- She is, by far, my least favorite professor at UCLA so far. Poor teaching style aside, she made it very clear that she was not very interested in student learning or teaching. Her unfriendliness and overall condescending attitude during office hours were unacceptable. When students ask her questions, it was visibly apparent that she was annoyed. She would give two sentence responses, expecting you to understand it. She posted a negative tweet, was very sarcastic, and overall, unreceptive to feedback on anything.

- This class took a lot of deciphering on your own. While the material itself is not intensely challenging, she made it difficult to understand by framing everything in the context of experiments. She would never start off with the definition of a term or explain it; she dove straight in to the experiment, and by the time you find out what the conclusion is, you're just confused about what the prior 15 minutes meant. If you went to discussion or TA office hours, they did a good job explaining it! I would not solely blame Professor Sharpe for the incredibly poor test scores because I do think it takes some work on your own and initiative to ask for help from TA's about confusing terms. Could she have made it a little easier for us? Definitely. But the active discussion board on ccle and TA's made it more bearable.

- On the syllabus, it said there would be absolutely no scaling of exams, but since the average for both midterms was below 80, she scaled us up, luckily. The midterms were poorly written. I honestly don't think she understands the concept of all of the above multiple choice questions! Many confusing language.

- save yourself the headache and take 110 with someone else. Bad teacher + good character is one thing. Good teacher + bad character is another. But this.... bad teacher and bad character is unacceptable.

I do think this class and professor has potential, so maybe, in the future, it will be better (so pay attention to reviews after Winter 2020), but short-term, AVOID this professor. To establish some level of credibility, I have a near 4.0 departmental GPA as a psychobio major, and despite applying myself the same level I do to other classes, I received my first ever C at UCLA. Here is some info that I spent way too much time typing out, so you can make an educated decision on whether or not to take this course.

//The professor//
- Non-COVID-19 related/ NEGATIVES: The other reviews have already discussed several major failings of Professor Sharpe and several events where she demonstrated fairly egregious behavior. After our first midterm she posted a tweet in which she made a sarcastic comment about our class and grades, which honestly I did not care too much about, but did demonstrate her lack of understanding of why students care about grades and provides some insight as to why she doesn't care about student input when creating her exams. (Hint to Sharpe: very few people inherently care about grades, but when grad schools (PhD programs, Med school, etc.) and future employers look at GPA to evaluate students, of course people will be extrinsically motivated, since this can actually affect one's livelihood. Don't be so callous about it.) A small issue for me: I felt like she treated the students in the class as little children during the lectures, providing us with over-the-top validation. I guess you can consider that to be nice, but the manner and frequency with which she gave it seemed a little condescending to me.
- Non-COVID-19 related/POSITIVES: Professor Sharpe was nice during lectures and was happy to questions in class; she frequently encouraged the class to ask questions. Furthermore, she is clearly knowledgeable about the field of associative learning and has a tremendous passion for the field. It's unfortunate that this doesn't translate into her teaching.
- COVID-19-related / NEGATIVES: Sharpe sent an email in the midst of the COVID-19 situation, in which she said that she will no longer be responding to emails. This triggered a lot of students, and frankly, understandably so. This was a difficult time for many students and Professor Sharpe added a lot of undue stress on students in the class. Furthermore, she disregarded the Academic Senate's strong urging to make the final opt-in, instead opting to just have it weigh less than the other two exams, which makes no sense to me because if she felt that the COVID-19 situation was severe enough for her to reduce the weight of the exam, since so many students were disadvantaged, why would she not just make the exam optional prior to us taking the exam or retroactively make it optional, where it can only help your grade. Out of all four south-campus classes I took, she was the only professor to not do opt-in.

- All in all, I still am a little confused about whether I would consider a "nice" professor because she seemed helpful and seemed that she cared about students and their learning, but her often actions demonstrated otherwise.

