Amazing professor. I found the class a bit difficult but he tried his best to help me in office hours. Some of the weekly labs were pretty difficult and sometimes they were easy, I scored mostly 90s on the labs but messed up on one scoring in the 70s, otherwise I got a mid B on the midterm, high B on the project and a low A on the final and got a B+ in the class, so the class definitely isn’t curved at all and you want to get 90s on almost everything to get an A. If you’re ok at math and are interested in this kind of stuff then I would recommend this class.

Of the three modules for 101B, Babiec's was my second favorite, next to the neurodevelopment module. I thought Babiec seemed friendly and very knowledgeable and helpful. I will say that lectures can seem to drone on for a while because he often spends sooo long on one slide (like using the entire 2 hours for only like 15 slides) so it makes it go by slow sometimes. The bright side to this is that when it comes time to study for the exam, you don't have all that many slides to study. I found the material of this module to be pretty interesting, for the most part. As for the exam, it was actually quite nice and very fair, in my opinion. I was expecting it to be more challenging than it was, and I was pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't super easy...there were definitely some tough questions that I had to pause to think about for a few minutes, but overall, I'd say it was the easiest exam of the three modules.

If you're great at memorizing minutiae, this is the class for you. This professor's lectures are very long and boring, and you're better off skipping lecture and just memorizing all his slides a couple days before the exam. He also assigns 6 useless coloring homework assignments (yes, you will need colored pencils for this class) that didn't contribute to my understanding of the material at all. He has four non-cumulative exams that consist of multiple choice, very short answer, and short answer. If you take this class, be warned to memorize EVERYTHING on the slides. On an exam, this professor asked for things like who said that quote on one of the slides and the diameter of a synaptic vesicle. Overall, not the worst GE out there.

*** COVID-19 Review ***
Babiec does host a lot of office hours and can be very helpful when you reach out to him. However, do NOT buy the book for this class. It is over $100 and he blatantly says later on that exams do not reference the book, but rather will reference the module videos he supplies.
The content itself was very interesting, but Babiec is very monotonous in delivery and also has moments where he makes it incredibly difficult to understand what he's referring to (big words, although it is manageable when you take a second to understand it).
Exams kinda blindsided me if I'm being honest, I took this class as a GE for an easy A and it was far from it. There are 4 exams 25% each and they definitely get extremely hard and you need to be careful when reading answer choices.

I hope to retain the information I learned in this class, as it is all so applicable and interesting considering how it gives context as to how the body functions.
I took this class during COVID, and all the lectures are recorded. They are ridiculously dense, and you will need to pause every 10 seconds to digest what you just watched.
I got an A by taking notes on OneNote as I watched the videos. The exams are open note, but you won't have a lot of time to look back at them to find the answers.
The best way I can describe this class is that the lectures are way too hard for the easy exams.
You do not need the textbook, don't waste your money.

I took this class online, but I’m pretty sure it’s similarly structured to in-person classes. The class is divided into four units. He posts prerecorded videos on CCLE (it’s 4-5 videos per unit) at the beginning of the unit, and you have two or three weeks to watch them before the test. The videos, although short, can be very dense. It sometimes took me over an hour and a half to get through a thirty minute video. The material itself is interesting though and the units and material are organized in a logical manner.

Personally, I never met the professor since the only time you actually get to see him is in his OH and I never went to them. I heard that he was chill, good at explaining, and understanding though.

Your grade is made up of four tests at the end of each of the units. Each test only covers the material for that unit, so there are no cumulative questions. In order of difficulty, I’d say the third test was the hardest of the four, so watch out for that one. Each test is twenty questions and you have thirty minutes to complete them. He gives you a day to take the test, but once you start it, you only have thirty minutes. He also gave extra credit for answering a survey from the department before and after the course.

Overall, though, I feel like this course was dense but interesting and the grading wasn’t too bad. I would definitely take it again!

*Note: I took this class online during COVID

TLDR: I would recommend this class, at least in its online format, as an easy GE with low workload.

The course is structured into 4 modules, each with an exam at the end. Your grade is based entirely on these exams, as there is no homework or traditional final (the exam for the last module is during finals week, but is not cumulative).

At the beginning of each module, a few videos were posted that contained all the information for the module. You watch these videos and at your own pace instead of going to scheduled lectures, which I appreciated. These videos were super dense since they totaled only about 1.5 hours per module. Don't let the length of videos fool you; it's still a good idea to start working through the content early since taking notes on such dense information is time consuming. I wouldn't say the videos were particularly interesting, even if the material had the potential to be.

I didn't have much interaction with Professor Babiec due to the online format. He seemed helpful the couple times I went to office hours, but there wasn't much communication outside of that. I didn't find the lack of communication a problem, but I felt slightly disconnected from the course.

Again, there was no homework. There was some recommended reading associated with each module, but I never did it and fared well on the exams anyway, so I would advise against buying the textbook.

