Prof. Ikudo is great. She is very clear in her explanations. Workload is very reasonable: two short quizzes and homework assignments per week. Each of those comprise 20% of your grade, and the midterm and final make up the remaining 60%. The key to doing well in this class in understanding the material properly. Don’t just memorize - you’ll get confused and won’t know how to approach new problems. I took this class during the COVID era, so lectures were recorded and exams were open note. Highly recommend this prof for this class.

Overall, ECON 11 with Akina was a great class, despite ECON 11 normally being the first challenging Econ course. Akina makes great effort to ensure her students understand the concepts by explaining examples in lecture and posting endless resources online.

Lectures: Her lectures are very organized, focused, and incorporate many examples (although they are pretty basic compared to the test). She posts her slides and lecture notes which are helpful for studying.

Assignments: For each lecture, we had one problem set (usually 3 multi part questions) and one ten question quiz. Not too bad and the low stakes practice was beneficial as it allowed us to only have one midterm and a final.

Exams: The exams in this class were tricky, despite being open note/open book. The midterm was significantly easier than the final, as the final had questions with 10 answer choices and an option to skip a question and get 0.25 points. Overall though, if you take time to study with practice material and organize your notes, you should do fine (especially as the HW and quizzes can boost your grade). Class averages were in the low 70's for both the midterm and final.

Helpfulness: Akina was very helpful throughout the quarter. She always answered questions on the discussion board, went into great detail in office hours (and posting an office hour log to look back on), provided review videos on commonly missed exam questions, and remained in constant communication.

TLDR: Take this class with Akina! ECON 11 may be overwhelming at first but her helpfulness and the quizzes/problem sets make everything better.

This was my very first UCLA course. It was definitely intense but I enjoyed taking it with Akina. She did not just teach economic theories to memorize but she explained the reasoning behind most ideas. Her explanations were useful during exams because exams are not solely based on whether you can memorize how to solve problems but rather how would you apply the theories and rationale learned to situations not directly taught in class. Although her exams can be difficult, her grading scheme more than rewards the strong efforts. Your final grade includes quizzes and problem sets (not common amongst economics professors) that boost up your grade. This is better than a professor simply curving a course at the end because it boosts your grade while still providing the opportunity for further learning.

I think this class is good for ESL students. She told us that as long as the sentences are clear and the idea is right then we are good. That was a huge release to me because I don't have to worry about the grammar when I submit the homework. The homework supports what we learned really well. After the homework, I feel I understand the material way better. We have one homework per lecture, and it usually take me 3-5 hours to finish it.

I like The grade set up: we were evaluated on homework 20%, quiz 20%, and two exams 60% (30% midterm + 30% final or 20% midterm + 40% final). If you do not do well in the midterm, you certainly has the chance to fix it in the final. There won't be the same questions from the practice exams or quiz but study them will help you understand what kind of questions are important to understand.

This class do not require you read the textbook. If you confuse, go to the office hour or leave your questions on the discussion forum and you will have the respond really fast. I am a non-traditional student and English is my 2nd language. I managed to have a score 0.25 away from A. I think I can do it and of cause you can (I believe you can do better than me). I recommend you take this class.

She is really helpful and her lectures are super clear. Her homework could be considered a lot (two problem sets due each week and two quizzes) but it was all super useful, so it made the time investment worth it. The homework is also not a lot if you manage your time right. She replies to questions on CCLE fairly quickly. Her exams were pretty tough – as you can see from my grade LOL – but I think they were fair, I definitely could have studied more for my first midterm, and she had offices hours always set up for people who had more questions.