I took this class in Fall 2024 and I thought Roberts was an excellent professor overall. His only flaw is that it can sometimes be unclear what you're supposed to gleam from his powerpoint presentations. Other than that, a manageable workload (weekly quizzes + 3 short essays) and a take-home final made this a perfectly doable upper division class.

Professor Roberts was great! I took his History of the Samurai class and really enjoyed the content he presented to us. He is passionate about his job and effective in his teaching! Weekly quizzes (you get 2 attempts), 3 short essays throughout the quarter, and a final exam! A little salty because his TA graded my papers harshly (hence my B+)

Easy class but difficult to pay attention to, stopped going to lecture early on. Agree with the "too much text on slides" complaint. Not as interesting as you'd expect it to be. If you don't care and just want an easy class, take it. As a history major, probably the least interesting history class I've taken, despite the cool premise. Nice guy tho

Like another review said, I kinda feel bad rating him so poorly because he's such a nice guy but his lectures are INCREDIBLY dull, slides have WAYYYY too much text to absorb, and readings are super long and tedious. Speaking as a history major, this class is one to avoid, but it's absolutely free if you're looking for an easy A+ without attending.

Fantastic lectures, clearly very passionate about the topic. Class is pretty easy as long as you do the readings and go to lecture. Great class!

I almost feel bad rating Roberts so poorly but he is not an effective lecturer. Slides have too much text and it's hard to know what to take away from them, delivery is boring and I never feel like I learn anything. It's prob one of the easiest classes on this campus but if you think you're going to learn about samurai by taking this, you're wrong