This is a list of all of the classes I took at Penn, with descriptions and ratings for each one. I was an undergraduate from 1999-2003, and then took 3 courses in my first post-bac year while I worked at Penn (as a full-time staff member, tuition is free.) The purposes of this page are to inform students about these courses if they feel inclined to take them, and to remind me about what awesome courses I took when I look back on this page later. This page is not to be taken too seriously, and keep in mind that these are the opinions of one student.
Rating System: the scale is 0-4 for everything, with 2 being average, based on my limited experience. I did my ratings this way so that they would reflect the ratings of the course guide (the book that publishes these results). I try to keep my average closer to 2, but since I've had so many great classes, I had a hard time sticking to this.
Spring 2004
PSYC 751: Special Topics in Cognition: The Neural Basis of Visual Working Memory, 1CU
Professors: Amishi Jha. Matt Botvinick
Basic Overview: This course was the continuation of the neural basis of visual attention. The format was very similar, with a few minor changes. Rather than using a text, we used articles. Each week everyone read 1-2 articles, and 1-2 people presented the articles during the class period. Another change was that this course was more designed as a lab meeting. Every other week, rather than reading and presenting articles, someone from the group presented their research and got feedback from the other members of the class. The final change was that those who took the course for credit completed a final paper in the form of a grant proposal, and completed an extra presentation.
Overall Rating: 2.5
Again, I enjoyed this course. Journal club style learning is my favorite kind. The grant proposal paper was also a great idea.
Difficulty Rating: 1.0
This course was still easy. Some people got away without doing the readings, although admittedly they probably weren't the ones taking the course for a grade. The grant proposal paper was challenging, but it was the only assignment.
MUSC 090/PSYC 431: Psychology of Music, 1CU
Professor: Eugene Narmour
Basic Overview: This course, which is cross-listed with psychology and music, studies the cognition of music. The students in the course mostly came from music backgrounds, but many of them had significant coursework in psychology as well. The course focused primarily on the physics of music, music perception and cognition, and only slightly touched upon the emotion and social psychology of music. Grades were based on a short answer/definition midterm and a take-home final involving a review of three empirical psychology of music papers.
Overall Rating: 1.7
I loved this course, because it combined my two favorite topics -- cognitive psychology and music. Indeed, I waited through four years of college to take the course, until I finally took it after graduating.
That being said, the course was not flawless. The main problem with the course was that it had not been taught in years. The syllabus was fantastic, but it was unfortunately too ambitious and we only got through about half of it. This happened in part because of an unfortunate accident that caused the professor to miss two weeks of class. :-( The half of the syllabus we got through was my favorite part, but most students were more excited about the social psychology of music than the physics of music and perception. A related problem was that the professor was unaware of students' backgrounds, so we spent longer on perception and review of music theory than was expected. The course would have done a lot better had it required another prerequisite such as perception (psyc111). I would not recommend dumbing down the course -- as I said, the syllabus was quite good.
Difficulty Rating: 1.8
I didn't find this course hard at all, but I was at an advantage given my physics of music background and interest in the subject. (Indeed, I even subbed in for one of the lectures Professor Narmour had to miss, because we were still learning the physics of music and perception, and this was my specialty. I was also eager for us to move on!) Despite my advantage, the course was objectively not too difficult, because there was only one midterm and an easy final. Some people found the midterm challenging, but the final was easy. All we had to do was write a review for three papers.
Fall 2003
PSYC 751: Special Topics in Cognition: The Neural Basis of Visual Attention, 1CU
Professor: Amishi Jha
Basic Overview: This course was designed like a journal club. The participants were members of the Jha, Botvinick, and Olson labs. Course credit was optional. Every week, everyone read a chapter from "Converging Operations in the Study of Visual Selective Attention," and one person from the course presented the chapter, leading discussion. People taking the course for credit presented twice as often as the rest of the group, and wrote up required discussion questions before every class.
Overall Rating: 2.4
This was a great course. Journal club style of learning is my favorite, because I think we learn the most about current and past research by discussing experiments from papers and chapters. I also loved the opportunity to give public presentations. My only suggestion for improvement would have been to require more for the students who took the course for a grade. (Yes, I think I should have had to write a paper or something!)
Difficulty Rating: 0.7
This course was very easy. The amount of reading was not much, and the only required work was on occasional presentation, in addition to the written discussion questions and participation in discussion each week. Making a good presentation wasn't a piece of cake, but it only occurred about three times in the semester.
Spring 2003
PSYC 149: Cognitive Neuroscience, 1CU
Professor: Sharon Thompson-Schill
Teaching Assistant: Laura Barde
Basic Overview: This course, which is cross-listed with psychology and the biological basis of behavior, studies the neural basis of cognition. Thus, it is similar in content to both bbb109 and psyc151. It fulfills the neuroscience requirement in the Cognitive Science major, and is actually a much more appropriate course for this requirement than is bbb109. The course is centered around the idea of combining the study of "hardware" (neuroscience) with "software" (cognitive psychology/cognitive science), claiming that the two are not separate. Course requirements included three midterms (drop the lowest one), two to three short papers, and either a final exam or a term paper. Grading was not curved, but the average was close to a B- anyway.
Overall Rating: 3.6
This course was amazing. I could go on forever about how awesome of a professor Sharon Thompson-Schill is, (I already wrote a 1000+ word recommendation for her, as she is being considered for tenure) but I will try to highlight some key points so that it doesn't go on too long. It is impossible to do the course justice in this space here.
First of all, almost everyone I've talked to has loved this course. In the course guide it consistently gets superb ratings in spite of its difficulty. What is so great about it is that pretty much every student leaves the course having learned a great deal about cognitive neuroscience. Additionally, every student gains some experience with writing, a rare phenomenon in 100-level psychology courses. Students also learn how to read and understand scientific papers--very important for college and future studies!
Professor Thompson-Schill lectured by using experiments as examples (like psyc121). Examples served two purposes--they helped students to remember information more easily than straight lectures with facts, and they introduced students to psychological research methods, including concepts like "single dissociation" and "double dissociation".
In addition to teaching us extraordinarily well in the classroom, Sharon Thompson-Schill went beyond the call outside of the classroom. She invited students to join her for coffee for her office hours so that the setting would be less intimidating and more fun. At exam time, she would sit at her computer all day and night and respond to student questions, e-mailing the answers to the entire class. At one point in the semester, she and Laura held a "futures in cognitive neuroscience" information session in which they discussed medical school and graduate school, and how to prepare for these careers. Finally, she encouraged students to attend "learning outside of the classroom" events (lectures, case study conferences, and experiments) and she posted full time and work-study lab positions to the class listserve.
Sharon Thompson-Schill was an incredible teacher capable of stimulating student interest and converting many (including me!) to the study of cognitive neuroscience.
Difficulty Rating: 3.3
Even though I personally only took the course P/F, I could tell that the course was one of the more difficult ones, especially for a 100-level lecture. Students were required to memorize a great deal, but in order to do well they must also be able to apply and integrate the knowledge. There were several essay questions on each test. What made this course more difficult than, for example, bbb109, were the short papers. Though the papers were only 1000 words each, they were not easy. Students had to find two current neuroscience empirical papers on the same topic, summarize them both, and integrate their ideas. The final exam was also difficult in that it was cumulative and the essay questions drew on ideas covered throughout the entire course.
Spring 2003
PSYC 311: Research Experiments in Auditory Perception, 1CU
Professor: Ginny Richards
Basic Overview: This is a psychology research experience course on auditory perception. During the first part of the class, we performed auditory perception experiments on ourselves and wrote lab reports on the results. Generally the experiments were replication studies, so the relevant literature was considered in the write-up. Examples of topics included loudness thresholds, profile analysis, perceived pitch, critical bandwidth tests, and masking.
In the second part of the class, students designed their own projects and wrote up reports on them, considering relevant literature.
There was also a computational aspect to the course. Students choosing to participate were awarded credit towards the computing certificate in the college. These students programmed models for theories of auditory perception and tested the models using stimuli. They compared how similar the results were to the human performance.
Overall Rating: 3.0
I really liked this class. What worked well was that we had a good combination of pre-designed labs and student-designed projects. It was good to start off by getting used to performing psychology experiments and writing them up as well as introducing ourselves to auditory perception before we made up our own projects. Additionally, students choosing to take the computational approach were able to explore another area of cognitive science.
Often with this format, (small labs followed by student projects) you run out of time. I felt like we accomplished both goals, but some of the science was sacrificed in the end. For example, when we did individual projects, we each had only one subject--ourselves. We also completed fewer labs than we had originally expected to do.
I think my only suggestion for this class would be to add a few more labs so that we would cover more material. The class was excellent, though. Professor Richards was easy going, funny, and very knowledgeable. She put a great deal of work into the class because she had to program every single experiment, including the individual projects.
Difficulty Rating: 1.8
It was not very difficult to do well in this course. While the labs were relatively time consuming, they weren't very frequent (every two to three weeks), there was not much reading for the course, and the grading was not too harsh. What probably took up the most time for the course was being a subject in the experiments, which was very easy and was a fun study break from other work. Even so, there was a lot of writing for the course.
