Hmmmmm... Dr. Firstenberg seems like a great person and is also an engaging lecturer and is very knowledgable about the topic, but unfortunately the material covered in this class was just not my favorite at all. It was pretty boring, but I mean I understand why psychology and a lot of other majors have to take it because it is really important to know about well-conducted experiments. This class, in my opinion, was pretty easy it was just so boring.

OMG also labs are like 2 hours long and are soooo boring. They are not very helpful and are actually optional. I went to them for the first 4 weeks and then I stopped and I don't think it effected my grade or how well I understood the course at all.

If you get a decent TA, this class is a breeze. My TA would mark off points on the assignments seemingly at-will, despite the fact that I would follow the rubric excruciatingly closely. This class was boring but informative; I did extremely well on every assignment that was NOT graded by my TA, and I guarantee you I would have scored higher with a different person grading my assignments.

If you get a dogsh*t TA with a bug up their @$$, you are in for a trip. Otherwise, you will learn a lot even if the material is not the most engaging. Definitely a class that changes the way you think.

This class wasn't that bad. The lectures were long and quite boring. I attended all the lectures but you could honestly just skip the lectures and listen to the recordings and take your own notes. You don't need to attend labs either but I recommend it since what you do in your lab is pretty much the same as what is assigned for homework but you're given a different scenario. If you don't want to attend lab, download the lab slides and the rubric for the homework and make sure you follow the instructions clearly and to the T. There is only one midterm and one final, both the same format (all online, all MCQ). You read scenarios and you answer questions that pertain to it. The week leading up to your test, the professor gives you practice tests (both short and long ones) for you to work on. If you need any practice tests or want to see what my midterm looked like (with questions and answers), you can hit me up and I'll send them to you **********. I didn't use the textbook and opted out of the inclusive access thing. I don't think you need it. A free pdf of the book is available online if you still want it tho. There is also a LOT of extra credit given and I recommend doing them early on so you don't forget about it. Because of the TA strike this quarter, our professor was pretty lenient and gave us all full credit on our last (and MAJOR) lab assignments and that pushed my grade up to an A.

I was afraid to take this class, but since being restructured, this class is a breeze. It was very interesting too! Who knew research was so complicated. This class has genuinely made me a better consumer of all kinds of research. With that being said, there are a few things I wish I knew before taking this class:
1. Take the practice exams. Do every single practice question. I strongly believe one of the reasons I performed well on exams was that I took every practice exam, annotated every question, and wrote rationales for every right answer. This helped me to understand how exam questions would be structured, what I was expected to know, and what kinds of tricks would be written into the questions.
2. Go to discussion sections. Although they were optional, I think that going to discussion sections helped me tremendously on my homework. Some of the homework assignments were graded on completion, but for those that were graded on accuracy, it was helpful to go to discussion to know what, exactly, I was expected to do on my homework. The assignments graded on accuracy were graded by a rubric, and it was sometimes not too clear what was expected of us, but discussion sections literally provided us with an example of exactly what we needed to do on our homework to receive a good grade.
3. On the homework graded on accuracy, the more detail the better. Seriously. Include pretty much every detail you think might be relevant when designing an experiment.
4. Watch the ALM videos. I'm gonna be honest. I often skipped the ALM videos & went straight to the assignments because ALMs are graded on completion. However, when I actually watched an ALM video once on a topic I was especially confused about, I found it to be extremely helpful-- ALM's are essentially deep-dives into the exact topics that will be tested on the exam. Don't take these for granted, they are a valuable study resource.

OKAY, forget all the past reviews because this professor redesigned this course. I was so scared to take this class bc of its reputation but I SWEAR THIS CLASS IS EASY (and I am not a psych genius or whatever). So for the assignments the ALMs are based on completion and are super easy took barely any time to complete & were helpful for the exams. There are somewhere around 4 labs that are participation based so super easy. HOWEVER, for the labs that are graded for accuracy, you need to be as detailed and specific as possible bc those are graded harshly. But, the assignments are relatively easy bc there are so many resources given to you and the lab helps you a lot. The exams are super easy too literally all you need to do is do the practice exams she gives you and if you understand them then you are good. For reference, I only studied the lecture slides and did the practice exams and I got a 97% on both the final and the midterm. The exam questions are meant to trick you, so you must read carefully and annotate the questions. The exams are online and open-book so...easy A. Going to lab is optional and tbh missing them isn't that big of a deal. I promise you guys this class is an easy A, like it is crazy how much they have changed the course so don't stress!!!!

