People complaining about this man's accent are really trying to cover up the fact they didn't do as well as they wanted to purely due to their own incompetence. Pham's lectures are fast-paced, but he goes over the clicker questions very well, which are all that really matter. I never attended his office hours but every time I asked him something after class, he was nothing but kind and extremely helpful. The LS Core Curriculum have a specific way of explaining problems and he does a great job of explaining what type of knowledge is expected of us. I would go to his lectures to figure out what type of material will be tested and go to your TA's office hours instead because they offer much more personal help.

Dr.Pham is SUCH A GOOD PROFESSOR. You will be teaching a lot of the material to yourself so make sure to make use of the preclass worksheets and reading guides. These will help you focus on the important material since launchpad has soooo much to take in. Pham is a fast lecturer, but if you ask him to slow down or go over something again, he is always more than happy to do it. He also encourages questions like no other! He clearly (and I'm talking crystal clear) cares about his students :') Cellular biology can be complicated, but he will make sure you know he is there as a welcoming resource.

The flipped classroom format of this class means it relies on self-learning a lot through assigned readings/quizzes on the online textbook. Each week there are videos, textbook pages, and mini-quizzes (2-6 questions), which make up a fair amount of points (the class is out of 702 points). Staying on top of these is a must - you fall behind and it's really tough to get back on your feet. They are also super easy points that might push you from an A- to an A at the end.

The tests are quite difficult but Pham teaches you well on how to think through problems -- the questions force you to make connections with what you already know, which is why you need to stay on top of readings. There are also CLC sessions (kinda like office hours but led by Learning Assistants) that are of utmost important if you want to do well in the class. They provide worksheets that are of similar difficulty to the tests and the LAs help you walk through the problems and make connections. A lot of people who didn't do well in this class didn't go to these. They are a MUST.

Pham himself is a great guy. He makes funny jokes once in awhile and cares a LOT about his students. His accent takes a bit to get used to, but it's entirely understandable. He could be a bit more helpful when explaining clicker questions in class, but he will always expand more after class or in his office hours.

Because the class is majority busy work, it's pretty easy to get an A if you're with the right people and get all your homework in on time. Dr Pham himself is a super nice guy but I can't say I found his lectures very engaging. The slides lacked lots of necessary information and many of the exam questions were just testing whether or not you could decipher tricky wording, not how well you understood the content. You will probably lose some points with sneaky wording and application-based questions that were never discussed in class. Even with all that though, it is pretty easy to make up points to secure at least a 93. Dr Pham wasn't the most engaging and was pretty hard to follow at times, but he is a really nice guy and is passionate about the material.

Dr. Pham is an excellent teacher! Yes, he has a bit of an accent, but I never found myself struggling to understand him (some of the other reviews on here seem a bit exaggerated). The clicker questions serve as really good prep for the AoLs, and Pham provided good explanations for answers that didn't seem the most intuitive.

The pods are really make or break for this class. I got rather lucky with my group members (we all showed up to lecture, collaborated, seemed passionate about the subject, and even hung out outside of class) so I found myself enjoying the course, but I have heard a handful of horror stories. Even with bad group members, though, the content is generally pretty understandable so you can still succeed on your own.

I never took AP Bio in high school and was still able to receive a good grade in this course, so you can too!!

The 7A class is uniform across all lectures, no matter the professor. So, in terms of the tests, everyones being tested on the same material. My problem with the class was it seemed like you needed a pretty food background in Biology to understand the quickly paced course.

The topics change super quick, and the slides are nowhere near as in depth as they should be, so you are stuck drawing your own conclusions and having to do more work to figure out what you need to learn. I think the majority of test problems actively reflect the lecture material, but there were multiple problems where the application of knowledge seemed a step above what we learned sometimes.

My best advice: READ CAREFULLY...
They will get you with sneaky words. Don't lose easy points.

PROS:
Fun class, GREAT TA made it so good shoutout to Veronika!
Extra credit is readily available
Easy homework load

The course is heavily standardized across the different lectures/professors so the workload and content is the same. Dr Pham himself is very nice and enthusiastic. I am pretty bad at understanding people with accents and he does have a kind of heavy one but I found it wasn't an issue as long as I was paying attention to him (so if you're like me regarding understanding accents, downside is that you can't zone out while still sort of listening)

Class: Was on track for an A and then got absolutely humbled by the third AOL. Dr. Pham was really nice and was always open to answering questions. Personally I did not like the slides for this class and feel like it was really hard to be engaged during it especially since he talked fast and I feel like there would be a lot of pictures and not a lot of explanation. Since all the 7A classes have the same content, you can watch the lectures from other professors on the website, which I heard people say was really beneficial. They also use iClicker, but this is pretty much just effort based.

Work: This entire class is point based, which is great (unless you did terrible on the final like me). Pre-class and reflections were super doable, I would just do it all in one day and pretty much graded on effort. Practice tests (PALs) could be confusing & graded on accuracy, but worth very little points overall. Discussion assignments were usually gone over by your TA, but are graded on accuracy too in Gradebook, so pay attention. Out of all the AOLs, the 2nd one was the easiest, then 1st, and the final was atrocious, but if you have a good pod (who you will work with after each class on a worksheet, during discussion, and on the group final) I'm sure you'll be fine especially since they're all online which takes the pressure off a little bit. DO ALL THE EXTRA CREDIT. They offer a lot, and that's a grade cushion you wanna take advantage of.

Engaging and understandable. LS7a content is complicated, but this professor is patient enough to answer all questions about the material you have for him, and he is very warm when he explains things so you don't feel dumb.
The slideshows don't do well to prepare for AoLs, and he goes through them more quickly than I'd like. I have to admit that sometimes I can't understand some of his wordings. You have to attend all lectures because of Clicker lecture questions, which count for a hefty chunk of the participation grade. His Clicker questions are more accurate to the test type. Writing down his answers and walkthroughs of the Clickers helped me get good without having to attend any extra sessions.
This class emphasized busywork, but no curve, so everyone can get an A or F if you try hard. Lots of reading. Week 0 no lectures. The LS7a experience depends not on the professor (because the curriculum is shared across all the professors) but rather what pod members you get, if you understand textbook concepts, being able to read the AoLs' convolutedly worded questions, and how the TA helps you through discussion assignments. Pay attention to discussion assignment sheets, because those concepts/questions are similar (as in occasionally word for word the same) to exam questions.
I have to emphasize that the way things are written is not controlled by the professor; the exam questions are written by someone else, and the way they are written is unnecessarily grammatical, twisting concepts backwards in a way that makes you wonder why we learn things straightforwardly if they are going to be tested with an absurd amount of double-negative phrases. My grades for the AoLs ranged from Cs to As. The exam questions should be rewritten and reworded so that people can understand what they are being asked to do, rather than get it wrong from unclear writing and not any real misunderstanding. The English hurdles are wholly unnecessary to understanding biology concepts.
All in all, I recommend this professor.

Pham was such a kind middle-aged man. He is such a happy teacher and he always asks "is that good?" "do we understand?". He did have an accent but if you listen carefully, he explains things very well. Granted, I actually had Malloy/Burton for this class and Pham was just an occasional substitute but I did thoroughly enjoy when he came :))))