Cool class, cool professor, easy GE. If you attend the lectures (which are pretty fun and interesting) and pay attention, it should be pretty easy. The labs are super easy too, if you don't know something you can just ask the TA and they pretty much tell you the answer. The class averages were always above 90%. If you do the readings and use the study guide, you should do well on the midterm and final. I stopped doing the readings after the midterm and still managed to get a 97% on the final. I would say the most important part is to attend lecture, as the slides don't have any words on them so you can't understand them if you missed the lecture. If you do that, it should be an easy A.

Took this class a GE and it really was not that bad. Some of her lectures are pretty dense, but I think she is a really passionate lecturer so they aren't too bad to sit through.
The midterms and tests were honestly pretty tricky. I barely studied, just reviewed my notes from lectures (which I attended most) and made sure I knew the dinosaur names which she provided in a study guide. I also did not do a single reading, and was able to get an A on the midterm and B+ on the final.
Labs are pretty easy and you can often finish early and leave. There is one group project but that is also pretty easy, and annoying to do if anything.
The class is actually pretty fun- if you are at all interested in dinosaurs, you will probably leave knowing a little too much about them. Not the easiest GE cause the midterm and final might be stressful, but definitely on the easy spectrum.

I took this class as a GE and was hoping to do well in it. Professor Brown is a sweet woman, but I found the lectures kind of dull and hard to sit through. She moves through the slides quite quickly; they are posted on CCLE, but most of the slides don't have any words, just pictures. I didn't end up going to many of the lectures, because I was unable to pay good attention in them & it was a little inconvenient for me to walk all the way over to CS at that time of my day.

The labs were alright. I got high As on all of them, but that was probably because I worked in a group of people and we asked our TA for help quite often. Each lab is a packet of questions that require looking at fossils or photos. There was one group project that was a lab grade, and it was basically to make a diorama of life in the Jurassic; it was quite a pain to complete, because it required time spent outside of lab, physically building a project. However, my group of 3 finished it in a day, and received a 100% on it. There are also weekly quizzes on CCLE. They're pretty easy because there are unlimited retakes. One quiz grade was dropped at the end of the quarter.

The midterm and final were kind of tricky. Granted, I didn't go to all of the lectures, but I spent a while studying for each. Professor Brown posted study guides for both, and a lot of the class collaborated on the guides. The midterm contained short answers, while the final did not. These tests were not as easy as I expected them to be for a GE.

I was kind of annoyed at having to buy the textbooks; they were not cheap, and I couldn't find anyone who was selling them as used. Personally, I think they are totally not necessary. Overall, if you are genuinely interested in the topic, this class will probably be easy to do well in. However, if you are just looking to get the physical science GE over with (and aren't really too interested in the topic), be prepared to put in a little more effort than you would likely expect.

While it's true that this GE isn't quite as easy as it once was (no longer a guaranteed A now), it still shouldn't be that hard to get an A as long as you are reasonably keeping on top of things, or aren't falling too far behind. Professor Brown's lectures I ended up not going to after the midterm, because she posts all the slides online and everything is straight from the slides. One caveat, however, is guest lectures, as they don't post the guest lecture slides online so it's still a good idea to go to those. She talks pretty fast but pretty clearly during lecture, and answers questions quite effectively.
In labs, there were 7 for us this quarter. Labs were pretty fun, as you could work with a group (if you chose to do so), and you complete a packet while you look at fossils. Some TAs are more strict about lab grades than others; my TA, Erik Weidner, was pretty awesome in that he basically said "I'm here if you want all the right answers". If you were stuck on a problem, don't be afraid to ask your TA, especially since they don't expect you to become a world class paleontologist on the first day. As the labs go by, you start getting faster and more familiar with the packet, and start leaving the labs earlier and earlier. There is one group lab, where you work together to recreate a Jurassic environment (Solnhofen Limestone), and it seems every group in my lab section got an A for that one (just be creative, there were things from dioramas to baseball cards to posters).
We had two exams, one midterm and one final. The midterm consisted of 39 multiple choice and 11 points worth of short answer, and honestly it wasn't that bad (provided you do the readings and were somewhat staying on top of things). The final consisted of just 70 multiple choice questions, and that wasn't half bad (although the average was around 52/70, but the class has a slight curve, so you're alright). I will say however that the grades took so long for our TA to upload. We didn't get the midterm short answer grade until AFTER taking the final exam, while the final exam grades came in literally around the last hours of the deadline.
In terms of grading, your grade consisted of 10% weekly online quizzes (CCLE based), 25% labs, 30% midterm, and 35% final. The weekly online quizzes should be guaranteed points, as they're based on the reading and you have UNLIMITED attempts (taking the highest score). Take them seriously though, as some of those problems do show up on the final exam/midterm. Also, there were two extra credit opportunities for us this quarter, with one being to test out a paleontology themed board game, and the second was completing a trip by going to the NHM (natural history museum of LA county), with both providing the opportunity to replace your lowest lab grade with 100/100. I'd say that overall, this class can be interesting (I found the section on T-Rex particularly so), and with a small amount of work, you should be able to get an A too.

At a first glance this class might seem like an easy A but it definitely does require more work than anticipated. Professor Brown is engaging during her lectures and makes the content enjoyable to learn, but she does tend to rush through her slides a bit. The labs were very hands-on and pretty cool as well; every week you complete a packet with questions about fossils that you examine. We had a small project due in lab towards the end of the quarter but it was simple. The weekly online quizzes were not bad and you can retake them as many times as you want. The midterm was mostly multiple choice and a few short answer questions while the final was entirely multiple choice. Brown provides study guides for both and I found them to be pretty useful. I would recommend this class to anyone looking for an interesting GE, but be ready to put in the effort.

Lectures had a ton of information to know but a review guide is given for both the midterm and the final. Students this year collaborated to finish the guide together which helped everyone study. Midterm was multiple choice and a few short answers while the final was entirely multiple choice. As long as you study the information it shouldn't be that bad. The lab for this class was scheduled to be around two hours but if you work with people to get the work done early you can leave early as well. Labs were every week and the lowest score could be replaced with a museum trip.