The entire comm department at UCLA is terrible. I regret getting my degree in Comm Studies, and this class contributes heavily to my regret. Do not take this class with Peterson.

Professor Peterson is one of the worst professors in the Comm department at UCLA. Let me make this clear - I am not saying this out of bitterness. His class is not that difficult and I received an A. However, the topic is the most useless in all of Comm (he basically just makes you memorize a list of intricate terms) and goes on tangents the whole class that are not even remotely related to what he tests on. If you try and seek help from him, he is a huge asshole - arrogant and condescending. I wonder if he knows how truly useless the material he is teaching is, or if he has somehow convinced himself that it is useful or interesting.

The problem is that he is almost untouchable, since his wife is Pia Svenson, the head of the Comm department. You will really gain nothing from this class except an extra 2 hour nap twice a week during class, and stress trying to teach yourself all the material before exams. Avoid if you can.

Look, if this review helps you at all, I hope it informs you how after a decade or so teaching this class, Professor Peterson has not changed one bit. All these reviews are still relevant then as they are now. But no one has really expressed in-depth about why this class sucks so much, so I'll take a crack at it.
Here's the grade breakdown:

Class participation, group work, and weekly assignments – 10 %

Mid-Quarter Assignments
Rationale Exercise – 8%
Methods Section Exercise – 7%

Exam #1 - 25%,
Exam #2 - 30%

So here is a little bit of context. I am not a pure Comms major. I am also a double major in another department. If you have an inkling of knowledge about the social sciences, you know that here at UCLA they usually have an introductory research methods course for those majors. However, my other majors' research methods course is far, far better than whatever Professor Peterson has taught us these entire 10 weeks. These courses are meant to be for freshmen or sophomores entering the major for the first time. They're genuinely meant to be introductory courses. I took my other department's course my winter quarter here at UCLA, and I genuinely felt like I was learning something important. Yeah, I didn't really click with it, but it wasn't like this class. It was taught with a lot of compassion and care for the people who enrolled into the course and explained with much needed clarity and patience. It was wonderful, and the only bad part was the group project aspect, but all research methods courses have that component to it. It felt like a welcoming environment.

Now, this class was just the opposite of everything I said. The first day of class, Peterson asked the class "raise your hand if you're a senior", and of course mostly everyone raises their hand because this course is RESTRICTED to seniors. Why did this man feel appropriate to say "Unfortunately, you guys are behind" as if it was meant to be a joke. Maybe some of my peers found it to be funny, but I did not. I am a first-generation college student, a POC, and low-income. To me, those words reinforce the same things I was told growing up and what I heard others tell my peers. Even without bringing intersectional identities into this, it's just flat-out disrespectful right? Sir, this is restricted to seniors get off your high horse. And yet, those type of comments just kept coming.
People here have mentioned over and over again his condescending nature, it's this shit that we mean. He constantly tries to play it up like it's meant to be a light-hearted joke, but it's truly not. When we were going over statistics, he would ask questions about what Pearson's r is or a chi square, and he would exclaim "you guys should know this! y'know stats 10 is a pre-req to this class right". Yes, of course we know that, but why in the world would I answer you dude. I will truly never ever forget when two students answered his question he gave about some random crap we were learning, and he points to one of them going "your answer was great" and immediately points to the other answer saying "but HER answer was amazing". WTF is that dude? It is NOT a welcoming environment which is so goddamn important when we consider the intersectional identities that student come into this space. Yes, this major is predominantly white, but it makes it EVEN MORE important to make this class accessible to everyone.
And to be honest? I think he's genuinely a helpful person with good intentions at heart. truthfully you can tell he is passionate about the material and that he wants to support us, but then comes just how disorganized the content felt. He often, OFTEN, went on tangents built into his exam because he wants to provide examples, but they don't feel like a substantive reason to why I should care about these methods for research. Seriously, you can ask anyone at any point in the class besides probably the Von Blum lecture (which was great, btw) what the hell we were learning and they couldn't even tell you. The content analysis portion of our class felt like there was so much meandering because of Peterson talking about his own research using it, but there was this huge disconnect as to how to use it and why it's important.
Despite all of this, he probably is the easiest of the three professors (Lamberson, him, and Kernell at the time of writing this) that teach this course. You don't need to study super hard on the exam. Just write decent notes (if you can..) during lecture and regurgitate it on the multiple choice exam that involves no real statistical usage. you just need to know how to apply them. Everyone has mentioned here about the group project taking up a huge chunk of you time, and it's true. But it's not that bad thankfully; you work up to a research paper, and all your assignments are to make it easier on you when you finally create the final draft of it. Hell, a few students were able to do the project by themselves! you don't have to do it with a group but mind you it will probably be harder and more time-consuming.
Honestly, Lamberson was probably the better pick, but if you don't know shit about stats like I did and are willing to write a bunch, this class is worth taking with Peterson. Yeah, this guy sucks a whole fucking lot, but he's kinda easy. Just be prepared for everything I mentioned

Steven Peterson is condescending and boring. His lectures are dry, repetitive, meandering, and ill-prepared. His readings are unhelpful, irrelevant, and outdated (one recommended researching topics on microfiche). Also, all course content was hosted on a totally separate website that you couldn’t access from MyUCLA which is just annoying. Do your best to take this class with anyone else, but if it’s your last quarter and you still need Com150 to graduate, just buckle down. One good thing is that both exams are totally multiple choice. There is a group research project that is worth a big chunk of your grade, so choose your group wisely. This was such a painful class.

