As a transfer who has taken a lot of philosophy classes, this was one of the most painful I have taken. There were 3 essays (3-4 pages), and for all of them, I got no useful feedback. Part of it was the pacing; we had two of the three essays due in the last few weeks. The other part might have been just because of my T.A. Colleen, but for the last two essays I only received 5 comments in total that said either "good" or "nice" at different parts. I ended up getting a B+ on every essay. Yes I know, a B+ is not bad, but it is annoying because you can't improve on what you did wrong when you never receive comments about what you are doing wrong. The main gripe I had with the professor was that half the lecture was spent answering long unrelated questions that students should have asked during office hours and the other half of the lecture was the prof. reading almost word for word out of a text document. If you are looking for an easy intro philosophy class, this is not it.

I took this class because I found the proposed content to be the most interesting out of all the 'introductory' philosophy classes but my sentiment toward the course changed drastically as it progressed. Professor DeWitt is engaging enough, occasionally making jokes and incorporating funny examples into her discussion of theory, but her method of content delivery (reading almost verbatim from a word document) was rather drab and her tendency to accept any and all questions from students (regardless of their relevance or how behind we were in terms of material) forced her to rush the last theory we covered. I honestly liked the first theory we covered (Aristotle) as we were able to take our time with it and the reading was interesting, but as we progressed through the course, deadlines came faster (two of three final essays were due within a week of each other) and the professor rushed through and occasionally skipped material. That being said, the material itself is quite lengthy and I think the class would run smoother if we covered two instead of three topics. Readings were 20+ pages long and they were complex, which meant that I'd often spend hours before class annotating them to better understand them. The class is structured as follows: we had 3 final essays which count for ~24% of our grade each, 3 mini examlets/quizzes that count for 8% of your grade each, and some short reaction papers to the texts which count for 2% of your grade each. The quizzes were relatively easy, especially as they were open book and we could just search for the relevant information in the word document shared with us, but the essays, especially the second two, were genuinely difficult, as we were little substantive feedback on how to improve our writing. Overall, I'd recommend this class to those who are really, really interested in philosophy and who are willing to put in a significant amount of time into completing the needed readings, but I'd advise against taking it as an 'easy A' GE.

This class was a super easy GE and fairly interesting. For someone who has no back round in philosophy, this class was pretty interesting. She gives screen shares which are super important to study for the tests and the TAs are super helpful too. Id def rec going to the TAs office hours and conversing about essay structure and clarification on topic comprehension. I believe this class is super TA dependent. I would rec this class.

I took this class online in the Fall quarter of 2021.

Prof DeWitt is unfortunately not a great lecturer. She uses these things she calls 'screenshares', which are basically philosophy word vomit on a .txt file, and just reads over them over Zoom. I stopped going to her lectures around week 3, and my test grades didn't suffer for it at all. But, the screenshares are helpful once you edit out all of the fluff she puts in. That was how I studied for the midterm and final, and I did well, so I guess it balances out.

Honestly, my main complaint with this class is the essay grading and weight. DeWitt makes the papers on Bentham and Kant 15% and 20% respectively, and the TA's are brutal. I got points off on things that didn't really seem to make sense––conflicting comments like, 'beautiful writing, don't use it', and 'paper fits rubric, but could have been more wow' from the same grader... both of which were not constructive and contradict the other. I got a B- on the Bentham paper, an A- on the Kant paper, and a B+ on the final paper, and I felt like my writing was pretty consistent on all three. The fact that the Bentham paper was weighted SO high yet was due in like week 2 or 3 was really difficult, as there were very few resources to get help, and being so new to the class we had no idea what she was looking for. I was kind of confused as to what the prompts were asking most of the time, as well, and DeWitt's office hours weren't helpful either time that I went.

Not sure how the class will work in future quarters, but our midterm and final were both 25-30 mult choice questions that were straight from the screenshares. I got high A's on both with minimal effort. Some of the questions were extra credit, so our midterm ended up having a possible score of 106/100 (not sure about the final, she didn't release it for some reason, which was annoying).

The weird thing was that she had mentioned that she would be adjusting the grades to fit effort and participation, but nobody really saw any evidence of that. After the final grades were released, she sent out an email saying that she would not be changing them regardless of appeals or participation and that she thought they were fair. I think taking a hard stance on grades is a valid way to run your class, but not after leading students to think that you wouldn't be doing that (especially since we can't see our live grade tallies, so nobody really knew what grades they had until she put the final ones out.)

Just so you know, this class is barely about moral contemporary issues (which is basically why I took it). The first half before the midterm is all on Bentham and Kant (old philosophers) and then the three weeks before the final are rushed screenshares on contemporary issues like abortion and gun control. I didn't find it interesting from a current events perspective, so if that's what you're looking for (like I was) I would not take this class.

I probably wouldn't take a class with her again, mostly because I don't find philosophy interesting in the slightest, but also because a lot of her prompts, tests, and comments were confusing. If you want an easy A, I think it's possible (like I said, I literally didn't go to lectures at all and got an A-) but it all comes down to your essay scores, to be honest, and the TA's seemed similarly harsh to me.

