The class is out of 1000 points, and its breakdown is:
Midterm Exams (2) 300 pts (150 pts each)
Discussion participation (10) 150 pts
Discussion assignments (5) 250 pts (50 pts each)
Final Exam 300 pts
There is also up to 34 points of extra credit

The midterms are broken down into about 24 MC, 20 T/F, and 4 FRQs. The MC and the T/F were straightforward; sometimes you might find one that was worded weird, which might cause an issue, but overall, they were fair and manageable. If you complete both of them and get at least a 58% on both, then your lowest score is replaced by the highest MT score. The midterms were both online, and you were given 2.5 hrs to do them, and it's all open notes.

The final was longer, 4 hours and about 89 questions. In this case, it was 40 T/F, 44MC, and 5 FRQs. It was also open note.s

In discussions, you will go over the paper for the week. You must read the paper before going to the discussion, and then you will talk about the paper and its figures. This is where the participation comes in. After the discussion, you need to write a report about it. It's normally between 3-4 questions, and we were told that the report should not be longer than 2 pagemeaninging your answers must be concise and to the point. As long as you turn in all of them in time, then your lowest score will be replaced by your second-lowest score. There are 5 papers in total, resulting in 5 reports. Discussions are mandatory, and you are only allowed to miss one.e

You do not need to attend class; however, he will have Iclicker questions throughout the class. If you answer anything, you will get half a point. If you answer correctly, you will get 1 point for every question.

Farmer is a good professor, his slides were well organized and easy to comprehend considering the very dense topics, the only bad quality is that sometimes he will talk too fast, making it harder to write notes or fully understand what he is trying to teach, but this does not happen too often

I was definitely scared coming into this class, especially since Dr Farmer described DevBio as applied cell and molecular bio and I hadn't taken 165A or 144 yet. But it was definitely not as bad as I was expecting, and I even started to love this class. The material can definitely get confusing sometimes, especially with the different pathways and stuff, but Dr Farmer definitely does his best to explain it well and isn't scared to take time in class to answer students' questions in depth. I took 138 at the same time as 165A, and they actually both complement each other very well so don't be worried if you have to take them together. Overall very glad I took this class/prof!

Grading:
2 Midterms 30% (lowest score dropped; online and open-note, were a bit tricky but pretty fair and he adds points to everyone's score if the average isn't about 85%)
Discussion Participation 15% (you read 5 papers for discussion throughout the quarter and in section break into groups to talk about them, and get your points by just explaining a figure or two with your group, very easy/chill)
Discussion Assignments (answer 3-4 pretty simple questions about each of the papers; lowest score replaced with second-lowest)
Final Exam 30% (same as midterms, online/open-note)
+ a bit of iClicker and prof evaluation extra credit