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- Hugh Tad Blair
- PSYCH 115
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Based on 27 Users
TOP TAGS
- Uses Slides
- Tolerates Tardiness
- Needs Textbook
- Is Podcasted
- Tough Tests
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
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Blair is an awful lecturer. He lectures like you are an expert on the topic, and there is so much content and all the knowledge required is so detailed. You essentially have to memorize an entire textbook's worth of content.... and if you're not premed/don't absolutely HAVE to take this class/don't know much science -- don't.
INCREDIBLY dense content
There were weekly quizzes which were testing VERY SPECIFIC parts of UNRELATED textbook chapters. (The reading required for the quiz was on a chapter in the textbook that wasn't covered in class/in the course/completely irrelevant)...
If you're not good at science. Just don't
Be prepared for a Blair, who glazes over slides, and expects you to look at the slides and magically understand the material. Pretty bad teacher sadly, because the class material is actually very interesting.
For the exams, memorize the slides (even the details you think are irrelevant) because his exam questions are extremely detailed.
He's not a helpful guy though - he doesn't support students in their psych endeavors and he's pretty uptight when you ask him for advice.
all in all, okay class. but don't take it if you don't like biology.
Blair doesn't seem to have many updated reviews, so I'll give my two cents on him. I liked the course. The stuff we learned was interesting, and I feel like it's really relevant to stuff you need to know for the MCAT, so really grateful for that. Blair himself...he's not the best professor honestly. He's really nice and tries to make things fair, but here's a few things I didn't like: he's sometimes unclear in his explanations, expects us to know small details on his lecture slides that he sometimes glosses over or doesn't even explain, and very late in posting lecture slides (quite dense, so I found it hard to follow in class without having looked at the material beforehand). He does have a discussion board though, which was helpful I guess, until he stopped responding like halfway through to them until the exam approached. Anyways, he's an okay professor, but I guess out of all the professors that seem to teach this class, he's not a bad choice.
Exams, in my opinion, were overall fair as long as you knew the lecture slides by heart. Look over everything, seriously. But, you can get by if you took classes like LS2 (lots of material retested in this class).
I hated discussion, to be honest. Mostly because the quizzes were difficult, even if you read the whole textbook. Also, one point is literally one percent of your entire grade, so really unfortunate. You do get to drop your lowest grade though, so good luck. Reading took up quite a bit of time, and there's lots of vocab terms to know. Luckily, there was a format to follow I guess. One fill in blank (study bolded vocab terms), and two MCs related to textbook reading. Otherwise, section was fine, and TAs were helpful.
There's a bibliography assignment, which isn't too bad, and there's clicker questions, which he's not really familiar with (first quarter he's done clickers), so if there's issues, he'll be like welp I tried, there'll be more opportunities. Good thing about clickers is you only need a certain amount of points throughout the whole quarter (20 points out of 60 possible). He gave 1 point for right answers, and 1/2 point for any answer, so definitely reachable.
Overall, I liked the class. Professor wasn't super great, but definitely not the worst I've had (everyone has their flaws, so understandable), and his tests were quite fair, so I'm thankful for that. Not much room for error though, so take this class wisely. Good luck!
Dr. Blair was knowledgeable about the material taught in this class, but he often didn't convey that during lecture. He seemed to confuse himself often and would say things like "if you just stare at it for long enough, it'll make sense" when he should have been re-explaining it. He simply reads from his slides. I ultimately stopped going to lecture towards the end because it was a waste of time. I did watch the podcasts just in case he happened to mention something not on the slides (which was rare). He also seemed to focus A LOT on new research related to his own research, which wasn't in the book, which was difficult when you had questions that his explanations didn't clarify.
For the exams, expect to have to regurgitate or know every little detail from any slide he ever gave you. The exams only cover lecture material and are very nit picky. That being said, it is possible to do well on them if you have the time to memorize everything. The quizzes on the other hand are solely based on the reading. They usually focus on the bold vocab words but sometimes the TAs will throw in an odd ball question.
The class is curved to ~20% As, ~30% Bs. Overall, it wasn't a horrible class, but it involved much more memorization than it should have been.