Fall 2002
MUSC 062: Tabla II, 1CU
Professor: Prashant Kocherlakota
Basic Overview: This course was a continuation of beginning tabla. Several students continued the course from the previous semester, while some started tabla for the first time.
Overall Rating: 2.8
Once again, this course was excellent, but this semester was not as incredible as the last. The main problem was that there were too many people in the course. There weren't enough sets to go around and it was more difficult for everyone to get to know each other. Another problem was bad luck--several classes were cancelled due to bad weather or holidays, which meant that weeks of class time were lost because the class only meets once a week. We did not end up covering as much material as we had the first semester.
However, it was really an incredible experience for both the beginners and advanced students to work together in a mentorship relationship. We also did manage to get to know each other well.
Difficulty Rating: 0.5
This course was relatively easy for two reasons. For one, the professor graded easily, after threatening lower grades. (So, in the end, everyone did practice hard and earned good grades.) The other reason the course was easy was because the work you had to do for it (practicing tabla) was so much more fun than the work required for other courses. It was also so different that it came as a welcome study break to other courses. Because we didn't move as quickly in this course as we did last semester, it ended up being easier and less time-consuming to practice.
Fall 2002
ANTH 407: Human Evolution, 1CU
Professor: Janet Monge
Basic Overview: This is a physical anthropology course which covers in detail what is known of the human line of evolution. The course is anatomy and fossil-based. In addition to covering the well-known fossil evidence, we learned about new studies and fossil finds from the last few years that have introduced new possible ancestors of the human line.
Students wrote two 6-10 page papers (more like 10 pages) and did either a take-home final that was three papers 5 pages each, or a 25-page research paper. The first two papers were a biography and a site report. For each, all of the relevant work (of the person or the site) had to be read and included. The research paper was on a topic of the student's choice, and the take-home final was on general topics from the course.
Overall Rating: 2.4
Janet Monge is hilarious and made an otherwise boring topic pretty interesting. Invariably, we were laughing out loud at least once in each class. She had a great personality and cared about the students. Towards the end of the term, she invited everyone to her house for dinner and cooked a fabulous meal. It was a joy to take a class from this woman.
While I feel like I learned a great deal in the class, I had a few complaints as well. The main complaint I had is that absolutely no work from the entire term was returned to us by the end of the term. This is mainly because paper deadlines were late in the term. (Luckily, we were warned about these deadlines from day one, so you could get ahead on your work if you wanted to.) Other than that, the class was great. I feel like we all learned a lot in this course.
Difficulty Rating: 2.6
Though the work didn't come until late in the term, there was a lot of it. The lengths of the papers were deceiving, as one of my 6-10 page papers had 26 different references. Extensive research was required for each paper. While Professor Monge has high expectations, she is not too harsh in her grading, either.
COLL004-001: Representations of the Holocaust in Film and Literature, 1CU
Professors: Al Filreis and Penny Marcus
Teaching Assistants: Josh and Christina
Basic Overview: This course fulfills sector IV of the Pilot Curriculum, but since Pilot courses are now open to all students, I was able to take it. Because it is in the Pilot Curriculum, nearly all of the students were College freshmen and sophomores.
The course itself is very true to the nature of the Pilot Curriculum, as it is truly interdisciplinary. Instead of being the conventional history-based Holocaust course, this one focused on survivor testimony, the art of film and literature, and most importantly, how the Holocaust relates to our lives today.
Students were asked to read about 8 texts and watched about 7 films on the Holocaust. There were 6 papers chosen from 11 possible topics worth 75% of the grade. The comprehensive final exam was worth 25% of the grade.
Overall Rating: 3.9
As it is obvious by the rating, this class was simply phenomenal. It was organized with genius and carried out with effort and emotion. Penny and Al (that is how they wished to be addressed) put enormous effort into this course.
As mentioned above, the course was very interdisciplinary. Unlike most large freshman/sophomore level courses, this one strongly emphasized thinking, reasoning and applying rather than memorizing. In fact, very little memorization was required at all. Those who had done all of the work and gone to each class didn't even need to study for the exam. The course taught us to love school and to think. This is how all courses at Penn should be. No one ever really paid attention to or talked about their grades.
The really amazing part of this course is how it relates to life. Because of how the course was taught, focusing on the current impacts of the Holocaust on our lives and of all of those involved in the Holocaust, (even the "innocent" bystanders) the course makes you apply the concepts to your own life. By taking a course like this you learn about a topic and you learn about life.
Difficulty Rating: 2.1
I say this each time, but this course really was hard to give a difficulty rating. Compared to other courses, there isn't a whole lot of work because they six papers are all very short. There is a fair amount of reading, but it is easier to do than read from a textbook. What is "difficult" about this course is that is very easily consumes your life. There are many optional talks and film screenings you can go to, as well as there are optional readings. Given the extra features to the course, like visiting the Holocaust memorial and watching the 9-hour Shoah, you actually end up spending a lot of time on this course. However, since it is good time spent, the course isn't difficult in the way others are (with lots of homeworks, papers, etc.)
COGS 398: Senior Thesis, 1CU
Professor: Lila Gleitman
Supervising Post-Doc: Felicia Hurewitz
Basic Overview: For my senior thesis, I did a year-long psychology of language project involving animations and sentences with fake verbs. I investigated how people assign reference in a sentence.
Overall Rating: 3.7
I had an excellent experience doing this thesis. While a senior thesis might not be for everyone, it was probably the best thing I did my whole senior year. It can be easy to get very involved in and dedicated to one project.
One reason the project was so successful was because of whom I worked with. Felicia was an excellent advisor to me. She always answered all of my questions, set up regular meetings with me, and offered tons of advice. We also just had fun sitting around and talking, and she even offered lots of help with graduate school advice and job advice. I couldn't have asked for a better mentor. The people in the lab were also great to have around and talk to. I was really glad I did my project there, even though language is not my primary interest.
If you are wondering about whether or not to do a thesis, I will not say definitely do one. It will probably be a good experience. If you don't think you could be that devoted to one project, then it might not be the best idea for you.
Difficulty Rating: 3.3
The most difficult part about any senior thesis is making sure that you can pace yourself. Truthfully, my first term was a lot slower than my second. What made this project difficult was that at times I had to devote all of my time and energy to it, especially when I was running subjects. I also had to use many skills that I had learned a long time ago in order to do the project well. I had to re-learn certain statistical analyses and I had to re-learn how to program. I'm really glad I did, though! What made the project easy once I got into it was that I wanted to devote all of my time and energy to it. The thing is that it was really good to have a flexible schedule, as one does with reserach (in general). If you are busy one week you can just not work on it, and then do double time the next week.
MUSC060: Beginning Tabla I, 1CU
Professor: Prashant Kocherlakota
Basic Overview: In this course, students learn how to play the tabla, which is an Indian drum. The course is cross-listed in South Asian Regional Studies, because we also cover some aspects of culture when learning about the drum itself, though the course is primarily for learning how to perform with the drum.
Like the Holocaust course I took this semester, the course was not just about the topic it advertised, but about life. Our professor taught us life lessons through stories and just through communicating with us.
Overall Rating: 3.5
This course was amazing. I knew I would love it because of the drumming aspect, in which it really was phenomenal, but I didn't at first realize how much more the course would have to offer. At the end of each class period, we would choose one or two people in the class, and just talk about them and what we liked about them. The class environment was just incredible. Frequently, in small courses, you get to know the other people in the class, but in this class you went a step further and they became close friends of yours. We always stayed late after class--it ended at about 8:15 or 8:30 even though it was scheduled to end at 8, and we always came to class early. Usually the room was full of us practicing before class started up at 5pm.
Difficulty Rating: 1.2
This course was relatively easy for two reasons. For one, the professor graded easily, after threatening much lower grades. (So, in the end, everyone did practice hard and earned good grades.) The other reason the course was easy was because the work you had to do for it (practicing tabla) was so much more fun than the work required for other courses. It was also so different that it came as a welcome study break to other courses.
STAT112: Statistics II, 1CU
Professor: Dylan Small
Basic Overview: This course was a continuation of Stat 111. In this course, we covered power tests, Regression transformations, Multiple Regression, and Analysis of Variance, as well as reviewing topics from Stat111. Most year-long statistics courses cover MANOVA, chi squares, and factor analysis, but we never got to these topics. There were two midterms each worth 20% of the grade, 5 homeworks worth a total of 30% of the grade, and a final exam worth 30% of the grade.
Overall Rating: 0.8
This was not a very good course. For one, we did not cover enough material. We spent too much time reviewing stat111, and didn't move through topics quickly enough once we got going. I feel like I know little more about statistics than I did when I took STAT111. My main criticism is of the sequence itself rather than how the course was taught. More needs to be put in the syllabus. In fact, both courses could be taught in one term. Including the material we didn't cover, both courses could be taught in one term for 1.5CU.
