Posner is the best professor I've had at UCLA. He's a very clear lecturer with a voice that does not make you fall asleep in class. Although the content is boring, mostly talking about ways of measuring poverty and solutions to eliminate it in the global South, Posner's clear explanations and no BS style made it actually interesting to go to lectures. It's always a full house with 150-200 students present, showing how good he is as a lecturer. Even though classes are not recorded, which could be a reason why students show up, I've had classes that are not recorded where 90% of students still don't show up because of the professor themself. Others have already covered the break down of the course, but I'd just like to say that Posner is an amazing lecturer who explains everything in the most plain English language, and is understanding of students by making the final optional/remote amidst the ICE protests. His exams are also easy as long as you go to 80% of the lectures and skim reads the intro+conclusion of most readings.

Posner is definitely one of the better professors I have had at UCLA within the poli sci department. His class is based on the following:
Section participation (15%)
In-class midterm (25%)
Take-home midterm (25%)
Final (35%)
It's very easy to get a 100% in participation, just show up to section and say at least one thing during class. Regarding the midterm, it was broken up into an in-class midterm and a take-home midterm. Both were pretty reasonable. Regarding the former, Posner gave us a list of around 30 terms a week beforehand and we had to write a paragraph or two in a blue book about 6 terms from a list of 8 from the list of 30 terms. We had to define it in addition to identifying its significance in the context of the course. The latter was an essay that we had around 30 hours to complete asking us to evaluate a country's development prospects based on a list of facts about the country. Both were not super difficult and it was not hard to earn an A on both. The final was optional when I took the class due to ICE activity in LA/Westwood, but it would have consisted of 3 sections. The first section would've mimicked the in-class midterm with us having to write about 4 ID terms from a list of 6 taken from a greater list of 30. The second section was a short-answer section where you had to answer 2 out of 3 questions. The last section was an in-class essay. The first two sections were focused on the 2nd half of the course while the last section would've covered the whole course.
If you decided not to take the final, your grade would be based on the following:
Section participation (23%)
In-class midterm (38.5%)
Take-home midterm (38.5%)
Regarding the class itself, it is quite interesting. Posner is a solid lecturer who does a great job of conveying information. While his slides aren't great and he doesn't record his lectures, he makes it for it by being a great teacher. Posner is also very helpful during office hours (or student hours as he calls them), so make sure to go to them. While there is a lot of reading in the class (could range from 50-80 pgs if not more a week), the readings are manageable if spaced out properly and you could honestly get away with not doing them (although some of the ID terms are only mentioned in the readings). Overall, I would highly recommend taking Posner's class; he is one of my favorite professors within the poli sci department!
PS Shoutout Shreyes Jayaram, he was such an amazing TA in addition to being a relatively fair graders as well!

I never write BruinWalk reviews, but I genuinely feel the need to emphasize how incredible this class was. I believe Professor Posner is the best professor I've had at UCLA so far. If I could give him 10/5 stars, I would. In his lectures, he engages with his students by discussing the material instead of relying on slides, which requires students to take notes. I believe that this approach requires more motivation and attentiveness than a class where students can simply go home and copy the slides; however, in my opinion, it is a much better way to learn the material. He is such an engaging lecturer, and he is so knowledgeable about the content. I truly wanted to clap after every lecture because of how inspiring and incredible Professor Posner is. On top of being an incredible professor, he is such a kind soul who truly cares and listens to his students. My TA assigned me a grade for the midterm that I was unhappy with, so I submitted a regrade request to the professor along with a note explaining why I believed I deserved a higher score; he then reevaluated my work and awarded me the score I felt I deserved. Additionally, during this distressing time marked by the ICE protests, he chose to make the final exam optional. Thus, he not only cares about the success of his students but their safety as well.

