CLIMATE CRISIS 101
(A.K.A. ENGLISH 23)
Course Evaluations, Winter 2021
Jump down to Student Comments or FAQs.
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Ken’s Comment
It is hardly surprising that a variety of products and services are rated online – usually on a scale of 1 to 5, often with comments – as this feedback can be eyeopening. You may be surprised to learn, however, that many colleges and universities have been asking students to similarly evaluate courses and professors for decades now. Some universities make this information public, others do not. Because UCSB does not, I have taken it upon myself to post my evaluations to this site.
Why doesn’t UCSB publish these ratings? To be honest, I do not know. To be completely candid, I find it frustrating that they do not.
Students are asked to rate both the instructor and the course on a scale of 1 to 5. Here are the ratings for Eng 23 in the Winter of 2021:
Instructor Rating, 4.3
Course Rating, 4.3
In order to obtain these ratings, students receive the following instructions:
1) Instructor: “In rating a course, you should consider the instructor’s teaching apart from the course materials or content. Please rate the overall quality of the instructor’s teaching.”
2) Course: “Please rate the overall quality of the course, including its material or content, independent of the instructor’s teaching.”
Students are also encouraged to provide two written comments:
1) “Please indicate what you consider to be the most valuable aspects of the course.”
2) “How could the course be improved? (e.g. additional detail about topics, modifications to instructional materials, different teaching strategies, etc.).”
Both sets of these comments are below, starting with the first. Note that 1) all the comments are here in their entirety, 2) they have not been edited in any way, 3) they appear in the order that they do on the UCSB report, and 4) because Eng 23 had an enrollment of 1000 students in 2020-21, there are quite a few comments here. For more on these reviews and how they were obtained, see the FAQs.
Ken’s lectures and reading were great
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The readings and films were very informative and interesting.
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I learned a clear aspect of the climate crisis and what to do about it. I think it’s beneficial for the next 20 coming years.
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Learn the urgency of tackling climate change and steps I could take personally.
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I appreciate how this course has opened my eyes to the urgency of the climate crisis and has given me numerous ways I can change my lifestyle to help mitigate global warming.
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Interesting material (encourages students to consider how this material can impact their lives), sources are diverse, learning material mediums diverse (documentary, lecture, reading, etc.), CLEARLY wants students to do well and learn, is passionate about subject matter, embodies values presented in class (talks the talk AND walks the walk)
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This class definitely taught me so many important things regarding the climate crisis that I don’t think I would have ever learned on my own accord. I took away many important aspects from the class ranging from statistical facts about the issue, to personal stories and experiences of individuals from the films we’ve watched and from the professor himself.
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I liked how there was a variety of ways to learn the material through reading, videos, and films.
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I think the most valuable aspects is the variety of coursework and the exposure to different sources (readings, films, lecture videos). I like how each week focused on a different topic and each of the assignments pertained to that topic. I think the material I will remember the most is from the films because those were the most interesting assignment of the class.
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The most valuable aspects of the course are the documentaries or films given, as well as the deep dives. These are the most valuable aspects of the course because I liked that for every week, apart from having a reading assigned, we also got to watch films which made me understand what we were learning better.
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The short lectures every week were always very informative. The class teaches a lot while also making an A achievable
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The documentaries
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I think that the range of topics that Ken teaches us about is one of the most useful parts of this course. We touch on so many different aspects of the climate crisis, from what’s causing it to how we can help mitigate it. I also feel that a strong contender is the resources he provides us with. When it comes to the readings and movies we’re assigned, it feels like they are so spot on that Ken must’ve spent a very long time perfecting what to give us, and did it.
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The introduction to Environmental Studies focuses on the things that we need to teach the public so that they can understand environmentalism and I think this course does a good job of balancing harder topics to understand and superficial knowledge of the environment. I also think it is great how much Ken seems to love this subject.
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There are countless lessons about perspective and lifestyle that I was able to take away from this course. Ken is a fantastic professor with profound ideas that he successfully and meaningfully passes onto to his students. Most or all of the content he assigned us was both relevant, interesting, and applicable to our day to day lives.
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This whole course was valuable, there was not one week where the information was repetitive or uninteresting, I thoroughly enjoyed this class as it changed my perspective on the climate crisis and I truly believe that I will not think the same as I would have before this class. Everything in this course is very organized and provided intriguing , thoughtful information that I will continue to remember. Professor Ken Hiltner said that students will not remember facts and details about the climate but if people are informed about the things we can do for ourselves and others is why I really enjoyed this class. Yes, there was a grade tied to this course (like all others) but I found this course to be largely based on what we took out from the information.
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Ken’s passion and drive 😀 It really inspired me to take up the challenge of reducing my footprint, along with all he’s taught me.
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My favorite class I’ve taken at UCSB. I love Ken’s energy and consideration of others from different backgrounds in his discussions. I like how he addresses social problems that intersect with environmental issues.
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The materials were definitely one of the best parts of this course. Just the range of topics and opinions we’ve read over the last ten weeks has proved to be very fruitful and beneficial to anyone considering an environmental science major or looking to increase their impact on the climate crisis.
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The Deep Dive/Intro videos to the course content were especially informative.
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I like how the structure of class goes from addressing the issues and causes of climate crisis to offering solutions in the last few weeks of class.
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I consider the short Youtube lectures to be the most valuable aspects of the course.
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I greatly enjoy everything I am learning about. Of all the courses I have ever taken, this one has been the most inspiring for me to take personal action.
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The pure humanitarian teaching and importance of the climate change and how to be good people on this earth and better yourself.
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He is very passionate
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Having a website and Youtube channel available to the public is a great idea that more professors could follow. I think the selected readings are especially a good overview of the climate crisis.
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I like how the structure of class goes from addressing the issues and causes of climate crisis to offering solutions in the last few weeks of class.
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I consider the short Youtube lectures to be the most valuable aspects of the course.
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I greatly enjoy everything I am learning about. Of all the courses I have ever taken, this one has been the most inspiring for me to take personal action.
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The pure humanitarian teaching and importance of the climate change and how to be good people on this earth and better yourself.
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He is very passionate
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Having a website and Youtube channel available to the public is a great idea that more professors could follow. I think the selected readings are especially a good overview of the climate crisis.
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The deep dive lectures.
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Ken is very knowledgeable, easy to understand, very considerate, nice
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Learning about climate change is very eye-opening.
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The information of this course is extremely valuable as it is applied to everyone’s everyday life.
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I especially appreciated when we covered Project Drawdown, since it gives a list of things we can actually do to combat the climate crisis. I also thought the entire week on the wildfires here in California was moving and excellently put together.
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the passion and real life solutions incorporated into lectures
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The material outside of lecture.
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Very interesting and important class! Pretty time consuming (lots of lectures, movies and long readings) but not too overwhelming most of the time.
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I think the lectures have been very insightful.
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The most valuable aspects of the course is the films that are provided to complete your weekly posts
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I think that this course is much more valuable to students that have never heard of or interacted with material regarding the climate crisis. For students that are familiar with the topics of the course, it is a bit too repetitive. The most valuable aspects of the course were the course lectures.
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Ken provides students with hope and strategies to combat the climate crisis and well as ways to encourage friends and family to join the fight.
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I really liked the content and films we watched.
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The most valuable aspects of the course were the pre-recorded lectures, reading, and film introductions. I thought it was wonderful how you could read the script alongside watching the videos; it make comprehension much easier of course materials. The documentaries and readings were also fantastic, alongside the Deep Dive lectures.
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intro to climate crisis, helped rethink life
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The materials necessary for assessments were very accessible and the asynchronous format makes each week flexible.
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climate crisis. For students that are familiar with the topics of the course, it is a bit too repetitive. The most valuable aspects of the course were the course lectures.
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Ken provides students with hope and strategies to combat the climate crisis and well as ways to encourage friends and family to join the fight.
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I really liked the content and films we watched.
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The most valuable aspects of the course were the pre-recorded lectures, reading, and film introductions. I thought it was wonderful how you could read the script alongside watching the videos; it make comprehension much easier of course materials. The documentaries and readings were also fantastic, alongside the Deep Dive lectures.
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intro to climate crisis, helped rethink life
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The materials necessary for assessments were very accessible and the asynchronous format makes each week flexible.
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Learning how to combat the climate crisis
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The actual content of the course because it is a vital subject to learn about.
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I really like how Ken offers a lot of valuable tips and strategies that his students can employ in order to help protect the environment.
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I really enjoyed how passionate the professor was on all the topics we covered throughout this course. It made it super enjoyable to participate in class when you know the professor actually cares about what they are teaching.
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The concepts were really interesting and I really liked them.
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I think it is very important to talk about climate change deniers and how to have a progressive and helpful conversation with them.
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The best virtual lectures of all time. From the formatting of assignments, lectures and films, to the production value… absolutely incredible.
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How the professor would provide resources upon request of the students after each week’s readings.
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The short videos that Mr. Hiltner produced about the topic of the week.
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I felt that the class was great at bringing in a range of topics and keeping issues relevant. I liked the different ways we learned material: readings, videos, and lectures.
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The information
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I am learning information that is crucial to know now and will be for my entire life. I like how professional the format of the class is.
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The WORLD needs to take this course – incredibly important
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I think that the documentaries and the deep dives are crucial for me personally. The deep dives are long-winded sometimes but overall they really ground me in the course material.
