Probably the worst class I've ever taken. Your final grade is made up of only THREE exams, two midterms for 30% and one final for 40%. Which is abhorrent. His lectures are incredibly confusing since they have zero structure to them, I found myself not being able to take good notes because there were absolutely no logical connections between the topics he was discussing. His lecture slides are SO SO BAD. Usually, professors would make them so that they have the basic gist of whatever they're trying to lecture about on the slides so that when you go back to study, you can reference them, but his slides were genuinely so unhelpful. He gives his students absolutely ZERO resources to study except for a single old exam from previous semesters and his own textbook. If you don't memorize every single word in his textbook, you can't expect to do well on the exams. The only redeemable part about this course is the curve he gives on exams. Do not take this class unless it is required for your major.

As someone interested in psychology, I LOVED this class. Dan willingam is incredibly knowledgable and teaches knowledge that is actually useful to know in daily life. I still find myself thinking about concepts I learned in his class. That being said, this class was not easy and does require diligent note-taking in class and a good amount of studying before exams. So i would only recommend if you're actually interested in the subject, and if you have to take it as a psyc major-- take it with willingham. Overall, great professor, challenging but rewarding subject matter, and my favorite uva class so far.

Grading: For my class, 13% got an A, 13% got an A-, 50% got from B+ to B- range. There are 3 midterms, you drop the lowest one, and a final. Midterms are 30% each and final is 40%. The midterms are 40 questions, 32ish multiple choice and 8ish fill in the blank. The final is 80 questions, 65ish multiple choice and 15ish fill in the blank. Each midterm average was around a 75 and the final average was a 65. Professor Willingham heavily curves the exams based on mean/SD so the averages ended up being around a B/B+ on each exam. You don't know your realistic course grade until after the last midterm because he waits for the exams to be dropped to do the curve. But he makes sure you know going into the final.
I read the Course Forum reviews for this class before I took it and freaked out because everyone said the tests were so hard. The tests are not hard, they are just very specific. You have pay attention to everything in lecture (which are recorded) and read the textbook very carefully. The test questions ask about specific terms and details, but none of the questions are interpretative or analytical so I would not consider the tests "hard." If you study well, you will do well. He gives you the exams from the previous semester and they are very good benchmarks to see if you are studying well enough. He also repeats some questions from year to year. I don't want to make the class sound like an easy A, its definitely not. I just want to even out some of the other reviews which might have been motivated by low scores in the class. If you put in the work, you can get an A.
For reference, I got 97.5, 100, and 95 on the midterms before the curve. I got a 98 on the final without the curve. I'm not a genius, I haven't taken a cognition class before, I just studied. If I can do it, so can you!

Professor: Professor Willingham is obviously extremely intelligent and extremely knowledgeable. He wrote the textbook and seems to know everything written in the textbook by heart. He knows the material back and forth but can still explain it in a way that makes sense to the average student. His lectures are extremely organized and well structured. He advices students to read the textbook chapters after lecture which I found very useful because the material is so much easier to understand after lecture has given an overview/explanation. He clearly wants his students to do well, but expects you to do the work to do well. He even gives an entire lecture at the beginning of the semester about how to study based on cognitive research. He was always available for office hours whenever I asked and was very helpful about answering specific questions from the textbook and re-explaining things that I didn't understand in lecture. He was always very approachable and welcoming.

Overall: As a psychology major, I found the material of this course to be interesting overall despite expecting otherwise. The main topics are vision, attention, working memory, long term memory, language, decision making, reasoning, and problem solving. The class seems less "science-y" than I expected which was a pleasant surprise; you only need to know links between cognitive processes and parts of the brain as they apply to the material which ends up being like 4-5 parts total and you don't need to know specific details. I wouldn't recommend taking this course unless its required or you are interested in the material because its not an easy A. However, like I said, if you put in the work studying, you can definitely get an A. There's no work besides the textbook readings and the exams so its definitely manageable. Each textbook chapter took me 2-3 hours to read and take notes but usually he assigned half a chapter per class. To study, I took detailed lecture notes, detailed textbook notes, then combined them into a quizlet for each exam. Each quizlet ended up having 150/200 terms. Its basically all terms/definitions and knowing broad ideas of studies. None of it is conceptually difficult.

