Professor
Julie Ko
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - I do not dislike Julie by any metric, but I do dislike the way the LS7 series is styled. I find the flipped classroom style ineffective and very much a pain. The PALs and PCRQs are kind of annoying to do and the points you lose do add up over time. However due to the maximum points set by the professors, you can mis up to 5 points on the PALs and PCRQs. The AOLs were all generally fair. However please make sure to study for AOL3. Many people neglected to do any form of studying and it very much reflected on their score at the end. Also I do not know how long the online style exams will continue, so if they convert to in person exams I do not know how much they would change the overall material of the AOLs.
Winter 2024 - I do not dislike Julie by any metric, but I do dislike the way the LS7 series is styled. I find the flipped classroom style ineffective and very much a pain. The PALs and PCRQs are kind of annoying to do and the points you lose do add up over time. However due to the maximum points set by the professors, you can mis up to 5 points on the PALs and PCRQs. The AOLs were all generally fair. However please make sure to study for AOL3. Many people neglected to do any form of studying and it very much reflected on their score at the end. Also I do not know how long the online style exams will continue, so if they convert to in person exams I do not know how much they would change the overall material of the AOLs.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - I LOVED THIS CLASS!!! Professor Ko is an amazing lecturer and is super helpful during office hours--she offered both content and non-content OH this past quarter, which was amazing because you could talk to her about class stuff but also chat about life during non-content OH and get to know her personally. She never says that content is easy and lets us know that she finds certain materials challenging too, which is comforting to hear, especially in an upper division life sciences class. We used iClicker, but honestly I did not mind because lectures were always engaging so there was no reason not to go in-person. In this class we used iClicker (participation), videos + video quizzes (flipped classroom), weekly quizzes, discussion worksheets, and Slack (to post questions and receive answers from other students, TAs, and the professor). Exams (two midterms and a final) were always fair--they covered content adequately, there was enough time to work on all problems efficiently, and the difficulty was just fine. They were open book as well, which helped relieve stress (I made a master study guide using all the learning objectives which helped me save time during the actual exam to look up anything in case I forgot a concept). There were exam revision quizzes too, which had similar questions from the exam (not the same ones, just similar), so they encouraged you to review your exam and if you did well on the revision quiz, you could earn some points back. Professor Ko also offered extra credit, which was very sweet and super helpful in case you couldn't complete work certain weeks or needed to make up for any lower grades. Overall I loved this class and would definitely take it again. Some of the material covered in LS107 is the same stuff covered in LS7B, but I feel like I understand certain concepts better in this class (like Mendelian genetics, nondisjunction, etc.) because Professor Ko would take the time to walk through each topic and question in a step-by-step fashion. Anyways, Professor Ko is just an amazing person and it was a treat to be in her class this past quarter. Wishing her all the best in her future classes <3 P.S. Big shout out to her organized and pretty slides and syllabus. Her slides were absolutely perfect--she used very clear figures and images so we obtained a visual understanding of material. Her syllabus had a table of contents and hyperlinks, make it easy to use and navigate. Considering she was fresh out of her PhD program and this is her first time teaching LS107 at UCLA, she did a fantastic job :)
Fall 2023 - I LOVED THIS CLASS!!! Professor Ko is an amazing lecturer and is super helpful during office hours--she offered both content and non-content OH this past quarter, which was amazing because you could talk to her about class stuff but also chat about life during non-content OH and get to know her personally. She never says that content is easy and lets us know that she finds certain materials challenging too, which is comforting to hear, especially in an upper division life sciences class. We used iClicker, but honestly I did not mind because lectures were always engaging so there was no reason not to go in-person. In this class we used iClicker (participation), videos + video quizzes (flipped classroom), weekly quizzes, discussion worksheets, and Slack (to post questions and receive answers from other students, TAs, and the professor). Exams (two midterms and a final) were always fair--they covered content adequately, there was enough time to work on all problems efficiently, and the difficulty was just fine. They were open book as well, which helped relieve stress (I made a master study guide using all the learning objectives which helped me save time during the actual exam to look up anything in case I forgot a concept). There were exam revision quizzes too, which had similar questions from the exam (not the same ones, just similar), so they encouraged you to review your exam and if you did well on the revision quiz, you could earn some points back. Professor Ko also offered extra credit, which was very sweet and super helpful in case you couldn't complete work certain weeks or needed to make up for any lower grades. Overall I loved this class and would definitely take it again. Some of the material covered in LS107 is the same stuff covered in LS7B, but I feel like I understand certain concepts better in this class (like Mendelian genetics, nondisjunction, etc.) because Professor Ko would take the time to walk through each topic and question in a step-by-step fashion. Anyways, Professor Ko is just an amazing person and it was a treat to be in her class this past quarter. Wishing her all the best in her future classes <3 P.S. Big shout out to her organized and pretty slides and syllabus. Her slides were absolutely perfect--she used very clear figures and images so we obtained a visual understanding of material. Her syllabus had a table of contents and hyperlinks, make it easy to use and navigate. Considering she was fresh out of her PhD program and this is her first time teaching LS107 at UCLA, she did a fantastic job :)