Professor

Tyson Roberts

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Overall Rating 2.2
Easiness 2.2/ 5
Clarity 2.2/ 5
Workload 2.2/ 5
Helpfulness 2.0/ 5
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - The class was based on two midterms that were each worth 15%, a final worth 20%, Inquizitives worth 20%, a Current Event Analysis worth 10%, and participation in section worth 20%. The textbook was available online for about $45 which was good, but you could also purchase the physical version if you wanted to. If you did that though, you would still need to pay a small amount to have access to the Inquizitives. The textbook was absolutely necessary to have as the whole class was based on it. The professor did lectures but they often were really just a repetition of the textbook, so I did not think they were necessary or very helpful to be present for. However, I think there were some helpful bits but if you stick to reading the textbook and doing notes, you should be good. There were a total of 14 chapters we needed to get through for this class and in the end it felt kind of rushed, making me a bit overwhelmed at times. After each chapter we needed to complete an Inquizitive, which I found really helpful in retaining the information and the main points we needed to be aware of. The midterms and final were all open-note and were done on our own within a certain time window, making them easy to access and fairly easy to find information if you forgot something. We had three options for completing a Current Event Analysis which required us to apply information from certain topics in the textbook to real world situations. You could do all three or just one and the highest score was applied. I thought this was a fun and easy way to look further into World Politics so I personally really enjoyed it. Overall, the class wasn't too difficult so long as you stayed on top of the textbook work and utilized the notes you took for the exams. The only critique I really had was that the professor's lectures weren't that engaging in my opinion and that the textbook seemed like a better way to understand the subject.
Easiness 3.0/ 5
Clarity 1.0/ 5
Workload 5.0/ 5
Helpfulness 1.0/ 5
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - I tried to drop this class in the first week but I couldn't get off the waitlist anywhere else so unfortunately I had to take this class for the entire quarter. Roberts absolutely sucks as a lecturer. He just kind of reads off of the slides, and when he does go on tangents they offer nothing of value to the class. I'm not even sure he actually knows the material. He was also supposed to be broadcasting the lectures on Zoom but he sometimes forgot and then still marked down people for not "participating" in lecture (when many couldn't participate because he didn't even start the Zoom). For the midterm, he gave us a list of things to study, but then it felt like half of the things on the test weren't on the study guide. For the final, he didn't even bother and just said "study the entire course", which is completely useless. The only positive thing I can say about this class is that the weekly workload, for the most part, isn't too bad. The readings are long but the actual weekly assignments are pretty brief. The weekly assignments are short little research projects that only take around 30 minutes to complete every week. This builds up to a final research paper that was one of the most frustrating assignments I've ever had to take at UCLA. I came up to him multiple times to workshop my essay and get his input on things. He often offer suggestions that were either A) not actually mentioned in the course readings, or B) were completely counterfactual to the evidence presented in the course material. Every time I went to his office hours I ended up leaving more confused than when I originally went in. If you can, do whatever you can to stay away from this class. I promise it's not worth your time.
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