I loved Professor Ankowski so much. Her lectures were extremely interesting. I wasn't originally thrilled about taking this class but she completely changed my mind within a few weeks. She makes everything really clear and I truly feel like I learned a lot in her class. A lot of people didn't want to read the weekly textbook chapter, but I must say it's essential if you are aiming to get an A in the class. It's not, however, boring and redundant like most textbooks. I found the text to be pretty interesting and not too long to the point I couldn't finish it in one sitting. The tests are fair and pretty easy. The average grades on all assignments and exams were a B or above. I highly recommend this class. It's easy and enjoyable.

To do well in this class, you need to have a good amount of time to study the content she teaches in lecture every week. Otherwise, you'll fall way behind. It's impossible to confidently relearn everything in a matter of a few days. The only reason I got an A- is because the (cumulative) final was online due to the TA strikes (midterm score went crazy tho). So otherwise...i don't even know. Assignments are okay, completely manageable. And she seems really nice, has less of a relationship with her students but it's understandable. Yea idk if I recommend this class. I guess I only do if you'll have actual time for it. There may be better and easier PSYCH 10 teachers in the sea.

Didn't go to a single lecture, barely watched the lectures too. Read through the slides before going to lab every week. Lab was really helpful I liked practicing the content with other people in class, and it kinda mirrored the lab assignments. Some of the lab assignments are graded on completion and some are graded on accuracy, so I def recommend going to ur TA's office hours to make sure you don't miss anything. Do the EC, don't underestimate the exams- I thought the first one was going to be really easy and didn't study enough and did average (B I think?). Just make sure you start the practice exams early and give your self enough time to get comfy w the material.

When entering this class, I was scared due to the prior reviews about this professor, but it truly was not bad at all. Ankowski was such a sweetheart and did her best to make all the different topics make as much sense as possible. She was always open to answering all questions, giving many different examples about a topic, and just overall a pleasant person to speak to! Even though some of the aspects of the class were tedious (ALMs), I truly did enjoy it.
The class is broken down into three categories: 240 points for lecture (120 for midterm and 120 for final), 120 points for lab, and 40 points for ALMs. The ALMs were graded on completion, so if you just met the word count you were chilling. They were weekly (except week 9 for us) and ranged from practice questions to reflections about certain questions or videos. It wasn't hard and helped give me a grasp of the types of questions they'd be asking. The lab section was graded on like 6-7 assignments throughout the quarter, where about 50 points were graded on completion and the remaining 70 were graded on correctness. To be honest, it really does depend on your TA. My TA was the sweetest human being ever and she always did her best to explain to us what was expected on the assignments and how to get the most points possible. Some TAs graded harder than others, so I kind of lucked out with mine. Labs are optional and to be honest I missed like half of them, but they were helpful because you would do a mock lab assignment in class and get feedback from your TA as a way to let you know what's expected. I would suggest going to all, but it's not the end of the world if you don't. The hardest part of the course was clearly the exams. They were written in a way where you HAD to understand like all of the content to properly distinguish from each answer. The average for both exams was a C+/B-, so if you start studying with proper time, you'll be okay. The BEST way to study for these exams is to review the practice questions. She gives you around 150-200 practice questions that really help understand what you do or do not know and were reflective of the content on the exams. I started studying the night before for both of the exams and received a 90% on the first one and a 95% on the second one. My biggest tip for this class, which might seem a little controversial, is to do the textbook reading and the inquizitive problems that go with it. I spent maybe 2-3 hours a week doing the assigned textbook reading and questions and even though it was VERY tedious and unnecessarily long, it helped me understand the concepts. If the topic doesn't seem important to you, which I promise will be evident, you can just skip it. Overall, though, I think this was the thing that helped me the most to ensure that I understood the definition and being exposed if different examples to understand what's being taught.
TLDR: Amazing professor, super accommodating, get a good TA, hard-ish exams, and super doable.

