Y'all need to chill on Deb.

I came in this class expecting the absolute worst on her because everyone I knew had terrible things. And in all honesty, this class turned out to be better than everything that I have heard on her. In addition, I asked a lot of my classmates in the discussion about what they thought of her and they were all positive too and not even one person I talked to had harsh, negative things to say.

Most people who have taken LS 7B have most likely taken 7A so the format is the same.
The course is graded based on two midterms (120 points each), Launchpad activities (150 points total), Clickers (75 points w/ 3 free clicker days), Lab Section (150 points), and an easy survey that the LS core makes you complete (10 points) including, and the Final (200 points).

Because the LS series has a flipped classroom style of learning, students do most of their learning on Launchpad anyway, therefore, I personally do not think who you have as a professor matters. Therefore, I believe how well you do in these classes depends on how well you can self-study on your own. The professor does not matter too much but I still think Deb was still good to have as a teacher.

Deb just goes through clickers (like the rest of the 7B professors) and explains them and while some clickers were confusing, she did a good job explaining them. Not only that, she always had a smile on her face and she remembered a lot of students who came to lecture. She would always stop to make conversation and try to talk to a lot of people about their lives. Not too many know this, but sometimes when students asked questions in class and she would ask them to say the question out loud for the rest of the class to hear, she would personally go back and apologize to that student and say that they had a good question and it was a good learning opportunity for everyone. I used to email Deb sometimes for random questions and she emailed almost immediately or in less than 24 hours. Knowing how busy she is and how many emails she gets from all the courses she teaches, it's nice to know that you are not completely insignificant.

She gave opportunities for extra credit too. There were multiple surveys given out by the LS core throughout the quarter and they at most took me 3-4 min to complete and each survey was an extra 2 points. So you had an opportunity to earn 8 extra credit points (4 surveys).

I am writing this review because I in no way deserved an A in this course. I did mediocre on my midterms and not too well on my final. However, when I looked at my final grade, I saw that I received an A. When I punched in the numbers for my grade it turned out even with doing all the extra credit, I would not have made it but Deb decided to curve everyone up a bit and that is how I received an A instead of an A-. Guys, taking Deb will not screw you. I thought she was great and I believe people should take a chance.

Anyone who claims this class is impossible or that the test questions are unfair is not studying correctly i assure you. I attended literally not even a third of the lectures this entire quarter (gave my clicker to my friend for the rest) and did all the launchpad quizzes by using quizlet. I didn't do a single launchpad reading. All I did was watch the bruincasted lectures at 2x speed and write notes down onto the lecture notes and clicker questions. I studied for both midterms no more than 2 days in advance (meaning I began even looking at the material at all) and I got a 98 and a 97. Yes the tests are difficult, but I promise you if you quite literally just take notes from the lectures and just read the slides/clicker questions you'll sail by without a problem.

I absolutely despised this class dont be fooled by my semi-okay grade (I definitely could have done better). The main problem with this class is the exams, everything else is difficult but manageable. The exams are on average graded 20% incorrectly which can literally tank your grade even if you knew every part of the material. Plus there are 6 total exams, and they dont give you your answers back after, so you will never learn how to Improve. I dont think this is a specific thing to Pires class, I just found her class style unengaging, boring and incredibly unhelpful though she is nice (enough). A lot of other reviews talk about this but yes you teach the material to yourself, then go to lecture to clarify, which in theory would be great and kind of is EXCEPT no amount of understanding of the material is enough for the exams. If you really really love biology not just think you do you will probably be okay, but be prepared to work the hardest you've ever worked and still barely scrape by! All in all hate the 7 series with a passion and they should get rid of it

This class was quite meh in my opinion. I lowkey did not pay attention to lecture at all because I found her a little boring, but it wasn't the most boring class ever (she does have some interesting stories she tells). Be warned that the first midterm (individual part) tends to be an ego-check - most people don't do that well, but if you do fine on the final and the group parts of the tests you will be okay. (My grades were 70, 85, 85 on individual midterm 1, 2, and final respectively, but I still ended with an A!)
I used the slides to study, but they're honestly quite janky (the Clickers are for some reason a separate slideshow so you need to cross reference the slides sometimes). One other problem I have is that they post practice tests, but then no answers to those tests, forcing you to use campuswire/office hours to see if you got the answers right - very pointless in my opinion.

