Ken is such a great guy! He is like a fun, inspirational uncle! His lectures are a bit boring since the class is largely reviewing the work of your fellow students. He is super passionate and it shows! It is hard to study for his tests since the matter is vague but take good notes and you'll be fine. Very easy to get an A and a very fun class.

Professor Hiltner does a great job of structuring a large class and picking valuable readings. A professor I genuinely liked and would take again. Only downside is that tests focus on numbers and stats, less ideal for a humanities class.

This class was setup very weird. He made a YouTube account where you had to make 3 paragraph-sized comments per week. Lectures were very boring, as all he did was cherry-pick some comments from YouTube and read them out to the class. Hes also very strict with iClicker attendance. Many times he started class with iClicker questions.

Definitely recommend! Prof Ken is very passionate about climate change. His lectures make you rethink your values but he also gives you solutions for the crisis. iClicker necessary for participation points and the main assignment was online youtube comments. Pretty straightforward/easy.

Honestly a really good guy, but this class was mind-numbingly boring. Lectures were mandatory and shouldn't have been, as it was just us doing iClicker Qs and listening to him comment on our own Youtube comments, super redundant as we learned nothing new. Midterm wasn't bad but consisted of questions that were either oddly vague or too "niche."

His lectures for English 23 were not great. He just went through the class comments that we did for homework every week. You have to pay attention during the lectures, readings, and videos. He clearly knows his stuff about climate change, but his execution of the lectures wasn't great. It was a brand new class, so I'll give him a break for that.

Amazing professor. I learned so much about the climate crisis in this class. Definitely the most life changing class I've taken at UCSB so far.

Ken is a great guy. He cares about his students and wants them to succeed and learn. He is knowledgeable on the material and highly values student input. Although the format is unconventional, this class teaches you a lot and is a completely manageable amount of work.

Because of the virus, he canceled the final exam and gave everyone full credit on final. The midterm also had curve.

He canceled the final exam and gave all the students full credit on the final.

A pretty easy class if you do all the work but it is time consuming. Have to read something, watch a film, and watch 3 video lectures every week and make 3 comments. In person lectures are him responding to student comments so they're pretty useless in terms of testing material but attendance is a big part of your grade so you have to go.

Ken's lectures and tests are irrelevant to learning, but the readings are very good. He spends lecture making us silently read Youtube comments that students made on his video, and his test is memorizing details that don't add to your knowledge of climate change. One question of his midterm was: "What painting was on top of Leo DiCaprio's crib"?

Ken is great but needs to work on structure. If he only focused on readings and films and made optional discussion forums on something like reddit, I think it would increase genuine engagement and help people focus on the actual material for exams, not just enough to have enough comments. Lectures should not be him reading comments. Come on, Ken :(

his structure of the course falls very flat to me. He makes everyone do comments but they have to be rather long. there's no section so he does this to add engagement but it makes it very forced and mind numbing. You end up getting behind so that you just have something to comment.

Don't get me wrong, I think that Eng23 is a really important class that teaches important concepts surrounding the climate crisis. That being said, dear god, never did I expect to have to mandatorily sit through about 2 dozen lectures JUST looking at Youtube comments on HIS videos. Clearly likes to hear himself speak, maybe bit too much.

Content is interesting, but doesn't actually lecture in class. He posts his lectures on YouTube; you watch 3 lecture videos (1 is accompanied by an article, 1 is accompanied by a documentary), and leave 3 comments a week. The actual lecture block is spent reading YT comments, and no attendance credit if you leave early. Feels like a waste of time

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Great and easy class, very easy GE and easy A. All you need to do is pay attention and do the readings and watch the films. There was no midterms or finals, grade just depended on lecture quizzes every lecture which were not confusing. Personally, I think you need to enjoy the topic, but you also don't need to, to do well in this class.

If you pay attention he's really passionate about what he's teaching. The quizzes are SUPER easy and there really isn't that much outside work. Definitely look into this one!

Prof is passionate but his voice is so monotone it puts you to sleep. I thought we would learn about the environment, however we spent like 2 weeks reading the bible dissecting its teaching on the environment?Boring lectures with bad readings. 2 assignments per week with short discussion posts. The film assignments were fun, the reading not at all.

Lecture content is interesting but drags on, class is on "ecocriticism", not "environmental literature". Readings and documentaries were insightful, but the real problem is the in-class quizzes. There is a quiz everyday and every question wrong = -1% on your FINAL grade. Questions are extremely specific, so reread before every class.

I thought the lectures were interesting and they definitely made understanding the reading easier. Pretty much the entire grade is based on short multiple choice quizzes that happen every lecture, and because they often focus on really specific details from the readings or films, they can tank your grade quickly. But no final!

This is a good class to take for GE credit. Lectures are dry but the workload is very chill. Reading and lecture quizzes basically determine your grade so make sure to do good on those.