Merolla really cares about his students and their experience in his class. He checks in on you throughout the quarter to make sure all is well. He has a few quizzes in his class that are multiple choice and can be stressful if you don't study the notes. Interesting lectures and easy paper prompts. Be thorough and you will be good!
Great class and amazing lectures. All tests are online with days to take it, but they can be challenging. You have to do 2/3 of the papers and those are short and easy. Great prof and interesting class
Class is definitely not easy, get ready to read and take good notes on her lectures to get a good grade on her exams. Her exams were tough however I really enjoyed her lectures and the concepts we learned in class. Her lectures were enjoyable and she seems like a great person overall.
Professor Merolla was great! I loved the structure of the class, grading was very clear, and as long as you go to/watch the lectures and take notes, (open-note quizzes) you will succeed! I found his lectures really interesting, and way preferred this class over Comm 1. This class is what made me fall in love with the comm major.
Professor Merolla is the absolute sweetest! It was so fun to learn about new communication concepts and he always presented them in an interesting and cool way. Highly recommend taking Comm 89 with him if you get the chance!
Gonzales is an awesome teacher and cares about her students, but I think she grades WAY too hard. Her exams are difficult and despite the curve few people got As on them. Lectures are dense and sometimes confusing, but the class topic itself is also complicated. Class is two exams and one paper plus an extra small assignment.
I took this class to retake comm 89 and I really really enjoyed merollas lectures. His lectures were easy to follow and made really good examples and explained the theories really well. I am really sad the class has come to an end because I learned a lot from him and I really liked his teaching style.
Lectures very informative and interesting.
Professor Gonzales is definitely a professor at UCSB who is there primarily for research purposes rather than teaching purposes. However, I found her to be very understanding and the material for the class is very interesting!
Prof. Merolla assisted Prof. Lane W21. Grading included Intro Video (5%), Weekly Assignments (40%), Paper Outline (10%), Research Paper (40%) and Research Participation (5%). Lectures + reading material was interesting and easy to understand. I recommend Li Qi as a TA.
The class has midterm and final and homework every week. You need to resubmit the homework to get full points. From my TA, I got to know my midterm and final were all graded by the professor, and she gave me A+ for these two exams. The textbook is the way to success!! Make sure to understand every concept clearly.
To be honest, his lectures are very well-organized and thorough so I actually enjoyed going to lectures because I felt like I was actually learning something. However, to be honest I also had a professor crush on him so I WANTED to go to class HAHA. Overall, interesting class and manageable if you go to lectures and keep up with the readings.
Took her in the Spring, she was super accomodating and I believe she did a good job trying to navigate the class online seeing as she had a short amount of time to restructure this course. Sometimes the lectures were a bit dry but it is a research methods course which I wasn't super crazy about taking. Overall she's awesome, especially upper div!!
Knows the material but is bad at getting the point across. Weekly homework that you dont get an A on. You must RESUBMIT to MAYBE get an extra point. Midterm/final was easy for me Bc I studied the book. paper grade depends on how strict your TA is. Overall, expectation were way too high. No reason I breezed through upper divs and struggled in this.
Her lecture is not really organized, and her language is sometimes unclear, which somewhat affects the quality of her class. The exams are fair. The research paper depends on TA.
Comm 88 is a difficult class, and not the most interesting. I definitely wouldn't take this class if you aren't a comm major. Professor Gonzales is pretty much exactly what I expected. She knows what she's talking about but she's pretty serious and a tough grader. For the exams you have to create your own experiment and it's pretty hard.
Best professor, did research with him and I remember in Comm 89, he was so thorough with every theory, explained everything in a way that didn't bore you but also helped you understand the material (probably why I wanted to join his research). Such a gem professor, take his classes if you actually want to understand the material. Taking his comm111
didnt take class, looking to see if shes a good teacher
I had her during the Spring quarter of 2020 and I thought she was fine. She switched her midterm and final to be short answer and it took a long time to get the feedback. Weekly assignments for section but were relatively easy. She allowed the final to be optional which was great. She tried to make the lectures easy (asynchronously) and relatable.
Due to COVID-19, the format for exams changed from MC to short answers. The first exam was written poorly and unclear- something she acknowledged. The other two exams had clearer objectives, thankfully. The textbook saves you in this class, I relied on it way more than the lectures.
Professor Gonzalez seems to be really cool and easy going at first. Just know for a fact if you take any class with her you have to really think outside the box even for a pre requisite class. Since the virus has been going on I thought she would be a little bit easier, not even close. I promise she is very difficult.
This class was interesting, but Gonzales made it way harder than it had to be. Test questions were phrased poorly, study guides and grades were rarely posted on time, and the TA gave no constructive feedback on the papers. I learned a lot, but it honestly wasnt worth the stress.
Took her comm184. course content is super interesting and relatable. I did get more in-depth understandings of the role that social media plays in real life, which is way more complicated than I was thinking of. fairly challenging course. Somehow hard to understand the material, tricky test questions. Glad I took it but won't take it again
Professor Gonzales is a great professor in the means of getting major points across and is just overall good at teaching. However, she teaches with her own political standings. There are a few chapters in the textbook that she teaches based on her views completely. If you don't want to hear somebody go off on tangents about their views keep looking