Most of my issues with the course don't lie with Dr. Pires directly, but rather the structure of the LS 7 series as a whole. Pires does a solid job explaining concepts in lecture, especially when she walks through clicker questions. Her rationale is really easy to follow, and you definitely never feel belittled for messing up. If anything, Pires' approach towards and passion for teaching really shines, and makes the course somewhat tolerable.

That being said, I wouldn't say this course was enjoyable at all. The biggest issue with the course is the tests. Many of the questions are worded confusingly, and can trip you up no matter how well prepared you felt or how much you studied. At some point, the tests were not about "how much do you know about the subject and how well can you apply it." Instead, they felt gimmicky, and were a better metric of how well you can read the intent of a question that has multiple, equally valid interpretations. It was tiresome to deal with this, and caused a lot of unnecessary anguish. And of course, in typical LS 7 series fashion, most of the actual learning is done outside of class, whereas class is more dedicated to just reviewing.

TL;DR - this course's structure is frustrating at best, but if you have to take it, Pires is a very solid professor to take it with.

I am just glad I'm free.

Prof Pires, as an instructor, is perfectly alright. Her lectures were pretty enjoyable, with the caveat that they were absolutely useless in terms of succeeding in the class.

The 7 series is genuinely baffling to me in how inefficient and uninteresting it chooses to be in how it teaches students lower division biology. The group phases are incredibly inconvenient in terms of scheduling and not at all conducive to my learning. As with the whole series, I disliked 7B's emphasis on learning how to answer specifically worded questions using "tricks" rather than being tested on actual course content learning. Overall, I do not think this course was useful for my learning and even though I had some interest in the subjects going in, I have come out of this course incredibly disinterested in any of the content due to the curriculum structure.

TDLR: Pires is perfectly alright as a lecturer. It just doesn't really matter because 7B's curriculum is awful regardless.

Many people hate Deb, and some defend her. Many people have never spoken to her once. I'm not her best friend, but I appreciate her more now. People say that (1) the tests are tricky, that (2) you don't get to see the tests, and that (3) it feels like there's no study method that works. That's what I thought for 8 out of the 10 weeks of the quarter (which is why I f'ed up for the first two midterms).

All of those things are avoidable. (1) It seems like there's no rhyme or reason to the questions. I literally have not yelled or sworn more from a class. Now, how do you avoid that? GO TO OFFICE HOURS. I know you're reading this damn review thinking you're not going to go to OHs and that you'll just "lock-in". Let me tell you. Go ahead and reread the textbook, redo the iClickers, and redo the PEQs a hundred times over. That's what I did, and I got cooked. Every word in a 7B question has weight, and many of those words are jargon you learn in class. (For example, if a question says that there's two populations of wolves and you compare them thinking that they're directly interacting, you're getting the question wrong. A population is within a geographic area, which means the wolves from two populations are separated, so you can't make conclusions.) Takeaway: what are you going to do in OHs? You're going to make sure you UNDERSTAND the 7B version of every vocabulary word and how they're interpreted in questions. Confused about an iClicker or the difference between two vocab words? ASK. Don't brush it under the rug because it'll come back to haunt you.