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The lecture videos were all concise and informative, making it easy to absorb information. I appreciate the accessibility aspects of how this class is formatted for online learning.
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The asynchronous structure of the course
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The information
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I am learning information that is crucial to know now and will be for my entire life. I like how professional the format of the class is.
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The WORLD needs to take this course – incredibly important
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I think that the documentaries and the deep dives are crucial for me personally. The deep dives are long-winded sometimes but overall they really ground me in the course material.
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The lecture videos were all concise and informative, making it easy to absorb information. I appreciate the accessibility aspects of how this class is formatted for online learning.
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The asynchronous structure of the course
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I really enjoyed the weekly films
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What I would consider most valuable would be the deep dives as they give insight from different people and also lets ken expand on topics he may not have thought about when giving the lectures.
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I like that it is the same every week, and so you know what to expect, and that you can do it when you want, as long as it is done by the deadline. I also really like the fact that work is not due at Sundays 11:59 pm like most high school work, but actually due by 6 am the next Monday. This lowers stress for me on getting it done if I am close to the end of the night, Sunday. This is probably an overlooked detail that this class has.
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I think the overall messages that the course emphasizes were the most important and will stick with me the most. The human-based approach of the course seemed to be the most valuable as well as the documentaries, which I found extremely interesting and a great supplement to the course lectures and reading.
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The fact that I was able to learn about the environment.
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Outline of course and lecture flow.
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The variety of material we were presented with gave a huge breadth of information and allowed us to see from different perspectives and find our most valued strategy to help better the climate crisis and apply to our own lives. I also enjoyed how the class is structured, as we first learn of the problem, but then learn what we can do to solve it and alleviate the burden of how massive the problem is. I also valued how the class addressed how our local communities in California will be affected, as it demonstrates how it can literally hit close to home and no one will be untouched by it.
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Ken is so passionate about the topic of the climate crisis. Even though it’s an asynchronous class, he makes it feel so personal and relatable. Even away from his passion for the topic, the topics themselves enhanced by the readings and films were interesting and educational.
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Very important subject. A good variety of sources and approaches.
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The amount of info we learn about the climate crisis
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I can learn something fill my requirement get a high score
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Prof. Hiltner was very enthusiastic Kept up to date with current events Reflected issues within the local community
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This course provided extensive resources and necessary knowledge on the current climate crisis. Professor Hiltner used a variety of films, readings, and lectures to cover a wide range of material, including calls to action for students searching to mitigate the climate crisis. I truly enjoyed this course and feel that it is immensely pertinent as well as important for our generation to learn about this topic. The real-life examples and footage of climate change disasters also ensured to strike a chord in students to act and be change-makers in our modern world.
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Ken is so passionate about the topic of the climate crisis. Even though it’s an asynchronous class, he makes it feel so personal and relatable. Even away from his passion for the topic, the topics themselves enhanced by the readings and films were interesting and educational.
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Very important subject. A good variety of sources and approaches.
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The amount of info we learn about the climate crisis
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I can learn something fill my requirement get a high score
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Prof. Hiltner was very enthusiastic Kept up to date with current events Reflected issues within the local community
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This course provided extensive resources and necessary knowledge on the current climate crisis. Professor Hiltner used a variety of films, readings, and lectures to cover a wide range of material, including calls to action for students searching to mitigate the climate crisis. I truly enjoyed this course and feel that it is immensely pertinent as well as important for our generation to learn about this topic. The real-life examples and footage of climate change disasters also ensured to strike a chord in students to act and be change-makers in our modern world.
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The lectures were amazing and well produced
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I really know a lot about climate change and how to do in this course.
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I know more knowledge about climate crisis and I know what I can do to help our planet.
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The most valuable aspects of this course were the films, readings, and lecture series.
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This class genuinely changed my life, as cheesy as that sounds. Each week I had something new to bring awareness to in my own life, and I have really thought a lot about how I want to live going forward. I think the most valuable aspect of the course is just the content. I like the structure as well, but it could get a bit overwhelming. However, the content made up for that. I have had so many conversations with my roommates, family and friends based on this course and I really think it has made a difference – which is Ken’s goal so, mission accomplished!
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The most valuable aspect of this course is learning what we can do as individuals to help with the climate crisis.
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The content
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I do believe that the material Professor Hiltner discussed in the lectures is very important to our society and it is information that people need to know. I enjoyed the documentaries because they were eye-opening and made me evaluate my daily decisions.
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The information presented here is valuable for living my life. The course makes you a better person, this is what I consider to be the most valuable part of the course.
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The material has a lot of potentials to make a change in the world if taken seriously, which I appreciated. I enjoyed this class and how accessible Prof. Hiltner was beyond just office hours.
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The deep dives, they were extremely informational and at the same time intruiguing, I liked to listen to them as sort of a podcast to start my mornings.
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I’ve really enjoyed this course and the insight I’ve gained from it about the climate crisis. I found all of the assigned readings to be very valuable.
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The documentaries and readings that you chose for this course were incredibly valuable and underscored all of the topics that you discussed in your lectures. Your lectures were also very engaging which made it interesting to listen to.
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The information presented here is valuable for living my life. The course makes you a better person, this is what I consider to be the most valuable part of the course.
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The material has a lot of potentials to make a change in the world if taken seriously, which I appreciated. I enjoyed this class and how accessible Prof. Hiltner was beyond just office hours.
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The deep dives, they were extremely informational and at the same time intruiguing, I liked to listen to them as sort of a podcast to start my mornings
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I’ve really enjoyed this course and the insight I’ve gained from it about the climate crisis. I found all of the assigned readings to be very valuable.
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The documentaries and readings that you chose for this course were incredibly valuable and underscored all of the topics that you discussed in your lectures. Your lectures were also very engaging which made it interesting to listen to.
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Throughout the quarter I learned a lot about my own impact on the out planet’s climate crisis. Being aware of the many changes I can do along with so many others seems hopeful. I’m taking what I learned in this class and implementing it to my day to day life.
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Everyone should be required to take this class. He’s a fantastic professor and I learned so much.
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The class concepts are vital, it analyzes the climate crisis from a collective cultural perspective which is unique to me.
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The importance of the subjects taught have stuck with me and I believe I can apply it in the future.
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I think the lecture videos, deep dives, and other youtube content are very detailed and well made, which really helps one’s understanding of the climate crisis and all the issues related to it.
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Learning about the major contributors of the climate crisis that are not mentioned a lot to the public, and how we as individuals and a society can create a change.
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This course is accessible to everyone and I have recommended it to many other people both inside and outside of the UCSB community. The knowledge of this course is the most valuable part of it.
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Ken is just phenomenal. He is a climate expert and is extremely passionate about the subject matter. I feel inspired after every lecture.
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The most valuable aspects are my own personal growth in regards to the climate crisis.
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weekly movies
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The documentaries and conversations I have with other students
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I have found the readings to be the most valuable part of the course.
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Being able to interact with other students through youtube comments.
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The short lectures are very interesting and informative
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I learn a lot of new things about the climate crisis. The most valuable thing is how to convince others to follow you. The way that the professor suggest is very useful.
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All the knowledge related to climate change is valuable. Leaning this course helps me to relate many other aspects that seems unrelated, such as how the big companies cooperate with the governments and cast doubt on the climate topic.
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weekly movies
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The documentaries and conversations I have with other students
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I have found the readings to be the most valuable part of the course.
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Being able to interact with other students through youtube comments.
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The short lectures are very interesting and informative
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I learn a lot of new things about the climate crisis. The most valuable thing is how to convince others to follow you. The way that the professor suggest is very useful.
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All the knowledge related to climate change is valuable. Leaning this course helps me to relate many other aspects that seems unrelated, such as how the big companies cooperate with the governments and cast doubt on the climate topic.
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talked a lot about the climate change
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I personally loved being able to watch and talk about weekly documentaries and readings, if anything I would just decrease the reading length if anything and focus on shorter articles if anything.
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Loved being able to speak my thoughts on an open platform. It makes the class feel more personal.
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The content we are learning is very interesting and informational
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I really valued the structure of this class. The quizzes were a very fair knowledge check that require students to keep up with the course without being too burdensome and accurately represent how well students prepared for them. The comment part was also really intriguing and allowed me to interact with other students ideas and learn more.
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The most valuable aspects were learning about the climate crisis and what can be done in order to help the environment which I really appreciated. Also, I really enjoyed the films in this class because they taught me something new every time and I always love to be taught something alarming.
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The variety of information, including films and literature, was a great addition to the course. I enjoyed how it allowed students to hear different points of view on climate change.
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In-depth explanation.
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Loved the accessibly to the course material.
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Wow, I learned so much about our climate crisis and it’s really impacted my system of thought. I’m a lot more conscious about my actions as both a consumer and someone who now knows the gravity of our actions in our everyday lives. I think teaching global warming as a human culture issue rather than focusing on technological solutions is extremely important.
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I really enjoyed that I could learn about a new topic that I haven’t known before.
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I really enjoyed all of the subject we learned in class.
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I find the resources provided rather informative and the general discussion interesting with regards to climate activism and such.
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I find the course more meaningful and inspiring because of how passionate Hiltner is about his course and material
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The films!
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I really like discussion the readings and films with our classmate online. It is a nice experience to share our thoughts.
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Wow, I learned so much about our climate crisis and it’s really impacted my system of thought. I’m a lot more conscious about my actions as both a consumer and someone who now knows the gravity of our actions in our everyday lives. I think teaching global warming as a human culture issue rather than focusing on technological solutions is extremely important.