As for the way the course was taught, our professor cared deeply about doing a good job, and was highly accessible to students. He reminded us of his office hours each week, and offered additional hours before tests. He offered an extra credit project option for students wishing to learn more in the class. However, as a lecturer he was not skilled, and was unable to speak lucidly in each class period. That fact combined with the course being too easy made people feel it was unnecessary to go to class.
Difficulty Rating: 1.1
This class was very easy. If you did well in STAT111, you would have no trouble cruising through this course, studying for the tests only by making cheat sheets.
Spring 2002
MUSC 171: Music and Musicianship IV, 1.5CU
Professor: Chris Hasty
Teaching Assistant: Lona Kozik
Basic Overview: This was the last music theory class in the sequence of four. The class covered mostly 20th century music styles, including serialism, minimalism, rows, arrays, atonal music, etc. Some of these styles required learning new concepts like the numbering system of pitch classes. In the end, analysis and composition were the most important aspects of the class. Analysis was emphasized towards the beginning of the semester, and compositions were more towards the end when we knew the concepts well. The lab session this semester emphasized singing and knowing intervals a lot more. By the end of this class, everyone pretty much had perfect relative pitch, and could sight sing more or less flawlessly.
Overall Rating: 3.3
Just like music 170, this was a great class. (I will use the same description, more or less.) Hasty really knew his material, and was very good about getting the students to think about the music and get into the styles, both in composition and analysis. He made the material interesting and everyone learned a lot in the course, even though we weren't learning any specific new chord names or vocabulary. Hasty was good about getting us to really think. I didn't feel like I was expected to regurgitate what was said in class or in readings when I did my analyses. Instead, he encouraged us to make our own decisions and take risks in both analysis and composition. The class was also a lot of fun because it was small and intimate, and was mostly the same people from music 170. What was not so great about the class was that a few students had pretty bad attendance. I'm not sure what kept them from coming to class since it was a good class--probably a seeming lack of repercussions. (He did actually factor it into the grade, I think!) That was disappointing, in my opinion.
The lab was a lot better this semester than last. More was expected of us, and when you did all of the assignments, (including a weekly singing test) you really improved all of your sight singing and listening skills.
Difficulty Rating: 2.4
I think this class was slightly easier than music 170 because I feel as though there were fewer assignments, but the difficulty was about the same. I think most people got relatively good grades, but everyone in this class was amazing musically. They made it to the last semester of music theory (most people drop out after 25 or 71). I could tell how good my peers were when we performed the compositions in the class--they were superb. Luckily there was no set curve! In general, there was a lot of work for the class. Granted, it is 1.5 credits, but sometimes the compositions sometimes took a very long time, and we'd have assignments due in both the lab and the lecture, sometimes on the same day.
PSYC 386: Research Experiments in Developmental Psychology, 1CU
Professor: Chris Massey
Basic Overview: In this research class, students split into small groups of two or three and carried out a research project that took the semester to complete. The research projects took place in neighboring West Philadelphia public schools, and were all on education. The point of the class was not only to find things out about how children learn, but to find things out about how to improve educational methods so that they will learn better. The three projects tackled this semester were the effectiveness of a robotics class (whether or not the knowledge learned could be transferred to similar problems); testing out multiplication table software, and whether different settings in the software changed learning; and how children classify biological concepts. The projects change each semester. A final paper and poster or PowerPoint presentation were the requirements for the class. We were also required to hand in all of our data sets, spreadsheets and stimuli.
Overall Rating: 3.7
This is one of the best classes I've ever taken. I really feel like our project was very thorough. Everyone did amazing research in this class. Not only did everyone collect a ton of data and come up with very interesting conclusions, we were even doing a little bit of community service! The teachers in the schools were excited about what we were finding, and actually seemed like they were going to use our findings in their teaching. Everyone loved working with the kids.
Chris was simply an amazing professor. The first smart thing she did was to limit the class size by interviewing everyone who wanted to take the class, thereby choosing the best students. It was uncanny how hard everyone was willing to work, and how smart everyone was. I had the best group I had ever had for an academic project. Chris also spent hours upon hours of her time keeping track of our projects and helping us with them. There is no way would we have completed as much as we did without the guidelines we had at the start of our projects, and her continuing help throughout.
Difficulty Rating: 3.3
Grading-wise, I believe everyone got an A. Then again, everyone in the class deserved one. No one was a slacker. This class is rated as "difficult" because of the amount of time spent on it. Our group collected about 65 hours of data, with at least two people collecting data at a time, meaning we all spent at least 40 hours of our time at the school collecting data. Along with the data collection came countless hours of analysis and spreadsheet work. The PowerPoint presentation and the paper wrote themselves after we had finished the project, but the paper was about 25 pages when we were done. This was just one of those great classes that forced you to work very hard and then rewarded you well in the end. You also ended up having learned a lot and having done a lot.
PSYC 311: Research Experiments in Perception, 1CU
Professor: Ben Backus
Basic Overview: For this research class, the entire class completed a project on stereo vision as a group. We did everything, including constructing the stimuli, getting approval, recruiting and running subjects, analyzing the data, and writing the paper. It ended up being a replication study. During lectures, class members would also present a paper from the relevant literature for about 20-40 minutes.
Overall Rating: 1.8
This class was a lot of fun, and we all learned a good amount about scientific research, but I feel like the class was not that well organized, and that no one ended up doing a whole lot of work for it. I guess it was in part because of the whole "diffusion of responsibility" rule, in that when the whole group was working on one project, the total amount of work done was less than if a few people had been working on the same project. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but I didn't feel like we were particularly efficient.
That being said, Ben Backus was an excellent professor. He was enthusiastic, fun, and really cared about our project and the class. He was also extremely knowledgeable and intelligent. Ben definitely knew his stuff, and was very good at communicating concepts and knowledge to us.
Difficulty Rating: 1.0
You had to participate in this class in order to get a good grade, but the work load was light. Also, none of the things we did were very difficult. There were no tests, for example, requiring memorization. Good attendance and participation were essentially all that was needed to succeed in the course.
PSYC 399: Empirical Psychological Research, 1CU
Professor: Saul Sternberg
Basic Overview: There are two different types of independent study courses in psychology. For psyc299, the student does a review of literature on a specific topic. For psyc399, the emphasis is an empirical research project, though a minor literature review is also required. If you are interested, you find a professor who agrees to work with you. He/She can either give you a project to do, or you can come up with your own that they'll supervise. In the end you hand in a paper.
For my project, I chose Sternberg because I had that amazing class with him last year, and he is interested in the same research as me. We did an experiment on timing perception together, that combined dual tasks. My final paper was about 11,000 words (25 pages 1.5 spaced), but paper length may vary greatly.
Overall Rating: 3.1
I really enjoyed doing this project, and I strong recommend it to anyone, especially people who are interested in research. Working with Sternberg was great because we like the same things and he is both brilliant and famous. He really pushes you to achieve your best, which I love.
Difficulty Rating: 3.1
Difficulty varies for independent studies. For this one, the work load was moderate. However, Sternberg still expected very high quality for a final product, as witnessed by his comments on my first draft. Most independent studies require a good amount of work, but the grading is easy compared to large lecture courses.
Fall 2001
MUSC 075: History of Jazz, 1CU
Professor: Guthrie Ramsey
Basic Overview: This music class that is designed for non-majors gave a survey of the history of jazz. It started from its African roots, moved onto its beginnings early in the 20th century, and progressed to what jazz is today. We studied early jazz, stride, swing, bebop, fusion, free jazz, and more. There were four tests each worth 25% of the grade. The format was generally about 40% listening and identifying pieces in the repetoire, 10% style identification from listening, and the remaining 50% was written questions on the reading or on other facts discussed in class. We read from two texts and there was a lot of in-class listening and watching of films--either documentaries or productions.
Overall Rating: 1.0
I was disappointed in this class. It gets great ratings in the course review, as does the professor in other classes he taught. However, I found a few problems with it. First, there were too many people in the class. There were about 80 people in this class, (it was oversubscribed) but if there had been about 20 people, the class would have been better. I also felt like the professor didn't put much effort into the class. We watched a lot of videos that replaced his lectures on the same material. The tests were almost entirely memorization-based, and usually didn't integrate concepts from class. There were repertoire lists of the music we'd cover on a particular test, but in order to know what they were you had to come to class and he'd tell you every few classes. This would have been fine and it's a great incentive to get people to come to class, but he rushed through them, sometimes telling us important information before the class was scheduled to start, and refused to repeat the information. Also, the professor was not very accessible. He didn't respond to e-mails, and people said they had a hard time reaching him in his office. The class was still interesting and fun. I had a great time learning about jazz. I just feel like it could have been so much better.
Difficulty Rating: 1.5
The course was relatively easy--all you had to do was keep up with the reading, go to class so that you could get the repertoire lists, and listen to the music on your own time to memorize what the songs were. Since most of the tests were on the listening parts, it was easy to do well because the songs were easy to remember. However, people who were not musically inclined had a harder time in the course identifying forms and styles in particular. Also, the grading of the non-listening parts was at times nit picking.
