attention in class, and farm your TA for info but the short papers could have done with a bit more clarity on grading. On the papers, I would recommend going overboard and putting out extremely high quality, well formatted, and well cited work to ensure you get an A. My TA was super helpful with clarifying the short paper expectations after I bombed paper 2, so make sure to utilize your TA as much as possible.

The lecture slides were not useful at all and the lectures are not posted online so you kinda have to go to class and pay attention, but Prof Heise is extremely passionate about the topic has so much knowledge about the field of environment literature and sci-fi which can make lectures fun to listen to. She is an extremely knowledgeable, caring prof and I really couldn't have asked for a better prof for my first quarter, I'll definitely try to take other classes with her in the future. My only issue with the lectures other than them not being uploaded online is that the slides are not easy to take notes on (dense quotes, pictures, etc.) which makes studying for tests kinda annoying.

Other than that though, this class was pretty fun and I would take it again, maybe just with a bit more mental prep to try hard and put my all into the readings and essays.

I really enjoyed this class with Professor Heise, because she is genuinely passionate about these topics. There were 5 assignments we had to do in total, and none of them were difficult in my opinion. She also offered extensions to students if they needed it. The discussion sections were pretty laid back and at least with my TA (Samantha), we did a lot of activities related to the content we talked about in class. There was a lot of material to cover and sometimes I felt a bit overwhelmed, but we would always discuss the readings in class, so if you didn't get a chance to finish everything before the lecture you'd still cover the main ideas. One of the things I really enjoyed about the class is that Professor Heise would give us a variety of media to study, not just books to read (we had graphic novels, podcasts, movies, short films, etc.). She is a clear and engaging lecturer, and she makes sure to take enough time to fully explain concepts. I would highly recommend this class!

I honestly really loved this class. I was at first really worried about the grading scale since you had to exceed the average completion requirements in order to get an A on the assignments, but it actually wasn't so bad. I managed to get an A range on all of my assignments which didn't generally take me too long. Your grade is based off of 5 assignments and participation: Assignment 1 (15%), Assignment 2 (15%), Assignment 3 (15%), Assignment 4 (20%), Assignment 5 (20%), and Participation (15%). These assignments were all spaced out throughout the quarter so I never felt too overwhelmed, even with my other classes going on. The first two assignments were short essays (500-1000 words) based off of analyzing a certain text, video, etc. and applying certain things we learned for it. They were straightforward and could be done in a day in my opinion. The third assignment is based off of us looking around LA and taking images of the different animals or plants we may come across and then writing a short essay on one of the species. This assignment was super fun and I really enjoyed it. The 4th assignment was a group project (1-2 partners) in which you pick a crisis, species, or place in LA to talk about the environmental issues connected to them. We used StoryMaps which was really interesting since it allowed us to show a number of visuals in relation to our text. It can be difficult to navigate at first but it was a really fun assignment. The last assignment is a take-home final. We had about a week to finish it and it was around 12 questions all about the readings and videos we had to watch throughout the quarter. I didn't find it especially difficult, but I also did keep up with all the readings and take notes at home and throughout lecture. If you can stay on top of all of the readings and attend lecture, you should be okay. The readings and videos weren't too bad, but there were two times where we were assigned almost a full novel to read for the week which was really overwhelming. I skimmed them and I was okay so it is doable, just time consuming. Professor Heise was amazing and during office hours was always willing to either provide feedback on your assignments or simply just chat on various issues. Overall though, I truly loved this class and if you are interested in the environment and how society perceives or affects it, definitely take this class.

This class and Heise's lectures were very engaging and enjoyable, although the workload of all of the assigned readings can be overwhelming at times (she does give pop quizzes in lecture and takes attendance during lecture as well). Your grade is dependent on five assignments throughout the quarter (including a group project at the end of the quarter), participation in section, and the quizzes in lecture. Overall this class was one of my favorites at UCLA and Professor Heise really cares about the class and the topic!

Ursula Heise is an engaging lecturer and honestly just a sick woman all around. Cool class, glad I took it. Learned a lot. Reading is heavy, but no more than any other English course.

Professor Heise's lectures had a good balance between discussion and lecture. She posted her slides after class and the concepts weren't difficult to grasp. We had around four smaller assignments and a large group project but the topics were all posted ahead of time so the workload was spread out well throughout the quarter.

I don't recommend taking this class. It honestly is a lot of work and the professor expects a lot for what the class actually is. The workload is heavy and no one ever scores above a A-. The grading system is a bit odd.