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I really enjoyed that I could learn about a new topic that I haven’t known before.
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I really enjoyed all of the subject we learned in class.
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I find the resources provided rather informative and the general discussion interesting with regards to climate activism and such.
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I find the course more meaningful and inspiring because of how passionate Hiltner is about his course and material
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The films!
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I really like discussion the readings and films with our classmate online. It is a nice experience to share our thoughts.
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All the personal actions we can individually take to help combat climate change
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The most valuable aspect of the course was being exposed to different types of information writings, readings, movies, and videos that truly explain in depth what is going on.
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The material itself is so valuable and I think more people on campus need to be taking this course and absorb and learn the content taught in this course.
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I think the documentaries were really interesting and covered a wide variety of environmental issues.
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I enjoyed the reading, all the reading materials were really interesting.
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Learning how to talk to people that do not believe in the climate crisis
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Investigation into beef industry.
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Becoming a Freegan.
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The readings and films were very informative and paired well with the lectures
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everything
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Providing ways to help the climate crisis with individual action.
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So passionate and engaging. Really genuinely wants us to learn and sets us up for success through the website, weekly schedule, and deep dives.
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This course really highlighted every problem that is happening in our society. Professor Hiltner did an amazing job in finding interesting articles and film that showcased many of the problems that our country faced while simultaneously showing us some solutions and ways to help alleviate the problems.
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All the given information was pretty interesting and it was important for us as students
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Learning about the climate crisis is extremely important. The documentaries shown were very informational (and enjoyable at the same time). The best part of this course is that we discuss solutions to this problem. We have known there was a problem for quite some time, so it is good to know that it is achievable to fix it. Really valued the information I learned in this course.
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Actually learning about the problems in our world that directly relate to our life and the possible solutions individuals can make Providing ways to help the climate crisis with individual action.
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So passionate and engaging. Really genuinely wants us to learn and sets us up for success through the website, weekly schedule, and deep dives.
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This course really highlighted every problem that is happening in our society. Professor Hiltner did an amazing job in finding interesting articles and film that showcased many of the problems that our country faced while simultaneously showing us some
solutions and ways to help alleviate the problems.
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All the given information was pretty interesting and it was important for us as students
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Learning about the climate crisis is extremely important. The documentaries shown were very informational (and enjoyable at the same time). The best part of this course is that we discuss solutions to this problem. We have known there was a problem for quite some time, so it is good to know that it is achievable to fix it. Really valued the information I learned in this course. —
Actually learning about the problems in our world that directly relate to our life and the possible solutions individuals can make to alleviate the problem.
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Reading/ sources on climate change
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I found the course lectures to be the most valuable aspect of this course. I learned a lot from them.
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Project Drawdown was very concise and straightforward. I also really liked how the course material included how to communicate the climate crisis effectively.
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Ken is extremely passionate about climate activism, and it is really awesome to see. The best thing that Ken did for this course was making nearly all of the course material completely free for every single student. Ken preaches that education should be free for all who seek it out and that is absolutely incredible to me! On top of that, lectures were clear, concise, and inspiring. Loved this course.
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documentaries and quizes
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The most valuable aspects of the course was definitely the awareness of climate crisis and the exposure of how we can simply help and make a change on this kind of crisis in the world. This course definitely made me realize that there is more to climate change than just temperature rising.
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Professor is very passionate about the subject and makes it very interesting.
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I like the lectures and the documentaries
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Ken cares about his subject and it shows. It makes you want to learn more to see how you can help. —
After taking this course, I feel armed with knowledge about the climate crisis that I didn’t have before. It makes me feel completely resolute in the fact that climate change is happening, and also makes me feel like I will be able to present counterarguments to climate change skeptics. I also really liked the documentaries we watched. I tend to shy away from watching documentaries about difficult topics so I appreciated being made to watch these documentaries that I had refused to watch before. Additionally, I liked Ken’s inclusivity. I like that he emphasizes how important it is to know the devastation in places outside of the US and that he actively includes comments during his deep dives from people who have different experiences.
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I enjoy the dive lectures from Ken. Each time, he chose a few comments on which we are required to post about his lectures and then anaylzed for us. We can deeply understand the document or videos.
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I was most engaged with the weekly readings and films and commenting about them.
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teaching us individual actions we can each do to help the climate crisis and how our everyday habits are hurting the environment.
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Ken cares about his subject and it shows. It makes you want to learn more to see how you can help.
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After taking this course, I feel armed with knowledge about the climate crisis that I didn’t have before. It makes me feel completely resolute in the fact that climate change is happening, and also makes me feel like I will be able to present counterarguments to climate change skeptics. I also really liked the documentaries we watched. I tend to shy away from watching documentaries about difficult topics so I appreciated being made to watch these documentaries that I had refused to watch before. Additionally, I liked Ken’s inclusivity. I like that he emphasizes how important it is to know the devastation in places outside of the US and that he actively includes comments during his deep dives from people who have different experiences.
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I enjoy the dive lectures from Ken. Each time, he chose a few comments on which we are required to post about his lectures and then anaylzed for us. We can deeply understand the document or videos.
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I was most engaged with the weekly readings and films and commenting about them.
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teaching us individual actions we can each do to help the climate crisis and how our everyday habits are hurting the environment.
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Learning about Climate Change in general is very sad, but very important and I feel that Professor Hiltner did that very well.
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The content and the documentaries
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The most valuable aspects of this course was the emphasis on how life changes can make your own personal life better and better for the planet. This course has allowed me to reflect on my own choices and make better ones for myself and the climate.
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SUCH important content, presented in an organized & digestible way. The materials were so useful, and I’m glad they’re publicly accessible so I can go back to them and direct others to them. Ken put a lot of work into making the class accessible and I can’t express how much I appreciate that and hope other instructors will follow suit. Grades & assessments were abundantly fair, and it was clear the goal of this course was for students to learn & think critically rather than spit out facts and forget them later. Lectures were very digestible and honestly fun to watch. So many angles of the climate crisis were covered. The problems & solutions presented in this class will stick with me long after this class ends.
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I really enjoyed the discussion as a core part of the class, replying to other students helped me to get to know them better and apply course themes to real life. The website was also extremely valuable, being able to save the webpage and take notes through a PDF program was really helpful throughout the class. Additionally, the class was extremely well-organized because of the website.
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The most valuable aspect to me of this course is that I became educated about the real dangers of climate change. It was presented in a way that appealed to my emotions which definitely made it seem more important to me in my day to day.
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Discussion videos of student comments.
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I really appreciate how the course discusses where issues of the crisis originate from and give answers on how to solve it. It provided me with a much greater understanding of the issues behind the crisis.
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That I learned a lot about an important topic like climate change. I got to watch so many life-changing films and read really informative books.
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The most valuable aspect of the course were the lecture videos. The lecture videos allowed me to feel like I was in an actual class instead of just having to read and answer quiz questions every week.
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The entire class was valuable and I’m glad I got to take it!
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The parts about teaching us how to communicate the problem and project drawdown.
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The course is incredibly informative about the subject and the professor is extremely knowledgeable on the topic.
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I really appreciate how the course discusses where issues of the crisis originate from and give answers on how to solve it. It provided me with a much greater understanding of the issues behind the crisis.
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That I learned a lot about an important topic like climate change. I got to watch so many life-changing films and read really informative books.
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The most valuable aspect of the course were the lecture videos. The lecture videos allowed me to feel like I was in an actual class instead of just having to read and answer quiz questions every week.
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The entire class was valuable and I’m glad I got to take it!
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The parts about teaching us how to communicate the problem and project drawdown.
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The course is incredibly informative about the subject and the professor is extremely knowledgeable on the topic.
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This class literally opened my third eye to the climate crisis, I am more weary of my everyday actions now because of this class!!!
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Being able to learn so much and being able to have the ability to share with others and hear other students’ voices.
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I loved this course and feel that despite being a course many people take for a requirement, it has valuable information that everyone in this world should hear and learn. It taught about an important subject that will benefit us all. I also really appreciated that the material is always available online, whether or not someone is a student at UCSB.
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The course content was consistently relevant and interesting, and Ken explained things in ways that were easy to understand. The quizzes were fair too.
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The films were very informative and eye opening. This class really opened my eyes to what is going on with the world
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The curriculum is the most valuable to me. I thought the movies, short lectures and the readings were very helpful. Deep dives not so much. I understand that it is the basis of a 4 unit class that there be 4 hours of lecture a week, but it is pretty excessive, especially when I am only encouraged to pick out random tidbits of information when preparing for the quiz.
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I really enjoyed the readings, lectures, and films throughout this course. I felt like I learned so much. The weekly lectures served as a great start for the week to get into the week’s topic. I enjoyed the films more than the readings because I felt (that for the most part) they were more interactive.
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The content of the course is extremely valuable.
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Everything about this course was extremely valuable as it all directly related to how to take action against climate change. I loved how Ken outlined specific steps to make a difference.
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The films and the readings were the most valuable aspects of the course. I learned so much from them and appreciated all the new information.
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I honestly really enjoyed the course. While it was the only course I had with this much work I didn’t mind putting in the work because the content was so interesting. I was able to share the website with family and friends and while that aspect was hard to get used to at first I did overall really enjoy it, like much of the class, it took some adjustments but was worth it in the long run. I loved the documentaries the most and really appreciated the opportunity to evaluate my life and make some changes. I think people are way to harsh on this class and I found it a really great GE to take, not at all an easy A but an obtainable one for sure.
