Professor Blank is....the G.O.A.T. I loved this class so much! This was my last pre-req before declaring the Cog Sci major, and I'm so glad I waited to take it until now! Blank is caring, intelligent, funny, and engaging. Although lectures were dense, surveying different sub-fields of Cognitive Science through theory and experiment examples, he had an ability to keep us all engaged. His slides were also gorgeous - you can tell he put a lot of effort into this class.
LECTURE
Lecture was twice a week, with no discussion. Blank would include in-class participation through PollEverywhere, where we gave our hypotheses/responses to hypothetical scenarios or real psychological experiments. This ensured that students participated in class and paid attention. These were completion based, and if you couldn't attend lecture, then you could watch a separate, asynchronous lecture that you sign up for and complete your participation points there instead. He used psychological experiments and case studies to explain certain concepts in Cog Sci, like Bayesian inference, Imagery, Neural Networks, Computing, and Innate Knowledge. Every example he used was super interesting (and, as he said, were all his favorite experiments!).
ASSIGNMENTS
We had 6 writing assignments that we had a week to do. They were used to preface the following week's material. These usually took me about 5-7 hours to complete, reading 2-3 papers and answering some questions on it in a page or less. They are not straightforward, instead requiring you to deeply engage in the research process and understand the paper at a deeper level (connecting to theories, drawing your own conclusions, etc). I thought the assignments were challenging, but fair. They were graded on completion, with 2 of the 6 assignments (that we picked), graded on content accuracy. I'm not sure how they were graded, but I got high scores on them. Immediately after the turn in deadline, he provided us with videos going over the assignment answers, so we could have an understanding of how far off our answers were in deciding which assignments to grade for content. More than generous imo! We also had two group assignments (randomly assigned based on student time availabilities), in which we had to create ~15 min videos where we go over a research paper within the subfields of Cognitive Science and try to explain it for a general audience. The project instructions were very clear, and the graded was pretty lenient (instructor grade - the TA + group member peer grading + other group grading).
EXAM
There was only a final exam for this class, which consisted of 7 short response essays that each had 2-3 parts. We had all of finals week to complete this, and were able to collaborate as a group. I found the final really time consuming, but the problems weren't super hard. Some questions asked you to summarize and idea from lecture, others required us to calculate probabilities, and others required you to analyze experiments. I didn't find any questions super left field, because you could find the answers or procedure in lecture videos.
GRADE BREAKDOWN (this is the standard breakdown, some breakdown variations were possible after the final exam)
Weekly Assignments Completion (7): 35/35 - 14% of grade
Weekly Assignments Content (2): 34.9/35 - 14% of grade
In-class Participation (PollEverywhere): 30/30 (we can miss 3 lectures) - 12% of grade
Group Project 1: 24.7/25 - 10% of grade
Group Project 2: 34.9/35 - 14% of grade
Final Exam: 90/90 - 36% of grade
Extra Credit: 5 points
Overall Grade:
254.5/250 = 101% = A+
This class had altered grade cutoffs, with a raw score of 88+ being an A, and a raw score of 94+ being an A+.
Summary:
Take this class. You will love it. It's challenging, but so rewarding, and Professor Blank takes you on an educational journey with him! Thank you so much Idan!!!!

Professor Blank stated from the very beginning that he made this class difficult. He also clarified in class that he didn't want us to focus on grades. Before the final exam, he told us that the exam didn't matter and that it was 'just a grade'. Also, on the weekly quizzes, when the class average was initially 78%, he told us, 'this was a fine average,' which may be true in other classes, but a 75% in his class is an F.

The exam and quizzes were difficult, and you must study for both. However, for the exam, he gives you three double-sided sheets of paper, and as long as your notes are detailed, you'll probably be fine and miss a few questions.

The homework itself is very light besides the quizzes. He gives us an article a week, which you must read carefully to understand. Then you have to meet with your podmates to talk about the article for at least 30 recorded minutes. His lectures are also really engaging, and the topics he covered kept me on the edge of my seat.

Overall, the class wasn't bad. The material was thoroughly enjoyable, but the weekly quizzes are challenging but manageable if you study. I would retake the class just for the content, but I don't know if I'd take it with the same professor.

This class was difficult for an intro class. The bulk of the work is writing weekly papers based on long studies. Attendance is required and it's worth 12% of your grade even for online lectures. There are two group projects that are worth 24% of your grade and your partners are randomly chosen. I heard for in-person classes, they just made a poster, but for online classes, we had to make a video. This was a lot of work and if your partners are not helpful, you're basically screwed. His grading is pretty harsh too even though he doesn't give that much instruction for the assignments. Idan is a pretty nice person and is obviously passionate about the subject, but his class was hard. However, the grading scale is pretty generous. An 88 is an A and he doesn't give out -A's.