MUSC 170: Music and Musicianship III, 1.5CU
Professor: Christopher Hasty
Teaching Assistant: Lona Kozik
Basic Overview: This was the third music theory class in the sequence of four. The class covered mostly the style of the romantic period. We didn't really learn new music theory concepts, because after music 25 and music 71 (the first two) we had all of the tools we needed for this class. The course emphasized thorough analysis, and more complex, but free composition than music 71. There were no tests; only compositions and analysis papers. There was also a lab session that met for two hours each week. In the lab we worked on singing, identifying chord qualities, and identifying and producing intervals.
Overall Rating: 3.3
This was a great class. Hasty really knew his material, and was very good about getting the students to think about the music and get into the styles, both in composition and analysis. He made the material interesting and everyone learned a lot in the course, even though we weren't learning any specific new chord names or vocabulary. Hasty was good about getting us to really think. I didn't feel like I was expected to regurgitate what was said in class or something that I had read when I did my analyses. Instead, he encouraged us to make our own decisions and take risks in both analysis and composition. The class was also a lot of fun because it was small and intimate. Most of the students knew each other from music 71, but even if you weren't in that section (I took it a year earlier) you still became good friends with the other people in the class.
The lab wasn't as great as the rest of the course. We didn't do enough listening/singing practice. Instead, we did extra analysis in the lab as well, sometimes overlapping (too much) what was being done in the lecture. Also, the grading was sometimes unclear and harsh.
Difficulty Rating: 2.5
It wasn't too hard to get a good grade in this class. If you were taking it, you were good enough at music theory that you were able to get a B without too much effort. I expect the grade average in the class was a B+ or maybe even higher. However, it is an upper-level course, so your peers are all very good, so comparing to them is not necessarily useful. What made this course hard, though, was the amount of work. For most of the term I had the most work in this class. Granted, it is 1.5 credits, but sometimes the compositions would be reminiscient of spending hours on end on computer science, and we'd have assignments due in the lab and the lecture--sometimes even on the same day.
PSYC 121: Psychology of Learning, 1CU
Professor: Robert Rescorla
Teaching Assistant: Dan Gottlieb
Basic Overview: This course is on basic learning: Pavlovian Conditioning, Instrumental
Learning, and single-stimulus learning. Rescorla
explains the concepts by giving past experiments as examples. The purpose
of this is both as a mechanism to teach the concepts, and to get us
familiarized with experimental design. So, he really taught us the way
psychology (and other sciences) creates knowledge. The requirements for
the course were readings, a non-graded homework, two midterms worth 25% each, and a cumulative final worth 50% of the grade.
Overall Rating: 4.0
This class was superb--definitely the best lecture course I've ever taken. Rescorla was a good lecturer--he was clear and very organized. He went through concepts in a systematic outlined form, reviewing where we were and what we covered in the last class at the beginning of each class. Rescorla has been teaching this class for many years, and it shows that he knows exactly how to do it. However, he is also flexible, as some of the experiements he mentioned were recent (one was from 2000). Grading and evaluation was very clear from the start. He explained how much everything would be worth, that the class was generally curved, approximately how he determined grade cut-offs, and that the grades did not have pluses and minuses. He also gave out review questions so we'd know what to expect for essay questions on the tests. Perhaps the most impressive feat was that he and Dan graded each test by the next class--two days later--even though the tests were pure written work. The best aspect of this class was the method of how it was taught. Instead of most psychology courses, where we learn facts, rarely applying the concepts (if at all), this course required the knowledge of concepts above all else. More than half of our entire grade was based on problem solving essays in which we were asked to design experiments, or indicate the implications of the results of a particular experiment. The thinking ability learned in this class was better than any other psychology lecture course.
Difficulty Rating: 1.8
This course is notoriously difficult, but I didn't find it ridiculously challenging. What was hard about the course was that we were required to think in order to do well--simply memorizing would get you no farther than the identifications. However, what was easy about the course was that the only requirements were the tests. Since memorizing was relatively unimportant, the readings (which were interesting) weren't actually necessary. If you were "good at" the course, simply going to class every day would be enough to do well.
SOCI 118: Sociology of Bioethics, 1CU
Professor: Paul Wolpe
Teaching Assistant: Bari Metzler
Basic Overview: This class was in the sociology department, but was on the topic of bioethics. The approach was sociological, so when looking at a bioethical problem, we would analyze the sociological implications of it. The class met once a week for three hours, and was partly discussion based and partially lecture based. The size of the class (~40 people) made it difficult to have good discussions each time, but Wolpe arranged it such that this was hardly a problem, and people readily spoke up with their opinions in each class period. In addition to lecturing and discussion Wolpe led the class with multimedia nearly every period, either with slides or a movie. This helped us to get through the long three hours, and most of the materials he chose brought the subject matter to life. The course had two exams each worth 35% of the grade and a paper worth 30% of the grade.
Overall Rating: 3.0
What we learned in this class was phenomenal. The lectures were very valuable, and we learned enormous amounts of both information and thinking skills. What was not great about this class were the mechanics of it. The tests unfortunately emphasized memorized facts instead of sociological reasoning. Also, the TA was very unprepared to evaluate students in the class. When grading the papers she appeared to be evaluating us on a different assignment than what the professor had asked for, and most of the papers she graded were handed back to the professor for a regrade.
Overall, though, these problems were minor in comparison to the quality of what we learned in the class. I will now never think about bioethical issues the same way I used to, and I'll never forget some of the concepts we talked about in the course. Additionally, this course was very applicable to current world issues.
Difficulty Rating: 2.3
The concepts we learned in this course were not hard to grasp. It was not too difficult to understand what a sociological perspective to bioethics was and to write intelligently about it when tested. However, the course made itself harder by requiring a relatively detailed knowledge of the readings, and because the grading standards were difficult. In order to do well on the tests you must have also paid close attention during class and taken good notes, but not as many details from discussion were asked about on the tests.
STAT 111: Introductory Statistics, 1CU
Professor: Tony Cai
Teaching Assistant:
Basic Overview: This class taught non-calculus based statistics, covering the following topics: one-variable statistics (mean, median, quartiles, etc), two-variable statistics (correlation, regression lines, etc), normalization, probability, statistical significance, z-tests, t-tests, and confidence intervals. There were two midterm exams each worth 20% of the grade, a final worth 35% (55% if it is better than a midterm and replaces that midterm's grade), 6 homeworks worth 15% of the grade, and once a week in class activities worth 10% of the grade. There was a lecture twice a week for 1 hr and a recitation 1 hr a week.
Overall Rating: 1.3
This class wasn't bad, but it could have been better. Though I feel like I've learned a lot of useful statistics, (for research--this class is required of psychology and bbb majors) I felt like the class started out slow and the lectures were inefficient. We could have learned much more. People found the lectures boring, and many didn't attend them at all. There were complaints that the TAs did not speak English, and there were frequent grading errors on tests. However, probably the biggest problem was that making a good statistics class is a challenge since the material is inherently boring unless coupled with application.
Difficulty Rating: 1.6
This class was easy for a math-based course. The homeworks and in class projects were designed to help out your grade. Though it was easy to make a lot of careless errors on a particular test, the problems themselves were relatively easy, especially after gaining practice from the homeworks and projects. However, just like any large lecture course, you were pitted against your peers and the average was not set very high.
Summer 2001
Summer Undergraduate Workshop in Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience, no credit
Directors: Sharon Thompson-Schill and Martha Palmer
See website for participating faculty
Basic Overview: This was the fourth annual summer undergraduate workshop in cognitive science at Penn. It lasted for three weeks in June. All expenses were covered, including meals, residence, and some travel. Participants came from different parts the US, Canada, and from a few other countries. There were three Penn students and 31 participants total. Most of them were entering their junior or senior year of college, but a handful had recently graduated. All students were considering graduate school in some field of cognitive science, and most were heading towards a career in research.
The typical day was to have breakfast at IRCS from 9-9:30, then have one or two lectures from 9:30-12:30. Lunch was provided for us in the dining hall. Faculty members ate with us, which was our chance to discuss with them if we wanted to. Afternoons were from 2:00-5:00. Again, we'd listen to lectures, or we'd head off to a lab. Dinner was also provided for us in the dining hall. Look at the schedule of the program to see more.
The program covered as many different areas of cognitive science as possible, with major emphasis on neuroscience (since it was an IRCS/CCN--Center for Cognitive Neuroscience combined effort) and linguistics. What were not covered in as much detail were computer science and philosophy, but both were represented.
Overall Rating: 2.8
This was a really cool program. Through three weeks of lectures, I learned a ton. Some of the awesome parts of the program included the great professors, the amount and quality of material covered, fun fellow participants, and the extremely helpful graduate student panel. There were only a few things that weren't perfect. Some of the lectures were a little boring, which is expected because there were so many of them. Even though everyone got along well, social interaction was not maximized because we were put up on four different floors in the high rises, which are not the best places to interact socially. Pretty much everything else was awesome.