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I find myself thinking about the content of this course in my everyday life and feel as though this is a class that many can benefit from. It has definitely changed my life in ways that I didn’t think it would and has made me a more conscious person.
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Everything about this course was extremely valuable as it all directly related to how to take action against climate change. I loved how Ken outlined specific steps to make a difference.
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The films and the readings were the most valuable aspects of the course. I learned so much from them and appreciated all the new information.
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I honestly really enjoyed the course. While it was the only course I had with this much work I didn’t mind putting in the work because the content was so interesting. I was able to share the website with family and friends and while that aspect was hard to get used to at first I did overall really enjoy it, like much of the class, it took some adjustments but was worth it in the long run. I loved the documentaries the most and really appreciated the opportunity to evaluate my life and make some changes. I think people are way to harsh on this class and I found it a really great GE to take, not at all an easy A but an obtainable one for sure.
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I find myself thinking about the content of this course in my everyday life and feel as though this is a class that many can benefit from. It has definitely changed my life in ways that I didn’t think it would and has made me a more conscious person.
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The videos and films throughout this course have been extremely fundamental to me. I found that the comments portion of this course have also aided in learning more about the climate crisis.
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The deep dives
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the explanations were easy to understand and the coursework is manageable once I am able to get used to the schedule and is able to arrange my time better
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I think that this course was amazing! The information that was presented is applicable to our lives and beneficial for everyone to learn. The way the information was presented was engaging and interesting and I loved every minute of it. I will definitely be recommending this course to other people that I know as it has truly changed my outlook on my day-to-day actions.
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The deep dive lectures and the diversity of sources.
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It provided many applicable methods to help with the global crisis, very informative and engaging. I loved the documentary and reading selected. It opened up a new world for me.
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Learn to not eat meat
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I think the films and readings were the most informative and fun part of the course.
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Everything he taught me was extremely valuable to me. Everyone should be taking this course.
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I think the lectures were the most valuable because they taught me the situation in a relevant way.
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the films are immensely important and i appreciate the focus on film
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The information and the way it is presented is very useful to understanding how it can be applied to real life
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This was my second time taking a course taught by Professor Hiltner. His method of teaching is very much in favor of students and the content he gives is not too hard to digest. His content is easily accessible and so is he.
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The content is so important. I am so glad this class is taught at UCSB and is made accessible to so many students.
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n/a
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Specifically, I think learning about how the climate crisis has been falsely communicated is the most important aspect of the course. When we had the week about this miscommunication and watched the documentary about how the fossil fuel industry and tobacco industry both have employed tactics to confuse the public, that was probably the most eye-opening week. For climate skeptics, this I think the lectures were the most valuable because they taught me the situation in a relevant way.
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the films are immensely important and i appreciate the focus on film
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The information and the way it is presented is very useful to understanding how it can be applied to real life
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This was my second time taking a course taught by Professor Hiltner. His method of teaching is very much in favor of students and the content he gives is not too hard to digest. His content is easily accessible and so is he.
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The content is so important. I am so glad this class is taught at UCSB and is made accessible to so many students.
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n/a
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Specifically, I think learning about how the climate crisis has been falsely communicated is the most important aspect of the course. When we had the week about this miscommunication and watched the documentary about how the fossil fuel industry and tobacco industry both have employed tactics to confuse the public, that was probably the most eye-opening week. For climate skeptics, this week probably would’ve solidified the fact that climate change is real and that false propaganda has been misguiding them.
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This course is probably one of the most valuable courses people could take on campus, because it deals with a current real issue the globe faces. It teaches us in a raw and emotional way how we have caused the climate crisis and how we can mitigate it. I truly value the access to mitigation skills my professor has given me through this course. By watching documentaries we are exposed to the conditions other people are in around the world due to the climate crisis which is good moral motivation for us here to act. Professor Hiltner’s humanities-based opinions on climate crisis issues are very valuable in that they show us why it is important we act on this issue.
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Learning tons of information that I’d never consider that affected the earth negatively, also enjoyed learning ways to improve my own life in order to help the planet.
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I liked the combination of readings and documentaries. I think that is beneficial for different learning types.
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Work ethic, Reading, Critical Thinking
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The most valuable aspect of the course was the structure from learning about all the horrible things happening as a result of the climate crisis, and then learning about ways we can personally and collective bring about change.
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The deep-dive lectures
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I think the films were the most valuable aspect of the course because they presented the course information in a very engaging way and gave helpful real world examples of topics that we discussed in class.
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The readings and lectures are very insightful and I learned a lot from those.
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The content of this course is so important, this course or courses about the climate crisis should be mandatory for all students.
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Everything was extremely valuable in this course and has changed many of my habits in order to become more sustainable!
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The professor’s deep dive lectures that give you a greater insight of the course material.
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Just all the knowledge that is being taken in right now is crazy. THANK YOU.
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The interaction held with the professor and students
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articles and lectures give really good info about the climate crisis
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Ken is so passionate and an amazing teacher, one of the best lecturers ever.
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The readings and lectures are very insightful and I learned a lot from those.
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The content of this course is so important, this course or courses about the climate crisis should be mandatory for all students.
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Everything was extremely valuable in this course and has changed many of my habits in order to become more sustainable!
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The professor’s deep dive lectures that give you a greater insight of the course material.
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Just all the knowledge that is being taken in right now is crazy. THANK YOU.
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The interaction held with the professor and students
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articles and lectures give really good info about the climate crisis
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Ken is so passionate and an amazing teacher, one of the best lecturers ever.
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It was all laid out
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I enjoyed the lecture material and the fact that the material is all available on youtube for the general public to access. Fuck higher education for gatekeeping information!!
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Learning the consequences of the climate crisis and the documentaries that we watched because it made me realize how serious the climate crisis is.
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I really enjoyed a lot of the films we watched. I think a lot of the information I will remember from this class will come from the films.
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the most valuable aspects of the course was the information we were learning, such as the very easily accessible resources and encouragement to share these resources with others
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I think the most valuable aspects of this course are the materials that he has us read and watch and all of the movies and articles that he gives us.
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Dedication to the content and students
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This is one of the most relevant courses offered at UCSB. Every week we covered information that I was happy to be learning about. I will carry ideas and action items from this class into my life, in and outside of school.
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Ken is fantastic at lecturing
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Climate change is happening and actions need to be taken to stop it. Voting is of upmost importance but, personal actions are not to be neglected as well. There are a lot of ways to be involved and though we have the potential to make a change we as a society do not. Companies are brainwashing people for their own benefit without regard for the planet at all.
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All course materials are pretty helpful in understanding the climate crisis and what we can do about it. I personally find all the documentaries very informative and valuable.
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the films
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Very passionate about his course, inspired me to take on my own action about climate change
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learning about this topic and what we can do about it
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Ken is fantastic at lecturing
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Climate change is happening and actions need to be taken to stop it. Voting is of upmost importance but, personal actions are not to be neglected as well. There are a lot of ways to be involved and though we have the potential to make a change we as a society do not. Companies are brainwashing people for their own benefit without regard for the planet at all.
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All course materials are pretty helpful in understanding the climate crisis and what we can do about it. I personally find all the documentaries very informative and valuable.
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the films
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Very passionate about his course, inspired me to take on my own action about climate change
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Learning about this topic and what we can do about it
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Content
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I really enjoyed the lectures where we discussed personal action because it made me feel more proactive in fighting the climate crisis. I also enjoyed the deep dives where we discussed other students’ comments and relate them to our personal lives.
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It was important for us to understand each base level concept each week so that we could build our foundation of knowledge on the climate crisis. This allows us to fully grasp what our future entails and what we need to do about and and how to spread the word in a correct and applicable way. I felt this was accomplished and it gave me the most out of the class. I have always been fascinated with the environment and as I plan to pursue a related career, I found this class very helpful in continuing my understanding of our current climate crisis.
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I am very interested in the climate crisis and have been for a very long time. This is what led me to take this course. The most valuable to me is probably the last weeks where we look at what we can do about it. I have always had the knowledge that we were destroying our planet, but never really knew how I could fix it. Ken Hiltner tells you in this course.
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The simultaneous introduction of necessary climate science and how to communicate what it means.
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I think that it is great that there are many different forms of materials incorporated into our class such as films, texts and websites
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The most valuable aspects of this course were the professor’s overall passion for the content and all of the effort he has put into this course. No other teacher is as well equip technology wise and this course was so interesting and fun to take online.
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The most valuable aspect was the diversity and communitcation in the class. Even though it was online, Professor Hiltner found ways for us to share and discuss our own perspectives which was really helpful in seeing topics from other points of view.
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Documentaries and Videos about societal aspects of climate change Large windows to complete assignments
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I think the readings and videos we watch to be the most valuable aspect. I also think the shorter lecture videos on their own topic are the most valuable.
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The readings and films that allow to interpret the information on our own and the explanations after for how they apply to our world in the big picture. I felt the comments made me involved and my understanding of the material came back to me when I needed to express what I thought.
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Learning about the climate crisis and the ways to help were interesting to learn about and to apply to my everyday life. I particularly liked learning about food waste because I had never really though about how much food we are actually wasting without noticing it.
