The class has a presentation, weekly quizzes, a midterm, and a final.

The presentation and weekly quizzes are in discussion. Every week, there is a different scientific paper that you must read. The quizzes are the exact same format and questions every time. In fact, the TA will tell you the questions and format of the quizzes during Week 1. Basically, all you have to do is write a response to the question beforehand, memorize it, and regurgitate it for the quiz. For presentations, you are split into groups of 3-4, and each group does a presentation on the week's paper.

Hartenstein's lectures are hard to follow because he jumps from slide to slide, and it's hard to figure out what he thinks is important to focus on for the test. Even my TA said she found the lectures hard to follow. However, he is always available to answer your questions. Also, he provides course readers on CCLE, which follow each lecture. Everything that he goes over in lecture (and more) will be in those course readers. READ THEM.

All in all, it's a class that requires a lot of hard work, but getting a good grade is doable. I barely listened in class, and I never relistened to the audiocast. HOWEVER, I did read all of the course readers and I took diligent notes. In the end, I got an A.

NOTE: His midterm and final are very uneven in terms of how much course material it covers. The midterm covers about 4 weeks while the final covers the last 6 weeks. To put it in perspective, my outline for the midterm was about 25 pages long, but it was 50 pages long for the final

Hartenstein is a great lecturer. He has a soft accent that is engaging (in my opinion) and he is super approachable and gentle. I would describe him as fragile almost lol. He lectures from his slides, but his slides are ONLY DIAGRAMS. NO TEXT. So you have to take good notes, and the class isn't podcasted, only audiocasted. Audiocast sucks though cuz it's hard to tell which slide he's on. However, he has a reader that he posts on CCLE that is basically a review of each lecture, and it's really helpful. There aren't any required materials to buy for this class and you certainly don't need the textbook, it's just optional.
He has one midterm and one final for this class, and both are multiple choice. Don't be fooled though! They are pretty difficult because he will ask specific questions about the genes and pathways, etc. There is a lot of information to know in this class but I think that is why he makes the exams multiple choice.
You have to read weekly scientific journal articles and there are weekly quizzes on the papers. This definitely took some time for me to complete every week. Additionally you have to complete a group presentation over one of the papers once during the quarter. So this class does have a lot of work, but the information is really interesting, Hartenstein is a pretty good lecturer, and overall I would recommend it.

This may be the easiest of the MCDB courses in my opinion. 138 with Hartenstein was awesome. He teaches the material very well and made it very interesting. Although there is a lot of material to go over, the exams are very fair. I found the first exam to be a huge grade booster that kept me afloat for the rest of the class. The questions on the midterm is relatively straightforward. I would recommend studying by just going over the slides once or twice. I also think the average was pretty high. The final was fair. Unfortunately, I did not have much time to study for it, but I am still satisfied with grade. Overall, I'd say that you should take 138 with Hartenstein.