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Minayo Nasiali
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Professor Nasiali's lectures are multi-dimensional in terms of history, politics, culture and economics, entertaining and she does a great job of connecting modern French history to today's political and cultural environment. Her class mainly focuses on the political development of modern France at the beginning of the Third Republic and goes into the early 2000's. She encourages students to engage with questions throughout the lectures which are usually short. Once a week, participation will be graded by a group write-up of a primary source document assigned for the week which are not difficult. She remembers everyone's name and face, so constant attendance and participation are helpful. She also offers extra credit and encourages attendance to office hours. Overall, this is one of the easier classes I've taken at UCLA and would highly recommend it for the interesting material and great professor.
This class is by no means an easy A. Professor Nasiali is a kind and warm professor who genuinely cares for her students not only for their academic success but also for their personal-wellbing. This class is compromised of 1 midterm, and revised 2nd midterm, and final paper. The topics of this class are complex. The professor is a tough grader, but she really wants her students to improve on their historical inquiry. She offers extra credit and it definitely helped my grade. If you are looking to do the bare minimum please take another class. Professor Nasiali's curriculum is the UCLA standard, so if you're not passionate about History and have no motivation to improve your writing skills you're setting yourself up for failure in this course.
I'll split this review into two parts, the professor and the class.
First the class:
The class is broken down into this:
There are 100 points in the gradebook, Midterm Paper (40 pts) Final Project (45 pts, includes Annotated Bibliography 10 pts), Attendance and Participation in Discussion (15 pts). Every single one of these is graded by your TA. You TA will make or break you grade in the class, so when you are working on the final project (which is a podcast or an op ed) and your midterm go to your TA and ask them about what they want to see and how you can get the best grade possible on these. If you screw up your midterm, there going to be a revision opportunity which allows you to get back at most 3 points. During my discussion my TA give you a full point for the day if you came and said at least one thing. So make sure you do your part and ask how your TA is going to grade participation. The lectures are pretty useless especially if you took AP Euro or AP World History. She requires you to buy the textbook to read and because you will have to quote it at some point but I never read any of the readings or textbook and still got an A.
The Professor:
She is very nice and helpful and she is a pretty decent lecturer. I love History but I was so bored during her lecturers I do not know why but I just did work during the lecture. She is very friendly and helpful and makes it easy to participate.
Overall: This is a good GE that gets the Historical Analysis and Diversity Requirement
You really need a great amount of work in this class to have an A.
For the midterm draft, she will give you a lot of revising advice and DO follow her instructions (although lots of them are actually contradictory and ambiguous).
If you show your improvements, she will give you a pretty good grade.
Overall I really liked this class. The material is easy to understand and Dr. Nasiali presents it in a creative manner. While the lectures sometimes felt like they dragged on and on and on, Nasiali is for the most part an engaging speaker and has well-prepared and understandable slides. She is very kind and easy to talk to, and tries to learn as many names as possible in lecture. Some TA's were harsher graders than others. Your grade is made up of a midterm paper (40%), a final op-ed paper or podcast (30%), an annotated bibliography for the final (10%), and participation in discussions (20%). Weekly homework usually just consists of primary source and textbook readings, and you can find a PDF for the textbook online.
class was easy, wasn't a huge fan of prof Nasiali and her lectures, but you don't need to go to lecture to succeed in the class. Spencer was the best TA, definitely recommend his section. grade was based on participation, a paper, and a final project (either an op-ed or a podcast). straightforward to succeed, but the class covers so much I didn't feel like I learned much
I actually took her History of Imperialism course. Professor Nasiali was very warm and friendly. The class was simple, just a few papers and in class reflections. She also played some nice songs and videos from each time period to keep us interested. I would take another class with her if I could.
Professor Nasiali is by far my favorite teacher at UCLA! Her midterms and finals were both take-home papers, which relieved a lot of the stress of them being in-class, and as long as you attended class, it would be difficult to do poorly. She is extremely engaging and I truly looked forward to attending her class each week. The readings are not overwhelming for the class, and although a couple of them were a bit difficult to understand, as long as you get the gist of them, you'll do just fine.
Professor Nasiali is very nice and helpful but grades extremely harshly. I followed her advice and went to office hours each week, applying what she told me to improve my writing, but each week she gave me the same low grade. Very disappointed with the class in general and how unnecessarily difficult this class was.
I really liked Professor Nasiali and her class. This was my first class with her and I took a different class with her again after this class as well. This isn't an easy A but she is a very helpful professor and the class was interesting. This was an online class due to covid and it was structured as a hybrid class. She posted recorded lectures every week (they weren't too long and very engaging with powerpoint slides). It was pretty easy to follow along with her lectures and pay attention. Then on Thursday mornings we would have a zoom discussion about the assigned reading for that week (and she also used that time to talk about the midterm/final and for people to ask questions). You do get graded on participation and you should try to participate on Thursdays but on her syllabus it said if you could not make to to the Thursday discussions to email her and she could work something out for you to still be able to get a good participation grade. The readings were pretty long and dense but usually interesting. The midterm and final were both papers (I think the midterm was 5-6 pages and the final was 7-8) and you had to use the readings and lectures to answer the question. She does grade them kinda tough but if you go to office hours before they are due she will definitely help you form ideas. She really likes it when your writing is polished and likes it when you revise your essay a lot. There was also a project that was due toward the end of the quarter and you had to submit a paragraph about your project topic at the beginning of the quarter. The project was on a product (such as chocolate or soap) and you had to research its colonial history (find outside sources) and then either make a blog post or a podcast about it.
