LPPP 2200

Class is average. Prof is interesting and makes an effort to be unbiased. Would ask why all the TAs are grad students when they know they have a master thesis due. Should hire TAs who do not have extreme time conflicts. Grading and feedback is slow. Discussions are not helpful as just are repeats of lecture, could be just extra hw given. #tCFS24

Very introductory, easy course. Good for understanding roughly what policy and policy analysis is at a basic level. Workload is very limited (if you don't do the readings), just one memo and group presentation that together took me maybe 8 hours. Exams are all on laptop and open note. Enjoyed the content of the course though, kind of like econ 201 in that all of it is kind of common sense but it helps you think about things in a way you haven't thought about them before. Also enjoyed the lecture style of Professor Johannessen, kept it relatively fast and engaging. Overall, good course but wouldn't really recommend to someone not interested in Batten.

I assume the vast majority of students looking to take this class are interested in applying to Batten, and for that reason I would recommend taking it with Professor Johannessen. Overall, I’d say he was a very effective teacher and did the best he could with the dry material. He is so organized with his slides and on Canvas. My one qualm with him is he goes through slides too fast, so you can’t write anything down. I had no idea what to expect coming into the class but was interested in the public policy major, and this class made me lose interest. The only thing you do in class is learn frameworks and apply them to random policies. It’s extremely easy and boring; I would say if you want to learn more about what public policy actually is, take a LPPS class such as JFK or Terrorism. This class is less of a way to gauge interest, and more of a roadblock you will need to get through. The grade breakdown is the following: 35% from the policy memo, 20% from the open-book final exam, 10% from the open-book midterm exam, 8% from the group presentation, 7% from the worksheets, and 20% from “citizenship” (engagement, peer feedback quality, group project contribution, and course evaluation completion). As I said, the exams are open-book and therefore ridiculously easy. You don’t need to prep for them at all, besides maybe making a study guide so you can command F terms. The memo is obviously the bulk of the grade, and this is where your TA comes in. You get to turn in three drafts and get TA feedback on each of them, and they stress that you’ll probably do terribly on the first one. I had TA Anna, who was fantastic. I spent a lot of time in her office hours and therefore did pretty well on every single memo draft; there was almost no reason to turn in a third one. That being said, I had friends who had different TAs (such as TA Nick) who are much smarter than me but will likely get worse grades because he was so harsh with their memos. You also have to keep in mind THERE IS A BATTEN CURVE THAT IS WORKING AGAINST YOUR GRADE. The homework for this class consists of readings, which are generally short and cover everything you learn in lecture, so I’d recommend doing them. Discussion is a fat waste of time; I prefer discussions where TAs review lectures but in this class they make you do stupid group activities. At the end of the day, this class was so boring it made me not want to apply to Batten anymore. Only do this if you have to.

writing and grading was extremely subjective. Although they do give you 3 chances to redo the memo (the major part of your grade), the expectations for the memo would practically change each time without you really knowing. Unless you have background experience writing these memos, I wouldn't recommend. The TA's are slammed and can't help you along by reading your memo. All of the answers to questions and practice are subjective and each one can be argued for but you basically have to choose what you think the professor would say is the right answer. Johannessen is a great prof, but goes through slides much too quickly and puts random slides in the lecture that could easily be skipped over so that you are able to write down the actual important information while he is verbally lecturing.

I took this class first semester second year because I was considering applying to Batten. Needless to say this class ruled out Batten for me. I found the grading highly subjective based on your TA and after attending office hours many times to revise my memo, my TA wouldn't budge and I ended with a B+. Overall the class is easy. Technology is banned so it's all handwritten notes but by the end it was very skippable. The final group project is not bad and easy to do well on. The memos killed my grade for what I thought was an easy A class. Also for our midterm, the wifi didn't work and we had to write on paper which gave us very limited time. I wouldn't recommend this class unless you are 100% apply to Batten because those people like it, otherwise don't waste credit outside of the college and risk subjective grading.