(2) That brings me to the damn tests. It's true you can't SEE the questions. But guess what happened when I went to OHs. "I got Question 3 wrong. I had Version #2." Guess what Deb did. "Oh, that was the one asking you to calculate X, with Y figure from the group phase. What answer did you put? Oh, students who put that made this mistake." People saying that you can't learn from the tests are wrong. JUST GO TO OFFICE HOURS. Sometimes you don't get everything, but I promise that you'll learn. Everybody gets the same questions wrong, which means that Deb answers the same questions again and again in OHs. Students come in pissed and upset after scoring poorly, asking the same damn questions from the MT that she's answered repeatedly for the past few days. (I understand where you're coming from. I was unbelievably frustrated too.) Sometimes, she's tired and you can feel it. Just give her grace.

(3) Here are my biggest studying takeaways. You don't need to read the textbook as thoroughly as you did in 7A. Get the general concepts and focus on the definitions. Spend your time focusing on the definitions and how the definitions and concepts are interpreted in iClickers and THROUGH WHAT DEB SAYS. Lectures are important because she speaks from a 7B perspective. Yes, still redo all the iClickers and PEQs. GO TO OFFICE HOURS.

I hope this was helpful. Biggest, fattest takeaway that I hope you worship with all your might while you take this class: GO TO OFFICE HOURS AND UNDERSTAND THE VOCABULARY. Lastly, if you're thinking about whether to take the class under Deb or someone else, I'd recommend Deb. She's a veteran at 7B material, which means that all her answers will tell you correctly how to interpret things in this class.

Don't let yourself get overwhelmed and give up because you can do it. I'm not just saying that to decorate this review. You got this.

I just wanted to say that the fact that we aren’t allowed to see our old individual phase exams is genuinely detrimental to our grades not just because you can’t study what you got wrong, but because they are so often wrong at grading, and they wouldn’t get called out for it unless we got to see the exam. Just to recap:

Group Phase I- 1/8 questions were regraded Group Phase II- 2/8 questions were regraded very heavily debated exam, probably the worst written exam I’ve ever taken Group Phase III- 0/8 as of yet

This might seem like not a big deal but if you take the average percentages of regrades that’s about 19% of every exam being regraded (and that’s just out of 8 question exams!!!!!!) so that means on any given final there is a chance that almost 20% of the answer key is incorrect. For the final that would mean that about 8 questions are incorrect. If you got all of the questions right on the final but 8 were graded incorrectly, that’s an 80%. Plus you have to think about the fact that that’s for 8 question exams, imagine how many could be wrong on a FORTY question exam. Now thinking about the last individual phase- from what I understand SO many people left that exam feeling like they had finally done well (including myself). Personally I’m one of those people who leaves an exam and immediately starts checking my answers with google and in retrospect I could probably think of 1 or 2 questions I got wrong, and I felt pretty good about my answers. Then the grades come back and I got a 70%! Okay, sure! Maybe it’s just because I’m bad at biology which I definitely am but who’s to say it’s not because I got 1 or 2 wrong and 4 were graded wrong (19% of 20 is about 4, which follows their usual grading pattern). I guess we’ll never know!!! Not to mention the fact that the concept of true or false is simply not scientific!!!!!!!! I know they say not to “consider unlikely scenarios” but what does that entail. Don’t beat urself up over bad scores in 7B they did that TO you not you to yourself and b) the testing element of this class is inherently faulty, and as a result of that they should be doing everything they can to make sure we know what they are looking for LIKE GIVING US OUR EXAMS BACK.

Tough class with more tricky questions compared to 7A. One of the issues with this class is that you're not allowed to see the question what you got wrong on the midterms and you have to go to office hours. Despite multiple attempts to address concerns via Campuswire and emails, the LS department ignored them. It is pretty clear the LS dept doesn't care and doesn't plan on changing. Another major problem is that there just isn't enough problems and practice to do. You can study for hours but it's all up to whether or not the questions are convoluted or not. Your amount of studying probably will not reflect the expected grade you got, you'll walk out thinking you did well but when grades come out, its the opposite. Midterm averages were very low, probably around a low D.
She is friendly, but I didn't find her teaching style good, Aguillon is even worse and it didn't make it better that this class was uninteresting to me. Workload is very manageable and so is the end of quarter lab project. Good luck with this class.