Difficulty Rating: N/A
Because of the wide range of backgrounds of participants, there was no correct "level" of difficulty appropriate for a lecture. However, since most of the lectures had to do with specific research rather than teaching us concepts or skills, they were often at just the right level. Only a couple of the lectures were either too basic or too difficult for most people.
Participants in the program were encouraged to read the bulkpack, which was two volumes and huge. However, since there was no grading or evaluation, this didn't make the program any more difficult. All of the lectures were understandable without the reading.
Spring 2001
COGS357/PSYC357/BIBB457: Research Experiments in Cognitive Science, 1CU
Instructor: Saul Sternberg
Basic Overview: This is an upper-level research seminar. Our class had 7 students who were mostly seniors. In this class, we read scientific papers in cognitive psychology on perception, action, reaction time and decision-making experiments. Every other week we performed one of these labs using ourselves as subjects, and then wrote a lab report on it. There were a total of six labs (75%) and a final (25%). To take the course, students were required to have completed one of the following psychology courses: 151, 121, 111, 192 and a course in statistics, math, or physics.
Overall Rating: 4.0
This is the best class I've ever taken. Sternberg put unbelievable amounts of time into the class. He spent a lot of time analyzing the data after each lab, and coming up with new things to show us depending on the results of the lab. When he graded our papers, he wrote tons of comments on each one--including comments that directed us to more information on a particular topic. Reading our reports often inspired him to look into deeper detail about one aspect of a lab. He was a true intellectual and dedicated professor!
Sternberg is also extremely knowledgeable and smart. He set a very good example of how to perform scientific research--attending to detail, eliminating biases, and being as thorough and skeptical as possible. This is an incredible class to take for anyone considering psychological or even other types of research, but unfortunately it is now longer being offered.
Difficulty Rating: 4.0
This was also the hardest class I've ever taken. First, the workload was huge. For every other class meeting we had about 30 pages of dense scientific papers to read, and were required to write a short paragraph asking questions from the reading. The amount of reading was not particularly sizeable, but you could not get away without doing it, because you needed the information to write the lab reports. The biggest amount of work were the bi-weekly lab reports. Every other week we were required to write 2,500 word reports, also including whatever graphs we may have made to support our arguments. It was not particularly difficult to write 2,500 words...what was difficult was writing 2,500 good words, because Sternberg was not particularly lenient in his grading style! (2,500 was actually a set maximum.) This was good, though, because it pushed us to be as creative as possible and to work harder. Everyone in the class showed improvement throughout the semester. (The average grade on a report when from about a C/C+ in the beginning to about a B+ at the end, however, the average final exam grade was a C+.)
CSE121/131: Programming Languages and Techniques II, 1.5CU
Instructors: Val Tannen and Sampath Kannan
Text: Same as CSE120, plus Data Structures and Algorithms
Basic Overview: This is the second part of a year-long introduction to computer science for those who plan on majoring in it. Non-majors usually don't take the class, although some engineers use it as an elective. It was also a core class in the cognitive science major, but the requirements have since changed. The lecture meets three times a week for an hour each time, and there are also 2 hours a week of lab that usually serve more as a recitation or help session than anything else. Weekly homeworks are worth 30% of the grade, 2 midterms are worth 17.5% each, and the final exam is worth 35%.
Overall Rating: 1.6
This class was an improvement upon CSE120, and I'm not just saying that because I've gotten better at computer science. Both professors were good--they were knowledgeable, and lectured well. However, the TA's were still sub-par, and the labs were useless.
Most of my complaints about this class are actually very similar to those complaints I had in CSE120, and it is these flaws that keep this rating as low as it is. The graders did not grade homeworks quickly. Additionally, the grading was often inaccurate! I felt like I was getting something re-graded about 40% of the time something was handed back to me. What were also off were the grading guidelines. For the second test, an accepted answer for a question that required a proof was, "we proved something similar in class, therefore...." This type of answer should never be accepted.
All of that being said, there were some aspects of this course that truly pleased me. As a cognitive science major, I finally found parts of computer science, often the data structures, which actually related to the rest of cognitive science. It wasn't until I took this course (alongside psych151) That I realized the true importance of computer science to what I'm learning. Also, this class seemed to be more useful to computer science majors than CSE120 was. We learned more of the underlying themes and ideas of computer science, as opposed to learning computer programming languages for the sake of knowing a language. What we learned in this class is probably easily generalizable to many different computer languages.
Difficulty Rating: 3.5
Strangely enough, I actually found this course a bit easier than CSE120, though I know I'm not normal for thinking that. What made this course harder was that it didn't have two weeks of easy stuff to get you started, (which happens in CSE120) although there was some review of CSE120 and Java in the beginning of this course. There were weekly homeworks that were usually very time consuming. The averages on the tests were usually about a C or a C+, and were not curved. However, each homework offered about 20-50 points of extra credit out of a 100-point homework, so it was still relatively easy to redeem your grade if you could make it to the end of the homework assignments.
LING110: Introduction to Language Change, 1CU
Instructor: Don Ringe
Basic Overview:
This class started out by going over some of the basic ideas surrounding language change, including what methods are used to determine how languages change. Immediately following that, we learned the basics of phonetics. The rest of the semester we spent working on problems of sound change, working our way up to comparative reconstruction, which was the process of reconstructing the sounds of a parent language given word data from two or more languages that descended from it. We also discussed morphological change a bit. This class had homeworks about once a week except in the beginning and end of the semester. There was a midterm and a final, each worth roughly 50%, minus however much the homeworks were worth. (It was ambiguous, but they were probably worth 10% of the grade)
Though this class fulfilled the history and tradition general requirement, it was not historical--we weren't required to learn anything about the history of languages. Rather, our work was much more scientific because we were working with actual language data.
Overall Rating: 2.3
This class was a pretty fun class. Ringe was a good professor. He was very animated and excited about what he was teaching, and extremely knowledgeable as well. It was very interesting to do very similar work to what actual linguists do when faced with the reconstruction of a proto-language. Ringe was very good at explaining these processes.
At times, the class was a bit boring, though, especially towards the end of the semester when we'd go over reconstruction problem after reconstruction problem.
Difficulty Rating: 1.1
It's a bit hard to give a definitive difficulty rating for this class, because I got the impression that you either got it or you didn't...so some people found the work very easy, while others found it challenging. For everyone, though, the class did not require much work. The homeworks were not very frequent, nor were they particularly time-consuming. Also, since the majority of the grade lay in the tests, a student could get away with missing homeworks or poorly done homeworks. There was almost no reading for the class.
The exams were designed to be easier than the homeworks, in part because you didn't have as much time to work on them, but also so that the homeworks would prepare you well for the exams.
PSYC151: Cognitive Psychology, 1CU
Instructors: John Trueswell
Text: Cognitive Psychology and its Implications, Anderson
Basic Overview:
This class taught the basic ideas behind cognitive psychology, including perception, attention, learning, memory, problem-solving and language, and spent a bit of time relating cognitive psychology to cognitive science. The format was lecture-style and there were no recitations. There were three midterms that were each worth 33% of the grade. There were no homeworks, but there was an optional extra credit paper worth up to three points of your final grade.
Overall Rating: 2.7
loved the way Trueswell brought cognitive science topics in to the course. It was literally this course that made me excited about my major again, and allowed me to appreciate the importance of computer science to cognitive science. As much as COGS001 was terrible, this class was excellent.
Now a lot of the reasons I liked the class were personal ones, even though the class was very good in general. There weren't any major problems with the course, but since it was a lecture, the classes themselves might have been a bit boring to some of the people in the class. (Especially people who don't love cognitive science as much as I do.) Though the tests were well-written and thought-provoking, it might have been better if we had written work in addition. (Not just the extra credit paper.) This would help the class stray from the memorize and regurgitate model that lecture courses often follow.
Difficulty Rating: 2.0
This class was a bit hard to rate for difficulty. On the one hand, we didn't have much work for the course. All there was was reading, and there wasn't that much of it. If you were good about going to all of the classes, you probably didn't even need to read that carefully. On the other hand, the average grade in the class was a B-, so obviously it isn't easy to do well, because you have to score above your classmates on tests. However, the extra credit, if you chose to do it, had the potential to help your grade a lot.
Fall 2000
BIBB109: Introduction to Brain and Behavior, 1CU
Instructors: Lori Flanagan-Cato and Steve Fluharty
Text: Neuroscience
Basic Overview: This class is an introduction to the brain and the nervous system. The first part of the semester introduces in detail the neuron and neural mechanisms. The second part of the semester goes over all of the sensory and motor systems. Finally, the last part of the semester deals with behaviors, motivation, and learning. As a prerequisite this class requires either psyc001 or biol101. The grade was based on four lab quizzes (10%), and three midterms (30% each). There was no cumulative final exam.
