DON'T TAKE THIS CLASS. Ken is the most insufferable, pretentious, self serving professor I've ever had. He cares more about his videos doing well on YouTube (interacting with them is 20% of your grade) than how well they teach his actual students. He is also not open to hearing feedback, questions can only be posted as Q&A and may not be answered.

Only 4 weeks in & Im just gonna say it, pls dont take Ken.. Hes probably a great person but damn does the guys like to hear himself talk.. His quizzes and exams consist of very specific & very vague questions which u only get 1m to answer (Plus cant go back and forth between them either...). Every week literally feels pointless to study now...

Prof Hiltner is super cool. Really interesting material (at least for me) and not too heavy on the workload. The information isn't rocket science and it's pretty easy to keep up with all the lectures and reading material. I really enjoyed this class and the professor :)

Took his class back when everything was in person. Truly passionate about what he teaches and cares about his students. Attendance was taken through Iclickers.

He's the reason I switched my major to Environmental Studies. His class was so informative and super inspirational. The class setup is far different than any other course I've taken... its all well-made YouTube video lectures and paragraph-long comments to write. Overall so much respect for professor Hiltner, he really practices what he preaches!

Prof Hiltner was a wonderful prof! I loved his style of class. Homework heavy though, you do your own reading, lecture, and video weekly and then he uses lecture time to discuss your responses. Iclickers are required, he spaces them out so u have to be there all class. Very eye-opening content, I recommend this to anyone.

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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