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.

The course is quite comprehensive, though it focuses almost unnecessarily heavily on quantum chemistry. Professor Kavner is an amazing and truly kind and willing person, but her teaching methods are not clear. Going to lectures did not help me learn the material, and I will likely have to go back through the entire textbook and synthesize the material on my own to prepare for the final. Her lectures were hard to track, it wasn't clear which information was more important than others, and it was overall very confusing. The TAs were also great, but Professor Kavner didn't provide much incentive for students (nor the TAs) to come to discussions as the only purpose was to finish the assigned homework during the discussion (which in most cases was already completed), and the logically didn't have much to add.

This class was not a good introduction to the potential of UCLA education. Although I loved Prof. Kavner as a person, she should not be teaching this class. It is unorganized, unstructured, and confusing. Even the TAs seemed confused half the time, because our homework assignments had little to no relation to the lectures, or we would learn the materials in the homework assignments weeks after they were due. I found that people were really stressed in this class, because literally no one knew what was going on. The lack of communication in this course was really shaking, especially when it came time for the midterms and finals. I feel bad for those who have little to no chemistry experience coming into this class, because Prof. Kavner expects us to understand a lot of fundamentals already, given that it's a general chemistry course.

However, the only reason you should take this class would be because of her grading scheme. It is very manageable to get an A, as the midterms themselves were doable if you did well in AP Chemistry. I will say the final was a bit difficult, but in depth studying should do the trick.
30% homework
20% participation quizzes (accuracy does not matter)
25% split over 2 midterms
25% final
10% extra credit - online textbook assignments
An A was a 95+.

I HIGHLY recommend going to TA office hours and collaborating with peers on the homework. That is the only way I succeeded in this class. Prepare to be stressed.

This class was extremely unorganized and I did not learn much. If you have AP Chem credit to skip this course, DO IT. I thought I should take it to make sure I understood everything and that it would be an easy A, neither of those things were true.

The final was also horrendous. There was a computational mcq with NO right answer that I spent a good 45 minutes crashing out over (they never even told us there was a mistake on the exam), and the rest of the exam was also just stuff that we had never learned.

- lectures recorded and can be watched again later
- participation quizzes during lectures
- textbook required for online assignments
- problem sets weekly due friday
- offers extra credit
- nice professor but doesn't stick to lesson plan when lecturing
- will answer questions posted on discussion boards
- possible to get above a 100%

Overall in the class, the lectures would at time seem disorganized and not completely related to the homework that was assigned that week. Because of this, if you've never taken chemistry before, I wouldn't recommend this class or the honor series in general. She also emphasized a lot of earth science material that didn't always seem relevant to the class. That being said, I don't think she deserves as low a review as she gets. Her tests weren't overly difficult, a lot of the grade consisted of homework (which could be regraded), and you could tell that she had an enthusiasm for teaching. I would definitely take her again.

20AH with Kavner is a pretty easy A as there aren't any quizzes or tests except for a final that doesn't hold much weight. All the grading comes from the homework and an easy project at the end of the quarter, and you can correct the main homework if you mess it up the first time around. However, if you're interesting in taking this class to learn, you'll get some out but not much more than you would get from reading a textbook. Kavner is really nice and enthusiastic but it doesn't really feel like you're learning much because she gets sidetracked easily and there's a big discrepancy sometimes between what you do on the homework and read in the textbook vs. what is actually taught in class.