Exams were timed multiple choice, although you had a 24 hr period to start them. They were easy enough if you took detailed notes on the videos.

This is a fat course for only 4 units. I’m a humanities major, & I took this as a GE because I was interested in the brain. I don’t regret taking it, as the information was pretty interesting overall, but being asynchronous was a major blow. The lectures were ridiculously dense, dry, and just blew through information. Like, it took me about 4 hours to thoroughly understand a 30 min video. If you don’t know how to time manage an asynch course, I wouldn’t take this class. Anyway, the 4 tests (no midterm or final, just evenly spaced module tests) were not very difficult if you study enough. In fact, they were pretty easy. It’s just that you don’t know exactly what will be on it since the tests are only 20 questions on massive amounts of information, so you have to study all of it to be adequately prepared. Crash Course and Khan Academy help a lot with the material though, so it’s not impossible to do well in this class. Wouldn’t recommend for a GE you just want to get out of the way, but would recommend if you’re considering neuro or cog sci.

This is a review for all 3 professors of 101L

I was particularly not a fan of lab work, but took this class bc I needed it. I ended up doing really well and got an A+. Here's my breakdown of the class and the advice I wish I told myself at the start of the quarter:

Grisham: you have weekly pre-labs, and then each weekly lab you do some work which at the end of the 4th week you'll use to write a paper. So make sure your'e doing everything right since the start bc you will need it later. The paper is like 88% of the grade for his module, and the rest is prelabs. You sometimes need to read a paper or two for the prefabs, He is a nice guy, go to his lectures or at least watch them after, as they are helpful for the pre labs, they grade nicely, I got full marks on all of them. The paper to me seemed daunting, I had no idea what was going on half the time... it took me a while to do it, maybe over the span of 3-4 days, and I would go to the TA OH a bunch to try and figure it out. I ended up getting a 98% on it. If you're freaking out, don't worry, just go to OH and try and get some pointers, I swear I am still confused abt what I wrote lol but it was good enough. I'd say his module is the most work heavy, but they also grade really nicely.

Babiec: Didn't really watch the lectures, sometimes skimming the slides was useful. Only had post-labs and then the final assignments. Grading here was more 50/50. The post-labs were based on the work we did in lab, and once again the material all adds up for your final project, so be sure to know whats going on each week. He is a much more picky grader, I'd get points off for the stupidest stuff... His module was a bit less work that Grisham's for the final. Once again, TA office hours will be your saviours.

Lin: the easiest of the 3 in terms of work load. By this point in the quarter you're probably overwhelmed with other classes, so it's nice that his module is easier. No pre or post labs, just the final project. One is based off of work in 1 lab, the other is answering some questions based on the lecture material (I skimmed the slides and watched parts of the lecture, but the majority of the lecture is not that useful). Once again, TA OH will save you. I got 100% on his module and didn't put in more than 2-3 days of work for all of it.

Overall I really wasn't too interested in the contents of the class, it's just not my cup of tea. I constantly felt lost in what we were talking about, but somehow managed an A+, so you will be fine! I would literally go to OH almost every week to check my work and ask for guidance, and on the weeks we had finals due I'd even hit extra TA OH to check stuff. That to me is the way to go if you want to do well, since on your own the stuff might seem really confusing. It is not too bad of a time commitment, especially the last module! Outside of the 3h of lab, I'd spend maybe 2-3h a week on this class, maybe 10-15h on the weeks we had a final due, and that was it. Everything is a take home, which makes it way less stressful, so enjoy that! Check your work in OH before turning it in, and you should be good to go

This class was an easy A for me, but overall I thought it was quite boring and uninteresting, so it isn't a course I'd take again. As other reviews have mentioned, the material is extremely dense. I went into the class interested in learning about neuroscience but the material was so dense that the class just wasn't very enjoyable and I don't feel like I got anything worthwhile out of it other than a GPA boost.

Exams are 80% of the grade, which is a lot for a GE, so it's important to prepare well for them. The best way to prepare for the exams in my opinion is to take super detailed notes during lecture and review the notes. There were a couple questions from the slides but I prioritized reviewing my notes rather than the slides, and that worked pretty well for me, as I got over 90% on all three exams. Babiec lets you bring a one-sided cheat sheet with 10pt font, so really use that to your advantage. Fortunately, each exam is weighted equally, so there is no cumulative final.

Additionally, homeworks are 20% of the grade. There are four homeworks and they are coloring worksheets. Others have mentioned that the homeworks are a good way to improve your grade in the class, but for me personally, that was not the case. I did not find the homeworks very useful for preparing for the exams or for understanding the content better, and they did not help my grade either, as I actually did worse on the homeworks than on the exams. So I stopped doing them after the second one. If you don't do a homework, your score for that homework gets substituted with the average of your three exam scores. There is also an extra credit survey offered at the start of the course which adds a point to your overall average.