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The content of this course is extremely important and valuable to learn about. It has really impacted me and how I live my life for us to share and discuss our own perspectives which was really helpful in seeing topics from other points of view.
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Documentaries and Videos about societal aspects of climate change Large windows to complete assignments
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I think the readings and videos we watch to be the most valuable aspect. I also think the shorter lecture videos on their own topic are the most valuable.
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The readings and films that allow to interpret the information on our own and the explanations after for how they apply to our world in the big picture. I felt the comments made me involved and my understanding of the material came back to me when I needed to express what I thought.
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Learning about the climate crisis and the ways to help were interesting to learn about and to apply to my everyday life. I particularly liked learning about food waste because I had never really though about how much food we are actually wasting without noticing it.
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The content of this course is extremely important and valuable to learn about. It has really impacted me and how I live my life now, and I think everyone should take this class.
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I really like the films and readings in this course, I also like how Ken re-reads comments he finds fascinating and goes in depth over how people’s opinions relate to the course information.
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I liked the content a lot and while I didn’t get much out of the the super long deep dive lectures, I found the shorter lectures very engaging and helpful. I learned a lot about the Climate Crisis.
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This is the most valuable course that I have taken at UCSB so far. I’ve learned how severe the climate crisis actually is and how I can personally reduce my greenhouse gasses in order. I’ve been able to implement the information from this course into my own life and have changed my habits to reduce my carbon footprint. Ken does a great job of teaching the course with readings, films, and lectures regarding global warming.
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The information, while not applicable to my major, was life-changing.
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What i consider to be the most valuable aspect of the course is the perspective. As Hiltner is so fond of mentioning climate change is a cultural problem and not a technological problem. While this is not entirely true as current estimates show that 90% of the electric grid in the US could be feasibly powered by renewables there is still that last 10% we need the technology for. I never considered it from a cultural perspective just a technological and political perspective.
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how i can make personal changes
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The amount of effort and passion from the Professor
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Kept students responsible for weekly material with weekly quizzes.
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changed my perspective on society
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clear content easy to understand
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its world altering topics
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The deep dive lectures, even though we couldn’t connect in person it felt like a personal lecture. I did not mind the length of the deep dives, I found every minute to be pretty useful.
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The films for the course and his lectures.
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the information is very useful and Ken is so amazing
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Kept students responsible for weekly material with weekly quizzes.
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changed my perspective on society
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clear content easy to understand
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its world altering topics
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The deep dive lectures, even though we couldn’t connect in person it felt like a personal lecture. I did not mind the length of the deep dives, I found every minute to be pretty useful.
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The films for the course and his lectures.
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the information is very useful and Ken is so amazing
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I learned so much about the climate crisis through various materials, from documentaries to books.
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The lectures were very informative.
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The materials were fascinating, and your introductions to all of them helped a lot in integrating them into the course’s themes.
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The subject material in general.
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The films.
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Professor Hiltner is an extremely knowledgable source of information regarding climate change and what we should do as a general public to help supplant the progress of the deterioration of our world. I have learned a lot from him, and I’m thankful that I took this class, although I did decided to make it P/NP after not doing well on a couple of our weekly quizzes.
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I think this was really applicable to everyday life that make it really interesting
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The information I got about the Climate Crisis was really interesting and inspired me to make changes in my life.
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The course laid a great foundation for understanding the climate crisis while focusing on step-by-step things we could do to combat climate change.
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What’s most valuable about the course is purely the information that I received regarding real issues around the world, how climate change is a major threat to our way of life, and what we can each do to solve it.
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The most valuable aspects were the individual lectures (not the deep dives or introduction ones), and the readings.
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He is really passionate and interested in what he teaches therefore the learning in this class was very easy and interesting.
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I got an immensely better understanding of the climate crisis.
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I appreciate that this course is all async because it allows me to work at my own pace and manage my other classes. Additionally, I like how Professor Hiltner uses a website to set up the course. It is easy to navigate and clearly lays out the assignments for the entire course.
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The most valuable aspects of the course were the films and the comments. The readings were also really interesting, but I felt that I was able to engage with the material from the films more, as it helped me get a visual understanding of how the climate crisis affects different parts of the world. I also found the comments very important because I learned about so many different perspectives about this issue and how the crisis is connected to so much more than just our environment (politics, social justice, racial justice, etc). I felt that these two aspects made the course interactive and enjoyable.
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The most valuable aspects were the individual lectures (not the deep dives or introduction ones), and the readings.
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He is really passionate and interested in what he teaches therefore the learning in this class was very easy and interesting.
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I got an immensely better understanding of the climate crisis.
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I appreciate that this course is all async because it allows me to work at my own pace and manage my other classes. Additionally, I like how Professor Hiltner uses a website to set up the course. It is easy to navigate and clearly lays out the assignments for the entire course.
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The most valuable aspects of the course were the films and the comments. The readings were also really interesting, but I felt that I was able to engage with the material from the films more, as it helped me get a visual understanding of how the climate crisis affects different parts of the world. I also found the comments very important because I learned about so many different perspectives about this issue and how the crisis is connected to so much more than just our environment (politics, social justice, racial justice, etc). I felt that these two aspects made the course interactive and enjoyable.
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I enjoyed the films we got to watch in this course, my entire family watched them together and we all learned a lot.
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I think this course has an amazing purpose behind it. Students need to be more aware of their carbon footprints and the impact we have on the environment.
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The documentaries and the small lectures.
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Learning about climate change
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Learning about the climate crisis and it’s impact
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The most valuable was the emotion the professor puts into the subject. It makes you want to do better.
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Knowledge for the future
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The most valuable parts were the films and the short lectures. The films were always super interesting and I learned a lot. The short lectures were also the most informative.
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I thought the layout of the class was awesome. However, the most valuable aspect of this course was the course material. This is one of the classes that I will forever be grateful I took as an undergrad!
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I consider the most valuable aspects of this course to be the positive impact it has had on my life and decisions. Not only have I learned about the grand issues that circle the climate crisis, but I have been taught many solutions that I have been taking and teaching to my peers and family members. I value the fact that the professor showed immense passion in his teaching, allowing me to be excited to watch his lectures and complete assignments. This was one of my favorite courses so far and will be sad once its over. Taking this course has truly changed my life.
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I love how after every reading and film there was a lecture to help explain some concepts before we made our comments.
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Ken is a VERY knowledgeable instructor. He is clearly passionate about the things he teaches and it in turn makes you interested in them too. While it was a LOT of work sometimes, he had some very interesting content and repeated things so many times that they were instilled into our brains.
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I feel that the content of this course is critical. The climate crisis will impact all of us, and I wish every student could take this class to learn more about it. I am appreciative for the new knowledge, awareness, and resources I have been made aware of. I feel this class was very well-structured considering everything being online.
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I think the most valuable aspect was learning how I could limit my carbon footprint individually, as well as how I could learned about the grand issues that circle the climate crisis, but I have been taught many solutions that I have been taking and teaching to my peers and family members. I value the fact that the professor showed immense passion in his teaching, allowing me to be excited to watch his lectures and complete assignments. This was one of my favorite courses so far and will be sad once its over. Taking this course has truly changed my life.
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I love how after every reading and film there was a lecture to help explain some concepts before we made our comments.
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Ken is a VERY knowledgeable instructor. He is clearly passionate about the things he teaches and it in turn makes you interested in them too. While it was a LOT of work sometimes, he had some very interesting content and repeated things so many times that they were instilled into our brains. —
I feel that the content of this course is critical. The climate crisis will impact all of us, and I wish every student could take this class to learn more about it. I am appreciative for the new knowledge, awareness, and resources I have been made aware of. I feel this class was very well-structured considering everything being online.
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I think the most valuable aspect was learning how I could limit my carbon footprint individually, as well as how I could communicate the necessity to act on the climate crisis to others.
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Films and contents are really interesting, intriguing, and meaningful. Professor himself is also knowledgeable and charming.
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The documentaries and readings were the most valuable
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I thought the lectures and readings were really helpful and provided so much useful information.
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Ken puts in a lot of effort to try and get his students to understand the climate crisis to its fullest extent. Many lessons can be taken away here.
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I thought I knew a lot about the climate crisis prior to taking this course but truth be told, I learned more than I could have ever imagined. Ken taught us the ins and outs of the climate crisis, what we could do about it, and how to communicate with those that aren’t as knowledgeable on the climate crisis. What I found most useful as how to communicate with climate change skeptics or deniers. Most of my family falls into one of those two categories and I have never been able to accurately and effectively prove my climate change statements. But now I can!!! Also, Ken’s videos are professional and informative. His asynchronous videos are conducted in a way that makes the viewer feel like they are at a serious conference, and I really enjoyed that.
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I really, really liked how much emphasis there was on real-world engagement. I feel well-equipped to go out into my community and help solve this problem, and to take action in my own life to do the same.
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The quizzes helped me really learn the information
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Comments to other students, reading that matches the material in the movies we watch.
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This course is very insightful, informational, and eye-opening. It teaches you about the severity of the climate crisis and what we can do about it, and I find myself applying what I learn in this class to my life all the time.
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This course is one that I know a lot of people take but I wish more could. Ken does a great job of dispensing a lot of life changing information. The most valuable aspect of this course is that it makes you reflect on your life and our society. I know this class has also influenced a lot of people’s actions to lead better lives for themselves and for the planet.
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Learning how to calculate your carbon footprint.