Professor Nasiali's lectures are multi-dimensional in terms of history, politics, culture and economics, entertaining and she does a great job of connecting modern French history to today's political and cultural environment. Her class mainly focuses on the political development of modern France at the beginning of the Third Republic and goes into the early 2000's. She encourages students to engage with questions throughout the lectures which are usually short. Once a week, participation will be graded by a group write-up of a primary source document assigned for the week which are not difficult. She remembers everyone's name and face, so constant attendance and participation are helpful. She also offers extra credit and encourages attendance to office hours. Overall, this is one of the easier classes I've taken at UCLA and would highly recommend it for the interesting material and great professor.
This class is by no means an easy A. Professor Nasiali is a kind and warm professor who genuinely cares for her students not only for their academic success but also for their personal-wellbing. This class is compromised of 1 midterm, and revised 2nd midterm, and final paper. The topics of this class are complex. The professor is a tough grader, but she really wants her students to improve on their historical inquiry. She offers extra credit and it definitely helped my grade. If you are looking to do the bare minimum please take another class. Professor Nasiali's curriculum is the UCLA standard, so if you're not passionate about History and have no motivation to improve your writing skills you're setting yourself up for failure in this course.
I'll split this review into two parts, the professor and the class.
First the class:
The class is broken down into this:
There are 100 points in the gradebook, Midterm Paper (40 pts) Final Project (45 pts, includes Annotated Bibliography 10 pts), Attendance and Participation in Discussion (15 pts). Every single one of these is graded by your TA. You TA will make or break you grade in the class, so when you are working on the final project (which is a podcast or an op ed) and your midterm go to your TA and ask them about what they want to see and how you can get the best grade possible on these. If you screw up your midterm, there going to be a revision opportunity which allows you to get back at most 3 points. During my discussion my TA give you a full point for the day if you came and said at least one thing. So make sure you do your part and ask how your TA is going to grade participation. The lectures are pretty useless especially if you took AP Euro or AP World History. She requires you to buy the textbook to read and because you will have to quote it at some point but I never read any of the readings or textbook and still got an A.
The Professor:
She is very nice and helpful and she is a pretty decent lecturer. I love History but I was so bored during her lecturers I do not know why but I just did work during the lecture. She is very friendly and helpful and makes it easy to participate.
Overall: This is a good GE that gets the Historical Analysis and Diversity Requirement
You really need a great amount of work in this class to have an A.
For the midterm draft, she will give you a lot of revising advice and DO follow her instructions (although lots of them are actually contradictory and ambiguous).
If you show your improvements, she will give you a pretty good grade.
Overall I really liked this class. The material is easy to understand and Dr. Nasiali presents it in a creative manner. While the lectures sometimes felt like they dragged on and on and on, Nasiali is for the most part an engaging speaker and has well-prepared and understandable slides. She is very kind and easy to talk to, and tries to learn as many names as possible in lecture. Some TA's were harsher graders than others. Your grade is made up of a midterm paper (40%), a final op-ed paper or podcast (30%), an annotated bibliography for the final (10%), and participation in discussions (20%). Weekly homework usually just consists of primary source and textbook readings, and you can find a PDF for the textbook online.
class was easy, wasn't a huge fan of prof Nasiali and her lectures, but you don't need to go to lecture to succeed in the class. Spencer was the best TA, definitely recommend his section. grade was based on participation, a paper, and a final project (either an op-ed or a podcast). straightforward to succeed, but the class covers so much I didn't feel like I learned much
I actually took her History of Imperialism course. Professor Nasiali was very warm and friendly. The class was simple, just a few papers and in class reflections. She also played some nice songs and videos from each time period to keep us interested. I would take another class with her if I could.
Professor Nasiali is by far my favorite teacher at UCLA! Her midterms and finals were both take-home papers, which relieved a lot of the stress of them being in-class, and as long as you attended class, it would be difficult to do poorly. She is extremely engaging and I truly looked forward to attending her class each week. The readings are not overwhelming for the class, and although a couple of them were a bit difficult to understand, as long as you get the gist of them, you'll do just fine.
Professor Nasiali is very nice and helpful but grades extremely harshly. I followed her advice and went to office hours each week, applying what she told me to improve my writing, but each week she gave me the same low grade. Very disappointed with the class in general and how unnecessarily difficult this class was.
I really liked Professor Nasiali and her class. This was my first class with her and I took a different class with her again after this class as well. This isn't an easy A but she is a very helpful professor and the class was interesting. This was an online class due to covid and it was structured as a hybrid class. She posted recorded lectures every week (they weren't too long and very engaging with powerpoint slides). It was pretty easy to follow along with her lectures and pay attention. Then on Thursday mornings we would have a zoom discussion about the assigned reading for that week (and she also used that time to talk about the midterm/final and for people to ask questions). You do get graded on participation and you should try to participate on Thursdays but on her syllabus it said if you could not make to to the Thursday discussions to email her and she could work something out for you to still be able to get a good participation grade. The readings were pretty long and dense but usually interesting. The midterm and final were both papers (I think the midterm was 5-6 pages and the final was 7-8) and you had to use the readings and lectures to answer the question. She does grade them kinda tough but if you go to office hours before they are due she will definitely help you form ideas. She really likes it when your writing is polished and likes it when you revise your essay a lot. There was also a project that was due toward the end of the quarter and you had to submit a paragraph about your project topic at the beginning of the quarter. The project was on a product (such as chocolate or soap) and you had to research its colonial history (find outside sources) and then either make a blog post or a podcast about it.