Dr. Blair is highly approachable and helpful. He answers tons of questions on the class discussion board in the days leading up to exams and is good at clarifying concepts. As others have said, there is a lot of memorization -- I zoned out during lecture, but did well on the tests by listening to the podcast files while reading along in the powerpoints and taking notes in the couple of days before each midterm and the final. Weekly quizzes on the textbook chapters; putting in a couple of hours reading the book and taking notes makes those fairly easy. Overall, challenging but not insurmountable course and a really cool professor who knows his stuff and is eager to share his knowledge with you. I found the material very interesting, but that's a more subjective point.
Dr. Blair is super nice, but this is a really hard class. There is a ton of information that you have to be familiar with, but not all of it will be tested on. It kinda sucked that the second midterm was short answer, and he told us the format had changed from 3 questions w/multiple parts to 8 questions right before the exam started :(
Grades consist of 2 midterms, section quizzes, a short bibliography assignment and the final. Section quizzes are mainly vocab from the book, and don't usually appear on exams. Exam questions can be nit-picky, so you better know your stuff, but they mostly come from slides,
Lectures are podcasted and video-recorded. Overall this class will take a ton of effort, and I wish I had known that going in
After the first midterm I realized that going to lecture, even watching the lectures, are pointless. He just reads the slides and for the tests you're expected to regurgitate any of the details that are on them. The tests pick out relatively specific details and aren't representative of all the information you forced yourself to memorize before the exam, but you kind of have to know everything if you hope to do well...or hope you get lucky and chose to study the specific things he decides to put on the exams. The section quizzes are relatively easy, just be sure to study the bolded terms from the book for the chapters that the quiz covers that week. The class isn't necessarily hard, but takes A LOT of time as you have to memorize a ton of information, but it is possible to do well if you're willing to put in the effort.
I also took this class with Blair and Jentsch. I though both of them were extremely smart, motivated, and knowledgeable about the subject. But, if you're a psych major without a strong background in biology, this class is going to be really hard. I've almost finished all of my psych classes and this was easily the hardest psych class that I've taken because of all the memorization that you have to do.
Blair is an awful lecturer. He lectures like you are an expert on the topic, and there is so much content and all the knowledge required is so detailed. You essentially have to memorize an entire textbook's worth of content.... and if you're not premed/don't absolutely HAVE to take this class/don't know much science -- don't.
INCREDIBLY dense content
There were weekly quizzes which were testing VERY SPECIFIC parts of UNRELATED textbook chapters. (The reading required for the quiz was on a chapter in the textbook that wasn't covered in class/in the course/completely irrelevant)...
If you're not good at science. Just don't
Be prepared for a Blair, who glazes over slides, and expects you to look at the slides and magically understand the material. Pretty bad teacher sadly, because the class material is actually very interesting.
For the exams, memorize the slides (even the details you think are irrelevant) because his exam questions are extremely detailed.
He's not a helpful guy though - he doesn't support students in their psych endeavors and he's pretty uptight when you ask him for advice.
all in all, okay class. but don't take it if you don't like biology.
Blair doesn't seem to have many updated reviews, so I'll give my two cents on him. I liked the course. The stuff we learned was interesting, and I feel like it's really relevant to stuff you need to know for the MCAT, so really grateful for that. Blair himself...he's not the best professor honestly. He's really nice and tries to make things fair, but here's a few things I didn't like: he's sometimes unclear in his explanations, expects us to know small details on his lecture slides that he sometimes glosses over or doesn't even explain, and very late in posting lecture slides (quite dense, so I found it hard to follow in class without having looked at the material beforehand). He does have a discussion board though, which was helpful I guess, until he stopped responding like halfway through to them until the exam approached. Anyways, he's an okay professor, but I guess out of all the professors that seem to teach this class, he's not a bad choice.
Exams, in my opinion, were overall fair as long as you knew the lecture slides by heart. Look over everything, seriously. But, you can get by if you took classes like LS2 (lots of material retested in this class).
