This class isn't hard but workload is huge. This is probably the most work-intensive lab I have ever had at UCLA. In a sense it's easy to get an A, if you just do all the work - which is a lot. This class will easily take up 90% of your time. There's weekly homework, presentations, papers, keeping the lab notebook up to date, etc. so there are no breaks whatsoever.

Dr. Parker might seem strict on the outside but she can be lenient where it counts. I would suggest talking to her, asking her questions, and getting to know her so that you stand out as a student. She might be snippy with some of her answers but don't take it personally. She doesn't have answers to everything though so you should just ask your TA. Your TA is key, they do most of the grading and are the ones overlooking your project. Talk to them, be friendly, be casual.

My tips for this class are : 1) keep on top of your lab notebook. Everyday after lab update it with pictures and results. DO NOT fall behind on the notebook. This is rule número uno. 2) communicate with your group. Always. Start strengthening the group dynamics early so that everyone is comfortable talking to each other. It makes coordinating the project a lot easier. Also make sure all group members have lab results. Once you start splitting up duties for the project you will need to keep everyone up to speed on procedure, results, pictures, etc. 3) DO NOT procrastinate your midterm and final papers. Start that at least a week in advance. They will be at least 10 pages long. I stayed up over 24 hours because I only started two days before the due date. Just do a little each day. Trust me. 4) take advantage of her extra credit opportunities. If you do all her extra credit, you can get 50 points max. That's a lot. 5) participate in lecture. It might look like no one is keeping track of participation, but they are. Your TA is writing down who is asking questions and answering them.

I got an A in this course even though my notebook and final paper were terrible, but I did all the extra credit. I admit I did have fun in this class and it has prepared me for any future experiments because of all the lab work. There will be moments of panic where your results will be contradictory or something won't work and you think that your experiment is a failure, just remember everything will work out in the end. That I can promise.

This class is extremely time-consuming. I had no time whatsoever to focus on my other classes. The course says you only have to meet twice a week, but you're gonna want to go to lab every day of the week to catch up on experiments. There are a lot of experiments. After lab you're gonna have to upload data and meet up with your team to work on assignments from both the lecture and the lab portions of the class. The class has essentially 10 units worth of work.
The class is enjoyable if not frustrating from the weight of all the work. You'll get to cultivate some pretty cool bacteria.

Professor Parker has been the most amazing professor I have ever had during my time at UCLA. Despite coming into this course very nervous about the extreme detail that would be required of us to know, Dr. Parker taught the class using very effective and interesting methods that caught my attention and allowed me to retain the material. She always made herself available to us and she was very flexible about when and where we could meet with her, she had very clear and organized presentations and chapter objectives that allowed me to succeed on exams as well. I went to her office hours at least once a week and I am so glad that I did because I got to know a little bit about her ( although I do wish I could've sat and talked to her for hours about her life and other random things) and she was very good at explaining difficult concepts in a simple way that I was able to understand.

Her homework assignments, clicker questions, presentations and readings were extremely beneficial and I believe they were a major contribution to my interest and success in this course. I would recommend this class to anyone who is interested in learning more about the human body, as I felt that I learned a lot of miscellaneous material that I can actually use in the future, and its also fun to just know random little facts.

If Professor Parker was reading this, I would like to personally thank her for (never thought I would say this) teaching me microbiology because if I wasn't doing nursing, I would definitely consider becoming to an MIMG major. Professor Parker deserves every inch of her cute little office and I wish she was teaching more lower division courses because I would not hesitate to enroll in them simply to have the privilege to say that I was in her class. Truly an honor to be one of her students and I am immensely grateful for the short time we had together. 10/10!!!!!

I'm afraid of a lot of things, but I am most afraid of Jordan Moberg Parker. She's a very smart person; her aura oozes of intelligence. At the same time, if I had the option of picking hair out of the drains of 20 Sproul hall showers or attending her office hours alone, I'd pick the hair.
Her class is structured well. Although there is a lot of work, all of the assignments are outlined clearly and I knew what to expect each week. She low key pulled an LS7 series on us and assigned a metric fuckton of reading that wasn't always tested on. Her tests are difficult but fair (tricky wording sometimes). The material is super interesting and you can clearly see how passionate she is. I've learned a lot of very valuable information in this class. The only bad part about this class is the participation.
She requires you to get a certain number of participation points throughout the year. Some of these you get with clicker questions, but you must supplement your overall requirements by asking questions in class or posting on the discussion forum. The only thing that comes out of this is a fuck-ton of meaningless questions asked in class and on the forum. People ask stupid questions in class because they need the points. This just takes away from valuable class time. This class would have been much much better if she just addressed the participation point issue and relaxed a little. It's okay if people don't participate! It's okay! It's fine! Everything is fine!
Dr. Parker, if you're reading this (I doubt you will), please understand that not everyone learns the same way. Asking questions in class doesn't help everyone, and by forcing your students to deviate from their preferred method of learning, you show them that their learning is not a priority. I may be the stupidest person I know, but I know myself best.
tl;dr: she's not a bad professor in any way. Just prepare to ask a lot of bullshit questions in class to get participation points. Most importantly, prepare to lose your soul to the terrifying beast I call the CCLE discussion forum.

