This professor is sarcastic, with is a positive quality of his. His exams are not difficult, however you do need to study. The lab for this class is the most difficult part I believe. However, as far as the professor goes he is great and enjoys teaching. He is a professor that is concerned about his/her students and even has an Honors Seminar for those of you that need honors credit. The honors section is not difficult at all. You need to write a 3 page paper that is general on an article and do a 15 minute presentation on that same article. You get to choose the article you want to present in. It has to be something in developmental psychology. As for the actual class, all you need to worry about is studying for the exams, which is easy multiple choice questions. I would say 8 our of 10 in difficulty level.

Winter Quarter 2010
Professor Johnson is a very nice professor and this class is interesting. His lecture power points are organized and he also posts up podcasts of his lectures. This class is not hard. I got an A. For his midterms, I studied his lecture notes and skimmed the chapters in the book. It's important to take good notes and remember the main points of all the slides in his lectures. If you miss something, check the podcast. I enjoyed this class very much and learned a great deal about developmental psychology. I highly recommend this professor for this class =).

This class is interesting AND an 'easy A.' However there is a catch. Your grade is primarily based on class discussion and peer review.

Before every class meeting you must read two psychology journal articles (generally one is 4-5 pages and the other 8-9pgs); in-class you are organized into groups of 10 and assigned a question, which you have to collectively answer and present to the class (this answer is graded on a scale of 1-5 by the TA). Also, the people in your group, your peers, after the end of each class then submit to the professor a rating of your level of participation on a 1-10 scale.

SO if you are one who is uncomfortable in class discussions this is NOT the class for you, as peer reviews account for 60% of your grade. The other 40 percent is based on the two 3 page journal article review papers you submit in the middle and end of the quarter. The TA Kim was a very fair grader and the papers are not too difficult to write. Both the TA and Professor Johnson are very nice and truly care for their students. To make a long story short, I would definitely recommend this class to any psych majors who are seeking an easy A class and are not afraid of class discussions.

Professor Johnson genuinely cares about his students and puts forth honest and compassionate effort into his communication strategy. He was a pleasure to have as an instructor and can only hope that more of my professors at UCLA are as thoughtful and down to earth. As busy as he is with his research, it is evident that he truly cares and takes the time to enhance the quality of our education. I cannot say enough good things about him. Take his class, you won't regret it!

Johnson is the man! He goes through these teaching zones where his face starts to get really serious, he starts walking around a little bit making these hand gestures as he talks, and everything just sounds so crystal-clear and unambiguous. Love that he brings his own kids into the teachings, a little bit of personal embellishment never hurts. Funny, genuine, and effective, he's one of the best professors here, and my strongest recommendation for the 130 class.

I had psych 130 in fall 2008, I took the course as an elective course. it is not that hard. he gives 3 point extra credit that will help your grade so much. but the course was not well prepared. he is funny and kind man and he does his best to make his lecture not boring.
read the lecture notes and the book and you should be fine in his class.
recommended as an elective course

I'm probably going to get a lot of "this comment was NOT helpful" but the truth be told, Prof. Johnson's not that great of a professor. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy and tries to help those that need his help but his incompetence really shows. You would usually get a lot of "I don't know" or "that's a really good question, but..." from him when you ask him something related to his lectures. He also promised people that as long as you've read the reading, you should do well on the tests. That's not usually the case. At least not for the majority of the class. Even though I got an A, I still stand by what I've written.
Please don't let my comments discourage you from taking him because he truly is a great person and I even feel guilty writing this evaluation. But don't be surprised if what I wrote was displayed in real life when you take his class. The good thing is, out of the 4 tests you take (how many classes do you have that has 3 midterms and 1 final?!), he'll drop your lowest score. There's a paper and a presentation about your paper. Those are not terribly hard. 93% is an A, and 90% is an A-. 3 extra *percentage* points are added to your final grade in the end if you do 3 hours worth of experiments.

100 points possible, 93 is an A, 3 possible EC points so really you could get a 90 without those points.

Professor gives you questions on the articles assigned to each class, your group discusses it, answers, and gets a grade out of 5, most groups get 5s. Each group grades its members (out of 10 points), so it could help you all agree to help each other out instead of being so harsh. You also get a point for those reviews. The average of these reviews (of 10), + the group grade, + the 1 point = your score for the day (out of 16). 15 days of class X 16 points = 240 possible points. Divide by 4 = your 60% of grade, the other 40% is off 2 papers (20% each).

So as you can see, group work is crucial to do well in the class. If you're good at that, and suck at writing papers like me, you can still get an A rather easily. Be nice to people, and you will get an A as long as you follow the directions for the paper.

Professor Johnson is awesome too! Believe me, the class is an awesome choice. Look at the grade distribution (for 130), obviously you can't go wrong.

Johnson was a great professor. He was engaging and made the class fun. All you have to do is read two articles before every class and you get into groups and answer questions regarding one of the articles. You're then reviewed by your members of your group and graded for your collective group response to the question. There's also a research proposal you have to do and those things basically make up your entire grade. There are no exams. It's a pretty easy course and the professor is great. Definitely recommend taking it.

Like others have mentioned, there are no tests, and you read two articles for each lecture and answer questions about them in class with your group members. Instead of the two short papers other people have written about, he had us write an NIH proposal about a scientific topic of our choice.

How the class works:
-Groups have about 8 people in them and change every 2-4 weeks. Each class you cross your fingers and hope your group gets an easy question. Easy ones are something like: define x. Tricky ones vary, but the most common example was: design a study to show x.
-Almost everyone used a google doc to write a one page response, which you turned in online during class. Your group would then get together with another group who had the same question, and you would compare answers and write a new posting based on the two responses.
-You give each of your classmates a rating out of ten before the end of the day to earn attendance. Usually everyone just gets a ten as long as they manage to show up, but sometimes people do give you a lower rating if you don't bother to help out at all.
-The NIH proposal was worth a lot of points. There was no length requirement , but it was a little tricky and it took a lot of time to write. Just look up NIH proposals online and imagine you're writing a mini version of that (don't let it freak you out though!). It was due the week before finals.

In summary, don't take this class if you:
-won't show up (you'll probably fail)
-hate group work (some people were really unlucky...)
-hate reading research articles (you'll have to read a whole bunch)
-plan on not writing your paper
-have not taken 100A or 100B (I mean, you could, but I really don't think you should)

Final note:
Professor Johnson is awesome, and he really cares about every single one of his students. He's funny and approachable, and he really took the time to answer everyone's questions about the course, as well as about the field in general. I'm pretty sure this will be one of the most memorable classes you'll ever take at UCLA.