Overall Rating: 2.7
This was a good class. Both professors were good lecturers and very clear. Fluharty was especially engaging, as he cracked jokes, told anecdotes, and related lectures to the news or to his own life. I feel like I definitely learned and retained a lot from this class.
I only have a few complaints about the class, one of which is my personal bias. First, like the other pre-med realm class that I took, the atmosphere of this class was pretty competitive, but this was never a big problem. Mainly, I was a bit disappointed with what was covered and what wasn't covered in the course, particularly near the end. As a cognitive science major I was hoping to see more learning and some language coverage. I felt as though we spent way too much time on thirst and hunger. This is just my personal bias, though, and it really doesn't matter to anyone else who's not a cognitive science major. In fact, since I originally wrote this, the cognitive science requirements have been changed, so that a more appropriate course, "Cognitive Neuroscience" also fulfills this requirement.
Overall the class was actually very good. One thing I loved was how well designed the tests were. Instead of just being required to memorize facts and spit them out with true/false, multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank questions, we were required to apply our knowledge to problems with multiple parts and aspects we hadn't seen before. I liked this because it distinguished between the people who memorized and the people who actually learned. But, no matter how smart you were, you couldn't get by without studying.
Difficulty Rating: 3.0
I actually found this class harder than biol101, because it required almost as much work but was only 1 cu. The hardest part of the class was the curve. Unlike some huge lecture intro classes, you can't just expect a handful of people to do badly on each test and pull the average down. In this class, everyone worked hard enough to do pretty well. The subject material itself wasn't too challenging, but sometimes the tests covered a lot of material.
CSE120/130: Programming Languages and Techniques, 1.5CU
Instructor: Lyle Ungar
Text: Java
Basic Overview: This is the introductory class in computer science for those who plan on majoring in it. Non-majors rarely take the class. It is also a core class in the cognitive science major. The lecture meets three times a week for an hour each time, and there are also 2 hours a week of lab that usually serve more as a recitation or help session than anything else. Weekly homeworks are worth 25% of the grade, 2 midterms are worth 20% each, and the final exam is worth 35%.
Overall Rating: 0.7
For a while when I was contemplating these course ratings, I was going to give this class a good rating. Our professor was particularly amazing. He enthusiastically went over the lecture notes for the class, and constantly asked students for feedback on how he was teaching, asking questions like, "would you like to do another example of this?" or "is it easier for me to use the chalkboard or the overhead?"
The class started out well. The first two midterms were well-written: they were based on what we did in class, in lab, and on the homeworks, and they required us to think and apply our knowledge. Around the time of the second midterm the class started to deteriorate. Nearly every handout and homework assignment had to be taken back after it was handed out so that they could edit its many typos. After homework #5 (which was half-way through the course), we didn't get another homework handed back until the last week of class. Our TA stopped showing up to labs. The most upsetting thing was the final. It was worth 35% of our grade, but was not cumulative. Moreover, its non-cumulative nature was decided about a week after they had handed us out a review sheet that would have served us for a cumulative exam. On the test itself, you weren't required to problem-solve very much. Instead, there were many true/false and yes/no questions.
Difficulty Rating: 3.7
This was a hard class, especially for a College student like me! What made this class hard was that most of the people in it had programming experience, either from a class like cse110 or from something they did before coming to Penn. Apparently there are no placement exams for this class, so all cse majors, regardless of previous experience, have to take this class and cse121. Since we were being compared to our peers, this made the class hard for the rest of us. The class also required a lot of work. Most of us would spend many hours (10 or more sometimes) on the homeworks each week.
GENH210: Faculty/Student Collaborative Learning, 1CU
Instructors: Ira Harkavy and Lee Benson
Basic Overview:
This was a non-traditional course. Both professors wanted the student and teacher to be at an equal level, each learning from the other. In this particular class, each student chooses a "real world problem," often having to do with education and/or Penn, and uses the semester or the whole year to study and help fix the problem. Some students chose to work on diversity issues at Penn, while others worked on educational issues ranging from the Pilot Curriculum to electronic/distance learning. The final project was a research paper that could be completed individually or in groups.
Overall Rating: 1.9
It is nearly impossible to assign a rating for this course, because it is largely up to the student. What you put in is what you get out. The positives of the course are easy to see. Harkavy and Benson are great professors and excellent resources for most students' research projects. This class opens up to every student a new way of thinking that is truly transforming. It makes apathetic students start to care, and everyone emerges from the class as a more liberal and independent thinker. In addition to having a nice, small discussion with two professors each week, Harkavy and Benson often brought in guest speakers from the community (Penn and West Philadelphia) to talk with us. These speakers were often extremely influential people, like the Dean of the College and leading officials in Philadelphia. If you put a good amount of work and passion into the class, you will come out with a product you are proud of, and this will be the best class you've taken so far. You will also be a much better student who is capable of performing independent research.
There were also negatives to this class. Despite the fact that you can come out of this class loving it, what you put in is what you get out. Sadly, it was hard for each student in that class to be motivated enough to rise to their potential. The reason for this is probably mainly because of grades. There was never grading pressure in this class, so people usually put it on the back burner while they focused on their classes that had more immediate deadlines. More encouragement from the professors would have helped, so that students would get into their projects sooner. (Sometimes people did get very interested and wrapped up in their projects, but often this happened late in the semester, so that time was already wasted.)
Difficulty Rating: 1.3
Again, it is hard to give an accurate difficulty rating for this class, because students may put such varying amounts of time into the course. The grading in the course is not difficult by any standard, but if you really want to produce good, thorough work, you will have to put a lot of time into the class. The good thing is that these projects are so different from regular research projects that often you might find yourself doing what used to be an activity (like a community service project), and using the work you're doing for that as something to incorporate in your paper for this class.
MUSC021: Music History, 1CU
Instructor: Emma Dillon
Text: Listen (comes with 6CDs)
Basic Overview: This class fulfilled Gen Req III Arts and Letters. It was a general introduction to the history of all western music starting with the middle ages and continuing all the way to the present. There were no homework assignments. The grade was based on two midterms each worth 25% and a final worth 50%.
Overall Rating: 2.6
This was an awesome class, but I'd be careful about whom I'd recommend it to.
Emma Dillon was an excellent instructor. She was extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable. She had a sparkling personality and was friendly to all of the students, always chatting with us before class started. She also organized the class well, putting a lot of effort into it. She presented us with a syllabus from the start that she stuck to, and nearly every class period we'd have a handout to supplement our textbooks, as well as occasional listening examples that weren't covered in the book.
The class was great for someone who wants to learn about classical music, but who has little musical experience. It is a complete survey of all "important" classical music, and introduces the student to the significance of each time period (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc).
This class was not that great for someone who has a lot of musical experience. The class covered fundamentals of music, and repeated knowledge that most musicians already know. If you're a "music person", I'd recommend taking one of the more advanced courses.
Difficulty Rating: 0.7
This class was easy on two levels, but this may have depended greatly on the professor. First of all, there wasn't much work. If you did all of the readings and listening, it would be a fair amount of work, but as long as you showed up to class each day, the reading and listening were not necessary, because we'd go over everything important there. Secondly, the class was graded easily. Dillon curved all of the tests so that the majority of the class would get As or high Bs. If you are experienced in music, the class is almost painfully easy. For someone with no musical experience, the class can be a little harder, but was not challenging.
RELS006: Understanding the Cult Controversy, 1CU
Instructor: Steve Dunning
Text: Bulkpack, Why Waco, Cults, Salvation and Suicide, Snapping, Dianetics, Endless Love
Basic Overview: This class fulfilled Gen Req I Society. It is a class designed to try to better understand the issues surrounding cults. We studied several major cults and the anti-cult movement, discussed the difficulty of defining a cult, and then looked at several different ways of studying cults, including a psychological approach, a sociological approach, a phenomenological approach, and others. The grade break-down was as follows: 30% for three quizzes (10% each), 40% for the final, and the remaining 30% could be completed in three different ways. The first option was to attend weekly recitations and write weekly one-page papers. The second option was to write a 10-page term paper (equal in length to all of the weekly papers combined). The third option was like the second one, but with a WATU (Writing Across The University) option added.
Overall Rating: 3.5
Surprisingly, this class was incredible. I challenge you to find a better sector I general requirement course! Dunning has taught this class for years, and he clearly knows how to do it well. Cults aren't a topic that interest everyone, but this is a class anyone could take, because we don't just learn about cults. In this class, we investigate different ways of looking at a topic and we learn not to judge until we've considered as many sides of and approaches to an argument as possible.
The course was extremely well organized and thought out. We had exquisite materials to work with: superb readings as well as frequent videos and guest lecturers from the cults themselves!
Dunning was fabulous. He clearly explained each topic we studied, and asked us provocative questions. He never let us know which side he was taking, if any. Therefore, he was never forcing his opinions on us or trying to get us to think one way or another. In fact, Dunning was very good at forcing us to think for ourselves, by not letting students who had simply memorized facts get away with decent grades on the tests and on the final. He was responsive to students and allowed discussion during lecture, but still mediated the talking when he had to continue with lecture. He was also extremely knowledgeable.