I hated discussion, to be honest. Mostly because the quizzes were difficult, even if you read the whole textbook. Also, one point is literally one percent of your entire grade, so really unfortunate. You do get to drop your lowest grade though, so good luck. Reading took up quite a bit of time, and there's lots of vocab terms to know. Luckily, there was a format to follow I guess. One fill in blank (study bolded vocab terms), and two MCs related to textbook reading. Otherwise, section was fine, and TAs were helpful.
There's a bibliography assignment, which isn't too bad, and there's clicker questions, which he's not really familiar with (first quarter he's done clickers), so if there's issues, he'll be like welp I tried, there'll be more opportunities. Good thing about clickers is you only need a certain amount of points throughout the whole quarter (20 points out of 60 possible). He gave 1 point for right answers, and 1/2 point for any answer, so definitely reachable.
Overall, I liked the class. Professor wasn't super great, but definitely not the worst I've had (everyone has their flaws, so understandable), and his tests were quite fair, so I'm thankful for that. Not much room for error though, so take this class wisely. Good luck!
Dr. Blair was knowledgeable about the material taught in this class, but he often didn't convey that during lecture. He seemed to confuse himself often and would say things like "if you just stare at it for long enough, it'll make sense" when he should have been re-explaining it. He simply reads from his slides. I ultimately stopped going to lecture towards the end because it was a waste of time. I did watch the podcasts just in case he happened to mention something not on the slides (which was rare). He also seemed to focus A LOT on new research related to his own research, which wasn't in the book, which was difficult when you had questions that his explanations didn't clarify.
For the exams, expect to have to regurgitate or know every little detail from any slide he ever gave you. The exams only cover lecture material and are very nit picky. That being said, it is possible to do well on them if you have the time to memorize everything. The quizzes on the other hand are solely based on the reading. They usually focus on the bold vocab words but sometimes the TAs will throw in an odd ball question.
The class is curved to ~20% As, ~30% Bs. Overall, it wasn't a horrible class, but it involved much more memorization than it should have been.
Dr. Blair is highly approachable and helpful. He answers tons of questions on the class discussion board in the days leading up to exams and is good at clarifying concepts. As others have said, there is a lot of memorization -- I zoned out during lecture, but did well on the tests by listening to the podcast files while reading along in the powerpoints and taking notes in the couple of days before each midterm and the final. Weekly quizzes on the textbook chapters; putting in a couple of hours reading the book and taking notes makes those fairly easy. Overall, challenging but not insurmountable course and a really cool professor who knows his stuff and is eager to share his knowledge with you. I found the material very interesting, but that's a more subjective point.
Dr. Blair is super nice, but this is a really hard class. There is a ton of information that you have to be familiar with, but not all of it will be tested on. It kinda sucked that the second midterm was short answer, and he told us the format had changed from 3 questions w/multiple parts to 8 questions right before the exam started :(
Grades consist of 2 midterms, section quizzes, a short bibliography assignment and the final. Section quizzes are mainly vocab from the book, and don't usually appear on exams. Exam questions can be nit-picky, so you better know your stuff, but they mostly come from slides,
Lectures are podcasted and video-recorded. Overall this class will take a ton of effort, and I wish I had known that going in
After the first midterm I realized that going to lecture, even watching the lectures, are pointless. He just reads the slides and for the tests you're expected to regurgitate any of the details that are on them. The tests pick out relatively specific details and aren't representative of all the information you forced yourself to memorize before the exam, but you kind of have to know everything if you hope to do well...or hope you get lucky and chose to study the specific things he decides to put on the exams. The section quizzes are relatively easy, just be sure to study the bolded terms from the book for the chapters that the quiz covers that week. The class isn't necessarily hard, but takes A LOT of time as you have to memorize a ton of information, but it is possible to do well if you're willing to put in the effort.
I also took this class with Blair and Jentsch. I though both of them were extremely smart, motivated, and knowledgeable about the subject. But, if you're a psych major without a strong background in biology, this class is going to be really hard. I've almost finished all of my psych classes and this was easily the hardest psych class that I've taken because of all the memorization that you have to do.
Based on 27 Users
TOP TAGS
- Uses Slides (12)
- Tolerates Tardiness (10)
- Needs Textbook (11)
- Is Podcasted (10)
- Tough Tests (9)