This review is going to sound exactly like every other review. Kavner is an amazing person, and I'm sure for any topic that she knew the content she would be a great professor. However, there's a reason Epsi teachers teach Epsi and not Chemistry. You don't learn much in lectures or in class at all, but it's very easy to still get an A without knowing any Chemistry. You're paying for the degree so take this class to boost your GPA, but learn the content on your own because you're most likely not learning it in class.

Unfortunately, Kavner is not a good lecturer on the material of Chem20A. Her first midterm had mistakes on it that she hadn't corrected after a month, and her final had a few mistakes on it too. If you've taken AP Chem before this, be prepared for this class to be extremely easy but frustrating to take. If you haven't taken AP Chem before this, then start praying to whatever you believe in.

Bad lecturer and a very good person which everyone agrees with. Homework had nothing to do with lectures; the lectures were nonsense half the time. Every single exam was multiple choice and the midterms were online. This is a class where you have the teach yourself the material, so hopefully you have some understanding of this class's material that you can start with. Would not recommend taking this class with her.

I really liked that this class was more of a physics-based approach to chemistry, and I liked how Kavner taught us many different ways of looking at the same thing - the behavior of atoms and molecules. I felt that this class was pretty intuitive, the tests and final were extremely fair, and there's no one area that I feel wasn't understandable. If I had any questions I just went to office hours, and the professor explained things well.

I agree somewhat with the general consensus that it's easy to get lost in the lectures, however, if you follow along in the textbook chapters and review the problem sets before lecture it's not confusing at all. There are so many opportunities for extra credit, the lectures are recorded, and the office hours are always helpful. Kavner is a great professor, and a great person.

Professor Kavner seems like a wonderful person who is very knowledgable and passionate about the subject. However, I and the classmates I spoke to all feel very unprepared and lost in the class. Her lectures do not cover much of the material, and she has a tendency to go on tangents about content way outside the scope of this class and what she can expect her students to understand. This means that we don't cover much of the material. We are very behind her outlined plan in the syllabus. She seems to expect a much higher base knowledge from her students, which is surprising as this is supposedly an intro chemistry class. Coming into the final, I have no clue what kinds of questions she will test us on or the format of the test, as do many of my classmates. We are all very stressed about the final and about the next class in the series. Additionally, the textbook is very unclear and does not communicate the content effectively at an intro level. The professor's assigned homework seemed at times very detached from content we were learning, and often felt like busywork rather than effective practice.

I believe that this instructor is very knowledgeable and well prepared, but lectures could benefit from time dedicated to what will be on the homework.

I think the scope and learning objectives need to be more outlined, and there need to be more clear resources to study such objectives. The textbook is minimally helpful and often was much more complex than what we were expected to know and therefore did not help much.

You can pass this class with flying colors without ever knowing what's happening content wise. Kavner is nice (I'm pretty sure, I didn't go to lecture), and TAs are chill. She gives EC on hw and both midterms were online/asynchronous. You can skip lectures and still do fine in the class. She has participation quizzes in class but they're on canvas so you should be able to do them remotely. Don't plan on learning anything if you take her for 20a.

I am sure most the the 780 some students in this course all have the same feedback for Prof Kavner's instantiation of CHEM 20A: (most caring professor and not well organized, OWL/readings, problem sets, quizzes and exams all contained different content, lecture was entirely useless etc.)

Separately, there is simply too much content or perhaps the CANVAS had too many links it was supremely overwhelming. Some content is not used in future courses or will be covered in future courses. It would be good if a little was trimmed (eg. overlap from the requisite high school chemistry courses removed).

I love the enthusiasm that was apparent in each lecture, but there were often issues with quizzes and mistakes in lecture presentations. Sometimes, I had trouble understanding concepts, especially when they crossed over to the land of physics which I have no experience in. If I didn't go out of my way to learn concepts on Youtube, I wouldn't have succeeded with just attending lecture and doing the assignments.