Hope this was helpful! :)

the theory is interesting enough, but in my view there's just a little too much work involved—hence, not an easy A or an easy GE by any means. for this quarter we were assigned three examlets, three short 'reaction' papers and three longer papers. two of said papers were stacked so closely together it was impossible to get feedback before the 'final' last paper. i think that this made it difficult to gauge progress and evaluate our understanding or knowledge of whichever ethical theory we happened to be studying. hence, pacing was definitely an issue!
that said, prof was engaging, her lecture notes were good, lectures ran long so i personally stopped watching them beyond the first 3 weeks—as long as you can understand the lecture notes, you're on track. i also feel that the extra readings she provided were interesting. i also liked that there was an automatic 'two-day extension' policy for most of the longer papers.

I took this class as a GE (biochem major). I had some prior experience with philosophical writing and am convinced that this helped substantially, as the schedule was super crammed and I didn't get much feedback on the papers that I submitted (more later). My TA was super helpful and attending his office hours proved to be very helpful, as he would usually give us concrete essay tips (i.e. tell us what we should include to get our paper from a B to an A).

Prof. split the final exam into three 'examlets,' which took place after we had finished the material for the philosopher we were studying. In total, the three exams were worth 24% of our final grade. I found them fairly straightforward, as the answers to ~80-85% of the questions could be found almost verbatim in the lecture notes. The remaining ~15-20% required a little bit more critical thinking (basically applying the theory, making inferences etc.). Even though I didn't do any of the reading, I found answering the inference questions manageable. Overall, if you read through the lecture notes and make brief notes right before the examlet, you will do fine. Prof. explicitly described these examlets as exams that test our comprehension — therefore, there are no trick questions, which was very helpful.

The three papers are worth the majority of the final grade. Although I found the length to be reasonable (3-4 pages, ~1000-1200 words), the crammed schedule prevented our TAs from giving us feedback on our second paper before submitting our final paper. This basically meant that for many students, they wrote their first philosophy paper ever, received some feedback and then wrote two papers without any additional feedback. Although it goes without saying that times during the pandemic are unpredictable, I genuinely believe that this prevented me from getting the most out of the course.

Having taken the TOK course in High School (IB student), I had some experience with the type of thinking that we were required to do when answering the paper prompts — and I believe that this carried me. ***For students with no prior experience with philosophy and philosophical writing, I would think twice before signing up for this class, as some of the material that you are expected to know goes beyond what I would classify as 'introductory.'***

The final part of the grade (6%) is comprised of 3 reaction papers, which are graded on completion. For these, you basically choose a section of the text that stands out and then write your response to it.

Final Notes:
- I signed up for this class thinking that it would be an easy A. It turned out, however, that it was more difficult to obtain this grade than I initially thought. The crammed schedule that limited the amount of essay feedback that I received certainly increased the difficulty.
- Although Prof. was engaged during her lectures and frequently made jokes and answered questions, she basically was just reading off of a document that she was screensharing. This document was also posted on CCLE (which was helpful while reviewing for the examlets and writing the papers), meaning that attending lectures wasn't vital.
- While I think that the online format certainly didn't help Prof.'s ability to go through course material, I genuinely think she could have put more effort into adapting to the current norm (i.e. creating more engaging lectures by making use of breakout rooms, etc.) When I signed up for this course, I was expecting to learn a lot from discussions about interesting ethical questions. Although we did have such conversations in our discussion sections, the one-way flow of information during lectures was underwhelming.

I took this class because I was interested in philosophy, and this class did not meet my expectations. I felt that Professor DeWitt didn't actually teach us much (other than that a good will is good because its a good will...) and the class was very repetitive. Essays required you to cite the texts, making her lectures practically useless. The final was pretty easy, though the essays were graded harshly (may depend on the TA, as they literally do all the grading). Probably would not take again.

She is a great person and professor. Because of the strike, she changed some things around. She definitely was generous because we didn't have to write an actual final paper, but it bothers me that we didn't get to see what score she gave us on the paper. Overall, the class workload was manageable, even if you don't go to class the lectures are recorded and watching them/taking notes will help on the midterm and final. For the papers go to OH and get help from your TA because each TA grades differently.

The class is extremely straightforward. There are only two papers, a final exam that is about 40 questions MC, two short essays, and then your points from discussion section. Topics revolve around the different readings that Professor Dewitt puts on CCLE in PDFs (Aristotle, Kant, Aquinas, etc). You're suppose to do these readings and then Professor Dewitt goes over all of the important topics in lecture. Lectures are pretty interesting because she makes all of the ideas understandable given that they were made over a century ago. She also goes off topic fairly often to talk about her sister, mother, or some other experience she had. I remember one time she couldn't talk for the first 5 minutes of lecture because of a joke she wanted to tell us. She is a very sweet midwestern professor and I would definitely take the class again for the fair workload and interesting lectures. Professor Dewitt is definitely the type of person you would want to grab a cup of coffee and exchange stories with.

I took this class spring quarter 2020 (remotely) and received an A. Professor Dewitt 's class is straight forward and if you watch all the lectures, listen in discussion, and pay attention, you'll be fine. I did read the readings, but to be honest, I think the lectures are sufficient. Our midterm was a 3 page essay. The final was multiple choice and another essay. The prompts are fair and the multiple choice final was fairly easy if you took good notes from lectures. While her lectures could have been better (they were screenrecordings of a word document with notes that she read off of), it was her first time remotely teaching so it's understandable. The topics we go over are relevant to issues today and Professor Dewitt does a decent job at explaining their moral theory without her own biases. We went over abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, gun control, ect. While I did have a previous interest in philosophy, this was a good introductory class that I would recommend.