One of the best professors at UCLA hands down

This class was alright up until I tested positive for COVID-19 fall of 2020. While the professor seemed nice and accommodating during lectures, he became difficult to reach when I actually needed help and accommodations. Between my extreme respiratory symptoms and my inability to focus during the course, the professor was more or less unwilling to provide me extensions longer than a week while I was sick ( I was sick with COVID for 4 months after infection with a prior chronic respiratory illness ), did not help me with class participation credit and did not provide accommodations when it came time to taking the final. While I was nearly unable to participate in the group project (he didn't accommodate for that either) I maintained an A throughout the quarter, until the end, wherein he failed me on the final exam and politely wrote in an email that "it wouldn't matter in the long term regardless." While I was keen on reporting this to the dean of students initially, I just hope to warn other students of signing up for this class and maintaining any kind of contact with Idan Blank and his TAs.

Psych 124A is incredibly interesting, but also incredibly difficult. I would be cautious when enrolling in this class because the workload and the course material really pile up. I believe I spent 18+ hours a week (outside of class) on writing assignments / problem sets. And I still barely scraped up C's on my submissions.
Despite the difficulty and workload, the material itself is fascinating. Topics ranged from phrase-structuring to developmental cognition to Bayesian inferencing. Overall, take this class if you're really interested in the intertwines of linguistics and cog sci. But if you're just looking for a good grade, this class is definitely not for you.

Idan is the sweetest professor and he definitely knows what he's talking about. He is super approachable during office hour and very passionate about teaching. However, this course is not easy and requires your dedication to it. His lectures include a lot of studies and those will be in your final so make sure you take notes down. Every week there will be an assignment composed of either 1) 3 papers + written assignment or 2) a problem set, and both take more time than you would think, so start early and plan accordingly. He encourages collaboration between students, so make sure you check your answer with somebody else before you submit because making careless mistakes is so common especially in problem sets. That being said, don't worry about your grade too much because you will get a lot of chances for bonus points and probably a large curve for the final. I like that Idan really wants his students to learn something out of this class instead of over-concerning about their grades. For me, the class materials are very interesting and I genuinely think I gained some important knowledge on language and mind. If you are here to learn something interesting, I definitely recommend taking this class ;-)

According to Professor Blank, the goal of this class was to "challenge you, but not tank your grade". Given the grade distribution of the class (63% As, according to the end of the quarter email that he sent out), I'd say that he succeeded pretty well with the second part of the goal (maybe even better than he expected). However, keep in mind that he was very lenient due to the circumstances (COVID, George Floyd, etc.). For example, he had 4 different methods of weighting the assignments for the final grade, and our assignments were weighted with the method that resulted in the highest final grade. Also, he lowered the grade cut offs (88% was the cut off for an A).
Although he was lenient with grading, I'd say that this class challenged me pretty well. I loved the material, but sometimes concepts were difficult connect. The 6 written assignments were difficult as well; for these assignments, you basically read 3 scientific papers and answer questions about them. Personally, sometimes I had to think long and hard about how the questions were even related to the papers; however, once you understand this, the questions were not too bad. It was also nice that only 2 of these written assignments were graded, and you got to choose which two.
Group projects were okay; they were actually easier than the assignments, and I felt like I spent only a bit more time on my part of the project than on an individual written assignment.
Overall, Professor Blank is super passionate and knowledgeable about the subject. You can tell he puts a lot of effort into his lectures and that he loves teaching.

Professor Blank was awesome. He was very responsive to feedback and seemed to genuinely care about his students. I went to many of his office hours, and whenever I had concerns, he would address them and find solutions. The way grading works makes it so that it's very easy to get an A because the professor didn't want us to stress about grades. Overall, I really enjoyed this class.

I think the class overall was fine. The only homework you really had was to read a research paper and then to meet with your pod to discuss the research paper (it had to be recorded on zoom and submitted). You then took a 5 question quiz on the paper, which was fine, but it takes a while to get used to the style of research papers and to figure out what is important to know for the quizzes. You also had assigned videos that weren't graded on if you watched them or not, but a few questions on the final referenced the videos, so it's in your best interest to watch them. Lectures are recorded, but only audio and you can't adjust the speed (like put it on 1.5x or 2x). There was quite a bit of extra credit throughout the quarter. No discussion section, which I didn't like because you're learning very new concepts but with little support from the professor or TA. That brings me to my next point: usually classes are taught cumulatively where everything builds on one another (think of a lego tower where each topic is a brick), but in this class, I swear it felt like a weird circle. The topics were loosely related to one another and sometimes it felt like whiplash when we switched topics. Go to office hours, make sure you attend class, and try to stay on top of lectures.