The WORST, WORST professor I've ever had in my life. Out of 30+ professors, he's the WORST. I never thought I could actually hate someone I don't completely know, but I hate him. He has no idea how to teach. NONE. I had to always go to youtube to learn all the concepts. He gives not one damn about the class. I couldn't figure out the simplest mistake to the Rescorla Wagner model so I went to his OH for help...he couldn't figure it out. After teaching it for 30 years, he couldn't see the mistake. Another STUDENT jumped in and said "oh, you just need to add these last two numbers". His test questions are trick questions. Not tricky, TRICK. Every other question I asked about why I got an answer wrong during TAs office hours started with "ya that was a tricky one"...His mean grade average for the midterm was 66%. That means out of 250+ people, most failed. Instead of learning how to teach, he curves the grades. The irony is, this class is supposed to teach you about how we learn..except no one is learning anything. If you care about learning, your sanity, your grade, DO NOT take this class. I can't stand professors like this who don't give damn about their students because they have job security. He's an old fart and he should be ASHAMED of himself.

Honestly, to the people who spent more time bitching on the class chat group and discussion board, it's so sad how you would spend more time scheming on how to take down a professor rather than putting in the hours to study. The truth is just that PSYCH 110 is a hard class, I spent about 15-20 hours a week on it going over the lecture thoroughly and reading the textbook to gain clarity.
There were 4 papers throughout the quarter, about 1 1/2 pages each covering 2 concepts from what we've learned so far, pretty easy to get full points on it.
There are 2 midterms and a final, each amounting to 20% of your final grade so 60% for exams and 40% for papers.
His tests are hard and designed to test if you are able to apply what you learn in lectures, my first test I got like a 83% but subsequently I got used to his testing methods and ended up getting a 100 on the second test and a 90 on the final.
My tip would be to go over lectures VERY thoroughly on the first go, like literally take down everything he says (draw diagrams to illustrate experiments especially the topics about love and sex and emotion etc).
I also can't stress this enough but READ THE TEXTBOOK!!! The textbook contains a lot of extra and in-depth information that might not always be tested (sucks I know) but it will definitely deepen your understanding of the lecture material.
Also, Rescorla-Wagner was a little tough but just get used to the equation and think of more examples to calculate.
Reading the reviews on this class, I was HELLA terrified because everyone made it seem like a GPA nightmare but honestly, go in with an open heart and yea Fanselow might not be the nicest professor but he's not here to give you free A's, work for it.

The book has a cute little dog on the front cover. This is a trap. The dog says this is a fun class. This is not a fun class. You will never look at a Japanese Quail the same way ever again (you will understand if you choose to take it). Fanselow.... where do I begin. He is kind of funny in a full-of-himself egotistical kind of way, he sucks at writing tests, he will actually TRY to trick you with his questions which I find very frustrating, and he will show his big huge ego in lecture when he snaps at people for not having his superior intellect. He does not care if you do well and that sucks. I hated that I actually found some of the material pretty interesting despite all of this. However, I felt I was not tested on what I learned which was even more frustrating. It is almost Christmas and he hasn't posted grades to a multiple choice test. Now directly to the man himself, Fanselow: I do not care that you are some big shot in the science of learning world or that you have a huge crush on Pavlov- be a nicer person and a better teacher, thanks.

I don't understand all the negative reviews for Fanselow. Yes the tests are not well written, elusive, and challenging, but he is very understanding and not only does he curve the test but he pays attention to which questions did not bode well and will remove them from everyone's scores. His lectures have all been very engaging despite being online, and he is very clear and direct when he explains. I honestly wish I had the chance to take this class in person with him rather than online this quarter, and I hope that more people will electively take his class in the future. He has done a lot of significant work in the Psych field and absolutely knows his stuff!

This class reflects what a joke our educational system is in this country. In the syllabus, it said that he likes to ask questions about experiments or scenarios that have not been seen or heard of before-- many are made up. You would think thats a fair challenge but he wants to see if you can apply complex concepts that you have just literally learned to those situations.

It's the equivalent of being taught how to ride a bike WITH training wheels, barely grasping the basics, then immediately removing the training wheels and giving you a mountain to ride down. Don't give beginners advanced scenarios, there's nothing wrong with challenging people but this was ridiculous. The entire situation was a floor effect and the class depends on the curve to pass.

Exams were on Respondus, where you are timed, and have a webcam tracing your eye movements, and you can't go back and forth with test questions to check your work, even though in real life, you can double check anything, and it's usually smart students who double check their answers anyway, which really grinds my gears.

Unless you are into aspects of neuroscience, save your GPA and avoid this class all together. I had a 4.0 cumulative GPA as a junior, and I got a C+ in this class. Gave it my all-- ignored my other courses just to get through this one.

Fanselow is definitely not the nicest guy or most helpful/accommodating professor at all, BUT, don't feel like it's the end of the world if you end up having to enroll in this class like I did when I read the reviews. Fanselow definitely is not a nice, warm, or approachable professor, but I personally liked the material in the class and it wasn't super hard to grasp. You definitely have to apply all the material learned in lecture and in the textbook, but the tests were pretty fair. Make sure you read the textbook and memorize every concept from lecture (and know how to apply it), and you'll do ok. The curve helps a lot too. Most people did really well on the essays and I would do them the night before like most people and we all did fine on them. Fanselow is also pretty responsive on the discussion forum which is nice for any questions before tests. Overall, he's not my favorite professor but I liked the content and lecture format.