Difficulty Rating: 2.9
I wouldn't call this class hard, but it did require a fair amount of work in order to do well. There was a sizeable amount of reading each week, and the reading was covered on the three tests, so it was not optional. The good thing about the class is that you would easily fall into a rhythm of doing all of the required work, so in the end you learn much more than you would have in most 006-level classes. (Or most classes in general, for that matter!)
Spring 2000
CLST009: Writing About Persuasion and Power, 1CU
Instructor: Kristin Holland
Text: Bulkpack
Basic Overview: This class fulfilled the University's writing requirement. It was limited to about 18 students. This writing class taught us the basics of rhetoric and argument. We read famous classical and modern speeches or written persuasive work and performed our own speeches. The class met three times a week for an hour. We had weekly 2-3 page logs and two 5-8 page papers. While we were working on the papers, we reviewed our peers and wrote multiple revisions. Kristin maintained a webpage for the class that had a constantly updated syllabus, explanations of assignments, and links to readings on the web.
Overall Rating: 2.5
As far as writing courses go, this was definitely one of the better ones, if not the best. Kristin always knew of ways to improve our writing and was very knowledgeable. She was also very organized: on the first day of the semester we knew what was to be expected of us for the rest of the semester. Her comments on papers were fabulous. They were thorough and very accurate. Sometimes the readings were boring, but I have few complaints. I liked the breakdown of our work. Some writing classes have more frequent and shorter logs, but there is little you can write in a paragraph. I loved the multiple revisions on the major papers that required us to critically evaluate and re-evaluate our own work. The peer review was also very helpful to both the reviewed and the reviewer. Sometimes we had a special in-class activity or a video of a speech that we'd discuss afterwards. These things broke up the monotony and were particularly interesting. Best of all, we learned a lot in this class and everyone's writing improved.
Difficulty Rating: 1.9
It is hard to give a difficulty rating for this class, because it had two distinct aspects. Throughout the semester, we were assigned large amounts of work and spent a lot of time on our assignments. However, if you did all of the work and had good effort in the class, you'd be very likely to leave with an A. So the class itself was hard, but the grading at the end of the course was very easy.
COGS001/CSE140/PHIL044/PSYC107/LING105: Introduction to Cognitive Science, 1CU
Professors: Robin Clark and Aravind Joshi
Teaching Assistants: Laura Deddens, Nae-Rae Han, Katherine Forbes, and Xiaoyi Ma.
Text: Bulkpack
Basic Overview: Cross-listed in the four related disciplines, this is the only real "cognitive science" course at Penn. All other courses listed in the cogs department have a home the in only one or two other departments. This course is required of all cognitive science majors and minors and it serves as an introduction to the cognitive science discipline. The class met twice a week for an hour and a half. There were about 200 students in the class, and no recitations. The grade was determined by 35% for a midterm and a final each, and 30% for three homeworks. (10% each) The final was not cumulative.
Overall Rating: 0.3
Let me preface this rating by saying that this class is in its evolutionary stages and everyone is trying hard to improve it. A friend of mine and I wrote a letter to the professors about our disappointment in the class, and one of them responded to us. He had clearly read the letter carefully and was thoughtful with his response. In fact, as this course has been offered again more recently, students have had increasingly positive responses to it.
All of that being said, the class itself had major flaws. The positives of this class were the effort of the TAs and professors and the fact that the class had a listserve and a webpage. The webpage was helpful because the lecture notes always went up, even sometimes those from guest lecturers. The listserve allowed students to ask questions that other students could answer or that the TAs could answer. Important information was also posted here. Clark's lectures were particularly engaging, and the guest lectures often had very interesting things to say.
The reason these good things only deserve a 0.3 rating is because of how flawed the rest of the course was. As mentioned above, the class is cross-disciplined. However, at least 80% of the class was on the computational part of cognitive science. The philosophy part of the class was only logic and never even touched on philosophy of the mind. Psychology coverage was also extremely minimal. Moreover, the disciplines didn't connect in a meaningful way. I didn't even get a good grasp of what cognitive science is from this class! Trying to appeal to everyone, the class was both too advanced and too basic at the same time. It moved very quickly over many subjects, but if you had taken certain linguistics, logic, or computer science courses, the course would be an exact repeat of what you already learned. The tests were nearly all multiple choice, and tested memorized definitions rather than reasoning and understanding of concepts. Since there were no recitations, it was difficult to learn the material and integrate the disciplines. Also, when a guest lecturer spoke, there was no way to incorporate their lecture into what we were studying at the time.
Difficulty Rating: 2.2
This is a very hard class to rate for difficulty. Doing well didn't actually require real understanding, nor much effort, since most people didn't do the readings. So much depended on the multiple choice tests: individual questions were each worth more than a percentage point of your final grade. Hard work didn't guarantee good test scores, though, so it was still pretty hard to do very well in this class. The mean grade for the class was set around a B- or C+.
MUSC071: Theory and Musicianship II (Intermediate theory), 1.5CU
Instructor: Lex Rozin
Teaching Assistant: Jee-won Cha
Texts: Elementary Harmony, bulkpack, and Mozart Sonatas
Basic Overview: This class is the second semester of the music theory sequence. The class starts out with four-part writing in the baroque choral style, with a focus on Bach. In the second half of the semester we learn about the classical style, with a particular focus on Mozart and piano compositions. The activities in the class include both composing our own versions of the style we are studying, and analyzing works for harmony and form. The class meets twice a week for an hour and a half, and has a lab that meets twice a week for an hour. The lab teaches ear training and musicianship skills.
Overall Rating: 2.9
This was a really fun class. The setting was intimate because there were fewer than 20 students. Discussions were common and we all got to know each other well. No one in the class wasn't interested in music theory, but for some it wasn't their main strength. Even these people had a great time in the class. I had only real complaint about the class: the lack of a syllabus. It would have been helpful to know assignments a bit in advance since some of them were time consuming.
As for the lab, we always used the whole class period efficiently, practicing sight singing and both melodic and harmonic dictation. All of us improved greatly at our aural skills. I had a few complaints about our method of learning in the lab, though. Solfeg (do, re, mi, etc) was something that was given huge emphasis in this class. I personally found it unnecessary. If someone can sight-sing but doesn't know what word to assign to each note, then that person should not be penalized. I understood the reasoning behind it, but I believed that the goals it sought to achieve could easily be achieved in other ways. It helped a lot of people in the class, though. The other thing I was not keen on were the auditions (sight singing tests). Each test had material that we had already seen before. This way someone who was a bad sight-singer but memorized the whole unit could do well. Though it would have been very challenging, I believe the best testing method would have been to test new material.
Difficulty Rating: 1.7
Although I feel like I learned a lot in this class, I believe it was not only graded easily, but also had not much work for a 1.5CU class. We had two extra hours of class time, but amount of homework was average for a 1CU class, if not less. Some people did not do well in this class despite putting in a lot of effort, but I think the average was still set pretty high (probably a B+), so most people did well.
PHIL244: Philosophy of the Mind
Professor: Richard Samuels
Teaching Assistant: Rory Goggins
Texts: Problems in Mind, Crumley; and additional xeroxes
Basic Overview: This class taught us many current theories of mind, starting with Dualism (Descartes) and moving forward in time to Behaviorism, Mind-Brain Identity, Functionalism, and The Language of Thought Theory. We ended with a segment on Animal Minds, and we also talked about the Problem of Other Minds throughout the course. The course also covered the relationship between philosophy and cognitive science, and is part of the core for the cognitive science major. The class met twice a week for lecture and once a week for a discussion-style recitation. There was a website with lecture notes online. There were two papers worth 25% each, a midterm worth 20% and a final worth 30%.
Overall Rating: 3.2
This was a good class! The topics were particularly interesting and the structure of the class was good. The lectures were well taught, and the recitation was an excellent forum for discussion. I only had a few very minor complaints. First of all, our grade was based solely on two papers, a midterm and a final. This is actually pretty routine for many classes, but our papers were each only about 5 pages in length, and our midterm and final were both pretty short. Also, our work was not spread out well over the semester. We ended up having work piled on at the end of the semester, with a paper due well into reading period. Overall these problems were pretty small, though, and were easily outweighed by the positives of the class. Samuels was terrific at clearly explaining the least comprehensible philosophers and was very good at answering questions. Our TA Rory was also an excellent mediator in recitation: no matter what question or half-formed thought a student threw at him with convoluted language or logic, he would rephrase it flawlessly for the whole class to understand. He was good about encouraging us to talk in recitation. His comments on my papers were fantastic.
Difficulty Rating: 1.4
This is another one of those courses that doesn't involve that much work, but that the work you have isn't graded very easily. As mentioned above, there were only four things that determined your grade, with a very small class participation factor. These four things didn't require too much time, but it was imperative to keep up with the topics covered in class if you wanted to do well. The readings were always pretty hard to follow, but the lectures were very informative, and the lecture notes outlined the main ideas. Recitations were also very useful in explaining the more difficult concepts. If you had good attendance, you would probably do well in the class because you'd pick up all you need to know from the lectures and the recitations. Also, to the best of my knowledge there was no curve, so even if your peers were particularly strong, you were not penalized.