I did not like this class. The content itself was okay (although confusing at times), but I did not like how he taught. He uses slides, but only for images; in other words, he does not have words on his slides, and you are required to listen to him lecture for an hour and fifteen minutes straight. At some point, you are bound to doze off during an hour and fifteen minute lecture, and when you stop listening for only a minute, it’s hard to figure out where you are in the lecture. Obviously, this is subjective, and some people may like how Posner teaches. Personally, I just do not do well with straight listening, so I didn’t have the best time. Aside from that, you can tell that Posner is a good guy and very clearly loves to teach. 
Here’s the grading breakdown:
MIDTERM ONE: worth 25% of your grade. The first midterm is an in-class bluebook exam where you identify 6 terms. Basically, Posner wants you to say what the term is and the importance of the term in the context of the course. Posner will provide a list of roughly 30-40 terms a week before the exam and you will study the terms on that list. On the exam day, Posner hands out a paper with 8 terms on it. Of those 8 terms, you pick 6 terms and identify them. 
MIDTERM TWO: worth 25% of your grade. The second midterm is given a week after the first midterm. This midterm is a take home essay and is supposed to be around 5 pages. Posner will post a prompt, and you have 30 hours to complete the midterm. 
FINAL: worth 35% of your grade. A 50-question multiple choice scantron exam. 2/3 of the questions involve content from the second half of the quarter, and 1/3 of questions involve content from the first half of the quarter. PLEASE NOTE — Posner changed the exam format, given that our TAs were striking. Originally, the final exam was going to be a bluebook exam where we were to identify 4-5 terms (similar to the first midterm), answer 2 short answer questions, and answer 1 essay question. If you take this class, you will most likely NOT have the multiple choice final exam; you will probably have the bluebook exam that was originally scheduled before the strike ensued. 
PARTICIPATION AND ATTENDANCE: worth 15% of your grade. This grade depends on your TA. My TA, Paul Bahk, graded this with 10% being actual attendance and 5% being if you participated in the discussion sections. The participation and attendance split will vary depending on your TA.
My biggest complaint about this class was that when Posner gave out the midterm and final terms, a lot of the terms were ones we hadn’t gone over yet. Our classes were Tuesdays and Thursdays, so he would post the terms list on BruinLearn/Canvas on the Tuesday before class, and he would talk about new terms that would be on our midterm and final the Tuesday and Thursday before the exam date. It’s difficult to study terms when you have not learned them yet, and, in my opinion, a little unfair to test us on terms we learned less than 7 days ago. 
To sum it up, I did not like this course. The Bruinwalk reviews made the class seem easy, but it was much more difficult than anticipated. Posner assigns many readings and often introduces 2-4 new terms per lecture. Although this class is labeled as a Methods and Models course, it is more of an International Relations course. If you like IR courses, then you will like this course. If you don’t like IR courses, you will probably not enjoy this class.

Dont take this class if you are looking for an easy polsci class. The only plus about this class is that there are no homework assignments but honestly they would have been helpful to manage your grade. Posner writes nothing on his slides and assigns too many readings. If you do not pay attention to every detail of the lecture, you won't have any way of learning it because he doesn't post recordings either. Both him and the TAs grade exams way too hard and expect you to be an expert and on point about everything that is taught. If you have Meghan Cox as Ta, she will grade way too harshly. The content was interesting but there was little leeway to improve anything in this class.

Professor spews the most neoliberal, pro-capitalist, pro-colonial approach to international development that I have ever heard. TA Daniel Carnahan was really self absorbed and graded way harder than the other TAs- if you have him switch out.

Posner lectures really well and his explanations make even the more complex readings very digestible (highly recommend going to lecture first before doing the readings for this reason). There were no required textbooks which was really nice. All readings are posted and there's a decent amount some weeks, but it's never unmanageable.

I thought that the exams were really fair. The midterm was a take-home essay answering a prompt which asks you to draw on material from throughout the course. The other portion was just answering a few ID terms in class, and all potential ID terms are given ahead of time. The final was similar, except it was all in class and there was an additional portion of FRQs.

I was a little concerned going into this class because I had Jacques as my TA and saw the negative reviews about him from previous quarters, but Jacques was a great TA this quarter! He had us work together during discussions to identify key points of readings, help each other with ID terms before exams, and he'd give us exam pointers as well as detailed explanations about more difficult concepts.

Overall highly recommend this class - workload and exams are reasonable and the material itself is super interesting.

I wasn't initially sure I would like the class because I was not the most interested in the subject, but Posner does a great job of breaking extremely complex subject matters down to make them understandable. The grade consisted of a midterm (half of it was term ID's, the other half was a take-home essay, it was worth 1/2 of the final grade), a final (35% of grade, all in person), and discussion participation (15%). The tests were intimidating initially but as long as you study the terms he gives you ahead of time, they should be a breeze.

This class was okay at best. Prof. Posner caught COVID and the class was administered on ZOOM. As my fellow peers have stated, the TA you end up with matters, as they are the ones who will grade your midterm and final exam. My advice for you: Avoid TA Jacques Courbe at all costs. He graded us quite harshly in comparison to other TAs. On top of that, he was clearly unprepared for much of the discussion sections. It is ironic that he expected us, the students, to be on top of the weekly readings, yet he himself clearly wasn't. He literally BS'd the summary of many readings during sections -- so much for quality education. Jacques, if you are reading this, DO BETTER. We the students can sense whenever you BS, too, just sayin'.

Two midterms - exam & take home paper (25% each), final exam - but due to Covid it was a take home final (35%). and discussion (15%). My TA did not assign any class work, but graded based on attendance & participation. Professor Posner is an engaging lecturer and the material is easy to digest, he does include a lot of graphs and data in his slides. Posner does hand out study guides prior to each midterm and final. Originally, he did not record lectures, just posted slides, but once he got Covid himself and Covid cases increased, he finally made that decision to record and post it on Bruin Learn. Overall, if you put the work into studying for the exams and attend discussion, it's easy to get a good grade.