Professor Johannessen is fantastic– the best lecture style I've seen at UVA. His slides are color coded and with that system you always know what information you need to take notes on or not. He is super nice and always brings humor and participation into his lectures, even with a big class. Definitely one of my favorite profs I've had at UVA, and his TA team is great as well. He really strives to implement student feedback and the whole TA team is very transparent. Some people say that the class is boring, but I found the concepts we covered useful for future policy analysis. If you're not planning on going Batten, I do get why the class would be boring unrewarding. The main components of the grade are "Citizenship" which is basically participation, an iterative policy memo, a midterm + final, and a group project. Between the memo, project, and participation, the class isn't super hard. Readings + weekly worksheets really aren't bad, but the memo does demand a lot of time.

The course was very interesting because we were able to look at real-world events through different lenses to understand why they happened that way. As someone who is not applying to Batten but enjoys policy and politics, it was still an interesting course. The frameworks can be confusing and sort of subjective (they are made up ways to understand policy) but if you learn the frameworks and have good notes for the exams, you'll get at least a decent grade. Not too much work except for the occasional labor-intensive project/memo.

This course was ok. The actual course is very focused on hypothetical frameworks which can feel a little abstract at times. Professor Johannessen was very organized and it was easy to follow most of the work. My issue with the course came from the lack of help when writing the memos and the variety of grading. Between TAs the grades can vary a lot and it's pretty frustrating. Would recommend the class only if you want to Batten, otherwise it's a pretty dull course.

Very well structured and organized class that provides a great understanding of what public policy is/how it works. A decent part of your grade comes from a policy memo that you have multiple opportunities to revise for a better grade. You can get away without doing the readings, but it's easy to get a little confused if you don't at least scan the readings here and there. The class can feel a bit repetitive at times because there's a lot of going over frameworks that are used throughout the semester. Some students like the class, some don't. If you're interested in public policy I would def take it. Prof is great and very approachable. The TA's are also really good in my experience.

This is a great class to take if you want to see if you actually enjoy learning about policy at UVA or not. It's a Batten prereq anyway, but even if you're just sort of interested, it's a solid introduction. Class is VERY structured, and the teaching team is competent and communicative. Readings are manageable and sometimes helpful but not critically necessary. I'd say start the semester completing the readings and see how you feel–I did and ended up reading less as the semester went on. I enjoyed the structure (different frameworks for approaching policy issues) and content, so I thought the lectures and assignments were enjoyable or at least engaging. Some of my friends who took the course didn't like the structure/content and found the course frustrating. It's totally possible to do well even if you don't like the class, but the course is very repetitive and tedious in its structure, so if you don't like it, it could be a drag. It's a Batten course, so overall class grades are normalized to a 3.5 GPA, which can be tough if you do poorly on some of the assignments. Johannessen is clearly excited about teaching policy, and he is clear with his expectations.

Prof. Johannessen is a great person and seems to genuinely care about his students. My TA was great, and he provided a lot of insight into Batten that I felt the lectures were missing. That being said, this course is so incredibly boring that not even his storytelling during lecture provided enough interest to make me want to attend. The lectures given during class often didn't get to the "frameworks" (actual tested content) until the last 5 minutes of class, forcing you to sit through a 45-minute example situation that ends up being relatively useless for your learning in the course. Additionally, all of the major frameworks of the class are made up by the professor, so the material being taught isn't actually relevant outside of UVA or even this class, further devaluing the time spent in lecture. Outside of class there are assigned readings, but I never read them and still kept up with the material being taught in class, and often did better on assignments than my peers who had done the readings. The policy memo is a major part of the class, and you're given 3 opportunities to revise it. The first draft's average is a C but it's only worth 2% of your final grade and the average goes up significantly after the second draft. There is a group project toward the end of the semester that requires a lot of work but is easy to get an A on. The exams in this class are open resource, and are easy to do well on with minimal studying. However, the final exam for this class is unnecessarily long considering half of it is almost identical to the final project you turn in a week before. Generally, this class is easy to get an A in, but feels like busy work and going to lecture often feels like a waste of time. It's a good GPA boost but made me not want to apply to Batten. Perhaps if you really enjoy policy you'd find the class interesting, but I just found it to be boring.