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The actual content itself is something I am very interested and invested in since it has to directly do with my future. I liked the films and they were very eye-opening.
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The material
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Comments to other students, reading that matches the material in the movies we watch.
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This course is very insightful, informational, and eye-opening. It teaches you about the severity of the climate crisis and what we can do about it, and I find myself applying what I learn in this class to my life all the time.
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This course is one that I know a lot of people take but I wish more could. Ken does a great job of dispensing a lot of life changing information. The most valuable aspect of this course is that it makes you reflect on your life and our society. I know this class has also influenced a lot of people’s actions to lead better lives for themselves and for the planet.
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Learning how to calculate your carbon footprint.
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The actual content itself is something I am very interested and invested in since it has to directly do with my future. I liked the films and they were very eye-opening.
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The material
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The topic! I’m walking away with a lot of information and have changed my ways. The movies and short lectures were impactful
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Ken is very passionate about what he is teaching and that makes it more interesting and easier to engage with the material of the class.
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The information provided by the course is very valuable. I definitely know much more about the climate crisis than I did before I took this course.
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Reflecting on my own lifestyle and determining how I want to live in the future. I’m more motivated and open to changes now, for my own, the society, and the planet’s good.
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I think the most valuable aspect of the course was learning how we can become better with how we live our lives for the betterment of the planet we live on.
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I have gained valuable insight into the Climate Crisis. Professor Hiltner’s classes are popular on campus not just because he is an excellent Professor, but students leave his classes with a sufficient understanding of the Climate Crisis to be able to inform others.
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1. His interaction with us is outstanding, I really liked the response videos to our comments and the time dedicated to discussing our thoughts as students. I could go on and on but this course changed my life in several ways and I can’t thank him enough for putting so much effort into a class and making it so captivating.
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How as an individual we can have a part in making a change
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Ken changed my life. I now understand what it means to be happy and why my anxiety about following the capitalist desire is justified.
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I think the material learned in this course is really valuable as it is helps us combat a current problem we have and because it is something we will take beyond the classroom.
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Everyone needs to know the content of this course. It opened my mind to the climate crisis.
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all of the material taught in this course is valuable and I enjoyed learning it
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I really enjoy the readings, videos, and lectures. They are the most valuable aspects of the course when paired with the lectures/ intro videos.
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I don’t think I have ever taken a course as inspirational and eye-opening as this class. I not only learned valuable educational knowledge, but also developed critical humanitarian skills that will be timeless. I would honestly recommend this class to any
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Ken changed my life. I now understand what it means to be happy and why my anxiety about following the capitalist desire is justified.
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I think the material learned in this course is really valuable as it is helps us combat a current problem we have and because it is something we will take beyond the classroom.
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Everyone needs to know the content of this course. It opened my mind to the climate crisis.
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all of the material taught in this course is valuable and I enjoyed learning it
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I really enjoy the readings, videos, and lectures. They are the most valuable aspects of the course when paired with the lectures/ intro videos.
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I don’t think I have ever taken a course as inspirational and eye-opening as this class. I not only learned valuable educational knowledge, but also developed critical humanitarian skills that will be timeless. I would honestly recommend this class to any individual at UCSB. This class truly showed me so many useful ways to save the planet while also improving my own personal life to be healthier and happier! Such a great course and loved every second of it. All of the readings and documentaries provided a variety of content that everybody would be much better off watching and reading.
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Learning how to communicate better about the climate crisis.
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The knowledge about the climate crisis as a whole is valuable.
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I thought that the lectures were really helpful in covering the material.
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I truly value the education on our effects on the environment and what I can personally do to limit the damage I do to it personally. I have already made smaller life decisions to try to decrease my carbon footprint and intend to carry out more in time.
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The most valuable aspects of the course was learning about how I’m able to take part in the action of combating the climate crisis. Another important aspects was how involved I was able to be in this course and the interesting material that we used to learn from.
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I think the most valuable aspect of the class was just the amount of sources and information we were looking at each week. We were given numerous important sources relevant to the courses that helped us better understand the current problem and what could be done to solve it.
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I thought that the class was great overall!
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I honestly found most of the information to be quite good and I liked the inclusion of films like Happy which were not directly related to the climate crisis but helped to paint of overall picture of the society we live in. I also thought the waste makers reading was very informative.
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This class really connects you to a real cause and makes you really reevaluate how you operate moving forward in this world. No other class has ever did this for me. I cant even say that this is just an english course—this is clearly a LIFE COURSE!
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The most valuable thing I got from this course was an understanding of the climate crisis and the most crucial problems in our world today. Along with that, how to deal with these problems.
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I appreciated the accessibility of this course (through easy reading systems, generally correct automated captions). As far as online learning goes, this class was done quite well. The grading systems and methods are solid. I will say it was a little difficult to find information from earlier weeks (I had to throughly search the syllabus many times). The information was divided neatly and I liked a lot of the course material.
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I thought that the most valuable aspects of the course were being taught through a variety of methods such as through lectures, films, and readings. This class was very accessible and convenient, which allows for a wide variety of students in accessing the related to the climate crisis but helped to paint of overall picture of the society we live in. I also thought the waste makers reading was very informative.
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This class really connects you to a real cause and makes you really reevaluate how you operate moving forward in this world. No other class has ever did this for me. I cant even say that this is just an english course—this is clearly a LIFE COURSE!
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The most valuable thing I got from this course was an understanding of the climate crisis and the most crucial problems in our world today. Along with that, how to deal with these problems.
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I appreciated the accessibility of this course (through easy reading systems, generally correct automated captions). As far as online learning goes, this class was done quite well. The grading systems and methods are solid. I will say it was a little difficult to find information from earlier weeks (I had to throughly search the syllabus many times). The information was divided neatly and I liked a lot of the course material.
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I thought that the most valuable aspects of the course were being taught through a variety of methods such as through lectures, films, and readings. This class was very accessible and convenient, which allows for a wide variety of students in accessing the course material.
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The list of class readings and films were the most valuable.
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The most valuable aspects of the course is how the class was structured around the climate crisis through a more cultural perspective and understand what is at stack and the solutions.
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The lectures on what we can do to mitigate the climate crisis
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cool material
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The production value of the videos and audio was very helpful. The clearer audio allowed for more accurate captions which made studying and reading previous lectures a lot more accessible and available for students to learn from.
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informative
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The focus on our culture and personal actions I think was what stood out in this course and was what made it so impactful. I think a lot now about the choices I make everyday and how they impact the environment, and it’s important to lean away from our dependence on technology as the final solution when our materialistic culture is why the climate crisis persists.
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The course materials are highly relevant to our modern climate issue. It’s informative and inspirational, and it helps students become climate activists.
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Every concept is very thoroughly explained.
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The documentaries and short lectures were where I felt most connected to the course material and learned the most. I also appreciated responding to other students comments because it seemed to allow for more of a class discussion.
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Although I found nearly every aspect of this course to be extremely valuable, I found the readings and lecture videos that related the climate crisis to our own lives to be the most important takeaway from the course. Assigned readings such as Project Drawdown and Communicating Climate Change Science really made it clear what the average person can be doing to combat the climate crisis in their own lives as well as how to communicate the issue effectively. I also really appreciate how kind and welcoming Ken is and how he addressed comments that have different opinions in his lecture videos so that students can see multiple perspectives.
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All of the information about the course was available in an easy-to-follow manner on his website.
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The world is put into a wider scope than just the USA which really helps broaden the issues being discussed in class
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Every concept is very thoroughly explained.
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The documentaries and short lectures were where I felt most connected to the course material and learned the most. I also appreciated responding to other students comments because it seemed to allow for more of a class discussion.
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Although I found nearly every aspect of this course to be extremely valuable, I found the readings and lecture videos that related the climate crisis to our own lives to be the most important takeaway from the course. Assigned readings such as Project Drawdown and Communicating Climate Change Science really made it clear what the average person can be doing to combat the climate crisis in their own lives as well as how to communicate the issue effectively. I also really appreciate how kind and welcoming Ken is and how he addressed comments that have different opinions in his lecture videos so that students can see multiple perspectives.
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All of the information about the course was available in an easy-to-follow manner on his website.
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The world is put into a wider scope than just the USA which really helps broaden the issues being discussed in class
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Lectures
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lecture videos
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I thought having the resources to watch a ll the documentries was valuable.
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This was such an awesome course and I really think everything was really valuable and well taught. This type of class and the info from it should be taught to everyone so everyone is aware of the climate crisis and what they are contributing to it.
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I thought this course was exceptionally, I feel so much more knowledgeable about climate change after being exposed to so much amazing material.
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How to communicate the climate crisis, and all of the documentaries. The documentaries gave very valuable information in an easy to-digest and entertaining manner.
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Ken’s teaching was engaging and tied course material to current events.
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The class was relevant to the world as it is today, unlike other classes where knowledge is theoretical or unapplicable this course gives a lot of insight into the world around us.
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A wide variety of topics were covered.
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I liked the deep dive lectures, I thought they were a good replacement for class discussion given the circumstances
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Ken is very passionate and informative about every single topic at hand which makes the class much more engaging then others.
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I think that the most valuable aspects of this course for me was how much Ken related what we’re learning about to our own lives. I also really enjoyed all of the films and readings.
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His approach was excellent. With such a sensitive topic, his approach was welcoming and understanding.
