BIOL 2200

Professor Manson is very enthusiastic about her class and tries her hardest to make it fun. She is a good teacher and I feel as though I learned a lot it was just the fact that the exams were really hard, there were some topics that I couldn't see how they would be application based but she found a way to do so which made it more confusing. That is the only problem, her teaching skills are impeccable and she is always willing to help. This course requires a lot of effort and office hours in order to understand how the exam questions would be.

Manson is a great person but does not teach the material well enough to prepare you for the exams. The notes are a joke and the exams are so hard. I wish she prepared us better for the exams as it is 70% of your grade.

Lectures are really easy. The exams are much harder.

I enjoyed Prof Manson's course! I would recommend doing the readings for part 1 if you don't fully understand evolution, and for part 3 to learn more about the different organ systems. She skips over a TON in the biodiversity section so don't waste your time reading those.

This class is very difficult. I know reading this review will not change your mind on taking the course because you have to take it with Manson. But a few things to be weary of: First off her lectures are 100% easier than the exams. Do not let her lectures fool you into thinking this class is easy and she is spoon feeding. Make sure to write down every word that comes out of her mouth, not just the bullet points on the powerpoint. She will say something once and not have it down as a bullet point and then test it on the exam. Second off, when taking the exam, read every word and make sure every word in the answer is correct or else that answer is wrong. She makes her questions very ambiguous and a lot of times you will struggle between two answers because of the ambiguity. She told me in her office that many times she will ask questions where there is a great answer, but because everything else is incorrect there can only be one answer. Also due to her ambiguity many students fight her on answers after the test and then she gets very rude and defensive. If you think you are right for the answer because of the way you interpreted the question, she still will not give you points back. Her test averages for my class tended to be around a 79% and Im surprised they were that high. I guess people can just get the info. So for advice: record lectures and/or write every word she says down (I suggest typing your notes), make sure every word in the question and answer is correct and makes sense, and study a lot for exams but memorizing every word she says. This is the best way to succeed in the class.

Professor Manson is very nice and very responsive to emails. I just do not think she is a good test writer and makes it a more of can you guess of what Manson is thinking rather than do you know your content or not.

Since no one does course evals and plus course forum is where it's at.. oh and this review is being written literally minutes after taking the final. Yeah, most of the other reviews embody my sentiment. I had a strong bio background in high school (took 4 years of it but sadly didn't place out rip) and still found this class pretty challenging. Overall, I would say this class is just a get-it-over with type deal. You are required to know large amounts of information which seems to be left out of the powerpoints (she also doesn't post them with annotations either). I do recognize that some exam questions are from lectures but that basically means you need to write down everything she says just in case they do happen to appear. The grade distribution puts unnecessary pressure on how lenient your TA's are at grading lab (because it is 20% of your grade) and 70% exams can be a little overwhelming . Did really well in Dave's class (basically everyone's dad God bless him <3) but with Manson, I struggled. I didn't do any of the readings for the first 3 exams and didn't pay attention in lecture and it showed so I decided to do the reading for the final (felt really prepared) and still ended up not knowing questions because of ambiguity in wording. Hopefully my clicker points which can be a potential 1.5% bonus on the overall grade, 1% test boost, those extra assignment things she had in class, and dropped exam questions (basically the exam curve) will get me over my borderline hump grade. Also, will never look at plants the same way again. Godspeed

Her tests are confusing mostly because of how she words things. I wish she actually curved like Kittlesen

Honestly, I really enjoyed the material that we learned for this course except for plants. But I loved learning about evolution, and invertebrates and vertebrates form and function. I felt like I really understood the material that was covered because of the way she teaches her lectures, but her exams were difficult. For her exams, her questions were very ambiguous. Sometimes, I would struggle between two possible answers because of the way she words the question. With Kittlesen, a student would explain their thinking process to Kittlesen for why they chose a certain answer, which he would actually think about why another choice could've been a possible answer choice instead of sticking to one. He actually curved exams for that reason. However, if you would argue this to Manson, she would argue that there can only be one answer. She does not curve exams. The average was always 79%, which I think is not true due to hearing some of my classmates complain about their exam score being lower than the average. I plan to declare my major as bio and I am pre-med, so I had to take this course. As for everyone else who are not bio majors, if you do not need this course, I highly suggest that you take a more narrow bio class or different science course. As for grading, there are four exams that you take, which are worth 17.5% each. There is lab every week, which is worth 20% of your grade. There is also mastering bio, which is worth 10% of your grade. She also offers extra credit opportunities, but you can only earn it by having an iClicker for class everyday (1% bonus), completing a post-self exam evaluation (1% added to your test score), and participating in a study at the beginning of the semester (0.2%). Depending on the amount of iClicker questions you got right, you can receive up to (0.5%). Overall, this course was a worthwhile class for me because it helped me appreciate biology even more.

This class is really interesting, and Dr. Manson is especially engaging and makes the material easy to understand.

Not close to how great Kittlesen is. Dr. Manson is knowledgeable in specific topics, but when it comes to the human physiology and other aspects of the course, she cannot answer many questions in depth. This reflects on exams through confusing wording which she doesn't often acknowledge is confusing and misleading. She is excited about the topic and nice enough to talk to, but I felt that this class was a drag... final's pretty easy tho