Professor Parker was an overall good teacher. She knows her information pretty well and at first I enjoyed the class like the first two weeks but oh my gosh the work load this woman gives is insane. You think you are done with work and when you check CCLE there is another inquizitive or smartwork hw you have to finish which are hard at times but not that hard because quizlet gotchu. Just make sure you do the inquizitives on time, make sure to do the smarthomeworks on time, post questions which she calls muddiest points, and participate in class. If you are a shy person, you are literally screwed because she has this name generator that calls on people randomly and if you answer the question you get the point if you don't then ya don't get a point. You have to present as well in front of the class your case study presentation and yall just get ready for this class because yall thought chem was the only hard class? NOPE! Goodluck?
BTW instead of taking notes get her objectives and answer those questions instead. You can fill those out as she is lecturing.

I took this class virtually in Fall 2020 with Dr. Parker and Dr. Hill. The class switched professors Week 5, and the quality of the course immediately dropped, although I will be talking more about that on Dr. Hill's page.

Dr. Parker was amazing. She emphasized in her introduction at the beginning of the quarter that she is interested in the process of teaching and learning, and this passion was obvious in the way she taught. She taught this class exactly like the LS 7 series (although the tests were extremely different which I'll get to.)

The course breakdown:
Concept Inventories and Course Evals 20
Smartworks Pre-Class Assignments 125 (a few dropped)
Smartworks Post-Class Assignments 80 (a few dropped)
Discussion Section Worksheets 40 (1 absence allowed)
Discussion Section Participation 50
Exams 350 (2 midterms, 1 final)
Total 665

A couple things of note here:
- Like the LS 7 series, there are pre-class (every class) and post-class (weekly) assignments connected to a textbook which is very similar to Launchpad that I believe you have to purchase access to.
- Also like LS 7 series, there is a mandatory discussion where we go over application of concepts, although I enjoyed it. I think as an adjustment for COVID, as long as you went to discussion you would get all 40 points and then at the end of the quarter, you would get the remaining 50 points by grading how involved your groupmates were (and they would grade you).
- By the end of the quarter, you had the opportunity for around 30? points of extra credit from doing things like posting on the forum, doing evaluations, and going to the MIMG 101 poster conference and reviewing posters.

Lectures were completely asynchronous and pre-recorded which I did not like, but was generally okay for Dr. Parker. Dr. Hill, in contrast, uploaded almost every lecture, reading list, pre-class assignment, and post-class assignment late.

Dr. Parker's lectures were similar to LS 7 series lectures, where she put interactive questions (like asynchronous clicker questions) into the lecture that were not worth any points. Her slides were clear and effective.

Tests were very different from the LS 7 series. They were open-notes and free-response with emphasis on being experimental, where, for example, you would be given something that scientists would want to figure out and you would write about the procedures, controls, results, etc that you would use/expect in performing that experiment. I thought that the tests were clear but a bit of a time crunch -- the professors were aware of this and responsive and as a result, gave 3.75 hours for the final. The midterms and finals all had some extra credit, although medians (averages not published) were low. The median of the first midterm was 76% and 23% of students scored below a 60 (36% scored a 70 or lower). The second midterm had a median of 80% where 13% of students scored below a 60 (25% scored a 70 or lower). While these are low grades, they were boosted by numerous extra credit opportunities and points from other categories like discussion.

Probably the most intense part of the class was its workload. There was a lot of reading assigned every class and when you're taking this class, it is so easy to fall behind. The pre-class and post-class assignments rely on the reading but are not completely related to the class material (like Launchpad). I read and took notes on everything when Dr. Parker taught, which took maybe 2hr/night, but after switching to Dr. Hill, I decided to do much less reading and did not suffer, making me think that readings are not completely necessary. Dr. Parker also published learning objectives before each lecture, and that is how I guided my notes for the readings. Dr. Hill did not publish any, and when asked to, he told students to infer them from his slides.

I felt like Dr. Parker was responsive and responsible and very committed to the success of her students. My experience in this course was definitely hindered by Dr. Hill, but I would recommend anyone to take this course with Dr. Parker.

This class has a lot of reading with pre-class assignments 3 times a week and a post-class assignment once a week. I spend probably around 15 hours a week (on top of class time) completing the reading and homework! The tests are also really hard but Dr. Parker offers a lot of extra credit so it is totally feasible to get a good grade if you put in the time. The course material was really interesting and I'm glad I took the course, just be ready for lots of work!

This was the hardest class I have taken at UCLA. I honestly thought I was going to get a B. It demands so much work from you. In the first half taught by Dr. Parker, there would be learning objectives for us to use when doing our readings. There are pre-lecture assignments and weekly post-class assignments (graded). Clickers during lectures were not graded. In this first half of the quarter, I did my readings and answered the questions on the learning objectives.I have no lab background whatsoever and this class is 95% based on designing experiments and application problems on the exams. This is really tough, and as Dr. Parker recommends, definitely make a giant experimental toolkit with all of the experimental methods that the lectures have covered. I would say the readings are not that important, and that the lecture experimental methods are what will be tested. In the second half of the class, I gave up on doing the readings and entirely focused on transcribing the lectures.

For the exam prep, I suggest having detailed lecture notes, the experimental toolkit, discussion section questions, and practice problem sets filled out for quick reference. For the practice problems I highly recommend looking on campuswire to compare answers. Most of the time, I'm entirely unsure if my experimental design is good, so it's extremely helpful to see how other students designed theirs.
There are so many extra credit opportunities in this class (~40 points in total). Take advantage of them!!! There are also buffer points on the exams and/or question thrown out.

For the midterms, I got ~3-5 points above the average on each of the midterms (I got a B-, B) and A+ on the final.