Professor Wood is the most boring prof I have had at UCLA yet. He reads directly off the speaker notes on his slides and is not enthusiastic about what he teaches. There is one midterm and one final, each worth 40% of your grade. The other 20% is easy to get full credit as it consists of discussion attendance and online inquisitive assignments. The tests were absolutely horrible. There is so much information covered in class, and he gives no guidance on what to study. It's all memorization but the content is so heavy it's impossible to remember everything. The class avg on tests was a C, and he did not curve because ONE person (out of hundreds) got a 100%. With tests being worth so much, even getting a B on the midterm makes it virtually impossible to get an A in the class. Tests were in person, and he made it extremely difficult to accommodate those positive for COVID. Overall worst class and professor I have taken.

This class is pretty easy, content is pretty much what you would expect taking an anthro evolution class. Except the grading is completely unfair. 40% midterm and 40% final would’ve been alright if there were two midterms to adjust an average score. I studied hours for this class because there’s no study guide, well they only provided one for the final which was literally pictures and just a chart (not helpful at all). Prof curved the grade based on highest overall grade but there’s always someone who aces the class so there’s essentially no curve. It’s just upsetting having aced stem courses but yet failed a GE. Make it make sense, change the grading scale or provide weekly quizzes or something for your next class won’t suffer. He’s a cool guy, but wasn’t understanding at all for everyone who emailed him about curving the grade for a good portion to not fail.

Honestly this class was time consuming. For me the lectures weren't as helpful as the textbook, just because the professor didn't get into the details of everything, but he expected you to know all these details for the exams. Each week the professor went over two chapters. These chapters were definitely long but in the end when it came to the exams I found that since I read I already knew where to find most of my answers. I ended up getting an A- on both exams. The midterm free response was definitely graded more strictly than the final (thank goodness). In addition to the lectures and readings, we had these online game-style quizzes that we had to complete. There were 3 levels to each quiz and you had to get a certain amount of points before reaching the next level. You definitely had to use the book to get through these (you aren't really penalized if you get wrong answers, it just takes you longer to finish the quiz). I found that if I read the chapter right before I took the quiz I was able to go through it much faster. Because the class grade is highly skewed towards what you get on the exams I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND getting 100% on all quizzes and in discussion section. This way if you get a lower A (like I did) on the exams you know you will at least get full points in the other areas.

Here is the breakdown of the course:

Midterm: 40%
Final Exam: 40%
Inquizitive: 5%
Discussion Section (short textbook questions): 15%

Overall, I didn't think this class was awful but like others said it would be super difficult to do in person because of all the details this course entails. I also think he made it much more detail oriented because we were online and the exams were open book, so it could be different in person! Shout out to Kim who provided notes for discussion section!

Pass on this professor. While the class material is pretty simple (just memorization), Wood did a pretty bad job when it came to making and grading the exams. There are just weekly homework assignments, but they took a decent amount of time and were only work 5% of the grade overall. When it came to his exams, you could definitely tell he didn't revise them to make sure they made sense or were clear because he often had to send us emails DURING the exam to clarify what he meant because he would just exclude crucial pieces of information (luckily a bunch of kids would notice and have to email him during the exam so he could clear things up). He's the type of professor to have multiple right answers for multiple choice questions but ask you to choose the best one even if what he considers "best" doesn't align with the information in the textbook. He also had to tell us if the information in his lectures didn't match up with the textbook, then we should trust the textbook, which was a hassle bc then we would always have to double check his slides and lectures, which took up a lot of time. The questions seem easy but it's like he purposely messes with the wording to make it more confusing since it's the only way to make the material difficult. I would have rather had more difficult material with straightforward testing. My advice: choose a different professor if you have the chance.

I took this class as a major requirement and really had no real interest in the material. That said, there were a few things that I thought were really interesting despite my lack of initial interest. Dr. Wood is really a great professor and he worked really hard to make this learning environment accessible to everyone this quarter. An 84% was an A, the final was optional, and discussion sections were really relaxed and flexible. My TA, Brit, was the best!! We had weekly discussion homework graded on completion, participation based on attendance, and weekly online homework (similar to launchpad). I got a 99% on the midterm and did not choose to take the final. The class is definitely doable, I just thought it was dry because I wasn't really interested in it. Dr. Wood had to take a leave of absence mid-quarter for personal reasons but Dr. Selza took over around week 5 and was just as great:) There were a lot of challenges this quarter but all the professors and TAs were really flexible and understanding.

I really enjoyed this class. At first, his prerecorded lectures were surpassing class time and it was taking me forever to go through them, but it was worth it in the end. We had these weekly quizzes that you can do until you get a 100% (through Inquizitive), we had weekly discussions that were really helpful, and we had awesome TA's. The class's grade divisions was very helpful and in the end the final became optional (over an 84 was an A). The midterm, though, had to work on it a lot and got a fair grade. Even though there's a lot of talk about different types of primates and comparing them to humans, I learned a lot and was a cool subject I was never introduced to before! Enroll in this class!!

This review is for Spring 2020, the first COVID-19 remote learning quarter. The textbook should be free and provided through Norton. Think of it as similar to LaunchPad, but a bit better. At the end of the chapters, you'll also be assigned to Inquizitives which is basically interactive quizzes that you need to take about the chapter you just read. Good thing is that you can keep on answering questions until you get 100%. Don't sweat about this. The midterm was a bit tough and some parts were ambiguous, but they were open note and open book. They were a combo of MC and short answers. Discussions are mostly just the TA talking about the week's content and filling out some short worksheet. We were tossed into some break out rooms, but no big deal. If you have taken the LS series, there will be some themes that are extremely similar to LS7B (Hardy-Weinberg, genetics, etc) and ecology as well. I didn't bother taking the optional final because for Professor Wood, the breakdown was an 84%+ was an A and had scored a 99 on the midterm.

Please keep in mind that this review is in the context of the circumstances of this quarter! Overall, a great class and I learned to appreciate and love primates.