Granted this was online Zoom quarter of spring 2020, and all students were given full 200 points on the final. Deb Pires is a very good teacher. She really tries to make sure each student learns and understand the material and will go out of her way to help you with any questions. She definitely listens to her students concerns and is very supportive overall. Although the tests were difficult, LS7B is not that difficult if you study the material well enough. Her lectures are clear and interesting. Very passionate and nice lady highly recommend taking this class with Deb.

I honestly enjoyed having Deb as a professor more than I thought I would after initially reading some of these reviews. This quarter was unique because it was online, but Deb (along with Pham) was very accommodating and nice to her students. Both would hold extra office hours to make up for the suboptimal online learning environment, which I think was quite nice of them.
In terms of work/exams, LS 7B can definitely be a bit dry if evolution and ecology are not your thing. I definitely struggled more in 7B than in 7A, and thought the midterms for this class were hard. Midterm 1 was a time crunch and Midterm 2 had a lot of ambiguous questions that required some lucky guessing. Overall though, this class is pretty standard so it shouldn't matter much who your professor is.

During the class she would mess on up on her clickers and confuse people anymore. When people asked questions she wouldn't really answer them or like explain the process which made her seem even worse. Honestly, because the series is so standardized it doesn't matter what professor you have, but if you have the option of someone else might as well go with someone else.

After reading all the Bruinwalk reviews, I was quite dreading this class. Either Pires has gotten significantly better or y'all are just really bitter. Yes Launchpad/ clickers/ mandatory discussions/useless labs make the class annoying but Pires herself as an instructor is not even close to awful. She showed us entertaining videos, put a lot of cat pictures in her slides, and made jokes that were actually funny sometimes.
I did not have to work very hard for an A, all the points from participation/attendance really help your grade if you just do them and bear through discussion/"lab". The tests can be confusing in typical LS style but I barely studied (talking like 3 or 4 hours total over the entire quarter, mostly on the final) and did really well on them, biology is my best science but if its not yours then pay attention and actually study. Lots of people complain about how difficult the class is because they skip through Launchpad and talk during lecture.
The class is not as bad as people say... more tedious than anything else and Pires is a decent instructor.

It's the 7 series. Lectures don't matter, you have to teach yourself the material through launchpad and just practice. The tests aren't really anything like the PEQ's, and the Pedigree problems on midterm one were really tough. Pires isn't super lenient when it comes to unclear wording of midterm questions. Lowkey the 7 series just needs to chill out, they have such a stick up their butt.

I came into the class thinking that 7B would be very manageable. Turns out it was the complete opposite. Pires has a very condescending tone, and often would just start the clicker timers without telling the class, often not even trying to calm the class down. Her clicker questions were nothing compared to the difficulty of the midterms. The final seemed a bit more fair, but she had already wrecked all of us by then. 7B honestly ruined my view of ecology and genetics. I would avoid taking it with Pires if possible, but most likely you would have no choice. Just overstudy pedigrees and expect the midterms to be long and hard.

Everything the other reviews have said about Professor Pires and this class is still relevant. The material itself is not difficult, but the execution of her lectures and exams are awful. You can literally get by from only doing all the launchpad work and do well in the class, but participation is tracked by clicker points and is sadly required. Labs are also a requirement and just busywork. I also agree that midterms 1 and 2 are awful in their own way, and because Pires refuses to review her tests for mistakes or ask her TAs to check for her, the vagueness and probable misinterpretation of the test questions is just an added insult to injury.
However, Pires is somewhat lenient on the grading because although I mainly got B's on my tests, I still ended up with an A in the class. She also graciously offered to hold a review session for the final, but at 7AM and as a pretty useless Q&A session on simple test-taking strategies. If that doesn't tell you how little she cares if you succeed or not, then I don't know what else to tell you. Don't take the class with Pires if you can't help it.

