Professor Anjum is interesting. She has a very cool background and speaks like 7 languages. I enjoyed watching her lectures, but sometimes I felt that we didn't go into enough detail on the material for me to fully grasp, but I had a positive experience. She also had us do a project that included a presentation and a proposal. I feel that helped me understand international and development a lot more. Both our exams were written and we had a couple of days to a week to work on them.

Professor Anjum is an amazing professor who truly cares about her students and their success. The class material is really interesting and the workload isn't bad at all. The final project was sort of lengthy but helps you understand more about international development. Take her if you can, you won't regret it!

Writing this years later but I remember a lot of students loved the professor . . . I was not one of those people. Not to be over the top, but I felt like this class was SUPER dumbed down. I finished each test in under ten minutes and I also felt like the lectures were very basic. Also, Professor Anjum is definitely was the type of professor who is young so tries to connect with students and joke along with them, this didn't sit well with me, I felt like a high schooler. The same quarter I took Global Studies 1 with Professor Potts and learned way way more.

Erica is a great professor! Her lectures were very engaging, discussions were helpful, and even though there were a lot of readings, it was all very interesting and useful for the project/paper/presentation. The midterm and final were pretty easy, just going through key concepts and the study guide is enough. The TA's were awesome and they all knew what they were talking about which made it really easy to ask for help or to clarify anything. We had around 5 guest lecturers and their work was very impressive and there were even opportunities to speak to them after to class to discuss working with them. The project and paper was probably the most difficult part of this class and it wasn't even that hard as long as you did everything on time. Highly recommend this class!

Wow! Talk about a garbage course with a totally inexperienced, unknowledgeable "professor." Erica Anjum, as she boringly goes through her lecture material, will spout sweeping generalizations and utter nonsense that can be easily disproven with a 5 minute rebuttal of facts. Yes, if you are one of those wide-eyed, immature college students that agrees with everything a lecturer spews, then you'll probably think this is a great course. Otherwise, if you have any REAL and authentic life experience outside the ivory walls of UCLA, you will quickly realize this course is rife with simplistic contrivances, totally circular logic, and utter BS fabrications based on biased opinions.
This so-called professor is a complete embarrassment to the Socratic method-- she is teaching what she wants you to think, not HOW to think independently to question the things being told and to look beyond the obvious. Shameful.

Okay so I actually took this class with Professor Hannah Appel but she wasn't on here so I'll just put this here!

I LOVED this class. This was my first experience with an international development studies class as an IDS major, and it helped me decide that this is what I want to major in. We learned all about systems of global injustice and why the world is the way it is right now. It was really interesting!!

Also, the workload was super chill. We had one 200-300 ish page book as our textbook, The Divide by Jason Hickel, and it was a pretty easy read! We also had occasional other readings, but it was mainly the one book. No tests, just a four question short answer midterm, a group presentation project, and a final reflection!

My TA was Arjun Krishna and they were super nice and helpful! Participation in discussion section was mandatory though! Overall amazing class, take it!!!!!

30% discussion section participation
20% midterm short answer
30% midterm project
20% final reflection paper

She is a wonderful, engaging professor. I will check every quarter to see if she is teaching another class that I can take.

Professor Anjum is a really cool, understanding person. I feel like starting this review with that because I really liked her but sometimes did not understand where she was going with lectures. Some more direction would have been appreciated. That being said, the project that we did was AMAZING for getting me to understand international development and how to actually plan a development project. Also, I liked how the professor formatted the midterm and final. You could really answer the questions in a unique way instead of within a tight mold, and as long as you had the right material weaved in there you'd get the points. The professor and TAs were also very accommodating given the circumstances, which I appreciated greatly.

Professor Anjum is very knowledgeable in her field. You can easily start a conversation with her and learn a lot from it. She records the lectures and posts the slides after the class. Her lectures are very interactive and interesting. Attendance to the lectures is totally optional. We had readings (which are mostly not too long), videos, and podcasts to do before meeting during the discussion sessions. The material is very interesting and engaging. Attendance and participation during the sessions count for 20% of your grade, the midterm is another 20%, the report is also 20%, the presentation is 15%, and the final is 25%. Her exams are very open-ended in the sense that there is no wrong answer, so as long as you address the essay prompts nicely with some evidence, you will get a good grade. We had review sessions before the exams, and that was very helpful because we got a chance to ask questions and get clarifications. Having the opportunity to listen to the recordings after the prompts were given was also very helpful because most of the time the answers are given during the lecture, and other times they are in the readings. I do not think that this class is hard or tricky in any way. The class also included a group project and you are given 8 weeks to prepare for it. You have to submit a draft, then the final project, and present it during the session. It was stressful because communication during the pandemic is hard and not everyone is responsive and responsible, but the TA (Naiha) is very nice and helps to solve the issues right away. The professor has office hours by appointments only and she gives each student 30 minutes to ask questions individually and discuss the material. I love Professor Erica Anjum and I would definitely take more courses with her!

Professor Anjum is the best! She gives very engaging lectures, has a great sense of humor, and is quite understanding. I took IDS 120 during Spring 2020 and I kind of expected to have learned most of this already, but boy was I wrong! Taking this class solidified that I will (hopefully) be an IDS major!

The workload is reasonable and Professor Anjum generously gave extensions to us. The group project was a little bit stressful, but it ended up fine. Just keep up on the readings, watch the lectures, and you should be fine.

TLDR; TAKE THIS CLASS!!!