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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I got a 96% in the class, but sometimes the quiz questions were unfair. Even if you watch the movies/do the readings, there is a chance you will get a trick one and lose 1% of your grade. It's the easiest class I've taken here, but I didn't feel like I got anything from it.
I would ride that bike.
Not a ton to complain about
Easy class for units. No midterm or final but there are quizzes every lecture (2-3 questions, 1 min/question) that are on the videos and readings he assigns. 1 reading and 1 video assignment due every Sunday. Take notes on videos and reading! Not much work needed to put into this class. Learned a lot about the climate, took some things with me.
No exams which was a blessing. Graded on weekly 2-3 question pop quizzes and a very lengthy comment on a film and reading. Sometimes felt overwhelming. Lectures were EXTREMELY dense and felt dragged on. All readings free on Canvas. But, he's very passionate about the environment and I learned quite a bit.
New format is a content quiz (either film or reading) every single lecture, each worth like 3% of your grade and questions can be really hard. Weekly film and reading responses are pretty bare bones but take a solid amount of time and feel repetitive. Actual course content itself is really interesting, though, if you engage with it.
Would not recommend due to his "new" formatting on ENG22, the quizzes were difficult and did not seem to reflect actual class material. Even listening in lecture, watching all the movies/videos, and doing all the readings is not enough to do well in this class. He puts random questions and there's no opportunity to show what you actually know.
Easy class -- no final or midterm just weekly quizzes. While the quizzes are light, they're weighted pretty heavily; if you make one mistake you lose a percent. However, you can easily do well on them as long as you listen during lecture, skim the readings, and just watch the films. Overall chill class with easy assignments and quizzes.
His lectures felt long and boring but if you pay attention you will do good on quizzes. We had a film assignment and a reading assignment due on Sunday each week. They are short discussion posts and replies to other students. Attendance quiz every day and a reading quiz or film quiz each lecture. Overall easy but boring.
The lectures were VERY boring if you are not interested in the environment. There were no midterms or finals, and only graded on weekly homework and short online daily quizzes. Only attended half of the lectures and still finished with an A-. A super easy class where I barely put any work into it.
Had a very interesting format to class with daily quizzes, homework, and attendance making up the whole grade. 1 reading/film assignment per week, manageable homework load, lectures could feel a bit dragged out but overall a solid professor