What can I say about this “professor” that hasn’t already been said? Michael Fanselow is the worst professor at UCLA, point blank. He’s condescending, unapproachable, unfriendly, unclear, and an overall embarrassment to the university. If you have literally ANY other option, don’t take this class with him. Seriously, if there’s ANY way you can take it ANY other quarter with ANY other processor, do it. Fanselow is trash. I’m not saying this because I did poorly and am angry at the man— I did fine in the class. Michael Fanselow is a horrible person and educator. A dyslexic student approached him with questions about grade calculations and he said “it looks like you never took math in junior high.” He scheduled midterms one week apart and when I emailed him with concerns that my classmates were joking about suicide, self-harm and substance abuse, he couldn’t have cared less.
His lectures make no sense. His tests make no sense (and he’ll try to blame you for “not understanding” his questions when, in actuality, he’s just a terribly ineffective lecturer) and he’s a jerk. He literally has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. After the final, there was a gmail outage, and he sent an email to the class saying that we might want to re-send our emails “if they’re actually important.”

Michael Fanselow is the WORST PROFESSOR AT UCLA and he doesn’t deserve tenure. No one in the department will care about anything he does or says to anyone, so your best bet is avoiding the class. I’ll say it one more time: FANSELOW. IS. TRASH.

FANSELOW IS TRASH. He’s horrible. Don’t take this class. Just don’t.

Do not take this class with him. He is the worst professor you will ever have. He does not care if you get covid, he does not care whats going on in your life, he does not care if his students suceed. Hes extremely condescending and unclear. He posted lectures from last quarter which made his work load this quarter very small, but he still took forever to post grades and wouldn't respond to questions he thought was stupid. He also called a girl stupid for asking for clarifications with grades since he can't explain anything. He has a bunch of TA's and they are the ones that run the class. Its all about classical conditioning but he expects you to be able to apply the concepts as well as he can with his minimal teaching efforts. Don't take him, he's just a straight-up an incompetent asshole of a professor. He has a huge ego because of his research and titles but hes just a prick. Don't take him unless this is the only option.

This course was wild... Going in, I was hesitant because of the decade or so of complaints on this forum. I think Fanselow definitely knows what he's talking about and is passionate about the material and it comes across. I actually enjoyed his lectures most out of all my classes this quarter because he explains concepts in a way that's very easy to follow and makes interesting examples. I preferred that he didn't use slides because I could focus more on his explanations rather than trying to frantically copy a block of text down. I think his whiteboard outline/diagram format works very well, however, this was during the zoom quarter when all lectures could be paused or rewound, and I could see why this would be less desirable in a live lecture setting. I actually found the concepts much more interesting than I thought I would, and the class itself was not as difficult as advertised. The final was hard, for sure, but most of my troubles were with issues in communication. Questions would be intentionally tricky at some points, but I feel like if you really study you can pass. There were lots of problems with the midterm technically for me, and because he literally told us that was no excuse because we'd had time to "practice" with Respondus so we would get a zero, I started the exam sobbing and stressed out of my mind. It was a horrible feeling to struggle by no fault of your own over a glitch you could not control and feel like you couldn't ask for help because you'd be denied compassion and understanding.

He was so unnecessarily abrasive with his students during their interactions, patronizing, condescending if we ever contradicted what he said, even though you could tell he really cared about our learning and what we took away from his course, so I don't know why he refused to be kinder. It was such a contrast of personalities, it was like whiplash and made for a very stressful and unpredictable time. He forced a student to buy a new computer when hers would not allow Respondus or fail an exam, he threatened to report us to the dean for asking him to reconsider a grading policy, and he was not very understanding during an extremely difficult quarter. In addition, because our section was canceled the Tas didn't seem to do much, and mine was also unnecessarily passive-aggressive in emails. Maybe trying to be funny but considering how the entire course felt very back and forth it didn't help. Not to mention we literally did not get most of our grades until the Friday of week ten... Yikes. I think Fanselow is a good teacher and researcher but that he needs to listen to some critiques of his method with a more open ear and not immediately get defensive or blinded by his own perspective. The class is about learning and the professor can still learn from his students too. Definitely take this during a COVID quarter though, because the textbook comes free and you can watch and rewatch his lectures on your own schedule. Curve is nice, I literally failed (like got a 1/4) the final because I got three hours sleep and then Respondus crashed my laptop AGAIN and left me 30 min to finish most of the exam (and he doesn't let you go back and change answers), but I still passed.

Fanselow is pretty rude, and given COVID and protests happening during finals, he barely budged. For online, he makes you do closed-notes Respondus monitored exams so if you take the class online, make sure you have a laptop because he won't budge. Also you can't go back on questions.

His lectures are pre-recorded and they're ok, but you REALLY have to take notes to follow along. Also he really tests you on small details from the textbook, so do the whole reading and take notes, but even then it's really hard to do his exams. He's also nitpicky with reasoning for exams and doesn't really budge.

For online, we had to do 4 papers (he ended up making the lowest one dropped in light of protests and everything at the end of the quarter) but they're 1.5 page double spaced writing assignments where you just kind of write about how course concepts apply to an example in your life. They're not too difficult if you really read the instructions and explain your work.

The exams were 20% each, 2 midterms and a final and the papers were 10% each so 40% total. The exams are really difficult and he curves on a 4.0 GPA scale that's kind of confusing.

He answers stuff on the Discussion Board, but is fairly rude about it. If you can take 110 with another professor, I would do the other professor.