This class does what my old community college professors called "reverse teaching." Basically, you have to teach yourself the material before lecture and lectures are just an iclicker quiz to try to reinforce whatever you learned. This may work for some, but for me this method was not enjoyable. I did not take notes during lecture AT ALL. All my notes were based off independent readings I did from the textbook.

Lecture and Lab were very engaging. The activities were incredibly useful and taught skills that were VERY IMPORTANT on the exams. iClicker and attendance were mandatory.

Grading is very forgiving, with you being able to miss multiple assignments/couple of days and still receive full credit. Exams are rather rough. You are given plenty of time however the questions may get very convoluted and are kind of built to trick you. However, if there is an unprecedented number of incorrect answers the question may be nulled entirely which is really forgiving on Professor Kane's part. I had Erika as my TA and she was incredibly helpful. Take advantage of problem solving sessions if offered, and utilize the practice midterms/finals/clickers they give you. An A is achievable but not easy.

First, I don't know if it was just for my quarter but bruincast wasn't set up in the room so the "recorded lectures" ended up being podcasts which made it super hard to follow. The professor herself is mid. We fell behind a couple of times because of the amount of clicker questions she would ask in lectures. There were a lot! It was honestly annoying. We also had Dr. Pires be a guest lecturer for us a couple of times and she went through our whole week's worth of slides in just one day which is saying something about the pace of Kane. She also provides practice questions before the midterm and final but no answer keys. They expect you to colloborate with others which was super annoying. The professor doesn't explain things as well as Pires did so if you have the choice, definitely take it with Pires. People tended to do worse on midterm 1 than 2 so don't feel too bad if you don't get a good grade. Overall 7B wasn't too bad.

Coming from LS7A. This class was a bit clearer than the previous, and this has to do with both the condensed number of assignments (1 vs 2 reading guides per week, but same number and structure of weekly quizzes) and this professor's more straightforward teaching style. I really appreciated how accessible this professor was - her office hours were right before or after class, and she was patient enough to draw out some diagrams and explain some ideas I wasn't familiar with when I asked her about my confusions. Her frank walkthroughs of how to read graphs on the slides and how to do PEQs also helped greatly on the exam.

7B is just 7A 2.0, but the individual phase of the midterms and final were in person (20 questions). I don't think I have much to say about 7B in general; it's genetics (weeks 1-3), evolution (weeks 4-7), and ecology (weeks 8-10, actually i forgot the exact weeks). I personally enjoyed 7A more, but that's just personal preference. The material itself isn't difficult, and with some prior knowledge most people should do fine in this class.

Professor Kane is a great professor, she explains things clearly and is willing to help her students (although I haven't been to her office hours since I had class at that time). So if you're looking for a good prof, Kane is a great choice.

Professor Kane is a gem. I hate the LS7 series so much, but having Kane makes all the difference. She was always willing to help, and most importantly, willing to admit when questions were written poorly. The content in this course is ridiculously easy, and we had high class averages for exams.

7B is not a hard class regarding the content and workload. However, Dr. Kane is a HORRIBLE professor. Sure, she treats her students like they're her friends, but she does not explain the material very well. Oftentimes, she provides the wrong information and then goes back to switch it up. She also does not know how to solve some of the practice exam questions (PEQs) she assigns. The midterms in the class are riddled with errors, and the professors don't allow students to review their answers (i.e., you don't get the test booklets back).

Kane's teaching aside, 7B is a pretty standard class. It's structured like 7A, except the exams are in person. You could get an A with a decent amount of studying as there is lots of extra credit offered in the class. The professor for the class also doesn't matter too much because the exams are the same for all students. However, I'd recommend taking the class with a professor who knows the content they are supposed to teach... so preferably not Kane.

I had to attend lecture outside half of the time because I had class right after this, so the wifi was bad and I would give up on listening to lecture halfway through. Kane was an okay professor, but the class was kind of boring. At least the tests weren't too hard, and it was open-book. Our discussion sections were almost 2 hours, but I often had to email my TA to let her know I'm going to turn in the lab worksheet a little late because I couldn't finish during class. They were ridiculously long, in my opinion.
In terms of asking for help, I would go to office hours and LA workshops, but the LA workshops were more helpful. When I asked Kane a question during office hours, she would sometimes get confused herself and tries to reason through it and take me in circles, ultimately giving a weak answer. The class overall wasn't too bad, though, so don't worry.

Professor Kane was nice, but not the best at explaining topics clearly.

This class is completely points-based. There are 774 total points: 120 Midterm 1, 120 Midterm 2, 200 Final, 135 lab worksheets, 64 clicker, 45 launchpad activities, 45 PCRQs, 45 PEQs.
Like 7A, Launchpad is just busywork. Try to find the PCRQs on Quizlet so you don’t have to waste hours clicking through the content, although not all of the questions are there so you may have to either guess on a few questions or actually read some of the content. Labs are also time-consuming and mostly done as groups, and only somewhat helped in learning concepts. There aren’t as many extra credit opportunities as 7A had, just the syllabus quiz, LA/TA/instructor evals, and mini midterms. Mini midterms consist of a reflection survey and a mini midterm that allow you to earn some extra points on the midterm up to 123/120 points. There is no mini final.
Kane uploaded prelecture slides at the beginning of the week, but she wouldn’t post a complete set of the slides she showed in lecture, even though she usually showed new slides so unless you wanted to watch the recording, you were left with an incomplete slideshow. Kane was also really bad at explaining anything and asking her questions often left me more confused. While she posted practice questions for the midterms and final, there was no answer key, and we were instead told to compare answers with classmates. Even the “feedback” you get on the midterm questions is useless; it consists of telling you the learning objective for the question and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll be told that the question is based on the week 2 lab. The grading for the midterms and finals took a really long time considering that the tests are all MC and done on CCLE which has the capacity to grade MC questions right away. Kane is also not an accommodating person and is extremely unapproachable. She’s often rude and expected us to have good wifi all the time even though she knew most of us were using unreliable wifi networks on campus. Sometimes in lecture, she’d have us go into breakout rooms and talk, but then she’d get annoyed if no one was sharing a screen even if we told her about wifi issues. She would also go overtime for almost every lecture and sometimes even have clicker questions for us to do after class was supposed to end so even if you left the zoom on time, you’d have to keep the app open to make sure you answered at least 75% of questions. Overall, I would strongly recommend taking this class with a different professor and only with Kane if you’re desperate to finish prereqs or have no other choice.

Best class so far in the LS 7 Series. Dr. Kane was never the most knowledgeable about topics if you ever had deeper questions to ask her, but she was always able to teach you enough to prepare you for exams, which is all that was necessary. She gives a TON of extra credit through surveys and "mini-midterms" after exams to get points back, and the class is full of free points in general. Labs were extremely boring but 135 free points, as my TA, Shomik, literally graded on completion and made the class the best. First midterm was a breeze. Second midterm and final were a little harder, but it's almost impossible to not get an A in this class.