My interest in biology is what allowed me to enjoy learning the course's content. Yet the teaching was difficult for me to effectively have a good learning experience. When I took the course, I felt the same way about the course like prior students that took it (who posted on The Course Forum). I also felt that the lectures felt dry, not engaging enough, and dragged out. However I do have some other experiences from this specific semester I like to share as well.

The course content showed many applications and concepts of genetic engineering, and helped demystified and clarified important ideas such as genetic editing via crispr, how bacteria are used to help copy genes, and how devices in genetic engineering worked. That will be extremely useful if you are going into genetic/stem cell related Biomedical Engineering fields.

Both myself and others provide answers to questions that the professor asked. And even if the answers were technically correct, even confirmed by the professor himself, he still marks them completely false and refuses to give the extra points that he gives us for answering questions. Learning is about sharing information, especially different perspectives and views of information, and the learning environment isn't so friendly when everyone must only comply to having only one view of things. During exams, the professor and TA refuses to clarify on questions at all, even if students want a better clarification of what the question is asking. For the final exam, I saw that a question was worded wrong and was logically incorrect. I tried to ask the TA for help, and he can only respond with th...read more

Be prepared to not receive any help during exams, even on incorrectly worded questions. Ask Professor about exact dates, and establish everything clearly. Be prepared for having exams at the very last time of the semester.

I thought this class was very fun and cute, the class is a little role-playish; you are put (randomly) into a Hogwarts house and your discussion attendance gives your house points. The house with the most points wins the most extra credit, but all houses get at least some extra credit at the end of the quarter basically using harry potter as a tool to teach/exemplify more general literary analysis tools.

its so chill. You read the first 4 harry potter books (1/2 book per week) and then watch the 5th movie. I listened to the audiobook and it was reasonable. Asynch online lectures and homework assignments- like two or three 20-30 minute lectures per week, can listen on 2x and still understand pretty easily. Synchronous 1-hour zoom discussion section once a week. There are a few writing response assignments and one 5-min video commentary/presentation assignment but some weeks there is no homework at all. Weekly quizzes about the content of the books and lectures. All work due on Fridays which takes a little getting used to The final is literally writing/drawing/animating a fanfic about the series and a 500-700 word reflection on the fanfic. Like bro. The first module thoroughly addresses ...read more

She was chill, a great speaker in online lectures and the lectures weren't that boring. I mostly interacted with my TA (Melissa Mack) who was also great.

I am very familiar with the harry potter series (just have reread them a bunch), so this class was super light work because I didn't have to reread that close and the other assignments are chill. I can imagine that if you don't know anything about/dislike the harry potter series this might be boring or grueling because you've gotta read 4 of the books. Then again, "gotta" is a strong word, I bet there are many in the class who just skimmed them. But it does make it easier if you actually read them, and its literally harry potter so its not that difficult of a text

Don’t ever take this course.

Awful.

Switch your major if this course is mandatory.

The course overall was ok but my professor and the way she executed the course was poor, for example, Assignments were just copy and pasted from week to week with the exact same wording.

The content was interesting at times but it was extremely boring since a lot of it is general knowledge

The professor really killed this course for me. The textbook readings are heavy and required for the weekly discussion posts. The lectures just repeat everything the textbook says and lacks anything interesting, the slides and information are repetitive and the exams are worded extremely weird and have no study guide leading the class to get low averages. Seriously one of the most infuriating college experiences.

I’m sure my teacher is a great person, but this class ended up being a complete waste of time. If attendance wasn’t taken then my answer would be different but please if she’s teaching take a different course or wait until the other professor is available.