Professor is great- funny, intelligent, thoughtful, prepared.

Good luck on getting a good TA- disc/lab isn't really mandatory but they grade your homework and can be very weirdly strict. Try not to get Gillespie!

Everyone makes this class seem super hard, and I was really nervous before taking it, but it is honestly one of the easiest classes I have taken. All of it is common sense or memorization, so if you're doing poorly in the class, then you're probably just not working hard enough.

as a psych major, i was mortified to take this class, i was so mad that i didn't take it while they were allowing us to use pass/no pass for this course. i am by no means a student who gets good grades without studying and i have never studied more for a class than i did for 100b. first off, i want to say professor firstenberg is not the scary, mean, psych lady everyone made it seem. she is so willing to help and is always open to answering students' questions. every time i dropped in for office hours, it was always empty, so please utilize the resources you are given to succeed. i literally went into office hours and told her how anxious i was for her exam and she stressed to me how important it was to use the practice exams she provides and i really do believe those practice exams are largely why i did well on the exam. the class material is really different from what we see in other psych classes which is why the exams are also difficult in comparison, but i promise with an appropriate amount of studying it is manageable. the material is very straightforward, so you cannot simply trust the fact that you understand it when listening to lectures, you really have to practice the scenarios they provide that emphasize the application of the concepts. the teaching assistants are also very helpful and make the material a lot easier to digest and they provide so many tips and tricks on how to read the information provided during the exams. this class is nothing like it used to be, i was so scared but luckily was pleasantly surprised. although the course was slightly heavier in the summer, i really do recommend taking it in the summer because it is compiled to the bigger, more important topics, making it easier to do well.

please do not let anyone scare you in regard to this course, i did not think i would do well. i spent the entire week leading up to the exam crying because i was so worried i wouldn't do well. all of us have different gauges of difficulty and i promise if you go in with an open mind, ready to learn you'll get it!

don't hesitate to ask for help because all of the instructors were so ready to help and promote success within the course.

also, i cannot stress this enough DO THE PRACTICE EXAMS, THEY HELP!

Professor Firstenberg was incredibly kind and engaging during her lectures! The course is relatively simple, but the exams are definitely more difficult than Firstenberg's bubbly personality lets on. Going to lab is not required, but I found it so essential for preparing for the tests. IF you are a psych or psychobio major, there is no wait out of taking this class, but it definitely is easier than now compared to how it was structured in past years.

Take this class with a helpful and caring professor, not Firstenberg. She does not make the class manageable for people to succeed. I understand this class is meant to be tough and the workload is excessive, but the professor is not helpful. We had a formatting issue on the exam, which displayed incomplete answer choices, and you had to select among the faulty choices. Due to the nature of the sequential exam, you couldn't go back to the question. People emailed during the exam and were told how to fix it, only after they already answered faulty questions. The professor was made aware of this issue with a class email, and gave us the option to double down points from the final exam before even taking it/knowing our score on it. We took this issue to the department, and only then she decided to say she would keep the best score that benefitted our grades at the end of the course. She was not understanding until the department intervened, which demonstrates her lack of care for students' voices. This issue made the class more stressful than it already was, during an already stressful Winter quarter (plus the school threat and omicron online transition). I was able to pass because I scored better on the final exam and completed the labs well.
Lab assignments are graded on a strict rubric, so make sure you read that carefully. Missing one sentence/component means you will lose points. Going to the lab discussions will definitely help you complete your lab assignments so try not to miss lab. Lecture is clear and gives you many examples of the concepts and terminology. ALMs are easy and help you understand what you don't really know from content. Review all the material for the exams, and try to do as many of the practice questions.