I really disliked this class, which was surprising to me given what I heard going in. I decided to take Pires as she was rated hirer than Gilbert, the only alternative, bust was very disappointed in her and the class. Although the information and course content was fairly interesting and familiar to me based on my AP Bio experience, her teaching style, behavior, and class organization made the class a constant source of stress. The entire class lecture was mostly filled with clicker questions that were a challenging, but helpful source of exam preparation. However, every time we got to a difficult clicker question where over half the class got the answer wrong, Dr. Pires did not take the time to explain the correct and incorrect answers but rather ignored our confusion and continued ahead. This disregard for students was something I noticed throughout the course as Dr. Pires was rude and condescending toward student questions, something that was reflective in her office hours and review sessions being almost empty as they were not helpful at all. The first midterm was the most difficult of the three exams, all of which were redesigned this year and not seen by anyone but Dr. Pires. This made learning from my mistakes especially difficult as the TAs we reviewed the exams with often had little more ability to dissect the confusing and ambiguous questions than we did. The discussions themselves were a further waste of our time as we needlessly were required to show up in full PPE for two hours while we completed a worksheet that often did not help further my understanding of course content. The lack of autonomy given to TAs in these sections was a huge loss to students as my TA Mars was a such a great resource when we had the opportunity to ask questions and hear her go over concepts. I was further disappointed by the lack of transparency regarding how grades were distributed as well. Overall, I would not recommend taking this class with Pires, but if you do, the key to doing as well as I could at least for me was focusing on the CLC worksheets, clicker questions, TA office hours, and launchpad practice exam questions as those were the most helpful resources.

After taking 7B with Debra, I realized how much I didn't particularly enjoy ecological and evolutionary biology (even though I loved it in high school). The class itself is challenging. I heard that 7B was the easiest in the 7 series, but her midterms and final were to me, very difficult. This first midterm had these extremely confusing pedigrees, and many students including myself came out feeling blindsided. Fortunately, she discarded 2 questions. The second midterm and final were hard in that the questions were often vague and there were answer choices that could be argued to be correct. Debra herself is pretty condescending. She claims she wants us to collaborate and explain concepts to each other because sometimes the way she explains it is too "complicated" for our pleb minds to wrap around. However, I will say that she is pretty fair in grading, and knows the content pretty well. In addition, there are a bunch of buffer points which help your grade. I think everyone can agree the 7 series is tedious and strange, so to an extent, the professor doesn't matter too much.

First, people tend to say this is the "easiest" life science course in the series, but I disagree. I think it's in par with the LS series especially considering that many of the ecology questions are interpretation questions rather than exact answers. The content of LS7B may be a hit or miss depending on your preferences. I personally find the class boring since I'm not to interested in ecology or genetics, so I was not too motivated.

I did mediocre or bad on both midterms, like a little below average and this freaked me out because I used to get 90s in LS7A. I studied a lot for the first midterm but I think I overburnt myself. I was very tired and made really silly mistakes on the actual midterm. I would recommend doing many genetics problems for the first midterm, but not excessively. For the second midterm, I think vocabulary and explaining key concepts is important. Make sure you can talk and explain a concept without looking at your notes. I did both of this things for the final, and I ended up doing fairly well, pulling myself to A- instead of a B+.

Overall, I recommend you attend all labs, get all the clicker questions, do all of the launchpad, and submit the evaluations to get the easy points. Like the entire LS series, you teach yourself everything through launchpad. Even if you did well on the course study a lot for the final since it can go both ways, hurt you or help you.

As for the instructor, I've had Pires for both LS7A and LS7B. She's an alright professor, but she tries to be intimidating and direct. The lectures were pretty boring , but I attended all of them for the clicker points (and the clicker questions help you study as well). I never went to her office hours because I had class, but if you do so I think she starts being a little nicer to you. She was rude to me and my TA when we interacted with her, but I don't really care enough. Sometimes when people asked her questions during her reviews, she would straight up say "I don't know ask me something else." She's not an encouraging professor, but I just focused on the work rather than the instructor.