1. Professor Ankowski is very passionate and knowledgeable about cognitive development. However, I find her lectures a tad disorganized, and her slides not helpful for review. I understand she wants people to attend lecture, as seen in her commitment to iClicker, but the lack of information present on the slides (while it may encourage people to come to class), is not helpful for review purposes. However, she records the class, which is a helpful addition. Moreover, this may be a personal preference, but I appreciate when professors explicitly define a term before they provide examples. Professor Ankowski sometimes does not provide definitions of terms/concepts or maybe breezes through them and then starts providing example after example. While examples are helpful, they ultimately mean nothing out of context, which she only loosely gives. I have had a surplus of upper-division psychology professors who I have enjoyed, and these issues seem unique to this class. On a separate note, I found that the midterm was not equitable to the types of questions we have been given on quizzes. The quizzes are almost too easy, whereas the midterm seemed unreasonably difficult. The wording of the questions was the most abstract. Furthermore, she opened her first lecture up by saying she is unwilling to revise grades, which is fine and completely up to her, but her presentation was very stern and seemed unfriendly. Since, I have not felt comfortable asking questions or even participating in class.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I thought that Professor Ankowski did a really great job at presenting the material in a manageable but also engaging way. She is a really good speaker and is very knowledgeable on the topic, which makes the whole lecture flow.

Fairwarning, lectures are 2 hours and she uses the whole 2 hours. All of the lectures are recorded, however, attendance is taken using iclicker.

The course consists of 5 or 6 labs. Some of them are individual, some are group work, so it's nice to establish a consistent group of friends/classmates to work on the labs together with. The labs themselves are pretty straightforward and easy.
I thought that the midterm and final were both also very easy. Both tests had an mcq portion and a short response part. There are a lot of terms to know, so it helps if you’re good at memorizing things. I used quizlet as my main study method. ALSO Prof. Ankowski provides you with the Pysch test bank as a study resource. USE IT. It was so helpful for both the midterm and final. A lot of the question were very similar, so it was a great practice test.

I really enjoyed this class! I took it freshman year, and even though the 8 am was brutal, the prof was super engaging and passionate on the subject. Her lectures were clear and slides were helpful for studying. the Midterm was online open note, and the final was in person closed note. would recommend ankowski!!