Professor Paquette Smith makes this class a very enjoyable experience.
Like people have said before, this course feels like more work than a 4 unit class, but all the assignments are straightforward and easy to get 100% on. She was able to transmit this course well into the online format, and she was always extremely helpful and kind during office hours. Her exams were also pretty straightforward as they were a similar caliber to the embedded lesson questions and the practice test questions making it very doable to get a high A on the exams.

I think Melissa is an excellent professor. If I were a psych major, I I would definitely take her class again. She has turned the online learning platform into something easy to understand and fun to use. Her online lectures are interesting and engaging and the mini quizzes in between have really helped keep me on track. The only thing that I think is important to note is the amount of work given per week. I got more weekly assignments from this course than I have in any other course at UCLA. They were not necessarily difficult and they did help significantly in my learning. I would recommend taking this class with maximum 2 other course and make sure that those courses are on the easier side. If you are a psych major or actually want to LEARN, this is the class for you!

She was very accommodating during the first online quarter, and I could see how exams might be difficult normally since it's mostly memorization, but everything was pretty easy online. I'd recommend taking her.

Melissa Paquette-Smith has been one of my favorite professors at UCLA. period. She makes the material very easy to understand, and all of her lectures are very engaging as she does little interesting class activities throughout. If you didn't study for the midterm or final, it will be hard. But if you study, it was pretty easy. Her exams ask for you to identify a lot of examples so you have to apply the concepts from class to the questions. I absolutely loved her class (even though it was 2 hours and felt like a lot) and I wish she taught more classes at UCLA so I could take a class with her again. I love that woman

Melissa is a great professor, she explains everything clearly and concisely. Aside from posting her lecture slides, she also posts lecture outlines that you can add your notes to. Also, attendance is mandatory since you'll need an iClicker. However, we were allowed to miss three lectures. The content is not that difficult but there are a few assignments every week. This includes quizzes, lab reports (some are submitted on behalf of your entire lab group), and scientific article analyses. They aren't that difficult and they seem to be graded based on completion for the most part. The midterm was fairly easy after making flashcards based on the slides from the midterm review. The exam contained multiple-choice questions and a couple of free responses questions, then you get in a group to answer the exact same multiple-choice questions together to help your grade a little. I did not take the final exam since it became optional due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the final exam is cumulative and follows the same format as the midterm.

Paquette-Smith is somewhat of a decent instructor. I feel as though she is TOO reliant on her slides, which contain an excessive amount of information to simply remember. I understand that this class is a GE; however, the amount of information she wants us to remember for the final is somewhat unrealistic. I very much disagree with her structure and way of teaching but I guess it is what it is for an introductory Psychology course.

Lectures were long, but she gives you a break during the middle to make it more manageable. Classes were interesting, but I did find it somewhat difficult to ace the midterms and finals. I studied a ton, but the material didn't overlap as I expected. The class is interesting, and the assignments and tests were reasonable, but I did found it hard to get A's which is why I finished with a B+. The final was optional because of the 2019 Winter Covid Finals situation so maybe she made it more difficult than usual. Overall the class has a lot of little assignments but was reasonable.

This is class is very structured and organized, but I definitely, on my part, didn't study as much as I should have which sucks because I was 1 percentage away from an A-. However, the overall class is super fun and engaging! Melissa is a wonderful professor and you can tell she cares about her students and want them to succeed. The class have labs, quizzes, the midterm, and the final. The quizzes are just take home quizzes where you take them on BruinLearn and have unlimited times until you get 100%. The labs were sometimes group and sometimes individuals. In the middle of the quarter is when you start writing up lab reports (there's 2 I believe). I think the main things to focus on in this class is the exams. Since I was taking 3 other heavy classes, I didn't study as much for psych and that was my biggest mistake, so I definitely recommend taking this class if you know you have time to study for psychology. Melissa offers psych 10 test bank practice problems and outlines which helped me so much when studying, so I recommend you to look at those! As a result, I did pretty good on the midterm because of that, so make sure to study using those. Just for context, I had an A before the final and got a C on the exam bringing my grade down to a B+. Although I wasn't proud of myself, I knew it was also because I didn't have time to study for psych as much, so don't make the same mistake as me. Other than that though, I learned so much about psychology in this class and I would totally take this class again if I could! Whether you are taking this as a GE or a prereq it really is a fun intro psych class! Take this class!!!

Taking this as my first official psychology class was absolutely the best decision I could have made. Professor Paquette-Smith was so engaging in lecture and her slides provided you with the perfect amount of detail and explanation. The class consisted of one midterm and a final that made up a decent portion of your grade. However they weren't too challenging and there were many other assignments such as labs and participation to help make up for these tests. I did somewhat poorly on my midterm so this accounts for the B+ in the class, but if you study well enough for the midterm and final is fairly easy to receive and A or A- in the class. The professor and TA's also graded the labs and lab reports pretty easily as long as you had all the information and data that they asked for. Overall I really loved this class as well as the professor and would definitely recommend taking this class with her.

If you like Psychology, you’re gonna enjoy the course material. I think it was interesting mostly. The class itself is 2h long, so be prepared with a cup of coffee or you’re guaranteed to fall asleep some time during the quarter. There’s iClicker participation tracking during lectures (you can miss up to 4) and although all her slides and lecture outlines are uploaded, listening to her talk is still pretty much required since the slides sometimes just aren’t detailed enough.

Prof is great. If you’re ever unsure of something, go to her office hours (she always hosts Zoom office hours alongside in-person so it’s easier access). She’s really clear about what she expects from students so asking her clarification questions about things you don’t understand can be helpful. Lead TA Claire is also great and you can reach out to her via email too. Pre-exam make sure to do her practice questionbank- they’re pretty much what you can expect for the final. There will also be some labs, individual and group, which aren’t super bad imo, but please remember to review the lab content since she does put some of it on the midterm + final. Personally I didn’t read the textbook much but she does ask on some things there, but I think you can get away with at least an A- even if you dont read it and just go to lectures.

Tip: do the SONA credits at the start of the quarter otherwise you’ll be forgetting and panicking to meet the requirement during finals season