This course will put you on the forefront of cognitive science and Willingham knows what he's talking about. Although that sounds really cool, know that when something is confusing, the internet really can't help you much. For example, try getting a straightforward definition for "pragmatic reasoning schema"--it's not easy. The tests are the real killer of the class. They make up 100% of your grade and are curved such that the average is a B/B+. To earn an A you'll need to outperform most of the class and as Willingham estimates, study around 20 hours per test (with 3 tests / semester). But if this subject area interests you, definitely take the course. You will learn a lot.

Professor Willingham is a fantastic lecturer because he makes the complicated material simple to understand. He is also very energetic and passionate about what he is teaching and is sometimes genuinely funny. The material can be difficult to understand but he is good at simplifying the information with examples, and the book also helps with understanding the material. The readings were very long and boring, which is annoying because the test will bring up specific instances from the book. The class was composed of 3 midterms and a final. The midterms are not bad if you keep up with the readings and study a lot beforehand. However, the final was incredibly hard, but it was curved a decent amount. Even though the class was hard, I found the class enjoyable because the material was interesting as it showed my mental processes.

This class is unreasonably hard. The material is interesting and the professor is nice but he makes his tests unreasonably hard and even harder to study for. No matter how much review you might do, you will not be prepared for the tests. To make matters worse, the entire course grade is based on the tests with no homework buffer or opportunities for bonus. Don’t take this class it makes you feel stupid.

Honestly, one of the best courses I've ever taken. Willingham is such a good lecturer and makes the content very engaging. He also wrote the textbook, so lectures and readings are pretty much the same (although I would recommend reading parts of the textbook before exams). There are 3 midterms and 1 final and you get to drop the lowest one. The midterms are all multiple choice and are pretty fair questions with great curves. If you pay attention in lecture you'll be fine.

Prof. Willingham is one of the most intelligent professors I have had at this university. You can tell by the way he speaks and answers questions during class that he truly cares and has extensive knowledge of the brain and cognition. Lectures were always captivating. I would recommend what he recommends on studying habits. I would go to lecture with skimming the textbook, and take notes afterwards. Do cheat sheets before your exams to help memorize information. He uses really basic/fundamental questions on his exams as well as specific studies from lecture and textbook. Final Exam is hard. Would recommend to everyone, you learn so much.

Professor Willingham wrote the textbook for this class himself, so much of what he talks about in lecture is also covered in the textbook. There is not homework at all for this class. You are just supposed to read the corresponding textbook chapter for each lecture. I did this throughout the semester. Your grade for this class consists entirely of three tests. There are three midterms and a final exam. The lowest midterm is dropped, the other two midterms are each worth 30%, and the final is 40%. I ended up with a B- in this class. While the course content is not that difficult in theory, the tests ask very specific questions about things from the textbook, so you basically need to memorize the entire textbook. They are all online Collab tests taken in the lecture hall.

I thought I liked psychology before this class. I took AP Psych in senior year and scored a five on the exam, but none of that prepared me for this course. Professor Willingham is intelligent and knowledgeable--he wrote the textbook he assigns--and he was accessible at office hours when I needed help. That being said, a lot of the psychology courses run on the test-only grades, meaning the very difficult exams are your entire grade. There are no quizzes or anything else. I studied for hours until I felt I understood the information and still couldn't score above a sixty percent. The exams are simply very challenging, and even when you know the information, you won't perform well. This course's content is really dense and complicated, and it is so far from an introduction course that I warn you: if you are not a psychology major, then do not take this course "For fun."