I think Shams gets more hate than she deserves, though honestly I didn't interact with her much because it wasn't really necessary to go to lecture. They were all recorded and most of the graded materials didn't require you to know lecture concepts (at least at a level that couldn't be satisfied by other courses). Most of the grade was determined by research summaries which requires some time and thought but weren't too difficult. Only 10% of the grade was from lecture material in the form of a take home final exam (really more of a take home paper) which required you to choose 5 readings based on course concepts and write a two page summary for each. Overall a pretty easy class.

This is the worst professor I have taken during my 4 years of college. The TAs are also not great this quarter so that doesn't help at all.

Material on the minilabs sometimes isnt even covered in lecture but you are expected to know all of the material because they are based on correctness. TAs then go over the material in lab AFTER you have submitted the minilab. Why not the week before? Idk.

Professor is unclear and lectures are extremely boring (hardly anyone shows up) and same for discussions now.

Professor was passive aggressive about students not wanting to attend in person lecture the day after the encampment attacks.

Don't even get my started on the paper critiques. They are expecting extremely specific answers but there is no rubric. After you get your results and ask questions about why you got points taken off so you can do better next time, they are unclear.

100b is a prereq for this class. Fair. However, the papers you are required to read have very complicated experimental designs such as things like 6x9x3 factorial designs. Also a lot of other 100b stuff you are required to know for this professor so make sure you take that class first.

This professor should be a last resort honestly this is the worst class I have taken in college. It is disappointing because I was excited for this class and the fact that there are no exams, but the minilabs feel like quizzes and the paper critiques feel like exams so I am confused as to how that logic came about lol.

I don't think that the class is bad, as many of the other reviews depict the class. I received an A+ even without attending more than five lectures. The paper critiques are worth 85% of your grade, the first one being 25% (you are given a 100% just for an attempt) and the second two are 30%. Yes, these are hard simply by how harsh the grading; however, if you attend TA discussion sections and office hours, you are at an extreme advantage. They are very helpful, and help guide your answers as opposed to those that are going in blind. I read a couple of peoples' critiques that didn't attend lecture or OH, and it was clear why they get fails. They are looking for something incredibly specific. The final was super easy (worth 10%) and the minilabs each week were short and doable.

Overall, I wish I attended lecture more because I don't think I learned much about the class. Instead, I learned what she wants to see in the paper critique answer choices. But I will take the A+ hands down. Go to office hours!!!

This class was pretty moderate, I didn't particularly dislike or like anything about it. Lecture material was interesting, but I didn't learn much since the assignments were largely irrelevant (paper critiques). The take-home final was easy and worth 10%, which was basically nothing compared to the paper critiques (75% I think?). Apparently grading for these critiques was harsh, but honestly the TAs were super generous during discussion and I received 95-100s on all of them with their help. I recommend starting the critiques a little earlier though because each one took me around 8 hours to complete (5-6 questions but the answers had to be thorough). Mini-labs were easy if you read through all of the book activities (had to pay the inclusive access fee for this unfortunately). The class was 90% on vision btw!

Shams is super smart but expects us to all be at grad student levels. The paper critiques were unnecessarily difficult and she tried to reject my disability accommodation. I don't feel like I learned much in this course which is a big disappointment because I loved perceptual development with Johnson so I thought I'd like it.

Like others have said, the lectures don't relate to the assignments nor the final at all. Throughout the entire quarter, I only attended the first lecture and immediately realized that they are all disorganized, uninformative, and irrelevant. Either way, I ended up with an A+ by doing all of the assignments, which were relatively easy. You are graded on:
- 3 Paper Critiques (i.e. answering questions after reading research papers)
- Weekly Mini-Labs (i.e. answering questions from an online workbook)
- One take-home Final Paper, where you select five scholarly journals of your choosing and write analyses about them
Grading on the papers was a bit harsh, as points would be taken off for very minuscule reasons, so I would recommend spending some time to revise these. You also get 2.5% Extra Credit by doing SONA studies, which is great.

Overall, I would recommend Psych 120B with Shams if you are looking for fulfilling one of your Column A requirement. The lectures are a little disorganized and somehow does not complete relate to the required assignments. You could get by without paying too much attention during lecture and discussion. The paper critiques are what make up the bulk of your grade, so I would definitely dedicate a good amount of time on those. But I felt that the grading was fair! Take this class!

For only the purpose of achieving a high grade in the class, lectures are useless because none of the material is tested in the final (the final lets you search for extra materials/research papers to write about). Lectures are bruincast recordings that are not of very high quality. 75% of the grade is based on three paper critiques, and their requirements are really detailed. I was very confident about my paper reading, writing, and editing skills and didn't spend much time doing the second paper critique, and my grade for that was only 80%. My suggestion is to look at the sample answers from the first paper critique (which was based on completion), look into it as deeply as possible, and figure out a structure of answering questions, and then write carefully to get a higher score.
Looking back, I think the content of the class was interesting, but is not really meaningful if you're not going to study vision in grad school or research. At the end of the quarter, this class became so unappealing that I didn't even have the motivation to watch the last 3 lectures or review for anything.

The class itself is pretty easy. You have 3 paper critiques in which you read a scientific paper assigned to you and answer questions about it, a minilab due every week, and a take home final that consists of you taking 5 topics from the quarter and essentially doing deeper research on. As for lectures, I never went to a single one beyond week 3 since all she does is post bruincasted lectures from fall 2019 (and shes not that good in them).

Overall: 3
Easiness: 4
Workload: 4
Clarity: 2
Helpfulness: 3

I genuinely do not know how this professor is still teaching at UCLA. This class is absolute hell and is even more hellish in the midst of all the crises. Please try to take another professor if you can. You will not learn anything in this class. It is important to enjoy the teaching style of your professor. I can't listen to this professor for more than 2 minutes without passing out.