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I enjoyed the lectures and the direct approach to telling students what they can do to combat and take action about the climate crisis.
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The vast amount of knowledge and resources we have been presented with on our, as well as the entire globes, impact on the climate and not just the doom and gloom parts, but what we can actually do as individuals to really make a difference.
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The weekly assignments and brief introductions were great sources of Information, super Informative.
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I think the best aspect of this course was how Ken made us relate the climate crisis to ourselves. He could’ve simply just taught Ken is very passionate and informative about every single topic at hand which makes the class much more engaging then others.
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I think that the most valuable aspects of this course for me was how much Ken related what we’re learning about to our own lives. I also really enjoyed all of the films and readings.
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His approach was excellent. With such a sensitive topic, his approach was welcoming and understanding.
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I enjoyed the lectures and the direct approach to telling students what they can do to combat and take action about the climate crisis.
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The vast amount of knowledge and resources we have been presented with on our, as well as the entire globes, impact on the climate and not just the doom and gloom parts, but what we can actually do as individuals to really make a difference.
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The weekly assignments and brief introductions were great sources of Information, super Informative.
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I think the best aspect of this course was how Ken made us relate the climate crisis to ourselves. He could’ve simply just taught us about it, but he went above and beyond. Further, he encouraged us to share our opinions, which I found quite valuable. He cared about what we thought, and in deep dive lectures, he supported students’ comments regardless of opinion.
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The readings along with the lectures that helped further elaborate on the course materials
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I really enjoyed the lectures and deep dive videos that Ken Hiltner provided us, the readings were also extremely interesting as well as the documentaries.
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I feel like that I’m able to learn a lot in this course and that solutions to climate change shouldn’t only involve technology.
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I liked how it allowed me to reflect on my own lifestyle decisions.
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The challenge the material raises to the student to create cultural alternatives.
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This course was incredible in a variety of ways. Most importantly, Professor Hiltner presented me with the knowledge and tools to become politically, socially, and individually active in combatting the climate crisis. I feel much less pessimistic towards climate change than when I began the course. And now I feel capable of making a difference. Thank you so much!
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I think the curated list of films and readings were appropriate for this class.
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Education on personal impacts
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I liked the way Ken responds to our comments in his deep dives as this makes it seem like we are interacting with him and the course rather then just being fed the material.
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I liked that the class was more to educate than test, I think this information is valuable and has a less of a need to be tested on.
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This course was eye-opening, enlightening, and an invaluable experience for not just my educational experience, but also my life. It taught me so much about topics that are crucial to our way of living and the world around us, and really made me think and reflect on myself and how society is damaging the environment and causing the climate crisis from our everyday activities and industries. It showed the deadly consequences that are happening and have been happening for a long time, and gave us the knowledge and resources to understand how we can change and mitigate the damages we have already caused.
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I really enjoyed when we actually looked at literature related to climate change and in general the aspects of the course that were more clearly a humanities approach to climate change. I think those parts of the course were very valuable.
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The documentaries were very interesting and I enjoyed watching them.
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course rather then just being fed the material.
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I liked that the class was more to educate than test, I think this information is valuable and has a less of a need to be tested on.
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This course was eye-opening, enlightening, and an invaluable experience for not just my educational experience, but also my life. It taught me so much about topics that are crucial to our way of living and the world around us, and really made me think and reflect on myself and how society is damaging the environment and causing the climate crisis from our everyday activities and industries. It showed the deadly consequences that are happening and have been happening for a long time, and gave us the knowledge and resources to understand how we can change and mitigate the damages we have already caused.
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I really enjoyed when we actually looked at literature related to climate change and in general the aspects of the course that were more clearly a humanities approach to climate change. I think those parts of the course were very valuable.
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The documentaries were very interesting and I enjoyed watching them.
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The Climate Crisis offered a very critical and detailed look into the issues the planet faces and the ways our society continues to contribute to the growing crisis the climate faces. Ken offered many resources and solutions that detail how we as individuals can help to mitigate the climate crisis and influence others to follow.
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The GND reading where we read the actual text. -Project Drawdown -Ken’s personal insight on all of the course topics
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The comments were a pleasure to read on Ken’s videos and also it was a great opportunity to reflect for me as well. I think this component was great because I could see what everyone else was thinking and hear other people’s perspectives. Videos were great quality as well and I felt it very easy to navigate the course. There was some disruptions with the academic dishonesty from students which I know angered a lot of students (it frustrated me as well) and blamed Ken (which I didn’t agree with). However, I thought that it was handled well and I was happy with how everything turned out.
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I think that the variety of films was really effective in showcasing the topic each week.
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This course, more than any other course at UCSB, gave me an education that changed my perspective completely. The most valuable aspect of this course is that it will most likely change your life at least in one way. The information we learn about climate change made me a lot more informed on the topic, and encouraged me to change a lot of my behaviors.
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The most valuable part of the course is that as someone who knows a lot about the climate crisis, I learned how to speak about it to people who disagree, I learned that while the solution will have to be systemic, individual action does matter, and that I can be positive when thinking about this issue. I think the movies, reading, and lectures worked well together, and I am happy I took this course.
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all the material in this course is valuable as it talks about the Climate Crisis and forced to think about the culture of our society and what our future needs to look like. I definitely feel a climate crisis class should be mandatory at UCSB.
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I really liked the films and the content of the lectures. I thought that it was very obvious that Ken loves teaching and is passionate about the subject of climate change. Even thought it was a large class, he still gave students the help they needed through the question and answer forum. I thought that I learned valuable information from the course overall.
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This course changed the way I view the climate crisis and operate within the world. Learning about the climate crisis from a humanitarian perspective has given me the motivation to change my own habits to be more sustainable and conducive to an environmentally friendly lifestyle.
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I enjoyed how our discussions were simulated by creating and responding to our classmates through comments on YouTube.
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Amazing. Very inspirational and personable . Wish I could take it again.
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all the material in this course is valuable as it talks about the Climate Crisis and forced to think about the culture of our society and what our future needs to look like. I definitely feel a climate crisis class should be mandatory at UCSB.
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I really liked the films and the content of the lectures. I thought that it was very obvious that Ken loves teaching and is passionate about the subject of climate change. Even thought it was a large class, he still gave students the help they needed through the question and answer forum. I thought that I learned valuable information from the course overall.
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This course changed the way I view the climate crisis and operate within the world. Learning about the climate crisis from a humanitarian perspective has given me the motivation to change my own habits to be more sustainable and conducive to an environmentally friendly lifestyle.
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I enjoyed how our discussions were simulated by creating and responding to our classmates through comments on YouTube.
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Amazing. Very inspirational and personable . Wish I could take it again.
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How could the course be improved? (e.g. additional detail about topics, modifications to instructional materials, different teaching strategies, etc
Quite a lot of content but overall rewarding class. Maybe change the structure of the quizzes they were a bit too quick and heavily weighted
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I understand the use of the timed quizzes because of cheating, but it was kind of difficult for me even after studying and taking notes on everything.
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Sometimes the quiz questions are too trivial.
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This course could be improved by making the deep dive lectures shorter and clearly establishing concisely what are the important takeaways in each deep dive lecture.
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Syllabus is hard to understand and incredibly convoluted. Perhaps break up large walls of text with a graph/chart of the grade breakdown? Tendency to over explain in Deep Dive lectures. Quizzes can sometimes use very specific info which was occasionally frustrating when I did all of the work but didn’t write down a little factoid that ended up being one of the 10 questions.
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While I completely understand the purpose behind the deep dive videos, I strongly feel that they are simply too long. The deep dives consist of the professor reading and reacting to student comments. I really like that he does this because I feel that it is important for the professor to know what students in the class are thinking, their attitudes, and the personal stories they bring up. I admire that he reacts to comments and gives his own insight about them. However, I feel that 2+ hours worth of reading comments and reacting to them is simply too long. It’s difficult to stay focused and interested in these videos beyond the thirty minute mark. At a certain point it just feels unnecessarily long. I would just advise perhaps shortening the videos more. This can help students stay more attentive while watching without getting bored or tired of just hearing commentary about the comments. If time is an issue, perhaps Ken may consider making his other lecture videos longer to make up for the time lost in the shortened deep dives. I have definitely enjoyed the shorter lectures videos such as the one about flying, and would be much more interested in watching longer versions of these videos instead of the long deep dives.
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In the beginning of the course, send out a few practice quizzes of the type of questions we can practice so students can get used to the time limit and question style. I know I struggled with the timing of the quizzes in the beginning so having practice quizzes the first week that don’t count towards our grade would be helpful to increase my performance.
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The course could be improved by having a social justice approach towards environmentalism and more of a critical analysis. Also, please consider undocumented students and formerly incarcerated students who are unable to vote before emphasizing that it is the single most important action we can take and considering that half of these politicians do not even believe in climate change it may not significantly alter our materials conditions.
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The course could be improved by having a bit more time for the quizzes, at least a few seconds more because sometimes I have to reread the questions or answers and that take time which then pressures me to pick an answer very quickly without even thinking but help students stay more attentive while watching without getting bored or tired of just hearing commentary about the comments. If time is an issue, perhaps Ken may consider making his other lecture videos longer to make up for the time lost in the shortened deep dives. I have definitely enjoyed the shorter lectures videos such as the one about flying, and would be much more interested in watching longer versions of these videos instead of the long deep dives.