//The material//
- This is incredibly subjective. I personally was ambivalent towards the course material. Likely, as a psych/psychobio major, you've heard of Pavlovian/Classical Conditioning and Instrumental Conditioning and the class is a 10-week course in those subjects (associative learning). You begin the course with a review of Pav/Instrumental learning, which is why the course seems incredibly easy in the beginning (and deceivingly so, since Midterm 1 grades were very low for a Psych class), but after Midterm 1, get ready for incredibly nuanced and difficult discussions on specific aspects of Pav/Instrumental learning.
- Sharpe is really into neuroscience so you will spend ~20% of the course on different neural circuits and discussing lesioning studies as they apply to associative learning. The neuroscience not as complicated as material in Psych 115 or 116, though.
- Sharpe loves to use graphs/charts from other empirical papers to explain the topics of the course. Generally, if you understand what's going on in the study and the graphs, you will have a good grasp of most concepts.

//The grading (aka what you really care about)//
- 3 equally weighted and equally long exams, worth 80% of grade. Each exam consisted of 25 questions, which means each question is worth a lot to your final grade. The exams were awful, there's no other way to say it. I found her exams to problematic for a few reasons:
-- Professor Sharpe mentioned that she doesn't test on rote memorization, which is correct, but be prepared for her to test on you on some obscure information applied to a novel situation. One would logically assume that the professor would test us on concepts that she spent the most time in class explaining, but that was not the case.
-- One of the prior reviewers is incorrect, Professor Sharpe DID inform us that the exams were cumulative, but her syllabus was not as explicit in this.
-- The biggest issue for me personally (regarding exams) is not even that Professor Sharpe tested on obscure information, but that the preparatory material (the practice questions and the discussion quiz questions) for the exams did not reflect the difficulty and style of the exams. I really don't care if a professor tests us on material that wasn't necessarily emphasized in class (your viewpoint might diverge here), because that just means I need to study more intensely, but it does then becomes the responsibility of the professor to provide us with practice materials that reflect the test design. I scored 100% on 5 of the quizzes and 90% on the practice questions for the 3 midterms - this is no way aligned with my actual test grades, which is a problem.
- 6 discussion quizzes, worth 20% of grade (lowest quiz dropped). These are generally pretty easy so long as you paid attention in lecture, took notes, and did some light studying before the quiz.
- Extra credit in the form of instructor evals: 1% added to your grade if >50% of the class responds.

//The textbook//
- You can find the textbook on UC-Elinks (ask the librarian at Powell if you're confused) as an e-textbook. You can download and print each chapter.
- Overall, the textbook is pretty useless but it is helpful with understanding a few concepts like the Rescorla Wagner Model; since the textbook is free and accessible, you may as well access it and use it. The lecture material doesn't really align with the textbook after Midterm #1, making it useless except in a few rare circumstances.

//The TAs (Mary and Nancy)//
- Honestly, they carried the class and were absolutely godsends. Mary was a gem, not just because she was kind, which honestly isn't that important since we're here to learn, but she actually could teach the material in an accessible, easy-to-understand way. The psych department really should just let her teach the course, I probably would have learned more.

//Overall:// I don't think Sharpe is a villain and she does care about the course material but is clearly clueless about what it entails to teach at UCLA and does not demonstrate a lot of empathy towards her students.

Dr. Sharpe is very passionate about her field of teaching, which is why she is also incredibly knowledgable about the subject- but with that comes the curse of knowledge. aka, she is not very clear or sympathetic when we did not understand something that she has been obviously studying for a very long time. With that being said, she tried her hardest I think to chunk the class into sections that would be easy to group together when being tested on. The main problem was that she would tell us one thing in lecture and practice tests and then actually test us on way different things. I think being a new teacher is hard, especially on a new continent (she is Australian) so I don't think its fair to chew her out so hard. She definitely should work on being more approachable and self conscious about her teaching method though. Also my TA was the best and made this class a bit easier!

