A decent class and Prof. Morris is a nice guy and very knowledgable. The lectures are all BruinCast and the sections are optional reviews. If you know the material on the lecture slides (also online) you can do a passable job in this class. The info is interesting, but Prof. Morris loses his train of thought sometimes. Overall a solid and relatively easy GE, not life-changing but no complaints

I have no idea why this class has such high reviews, because it's terrible.

First off, the HW grader is a random person not affiliated with the class at all, and is so unnecessarily strict. Second, the way he evaluates participation through tophat is so ridiculous. The question times are way too short, and it's often difficult to deal with formatting and submission issues, so your grade tanks. The homework questions are bizarre, unnecessarily difficult, and often unrelated to the lectures/readings. Some of them even tell you to google the answer. And on that note, about 80% of the LONG (40+ pages) readings are not tested on.

Morris is the world's most boring lecturer, aside from the few moments at which he's kind of funny. He also straight-up copies his lectures from Wikipedia. Like seriously, listen to one lecture, then go to the wiki page on the topic. Word for word.

The topic of the class is great, but this is not an easy A or a fun GE.

This class was super interesting, but a bit tough and disorganized. Morris is a pretty boring lecturer even though the material was interesting. What really made the class for me was ISABEL. Oh my god she is the. best. She is super nice, met with me one on one, really does care for the students, and explains things so well. She really made the class fun and interesting and kept me engaged. She seems like such a cool person outside of class too.

the homework for this class tho? terrible. it's graded by some random lady who is wayy to harsh for absolutely no reason. I got half of all my points off on a question for being "too detailed"... seriously, who hurt her???!! the homeworks were always incredibly harshly graded which was probably the biggest factor in bringing down everyone's grades. utter bs.

he also took attendance on an app that asked quiz questions, and if you got the answer wrong, it would impact your participation. sorry, but i am literally sitting here, participating, watching class, and i get counted off for not knowing the answer to a question we havn;t even talked about yet??

morris was funny at times though, he randomly showed a video of a weird ancient creature dancing or something and i thought i was having a fever dream

First off, I will say that this class felt less like "Life in Universe" and more like "Life on Earth" as that's what most of this class focused on. So, if you're expecting to exclusively talk about life on other planets then you will be pretty disappointed in the content of this class.
Anyways, given the high reviews for this class I imagine it's probably better in-person than it was online. However, I don't think this class was bad per se. Sure, the lectures can be kind of boring and professor Morris isn't what I'd call charismatic. But, the class itself is very straightforward and definitely is on the easier side.
The homeworks to me weren't too bad because I thought they were pretty straightforward and all the information you needed could be found either in the textbook or online. But, there were a decent amount of people who complained about them. On that note, the homeworks do take some time to complete and are graded pretty harshly. So, if you want to get a good grade on them you need to leave yourself some time to do them.
The exams are also pretty straightforward (mostly MC with some fill in the blank and short answers) but there is A LOT of information you need to remember so you do need to put in the time to study for them.
All this being said, the one serious complaint I have about this class is how participation is evaluated. For this quarter it was done through Tophat and we'd answer questions during the lecture. All this would be fine if simply answering the question got you full points in participation but it doesn't since you also need to answer them ALL correctly. Tophat itself is also awful and would sometimes just not work meaning I couldn't answer the question at all.
So, while I don't think this is a necessarily an "easy" GE, I do think that an A is still easily achievable.

Mark Morris is a really nice guy and good lecturer. His slides are actually pretty funny and he talks about interesting stuff if you pay attention. Most people don't go to lecture because he podcasts it. In terms of a GE, this class is a little harder than others but it's worth it for what you learn (cool topic, fun class). You don't do much math or really even astronomy (compared to what other professors of this class do) so don't worry about that. Morris talks a lot about evolution and the biology of other planets. Do the homework, do the study guides for the tests, and take notes in class and you should be fine. Going to discussion section isn't really worth it, unless you have a question or want to pick up your graded homework.

As someone who was very interested in learning about this topic, this class was quite fun. Morris can definitely be a dry-ish lecturer, but the material is interesting enough to keep things going. The homeworks and readings were interesting to work through and definitely light and fair, but beware as the TA I had graded homework quite harshly. He was overall a decent and fair professor, with a doable midterm and final that he provides detailed study guides for. Definitely take this class if you were ever interested in astronomy or space exploration.

This class isnt as easy as its made out to be, but its still pretty easy. The homework is graded really hard so you have to do a good job, but some of it is completely unrelated to the textbook and you have to do some research on your own. He's a pretty boring lecturer (I went to 4 lectures the whole quarter after falling asleep in the first two) but just listened to the lecture podcasts leading up to finals week and took some notes on those. Some of the ones late in the quarter you can skip since a lot of the end of the course is theoretical and doesnt show up on the tests, which are still pretty easy if you put in a bit of studying. In terms of science GEs, this is a good one.

This class is not that easy, I mean the contents, because it's a interdisciplinary subject. But the exams are heavily based on the study questions that Prof. Morris gives beforehand. Personally, I went to every lecture and take notes of what professor said NOT THE CONTENTS OF THE SLIDES. Take the homework seriously because it takes a while for you to figure out the answers+it counts 30% of the grade. Overall, an A is not unattainable unless you don't pay too much effort in it.

i heard this class was a piece of cake, but it definitely was not the case for me. i averaged A/B in weekly hwks worth 30% of the grade .. but got a 58 on the midterm. this is an "athlete class", but the athletes sometimes are really obnoxious so its difficult to pay attention in class, and the professor has no authority and doesn't tell them to shut up. it's like he's just reciting information without even realizing that he's supposed to be teaching it to the students. the textbook is unnecessarily long and boring to read too.

*note - this is the same professor mark morris from the physics department*

I took Astro 5 with Professor Morris. Don't be fooled by these somewhat low ratings on Bruinwalk. While his lectures are extremely dry, a lot of his homework questions and midterm questions come from his lectures. Literally, if you take a laptop to class and type up everything he says, you'll get all the information you need for the class - I didn't do that for the first 5 or 6 weeks of class, and missed a lot of material. If you don't like science at all, well, tough luck for you. He's really responsive to emails and will do his best to explain questions over email. His office hours are generally quiet, but if you show up, he's willing to answer any question to talk to. He's far better to talk to in person than he is a lecturer. His midterm is worth a good chunk of the grade, so take it seriously. I underestimated the amount of material covered in this class, did poorly on the midterm, did excellent on the final, but still ended up with a B+. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed the class and would recommend it to anyone with the vaguest interest in possibilities of life in space. I learned a lot of material I've always been wondering about since I was a child.