This was one of the harder classes in the COMM major, but honestly it's not that bad, if you pay attention and stay on top of things it's mostly just boring. Based on the reviews of other professors who teach 150, and having taken Peterson myself, I think Peterson is the best professor you could take it with and I highly suggest trying to take it with him if you can. Exams are multiple choice, you don't actually have to do any math/stats or honestly even remember stats (you just need to know how you would apply the statistical concepts into research) and Peterson is genuinely passionate about research.

Make sure you always have paper on you because he'll ask you to write down a few sentences about something related to class to discuss/turn in for your participation grade, and a lot of people usually just forgot and did it right before class. Midterm was way easier than the final (once you get to the material for the final, the stuff from the midterm seems so basic), so make sure to study hard for that. Pay attention to the examples he goes into in class because he will ask questions about those examples (not a lot, but those are easy points you don't want to lose because he doesn't try to trick you on exam questions).

As far as the readings go, I really recommend doing them. You could probably get a B if you don't do the readings, but I don't know that you could realistically get an A without them. The textbook is actually a psych research book, and you can usually skim through a lot of it because some pages went into extensive psych examples that you don't need to know. My suggestion is to get the bolded definitions from the book (except for the few psych terms that are bolded) and read the information around the terms because it usually explains and goes into detail about what those concepts mean (he'll go over the terms in class and on the slides, but I usually understood it better from the book than from the slides). I stopped doing the online readings after a while and it didn't hurt me too much, there were maybe 1 or 2 questions that I remember on the midterm coming from them.

The one thing that I think makes this class hard is the group project. First assignment is the intro section of a research paper, second assignment is methods, final project is to put those first two assignments together, revise/improve them and finish the last three sections of the paper. Topic can basically be whatever you want, just has to apply to communications. Choose your group carefully! If you can, take this class with people you know/can work with. I ended up doing having to do most of the project by myself at the end and it sucked so much, you do not want that!

painful...just painful

Oh Peterson. I'm sure by now you've heard his reputation. And it's all true.

This class is bad enough on it's own, but Peterson makes it even more torturous. This class isn't that HARD, but I found it almost impossible to go to lecture. There simply is no value in attending, because you won't learn anything.

He spends so much time reading fake emails from past students saying "this is the best class I ever took!" and saying how much we will learn at the end of this, that he doesn't actually teach. He doesn't believe in structure or organization, so he just spends his time going off on tangents and talking about current events.

My TA Alif was awesome and super helpful. The research project isn't that difficult if you put in the full effort. You can pass the tests by reading the book and memorizing all those little research terms. I got a B and never went to class or paid attention if I did go. He does give little participation points for going to lecture, but I got a 8/10 and missed a ton of assignments so no biggie.

Pick a good group for your project. Go to section. Take thorough notes through the book. And study any key terms on Peterson's power points and you will be fine.

I got a B in the class.

The class in its entirety is quite sad. taking it was a sad experience, peterson knows it's a sad excuse for a class.

when you begin any class with a defeatist attitude and openly acknowledge to your own students how much the class sucks, you can only hope for so much to improve as the class progresses.

he's kind, professional, and smart. there's no doubt about that. but the class structure is ALL wrong. we focus on a class project for way too much of the time to actually understand what goes into creating the paper. allow me to clarify.

instead of teaching the material and then assigning us the assignment, the assignment is divided and assigned piecemeal throughout the quarter. it's slow, ineffective, and ultimately confusing come midterm time when students don't know what to expect. not only did we spend so much class time talking about the paper, we spent little to no time discussing readings.

would you rather learn what you need to know and then be assigned a paper or be told how to do it while youre told to do it little by little so you can't get a whole picture of your final project.

it's a shit show.

his examples are actually quite relevant, but they're presented in such a spread out and disoriented fashion that it's no wonder half of his reviews say he just rambles on in class.

i wouldn't take him if i were you. not worth the trouble on any level.

Augh. Ridiculous professor.

Exams can be tricky. I have regretfully taken 3 courses with him (one of them being Comm 150).

It's always the same structure: 1 midterm, 1 final. 1 group project. A couple of small minor assignments shoved in between those 3 main aspects.

I always tell myself that it will get better... It will.

It never does.

There is just no way around it, CS 150 is required for CS majors. Get it out of the way asap, don't push it to your last quarter during your senior year, you won't enjoy the spring. Peterson is indeed vague, and his lectures do not relate to the exams or group project. Choosing the right people for the group project is essential. I got stuck with two sorority sisters, who were total slackers, and the whole experience was frustrating. You really have to rely on his TA (Joyce in this case) to get relevant information. Peterson is likable and laid back, but he is in his own little bubble at times. The text book he uses clarifies a lot as well.