Lannan was a new teacher this quarter, so there is room for improvement.

However, he wasn’t that great of a lecturer since he was just reusing Pham’s (the original teacher) slides. Quite frequently the slides would confuse him, and he would just stop and stare at them for a few minutes while the students just sat there. Explanation-wise, he also wasn’t that great—mostly given how disorganized he was when talking. He would also introduce ideas for projects and such but keep scrapping them as things turned up (likely more of an issue given he was a very new teacher). His exams were fair, but he was very unforgiving on them. As a test taker, I tend to make quite a few minor mistakes that I usually only get marked a few points off for. Lannan would mark you down almost all the points on the problem, which is what brought down everyone’s test grades (from what I understand talking to other students--the test averages were typically in the low 70s). The time crunch on the midterms was also a factor in that. The tests were also the majority of your grade.

Furthermore, our original extra credit was through Mentimeter and discussion attendance. However, he realized he couldn't track students through Mentimeter and exchanged the participation-based extra credit with a very intensive group video project. These two extra credits (Mentimeter vs. group video) were not equivalent, and the amount of effort was not work it for the percent boost it gave. Even despite that, he graded these group projects very harshly (where Mentimeter was going to be for participation)--my group spent a long time on ours just to get an A-. He was very nice, passionate about the subject, and tried to be accommodating to students, but I just don’t really recommend him.

TL;DR: new teacher + bad lecturer + manageable tests, but harshly graded

(There are more reviews for this class on his PEERS entry since 14C was just added to his profile)

Deserves to have his lannussy eaten out ;)

Lectures were often disorganized and not always clear but the tests were very straightforward and there was extra credit. I read the textbook and watched YouTube videos to teach myself the content and found the class to be pretty manageable.

OH MY GOD this class was actual hell on earth. Never in my life have I experienced education as its worst until I took this class with Ryan Lannan (and I come from an underfunded and under-resourced high school environment). I'm currently retaking the class and doing SO much better with a different professor. This class was an ABSOLUTE SH*TSHOW. Lannan was extremely disorganized, rushed, unaware of anything going on, and a hot mess. He did not respond to emails quickly at all, wasn't understanding about issues, literally put us in positions that exposed us to covid, and was so bad at explaining concepts. He would often mess up during lecture and go back and do the whole thing and spend extra time that we didn't have going over things to re-clarify .. but he found a way to make it worse? The other class also had online tests and everything was really beneficial for them -- despite the tests being harder. The grading scale was kind of unfair as other professors have lower scores for an A. Everyone would always complain about this class and honestly justice should be served to the students who struggled, failed, felt unsatisfied, and wasted their time. He did give SUPER stingy extra credit opportunities and tests were not the hardest (were definitely not easy at all though) BUT he was kind of arrogant sometimes. TAs were pretty cool tho. But yeah, please avoid taking a class with this man at all costs.

I had Lannan the first quarter teaching at ucla, he was very fair. Lannan never tested material on the midterm/final that wasn't covered throughly in lecture. Highly recommend, his OH were also super helpful

Lannan was thrown into the course with two weeks warning. It was his first quarter teaching, and I thought he did an excellent job. I have had less prepared and less organized professors who have been teaching the course for years. Overall I really enjoyed having him as a professor and would take a class he is teaching again. Ryan truly cared about our success, which you would think would be something you could say about all professors, but I cannot say I can. He seemed to relate to us and empathize more, having finished his own PhD and school relatively recently. You could tell he wanted us to succeed, and his problem sets reflected the difficulty of his exams, which was extremely nice. There were weekly problem sets, and going to both his and the TA office hours was extremely helpful for working through them. This is the only class I have ever attended office hours for, and I highly recommend going because they made the class very manageable. His exams were very reasonable and did not throw any surprisingly terrible questions at us. They were also scaled up to match the average of the other 14C lecture for the exam we had a lower average for. There was also extra credit given for discussion attendance and a video project at the end. I think people were unfairly judgmental of him and too harsh all quarter… he did an amazing job and I felt I really understood the material more than in 14A and B. This class made me thing I liked chemistry (but I am being proven wrong in 14D), which just shows that Ryan is good at his job, especially given this was his first quarter.