All I have to say is that, after reading the previous reviews, I was nervous taking this class, but this professor must have completely changed for the better. I did take this during covid so things might change. However, all of her exams and quizzes were open note, and she offered an opportunity for 12 points of extra credit (and this class is out of 100 points). She was genuinely super kind and cared for her students and I would truly recommend taking this class with her. She and all the TA's were super active on the discussion board for student questions. Of course, the exams had a few harder questions, but they were all multiple choice and pretty reasonable overall with pretty good averages. Professor Sharpe was a great and clear lecturer. I was a senior that needed to take this class to graduate, and again I read the awful comments before and I really don't write these reviews, but Professor Sharpe was an absolute gem this quarter, and with all the extra credit and open book exams on ccle with plenty of time, I thought it was on me if I flunked this class and that Prof. Sharpe really set us up to succeed this quarter. Btw this class was just 3 non-cummulative 25 question multiple choice exams (although concepts did build on each other), and 6 quizzes that were 5 multiple choice questions each. (w lowest score dropped).

I came into this class with heavy doubts after reading the previous reviews here, but I'm guessing Dr. Sharpe took the feedback from W20 seriously and really changed this class for the better, because I really didn't have any issues with this class. Lectures and slides were recorded and often uploaded days/weeks in advance, attendance was never mandatory (discussion attendance was extra credit), and I thought all of the exams were pretty straightforward and fair. If I recall correctly, some of the exam questions came straight from the practice questions, for which she posted the answer keys, so they were basically free points. In addition, Dr. Sharpe offered an insane amount of extra credit (5pts for discussion attendance + 5pts for 2h of SONA study credit + 2pts for instructor evals = 12pts/100 total) and with 90% being an A in the class, you could theoretically get a 78% on the actual exams and quizzes and still get an A in the class.

My only negative about this class was that I thought some of the lectures were kind of tricky to grasp - a lot of the concepts that were covered were explained through the actual studies that were done, which as an undergrad, got a little confusing at times. But, Dr. Sharpe and the TAs were SUPER helpful in promptly answering student questions on the discussion forum basically 24/7, and I really felt like she cared about her students this quarter.

This class is very challenging. I had to switch to pass/no pass after tanking the second midterm when I thought I did really well on it. The material is hard and it builds as the quarter goes on, so if there's something you don't understand early on, it's gonna be even more challenging for you. However, Professor Sharpe was super open to helping students out, as were the TA's. She also gives a lot of opportunities for extra credit as well. If you could avoid this class I probably would, but it's not the end of the world if you can't. Sharpe would probably make a better professor if class were in person and we could ask her questions in real time.

Honestly, I was terrified to take this class due to past reviews. Though she may have not been extremely helpful in the beginning of COVID, Professor Sharpe has been a pretty good professor for an online psychology class. 12% of Extra Credit points were offered, and the textbook is very useful but not required (and can be found for free online in the UCLA library). I actually quite like her slides, they're easy to follow especially when watching her lecture videos. The TAs for this class were exceptional, and very clear at explaining concepts. The exams are fairly tricky and I don't know yet how well I did in this course, but it's not as bad as it seems.

This was a really fascinating class. I appreciated Dr. Sharpe's positive attitude during lecture and could tell she was really excited about what she was teaching. Much of what I learned helped me come up with research ideas I'd like to explore in my doctoral studies! This class is tough, but if you're someone hoping to pursue a Ph.D, it does a great job refining your research literacy. Thank you Dr. Sharpe!

I have always been extremely passionate about the field of psychology, but taking this class really made me seriously doubt my knowledge within this subject area. I am a hard worker with a strong work ethic and have never procrastinated a day in my life. Although I watched her every lecture multiple times, always asked questions in the discussion posts, and studied for weeks before midterms and finals, I still always did poorly on exams even though I felt like I had mastered the material well. It was just very frustrating to have to deal with this professor and her unwillingness to support her students (via strictly enforcing a “no email” rule) alongside the other responsibilities required for the course. I would recommend avoiding this professor when taking this course as much as possible.

I was a bit nervous signing up for this class considering all the bad reviews, but trust me it's not that bad. It was actually really good. I learned a lot about how human beings learn and it's helped me reshape the way I study for tests. Regarding the professor, she's actually really kind and patient. I have a feeling she was having a hard time with covid lockdown. As for her class, she gives so much extra credit that it makes up for the material being difficult. Look at the grade distribution, she's very fair.