I did not like this class. The content itself was okay (although confusing at times), but I did not like how he taught. He uses slides, but only for images; in other words, he does not have words on his slides, and you are required to listen to him lecture for an hour and fifteen minutes straight. At some point, you are bound to doze off during an hour and fifteen minute lecture, and when you stop listening for only a minute, it’s hard to figure out where you are in the lecture. Obviously, this is subjective, and some people may like how Posner teaches. Personally, I just do not do well with straight listening, so I didn’t have the best time. Aside from that, you can tell that Posner is a good guy and very clearly loves to teach. 
Here’s the grading breakdown:
MIDTERM ONE: worth 25% of your grade. The first midterm is an in-class bluebook exam where you identify 6 terms. Basically, Posner wants you to say what the term is and the importance of the term in the context of the course. Posner will provide a list of roughly 30-40 terms a week before the exam and you will study the terms on that list. On the exam day, Posner hands out a paper with 8 terms on it. Of those 8 terms, you pick 6 terms and identify them. 
MIDTERM TWO: worth 25% of your grade. The second midterm is given a week after the first midterm. This midterm is a take home essay and is supposed to be around 5 pages. Posner will post a prompt, and you have 30 hours to complete the midterm. 
FINAL: worth 35% of your grade. A 50-question multiple choice scantron exam. 2/3 of the questions involve content from the second half of the quarter, and 1/3 of questions involve content from the first half of the quarter. PLEASE NOTE — Posner changed the exam format, given that our TAs were striking. Originally, the final exam was going to be a bluebook exam where we were to identify 4-5 terms (similar to the first midterm), answer 2 short answer questions, and answer 1 essay question. If you take this class, you will most likely NOT have the multiple choice final exam; you will probably have the bluebook exam that was originally scheduled before the strike ensued. 
PARTICIPATION AND ATTENDANCE: worth 15% of your grade. This grade depends on your TA. My TA, Paul Bahk, graded this with 10% being actual attendance and 5% being if you participated in the discussion sections. The participation and attendance split will vary depending on your TA.
My biggest complaint about this class was that when Posner gave out the midterm and final terms, a lot of the terms were ones we hadn’t gone over yet. Our classes were Tuesdays and Thursdays, so he would post the terms list on BruinLearn/Canvas on the Tuesday before class, and he would talk about new terms that would be on our midterm and final the Tuesday and Thursday before the exam date. It’s difficult to study terms when you have not learned them yet, and, in my opinion, a little unfair to test us on terms we learned less than 7 days ago. 
To sum it up, I did not like this course. The Bruinwalk reviews made the class seem easy, but it was much more difficult than anticipated. Posner assigns many readings and often introduces 2-4 new terms per lecture. Although this class is labeled as a Methods and Models course, it is more of an International Relations course. If you like IR courses, then you will like this course. If you don’t like IR courses, you will probably not enjoy this class.

Dont take this class if you are looking for an easy polsci class. The only plus about this class is that there are no homework assignments but honestly they would have been helpful to manage your grade. Posner writes nothing on his slides and assigns too many readings. If you do not pay attention to every detail of the lecture, you won't have any way of learning it because he doesn't post recordings either. Both him and the TAs grade exams way too hard and expect you to be an expert and on point about everything that is taught. If you have Meghan Cox as Ta, she will grade way too harshly. The content was interesting but there was little leeway to improve anything in this class.

Professor spews the most neoliberal, pro-capitalist, pro-colonial approach to international development that I have ever heard. TA Daniel Carnahan was really self absorbed and graded way harder than the other TAs- if you have him switch out.

Posner lectures really well and his explanations make even the more complex readings very digestible (highly recommend going to lecture first before doing the readings for this reason). There were no required textbooks which was really nice. All readings are posted and there's a decent amount some weeks, but it's never unmanageable.

I thought that the exams were really fair. The midterm was a take-home essay answering a prompt which asks you to draw on material from throughout the course. The other portion was just answering a few ID terms in class, and all potential ID terms are given ahead of time. The final was similar, except it was all in class and there was an additional portion of FRQs.

I was a little concerned going into this class because I had Jacques as my TA and saw the negative reviews about him from previous quarters, but Jacques was a great TA this quarter! He had us work together during discussions to identify key points of readings, help each other with ID terms before exams, and he'd give us exam pointers as well as detailed explanations about more difficult concepts.

Overall highly recommend this class - workload and exams are reasonable and the material itself is super interesting.

I wasn't initially sure I would like the class because I was not the most interested in the subject, but Posner does a great job of breaking extremely complex subject matters down to make them understandable. The grade consisted of a midterm (half of it was term ID's, the other half was a take-home essay, it was worth 1/2 of the final grade), a final (35% of grade, all in person), and discussion participation (15%). The tests were intimidating initially but as long as you study the terms he gives you ahead of time, they should be a breeze.

This class was okay at best. Prof. Posner caught COVID and the class was administered on ZOOM. As my fellow peers have stated, the TA you end up with matters, as they are the ones who will grade your midterm and final exam. My advice for you: Avoid TA Jacques Courbe at all costs. He graded us quite harshly in comparison to other TAs. On top of that, he was clearly unprepared for much of the discussion sections. It is ironic that he expected us, the students, to be on top of the weekly readings, yet he himself clearly wasn't. He literally BS'd the summary of many readings during sections -- so much for quality education. Jacques, if you are reading this, DO BETTER. We the students can sense whenever you BS, too, just sayin'.

Two midterms - exam & take home paper (25% each), final exam - but due to Covid it was a take home final (35%). and discussion (15%). My TA did not assign any class work, but graded based on attendance & participation. Professor Posner is an engaging lecturer and the material is easy to digest, he does include a lot of graphs and data in his slides. Posner does hand out study guides prior to each midterm and final. Originally, he did not record lectures, just posted slides, but once he got Covid himself and Covid cases increased, he finally made that decision to record and post it on Bruin Learn. Overall, if you put the work into studying for the exams and attend discussion, it's easy to get a good grade.

I thought the class itself was fine. But your grade depends entirely on your TA. My TA, Jacques, graded very harshly compared to the other three. Super unfair.

Really reasonable testing and workload. Never did the readings and got through the course well. Pretty basic overview of all of the concepts but interesting and pretty easy to follow along to what he's saying. Would recommend taking if you don't want to do busywork and prefer timed tests/essays.

This class's topic was interesting, but the number of readings and the dry lectures made it hard to sit through. the class consisted of two midterms (one in class and one take-home essay) and one final. it was a relatively easy class if you put the work in.