This class is the most 4-credit like class I've ever taken at UCLA. It's not your Chem 14 series where the 4 credits feel like 5. Honestly should be worth 3 credits from how easy it was.
There's no pre-class readings or textbook readings or anything. Everything taught in the lecture is what you'd expect for the tests. Plain and simple.
Don't let the 2 hour lectures fool you, theres a break in between and the lectures feel sooooooo slowwwwwwww like the material isn't that difficult lmao.
Exams are alright. Multiple choice with a short answer section at the end and VERY similar to how the question banks are.
She doesn't like sharing the question bank until a week or two before the exam but I'll be your angel: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mZn_vFnr489ePslCnrpCpG6or-MPLDgyPEal2wdh1bM/edit?usp=sharing

I Professor Ankowski is clearly super passionate about what she teaches, which translates to really good lectures. Honestly the worst part of the class was the 8 am lecture, but it was okay. There were iClickers everyday, so lecture attendance was mandatory. The tests were very manageable, and multiple choice. The class was super interesting, and honestly would take again. Highly recommend!

This is an enjoyable and interesting class. The content is really interesting the professor clearly cares about what she is teaching. Your grade is made up of participation points (iClicker), biweekly extension assignments/quizzes, a research project, one midterm, and a cumulative final. The assignments are all straightforward and not time-consuming at all. Your lowest extension assignment and quiz is dropped. The exams are online, open book, and consist of multiple choice and short answers. The questions are not difficult as long as you take some time to study. The professor is kind and her lectures are engaging. The only downside of this class is that you need the textbook for assignments and it’s difficult to find online, so you will likely have to buy it. If you need a Psych elective that won’t stress you out too much, this is a great class to take.

Overall this class was fairly easy and had a very manageable workload. Both the midterm and final were online, open note, and not proctored. The final is cumulative. Lectures were recorded on bruin cast, but Prof Ankowski has iClicker questions that are required for participation points. Personally I did not read the textbook and still did well in the class, and almost every answer to questions on the exams could be found in the lecture slides insted of the textbook. I do not think that you need to read the textbook for this class, and you can definitely get an A without reading it. Prof Ankowski is a great professor with clear, interesting, and easy-to-follow lectures, and she is super open to answering student questions/encourages people to come to office hours. The assignments for this class consist of 4 10-question multiple choice online quizzes, 4 short written assignments, 1 written research assignment where you basically just summarize and relate an existing study to class material, iClicker participation, and the midterm and final exams. This is a fairly manageable and easy class that doesn't require a ton of effort, and should be mostly review if you've taken a developmental psych class before.

1. Professor Ankowski is very passionate and knowledgeable about cognitive development. However, I find her lectures a tad disorganized, and her slides not helpful for review. I understand she wants people to attend lecture, as seen in her commitment to iClicker, but the lack of information present on the slides (while it may encourage people to come to class), is not helpful for review purposes. However, she records the class, which is a helpful addition. Moreover, this may be a personal preference, but I appreciate when professors explicitly define a term before they provide examples. Professor Ankowski sometimes does not provide definitions of terms/concepts or maybe breezes through them and then starts providing example after example. While examples are helpful, they ultimately mean nothing out of context, which she only loosely gives. I have had a surplus of upper-division psychology professors who I have enjoyed, and these issues seem unique to this class. On a separate note, I found that the midterm was not equitable to the types of questions we have been given on quizzes. The quizzes are almost too easy, whereas the midterm seemed unreasonably difficult. The wording of the questions was the most abstract. Furthermore, she opened her first lecture up by saying she is unwilling to revise grades, which is fine and completely up to her, but her presentation was very stern and seemed unfriendly. Since, I have not felt comfortable asking questions or even participating in class.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I thought that Professor Ankowski did a really great job at presenting the material in a manageable but also engaging way. She is a really good speaker and is very knowledgeable on the topic, which makes the whole lecture flow.

Fairwarning, lectures are 2 hours and she uses the whole 2 hours. All of the lectures are recorded, however, attendance is taken using iclicker.

The course consists of 5 or 6 labs. Some of them are individual, some are group work, so it's nice to establish a consistent group of friends/classmates to work on the labs together with. The labs themselves are pretty straightforward and easy.
I thought that the midterm and final were both also very easy. Both tests had an mcq portion and a short response part. There are a lot of terms to know, so it helps if you’re good at memorizing things. I used quizlet as my main study method. ALSO Prof. Ankowski provides you with the Pysch test bank as a study resource. USE IT. It was so helpful for both the midterm and final. A lot of the question were very similar, so it was a great practice test.