Pham is the best professor in ls I've ever had. Yes he has a strong accent but he teaches so well. When you get familiar with his accent, you will enjoy his lecture because he makes you think about biology. It's a lot of memorization but he makes you understand before memorizing. He gives you a big picture in class, explain the process. Your job is memorizing after you understand. It's not that hard. I hope people won't hate him just because his accent. He has so many other good things that can make up for his accent.

LS4 Summer 2016

"Take him during the summer." These are the words of my TA and I can see why. He graciously provides SO MANY PRACTICE TESTS and it is so clear that his tests were noticeably easier during the summer. We skipped a few topics and he told us that because we had less time, we would not go in depth in some questions (for example, he would give a "two gene" mapping problem instead of a "three gene" one; this may mean nothing to you, but it's shiz like this that made me, and the rest of the summer class, crazy (with joy). This man cares. His accent is a little rough, but it's honestly not something that should deter anyone. He goes slowly enough during the summer to guide us through problems that are similar to the exam. TAKE HIM DURING THE SUMMER. I don't know my grade yet, but I have no reagrets (hah).

LS4 with professor pham is a good experience. Workload is low because he walks through the problems with you in class so you can save time going to office hours. His exams are also fair and easy if you understand the problems he goes through in class and do the practice midterms. He also explains problems clearly and repeats the important parts so just attending the lecture and discussions alone is sufficient to prepare for exams.

Pham is great as long as you are able to get past his accent. He repeats important content over and over again so if you miss it the first time, you should be fine. Tests are very fair, and if you memorize whats on the slides, you'll be set for the class.

2 midterms: 100 points/each
Final cumulative : 200 points
online quizzes: 2.5 points/each
weekly discussion quizzes: 5 points/each

Professor Pham are very nice and helpful. The way to do well in the class is to go to office hour, WORK on his practice exams EARLY. Reading the book is not important as doing practice problems on his passed exams. Think of every exam like running a marathon, in order to do well, you HAVE to practice. Although the workload is somewhat demanding, it is reasonable for the nature of the 5-units-class. I fall in love with genetics after I take the class and I am sure you will too. LS4 could be challenging but it is fun, like solving puzzles!!!

People give Pham a hard time but I don't think he deserves it. Yes, he has an accent but it's not super thick. He is really friendly and can make some good jokes once in a while.

LS4 with Pham is one of the easiest LS classes you can take. The workload isn't light but it's easy to do well in this class if you try. A quiz before every lecture and one during discussion feels like a huge chore but it does help your grade a ton because the quizzes are easy. The textbook is not really necessary because the homework that comes from it is not for a grade but the discussion quiz questions come straight from the homework/book.

The midterms are really easy because Pham gives you all of his old tests. Just do those and you will be very well prepared for the midterms. If you can score 90 or above on every midterm you are golden. The final is difficult compared to how easy the midterms were. Just study a lot for the final and you will be fine.

Enjoy the class while it lasts. I hated/sucked at genetics in high school but I did really well in this class and liked this class the most out of all of the LS lower divs.

Dr. Pham is an amazing professor. The class layout is a little different since it a "flipped classroom". This means that before lectures, you are to watch videos (about an hour long for each lecture) that teaches you the material, and then in class Dr Pham will go over key points and do practice problems. I happen to like this since it gave me more time to try my hand at the practice problems and see the correct way of thinking about them. Dr. Pham also gives all his past exams on the class website. If you spend the time to do them all (which you will need a lot of time to do them), I feel it basically guarantees good grades. I don't understand why people don't do them when it is offered. An A is very doable in this class but you HAVE to put in the time to practice. Highly recommend Dr Pham, he is amazing

I took this class in Spring 2017-- It was definitely very manageable. I wasn't and still am not very interested in genetics, but the structure of the class made it an easy A. It was taught in a flipped classroom style, which meant that every week we would have to watch two 90-minute videos (looked like they were from Bruincast in the early 2000s) and take a 10-question quiz on ccle after each video, which was very time consuming. The quizzes aren't worth very much-- Pham drops the lowest five scores.
There are also quizzes during discussion each week, that test material taught during the previous week. The quiz question is pulled directly from the assigned homework questions, and is graded all or nothing (really not a big deal, as long as you do the problems or look at the solutions before hand). Pham also drops the lowest or 2 lowest discussion quiz scores.
The midterms and final were very very doable-- Pham uploads a BUNCH of his old exams onto ccle. The most effective way I studied for the exams was just by doing all of his old tests-- the same type of questions appear on his actual exams pretty much word for word.

tl;dr: very doable class, long videos, drops lowest quiz grades, do the practice exams.

Dr. Pham is a pretty good teacher and this class was more than fair. Do some of his practice tests and you're set for the tests. The discussion quizzes were easy. They do depend on your TA, but mine were very easy and most people's sounded easy as well. The videos you have to watch can be long, but if you keep up with them and go to class you'll learn everything you need to. That being said, this class isn't easy, but if you put in the work (and the amount of work you need to put in isn't really that much compared to other science classes), you'll be fine. In my opinion, this is the best LS out of 1-4.

hitting the key points of this class...
WORKLOAD: pretty light. the class is reverse lecture style (learn the material at home, take quiz on CCLE, and do practice problems in class). this is my first time encountering this style of learning, and i was a huge fan. problem solving is really the only skill you need to get a good grade in this class, so tackling problems during lecture was extremely helpful.

LECTURES: attending lecture is necessary not only to get your clicker points (although he drops five lowest scores) but also to learn his problem solving methods to do well on his exams! honestly, most of the leg work is done in class, and the rest is done by doing practice exams before midterm and the final. go to class- you'll thank yourself.

HOMEWORK: as mentioned, there's an online quiz based on the online lectures that's due before every class meeting. super easy and simple as long as you watch the lecture (definitely recommend adjusting the speed to 1.5x). the professor who teaches the online lectures is also great! pham also assigns homework problems and reading from the textbook. personally, i read the textbook to supplement my learning, but most of my classmates did not read it and still did well in the class. so, is it necessary? not at all. however, it is necessary that you at least attempt to do the homework problems. note that these problem sets are neither submitted nor graded BUT these are what the discussion quizzes are based on, which i will go into in the next topic...

DISCUSSIONS: as mentioned, there are discussion quizzes based on the textbook problems that pham assigns. these quizzes are all or nothing, and the difficulty of the problem(s) depend on your TA. i sorta found these quizzes to be annoying because some of the problems that we were assigned didn't exactly correlate to what we were learning in class... nonetheless, you should take the time to attempt these textbook problems, and DEFINITELY go through the solutions for each answer. another note: he drops your two lowest quiz scores, and weeks 1 and 10 are basically freebies since they're diagnostic exams.

EXAMS: if i could give a single piece of advice for this class, it's to do the practice exams. honestly, pham does an amazing job of providing all the resources to succeed in this class because he has plenty of office hours AND he has soooo many past exams available on CCLE. it's sorta ridiculous. he does not deviate much from previous exams, so you already know the types of problems to expect.

FINAL THOUGHTS: not much is required of you to get a good grade in LS 4. all the resources are available to you, and it's really just a matter of doing practice exams, staying on top of online quizzes, and showing up to class. i had such a good experience taking LS 4 with Pham, and highly recommend him to anyone who is taking this class.