THIS CLASS IS NOT AN EASY GE!!!! This was probably one of the most time-consuming and confusing classes I have taken here. Now, the class is very interesting if you enjoy learning about the environment but the professor doesnt use a textbook, does not write words on the slides, and constantly mentions her other classes and opinions during the lectures. Although it is pretty funny, I took this class online but it has an in person discussion which often involves fieldwork at ucla and attendance is mandatory. If you have a good TA it is so much more helpful but if you have a bad TA you are on your own. The final is cumulative and there is no study guide or mention of what you should study besides to watch the lectures so you really have to put in the work in order to get a good grade on the midterm and final which are 60 percent of your grade. Literally everything she says in the lectures are up for grabs including the mention of any numbers and the videos she includes in the lectures. The workload itself ranges anywhere from 1-6 hours of lectures and I would never recommend unless you have to take this class for your major.

I can't say how much I disliked this class. First off three weeks after our midterm was graded, a point was randomly taken off my test grade dropping it from a B- to C+ and then when I asked Professor Illes why that happened she said she would get back to me with an answer and never did. Next she gave us a "study guide" to help us out which literally consisted of ALL the topics we had gone over as if that helped at all. Would not recommend if you're looking for any easy GPA boosting class.

Great professor!! I've had her for Animal Geog., Conservation in Developing Countries, and Geog. 5. Smart. entertaining, passionate, and very clear in what she expects from you. Her exams are straight forward and don't aim to trick you. You do have to take good notes and know them well before you head into her exams, but it's comforting to know that as long as you put in the effort you will get a good grade (and learn something in the process). Her work loads are fair. She does have 10-page research papers in her upper-division classes, but they are more than do-able, as she gives you the entire term to work on them. You can't go wrong with Prof. Illes. I wish UCLA would get more professors like her.

Illes was my first professor at UCLA, and I've had her for 3 classes. She is GREAT. Very reasonable about grading. If you attend every class and take good notes, you will likely get an A. Very helpful and responds to e-mails quickly. Extremely knowledgable from her research experience and her lectures are very engaging. Also has a good sense of humor, which makes 3 hour lectures a little more enjoyable. Tests (a midterm and a final) are combination of short answers and essays, both of which are on basic principles and ideas that were taught. Weekly readings are worth 10% and are interesting and do not take much time. Also a research paper on an animal of your choice for another 10%. If you are debating taking any of her classes, DEFINITELY do.

Professor Illes is one of my favorite professors at UCLA. I have taken four of her classes, and from the first one that I took, I got into the habit of going to her office hours. She was extremely helpful in reiterating content from her lectures and making me understand the concepts if I had questions. She has a wealth of knowledge and actually passes that on to her students so they can succeed beyond the test -- something not all professors are masterful at. She is also an entertaining lecturer, and I was never bored in any of her classes, despite the fact that each lecture was three hours long. She usually kept it balanced by showing some videos relevant to the course material in between her speeches. If you want an excellent geography class, you should definitely take Professor Illes' classes. It's difficult to find even a decent professor, but Illes goes above and beyond to make her classes enjoyable and informative, and the information from her classes actually stick!

Professor Illes is engaging and funny in her videos, but she is brutal and cutthroat in my opinion. She basically does not tolerate late work unless your mom died. Her 90 multiple choice midterm questions (with no given study guide besides hours of rambling lectures) were written so vague and confusing and sometimes conflicted with lecture material and that was a huge scandal. The final was better, she dropped a study guide but it was vague and I basically only got a good grade because an angel student made a Quizlet. In terms of the class, GEOG 5 is a great lab GE to take, and in terms of the content it is very easy and comparable to AP Environmental Science. I took asynchronous lectures and in-person lab, so I watched 4-6 lecture videos ranging from 20-50 minutes a week, with the weekly assignment being to write 3 questions and answers per lecture video. The lab is mandatory with no makeups (depending on your TA), but the labs are incredibly easy and often group work.

While Dr. Illes was generally an engaging lecturer and the content she covered was interesting, her exams and assignments unnecessarily, and excessively abstract and vague. She is also very unresponsive through email, thus you may have to heavily rely on the TA.

For the final exam, there was not a single person that received >89%, and no, she did not curve the final grade...

This is the WORST professor I have ever taken at UCLA. I am at a loss for words of how bad she is. If I have one piece of advice for anyone reading this, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR. All of my friends cruised by this class with literally any professor with flying colors. I expected the same, but boy was I wrong.

The class seems deceptively easy because the lectures are relatively straightforward and easy to grasp. It seems like pure memorization. The labs were practically a joke, having absolutely nothing to do with the course material. But still really easy and you get 100% for just completing it. Then the midterm comes around, and any nitty gritty question is asked. I got a C+ on the midterm which was 2% above the average for my TA section. I thought it must be a joke or curved, but the TA announced there would be no curve. The entire class was furious. The professor said she refused to make a study guide (I believe due to laziness) and is extremely stubborn and unresponsive to student needs.

The TA then said the final should be much easier and that the professor was listening to our feedback. She even made us a study guide, which really wasn't much of a study guide and rather any broad topic that she has ever covered, and it honestly did not help at all. The final was just as hard as the midterm, with the class average being in the low B's. For a notoriously easy GE, this is ridiculous. This professor is a mean and rude lady who does not care about her students. WORST PROFESSOR EVER!!

the exams in this class are hard. however all the lectures are recordings. my ta was really nice and the labs themselves are easy. you just need to study hard for the exams.

Overall pretty easy GE class, felt like a high school class tbh. Lab participation is mandatory, but It's just group work that you'll always get 100% in as long as you do it. The class itself is asynchronous, which was pretty nice. All you had to do each week was watch 4-5 25-50 min lectures and create 3 questions with answers for each lecture.

The structure of the class is good and manageable, the only thing I didn't really enjoy was the professor and how she lectured and created her midterm/final. Illesburg was lowkey annoying in her lectures because it felt like all she did was rant in the recordings, but its tolerable if you skip past her rants. The midterm wasn't that bad, I got around an 87% even though she changed her test structure from 90 MCQ to 85 MCQ and 5 short answer questions. She also changed the structure of the final to be around 40 MCQ and 10 short answer questions because the class voted to have more free response, which didn't work in my favor because I forgot a lot of stuff and didn't have 4 options to choose from.

I didn't take this class that seriously, as I didn't watch the lectures thoroughly until the last couple of weeks leading up to the midterm and did fine thanks to my friend's notes combined with 2x speed. My advice to pass this class would be to work together with your lab group to make notes from recorded lectures and study it thoroughly before the exams.