This class was a pleasure to take with Mr. Cavanaugh. He always made lectures entertaining and engaging. You can get 1% extra credit to the overall grade (equal to 10 free points.. he grades out of 1000) every time you participate in class, up to 2% max. Midterm and Final were both very fair, people were finishing the final in about 30-45 min. Also! The class is bruincasted which is very nice, though clickers are required. Overall, I would recommend this class as not only an easy and doable lab GE, but also for personal interest.

I had Hudson Spivey as my TA, overall he was decent and always trying to engage with the students. The final paper he pretty much just wanted the paper to be interesting.

Overall, this class was a joy to take. Professor Cavanaugh was very engaging in his lectures, incorporating videos, demonstrations, and guiding questions. He did use iClickers, which I found helpful given that they were graded for participation and some were repeated on the midterm and final. Lectures were BruinCasted which is appreciated. Lab sections were once a week for two hours and although sometimes long, were never challenging and all lab work (except for the final group paper/presentation) was done in class. Communication between the TAs and the professor was strong too. Both exams were fair and the final consisted only of multiple choice and tested on general concepts, examples, and supplemental readings (i.e. articles). Textbook wasn’t necessary but is helpful if you do not have a general understanding of the topics going in. Prof. Cavanugh did cancel several lectures but still found a way to keep us on track without it feeling overwhelming. I would definitively take a class with him again!

The content of this class was not difficult to understand and was just like the environmental science class I took in high school. Hearing all the positive reviews, however, I think I expected it to be easier then it was. The class was a good amount of busy work, with multiple lecture videos and weekly quizzes and labs. Again not difficult stuff, but you did have to consistently keep up with all the work. Also my weekly lab was mandatory and my TA made us keep our cameras on the whole time and we had to participate and prove we knew the content for a grade. Overall not too bad at all just a lot of little things that made me feel like I was constantly doing work, definitely formatted more like a high school class than college.

This class was a pretty easy and interesting GE. Although it is a clicker class and in general those kind of suck, Professor Cavanaugh makes the class interesting and is pretty lenient with his grading policies. If you show up to most of the lectures, pay some attention, and take decent notes this class is pretty easy. The tests are fair and the lab section is pretty easy, although it did get annoying at times as its pretty long and had a decent workload. In terms of material, the first half is pretty dry as its mostly general science stuff like biomes and wind patterns. The second half focuses a lot on environmental issues and the reasons behind them like global warming, smog creation, wildfires etc. which makes up for the first half. Take this class if you can as its both an easy and interesting GE with a cool professor.

I would highly recommend this class. It was super manageable and an easy science GE. It was also interesting and Professor Cavanaugh was a fun and engaging professor. Lectures were interesting and the lab sections were easy to do well in.

Geog 5 one of most interesting classes I've taken at UCLA. Cavanaugh is a great professor and his lectures are very organized and clear. He also offers up to 2% EC to your final grade for participating in class. You do actually have to show up for lectures because he does clicker questions, but that's graded on participation and you don't have to actually get them correct to get credit. Labs were super simple. We usually just did worksheets and our section always got out early because they didn't take too long to complete. There is a final group project and that's probably the most amount of work. I know everyone says that the exams are easy, but I struggled with them. They're easy enough to get a good grade if you study, but not easy enough to pass without doing any work. But even if you do struggle with the exams, they're not worth enough to actually ruin your grade. I got low Bs on both the midterm and final but I think all the cushion from lab work saved my grade and I still got an A in the class.

I would say the course itself is not so difficult. There’s no midterms or finals, just a final essay. However, the weekly workload can be heavy as a GE course. You need to watch all videos posted, read a lot from the textbook, submit a discussion post, do a kind of tricky quiz, and submit a lab work ( an essay around 750 words) EACH WEEK! That’s a lot to me. Also, your ta can grade a little bit differently on your lab work. Overall, it’s easy and fun. Just too much work.

This class was very well organized and easy to keep track of weekly assignments. I also liked the fact that the weighting of grade was fairly evenly distributed between the various parts of the class, making it pretty easy to get a good grade. That said, it was a lot more work than I initially anticipated. Between the weekly readings, lecture, quiz, discussion post, lab assignment, and discussion section I found myself spending a lot of time doing work for this class. A lot of writing assignments that were often graded somewhat harshly by the TAs on account of there not being a final. Instead there is a final paper that you work on for the last three weeks of the class. Overall a decent GE class.

I took this course online asynchronously, and my main reflection is that the TA will make or break this course. As for the professor, his lectures are very clear and interesting, and the material is very easy (most of it was review of concepts I had learned throughout high school). However, my TA was very strict, marking down our participation grades if we didn't get the chance to speak during discussion section even if we attended, and grading the weekly labs unnecessarily harshly to ensure not everyone would get an A. I also found the weekly work very time consuming, with a discussion post, quiz on a chapter of reading and an hour or so of videos, and a lab/essay due every week. There was a final paper instead of a final exam, which was nice.

This class is very engaging, especially if you have any interest in climate change or environmental justice. The course is composed of pre-recorded lectures (I've never seen the professor in a live call, though he does host OH for those interested), assigned textbook readings, and often a short article related to the week's content. Everything is provided at the start of the week for students to complete on their own time. I would describe the course as easy, though there is a fair amount of work to be done, mostly in the form of weekly "lab" assignments due at the end of the weekend, which generally take a few hours to do. The workload is still nothing to worry about though, you can get all of the reading and lecture notes done in a day if you wanted and then spend a few hours on the weekend doing the lab assignment. The only assessments are weekly quizzes, which we are given 2 attempts at and are directly based off of the reading and lecture materials. My TA (Sammy) was fantastic and the discussion sections did a good job of further exploring the week's lessons by applying them to the real world or taking on different perspectives.
Overall this course was engaging and interesting; I feel like I'm truly taking away valuable knowledge from it. It's fairly easy too provided you have some time to spend actually studying the course content and focusing for a few hours on completing the weekly assignments. I would recommend it for anyone looking for a solid GE.