FALL 1999
BIOL101: Introduction to Biology, 1.5CU
Professors: Scott Poethig and Nancy Bonini
Teaching Assistant: R. Scott Winters
Texts: Biology, 6th edition, by Neil Campbell.
Basic Overview: Yhis class is an introduction to biology that is more in depth than a high school AP class, but doesn't cover as much material. The class focuses on cell and plant biology, as well as genetics. It does not cover animal biology and evolution. The class has lectures three times a week for an hour each, and a three hour lab once a week with fifteen or fewer students. The class was on a 450 point scale. 150 points were from the lab, and 100 points were for each of three tests and a final, but the lowest test score was dropped. The final grade was curved with the average set at a B-/C+.
Overall Rating: 0.8
I didn't really like this class, but it was ok. I find biology interesting, but the way that course was designed and taught, the material was not much fun to learn.
Most of the people in this class were freshmen, and nearly all of them were pre-med, which contributed to an unpleasant and competitive atmosphere. Though friends usually studied together and helped each other out, the general attitude was to hope that others did poorly so that the curve would be better in your favor. There was one girl in my lab section who was so hell-bent on getting a good grade in the class that she contested my TA for every point taken off on her quizzes, even those that were blatantly wrong. Not everyone in the class was like this, but there were more of them than in the average class in the College.
The labs in this class did not teach actual laboratory skills. We were sometimes told by our TAs to make up data at the end, or that preciseness didn't really matter. Moreover, we only wrote one full lab report the entire semester. For every other lab we either had no report (and hence no incentive to carefully record data) or we wrote up only one section of a lab, like an introduction, a data section, an analysis, etc. This practice was to teach us how to write a lab report. It definitely helped, but I never got the feeling that we were doing real research.
Despite all of this, the lab also had its positives. Rather than a lesson in laboratory skills, I considered lab a supplement to lecture in which certain concepts were taught in more depth and reinforced. Without what I learned in lab, I would have done significantly worse on my tests.
The testing had a good format but was not as good in practice for a number of reasons. The idea of having three tests and a final, where the lowest test is dropped and the grades are curved is a good, fair one. However, sometimes grades didn't reflect understanding. First of all, some of the tests didn't test the right skills. One in particular tested only memorized facts, and 90% of the test was on only 3% of the reading and lecture. The other problem was the TAs. Since none of them had taken bio101 recently, the TAs sometimes didn't understand a free response question well enough to grade it properly. If someone didn't have the exact correct response the TAs sometimes had little idea of how far off the student might be.
Difficulty Rating: 2.8
Since backgrounds in biology vary greatly (from taking AP bio and getting a 4 on the test to never having taken bio before), I tried to rate what the average student would give this course, according to how hard my friends and I thought the course was. The competition was tough and there was a lot to learn for each test. However, there wasn't much work in addition to the tests, and the amount of work was very reasonable given that the class was 1.5CU's. Because of the strict curve, it wasn't easy to gain an A.
LING001: Introduction to Linguistics, 1 CU
Professor: Paul Liberman
Teaching Assistant: Atissa Banuazizi
Texts: I don't remember.
Basic Overview: This class taught the basics of linguistics, including the specifics of the ways to break up language: phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics as well as the different fields of language study: historical, psychological, sociological, theoretical, applied, and computational. Essentially, the class taught what linguistics is. There were hour long lectures twice a week and one-hour recitations once a week. There were about 9 homeworks that counted towards 40% of our grade, a midterm that was 20%, and a final that was 30%. Class participation made up for the remaining 10% of the grade. The class had an amazing webpage with extensive lecture notes and other useful information.
Overall Rating: 1.7
This class was a great introduction to linguistics that got me very interested in the subject. I think the way we were taught was particularly efficient. Both texts were interesting, and the lecture notes were phenomenal, especially since they were all online. From the lecture notes there were links to further readings and online sources that related to the topic at hand. The recitations with Atissa were amazing. She was excellent at explaining the most important parts of lecture and we had great discussions in class. She had our midterms graded the day after we took them.
The negative points for this course are for only two reasons. The lectures were at times dull: our lecture hall was huge and there was no microphone, so it sounded like our professor was mumbling. Also, not very many students in the class were that enthusiastic about it because it fulfilled the general requirement sector V and that's the only reason they were there. However, I still give the class high marks.
Difficulty Rating: 0.4
This class was very easy, but was not a joke class because we still learned a lot. Anyone who did maybe 30 minutes to an hour of work a week would probably get some form of an A. As long as you turned in all of the homeworks and studied a little for the tests you did very well. There were also several opportunities for extra credit work to help your grade and for you to learn more.
PSYC050: Freshman Seminar in Human Nature, 1CU
Professor: J. Aronfreed
Text: Bulkpack
Basic Overview: Human Nature was a freshman seminar with a unique character. On the first day of class our professor told us that we were aliens from another planet sent down to research the species "homo sapiens". We were to read their writings and extrapolate scientifically and objectively from the behavior of the humans in these stories what types of beings these people were in a 5-6 page report we'd write every other week. Essentially, we were mock ethologists. Our reading was in a carefully crafted bulkpack, half of which was completely classical works like Dante's Inferno, the Illiad, and the Bible, while the other half was full of some of the most prominent scientific papers since the 1800's in biology and psychology, to show what the human view of human nature was. The class met once a week for 3 hours (which usually ended up being only 2.5 hours) and we had a paper every other week for a total of six, with extensive readings due each week. There were no exams.
Overall Rating: 3.4
This class forced psychologists like me to read classical literature and found a way to make it interesting. Even those who weren't interested in psychology loved the long, intimate class discussions in which we brought up random topics. Moreover, knowledge from all sorts of disciplines contributed to the discussions: biology, psychology, linguistics, literature, history, anthropology, and more. I loved the small atmosphere of the class, and that our professor encouraged everyone to speak up. I feel like we were truly challenged in this class in a way that was fun.
Difficulty Rating: 2.1
It is hard to give a difficulty rating for this class. The level of difficulty was actually ideal: there was a lot of work and thinking involved (even on the weeks we had 5-7 page papers due there was hundreds of pages of reading), which made the class itself harder than average, but the curve was set high (an average of about B+) so once we had all worked hard and learned a lot, we all got good grades.
PHYS021: The Physics of Music, 1CU
Professor: Paul Heiney
Texts: The Science of Sound, by Thomas D. Rossing; and Measured Tones, by Ian Johnston.
Basic Overview: This class taught all of the physics behind music. It started out by laying out some basic physical concepts, and then went into the physics specific to sound, particularly waves. Part of the semester was dedicated to the physics of brass, wind, string and percussion instruments and specific members of each family. The semester ended with the physics of electronic music, including microphones and speakers. The class was a small lecture (only about 30 people) that met twice a week for 1.5 hours. There were two midterms, one final, and a final project, as well as weekly homeworks and quizzes. There was a useful website that had homeworks, solutions to past homeworks, solutions to past quizzes, assigned readings for the week, and links to other physics of music sites.
Overall Rating: 2.2
It is hard to rate this class because I constantly had mixed feelings about it. The material itself was interesting and well taught, but certain things about the class got on people's nerves. I personally enjoyed the class, but I was interested in music and in physics. Almost no one else in the class was as interested in physics (they were taking it to fulfill sector IV) and not all of them were even interested in music, so this rating is hopefully more indicative of everyone else's opinion. (I personally loved the class!) Probably the most frustrating thing about the class was what was expected of us. A class called "the physics of music," limited to those without physics 150 credit, should be easier than an average physics class, because it is pitched towards people who are not interested in physics but are trying to learn a little about a subject that isn't their forte. Unfortunately, this class was hard and was very physics-heavy, overwhelming students in the class. Many people dropped the class towards the beginning of the semester. One thing that was also particularly difficult was working on a final project and preparing for a final exam at once. We were given a month to work on the project, but only one week out of the month didn't have a homework assignment. Though the class was difficult, it gave us the chance to learn more than the average "physics of music" class would teach, and we were all challenged. Moreover, at the end of the semester, our professor was thoughtful and speedy about grading us. He sent us each an individual e-mail telling us our grades and writing an explanation of them, and this was all done well before the exam period was over.
Difficulty Rating: 2.7
Though the students in the class were very bright, none of them were physics majors. Even considering my interest and strong high school background in physics, it was still wasn't one of my easiest classes and certainly was one of the ones that required the most work. Even when working with a friend, the weekly homeworks took an average of 3-4 hours each. On top of that there were readings from two texts assigned each week that we were responsible for in weekly quizzes. When the class grades were given out, the average was set at a B, but anyone who got a B had worked very hard for it. Out of the 30+ people in the class, according to the professor, only one A was awarded.