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In the beginning of the course, send out a few practice quizzes of the type of questions we can practice so students can get used to the time limit and question style. I know I struggled with the timing of the quizzes in the beginning so having practice quizzes the first week that don’t count towards our grade would be helpful to increase my performance.
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The course could be improved by having a social justice approach towards environmentalism and more of a critical analysis. Also, please consider undocumented students and formerly incarcerated students who are unable to vote before emphasizing that it is the single most important action we can take and considering that half of these politicians do not even believe in climate change it may not significantly alter our materials conditions.
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The course could be improved by having a bit more time for the quizzes, at least a few seconds more because sometimes I have to reread the questions or answers and that take time which then pressures me to pick an answer very quickly without even thinking but I liked everything else from the intro to the teaching ways of the deep dives.
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I know the deep dive lectures are supposed to recapture the live classroom setting, but I don’ think they are very useful.
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more writing
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I think the way that Ken runs the course at the moment in perfect. His teaching style is my favorite that I’ve seen so far, he’s adjusted very well to online learning.
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I think the course could be imporved a bit by shortening the deep dive lectures and making sure to not spend too much time on any one comment or on the intro to the video.
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Ken intended for his deep dives to act as a surrogate for his in person discussions during COVID times, but it ended up being more like an extra 2 hours of lecture, instead of a discussion. There was often little content in the deep dives that was useful for quizzes or exams. That said, I watched every single one of them and found them to be often repetitive. Each deep dive would be around an hour long, and often consisted of him reading multiple comments with very similar themes and ideas.
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N/A this course was put together with such thought and organization that there is nothing that can be improved. If anything I would change the quiz rules to be more adjustable to students needs and allow students to be given different questions not from one big pool as that posed many issues. Overall, Fantastic course, Thank you!
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Nothing, its great!
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I would take lengthy notes on all the deep dives and lectures, but still had trouble memorizing certain details for the quizzes even though I had DSP accommodations for the quizzes.
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I personally think the quizzes could be tweaked a little. It’s not so much the difficulty but rather just the execution, maybe just a little bit of a time extension or no sequential answering could be extremely helpful.
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The quizzes are heavily specific and at times are difficult to complete because there is a lot of content within a week to process and remember.
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Though the deep dive lectures are important, I think they are too long. It is hard to stay focused on them for 2 + hours.
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Allowing more time on the quizzes. It is stressful to have 10 minutes for 10 questions
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Considering how dedicated I am to learning course material, I find certain aspects about the weekly quizzes unfair. I think that in order to combat cheating, simply choosing a timed exam or a sequential exam would be sufficient, but having both makes it more challenging for just your average student trying their best. I am more focused on rushing through the exam, and then I cannot use I would take lengthy notes on all the deep dives and lectures, but still had trouble memorizing certain details for the quizzes even though I had DSP accommodations for the quizzes.
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I personally think the quizzes could be tweaked a little. It’s not so much the difficulty but rather just the execution, maybe just a little bit of a time extension or no sequential answering could be extremely helpful.
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The quizzes are heavily specific and at times are difficult to complete because there is a lot of content within a week to process and remember.
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Though the deep dive lectures are important, I think they are too long. It is hard to stay focused on them for 2 + hours.
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Allowing more time on the quizzes. It is stressful to have 10 minutes for 10 questions
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Considering how dedicated I am to learning course material, I find certain aspects about the weekly quizzes unfair. I think that in order to combat cheating, simply choosing a timed exam or a sequential exam would be sufficient, but having both makes it more challenging for just your average student trying their best. I am more focused on rushing through the exam, and then I cannot use that time to review once I get to the end of the quiz.
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None.
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nothing
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I think everything’s great and a lot of issues lie with the students and not the professor.
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Some questions were extremely specific, but I understand it’s to prevent cheating because we’re online.
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I personally liked the 2 quizzes with five questions each from Eng22 because that meant I could watch one lecture, do the quiz, and come back to the other lecture later. Having the quiz be for both lectures means that I have to watch both of them fairly close to the time where I take the quiz, which is more often than not on Sunday evening.
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I don’t really see how it would be improved much other than being taught in person, which for obvious reasons is not possible currently. I felt the course was excellently constructed and instructed, and I would highly recommend to my classmates to take it as well.
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I think including some writing aspect into this course would help round it out.
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Although he has explained that the amount of hours within the films and lectures are the same as in person I would rather get longer lectures than the deep dive lecture videos.
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I don’t think there could be anything really improves, Ken is a great instructor
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The course can be improved by encouraging literary discussion. As an English major, I felt that the class was entirely separate from the rest of my major courses. We did not discuss anything literature related, other than Walden, which was brief and comprehension-oriented. A lot of the topics feel a bit repetitive, so differentiating the units in a more drastic way might feel less redundant.
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Quizzes are a bit too specific. Asks about knitty gritty details that one could have easily missed in lecture.
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Having shorter deep dive lectures.
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This course can be improved with scripts for the Deep Dive for students to read. I know there is a way to get the script, but making it a clear PDF like the other videos would be great!
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longer quiz times
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I don’t think there could be anything really improves, Ken is a great instructor
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The course can be improved by encouraging literary discussion. As an English major, I felt that the class was entirely separate from the rest of my major courses. We did not discuss anything literature related, other than Walden, which was brief and comprehension-oriented. A lot of the topics feel a bit repetitive, so differentiating the units in a more drastic way might feel less redundant.
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Quizzes are a bit too specific. Asks about knitty gritty details that one could have easily missed in lecture.
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Having shorter deep dive lectures.
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This course can be improved with scripts for the Deep Dive for students to read. I know there is a way to get the script, but making it a clear PDF like the other videos would be great!
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longer quiz times
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Supplementary tools for deep dives would be very helpful.
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na
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The only way I could see this course improving is to remove the time limits on the quizzes. At least remove the time limit for the first couple of quizzes. I found it very difficult the first couple of weeks because I wasn’t very familiar with the way the professor asked questions. As the quarter went on I caught on to what was important and would most likely be quiz questions. If the time limit was removed it would ease a lot of anxiety for the first couple of quizzes.
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The readings were a lot for a 4 unit class. The quizzes also count for 50% of the grade so it put a lot of pressure on them. Also it was quite difficult to pay attention for over an hour on each deep dive. It would be helpful to have multiple shorter videos.
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This class was the most repetitive class I’ve taken. I felt like I wasted several hours of my life every week watching boring and monotonous videos, all of which said the same thing in different ways. This class completely took my passion for the topic of climate change and made it something I dreaded hearing about every week. I do not think I got anything valuable out of any of the assignments and I think the entire class was pretty much just busy work. The quizzes were all just on obscure statistics that were stated somewhere within the hours and hours of lectures we had every week so I felt this was unreasonable and did not promote the learning and application of actually useful information.
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Maybe a zoom or something so there’s some type of interaction.
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The lectures should be more engaging to the student.
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Shorter lectures, less videos to watch. Overwhelming work load and way more work then my other online courses.
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I would suggest keeping lectures a bit shorter and less repetitive.
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Stop being so detailed with quizzes
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Nothing. Love this class.
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I’m not really sure, my main gripe has been with the readings, and my problem has been that they don’t engage me, they’ve just been a bit bland. The first few readings we did were good, but as we’ve moved more into legislation or novel type readings I’ve gotten less and less involved.
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Because the class is so large and online, it did feel less personal. However, I understand the importance of reaching as vast an audience as possible, so I would NOT request that the class size be restricted, as the material is super important and applicable to all fields and students.
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Shorter lectures, less videos to watch. Overwhelming work load and way more work then my other online courses.
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I would suggest keeping lectures a bit shorter and less repetitive.
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Stop being so detailed with quizzes
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Nothing. Love this class.
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I’m not really sure, my main gripe has been with the readings, and my problem has been that they don’t engage me, they’ve just been a bit bland. The first few readings we did were good, but as we’ve moved more into legislation or novel type readings I’ve gotten less and less involved.
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Because the class is so large and online, it did feel less personal. However, I understand the importance of reaching as vast an audience as possible, so I would NOT request that the class size be restricted, as the material is super important and applicable to all fields and students.
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I understand that the course is suppose to match in class outlines such as the 4 hour-4unit, but times are much harder for a lot of people right now and I think a lot of the material given and assigned was busy work. I hope next time other peoples circumstances are considered.
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Quizzes are super specific about things that (most the time) don’t advance learning. They are also very stressful because we get ten minutes for ten questions, which wouldn’t be such an issue if the questions weren’t so randomly specific.
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I don’t think there can be anything that can be improved upon other than maybe adding a monthly schedule
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More time for office hours, keeping in mind that many people are in different time zones now. The quizzes were also very specific and detail oriented which I did not like. Some of these quiz questions did not have anything to do with course material, such as when the birthday/age of the prof is. If questions were more focused on reading or lectures that would be more helpful for people when trying to learn the content.
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As much as I enjoyed the course material and understand its significance, the weekly quizzes worth 50% of our grades caused immense stress and disappointment. I understand that in a class this large, it may be difficult to find other grading strategies but from a student perspective, as the quarter went along, it became hard to continue pushing myself to become interested in the material when no matter how many notes I took on lectures, readings, and films, I would still perform poorly in the course because of missing around two questions on weekly quizzes. Along with this, I completely understand the 10-minute time limit especially since this course is online and cheating is, unfortunately, an issue that may arise, yet this comes along with several issues. When the questions are randomized, sometimes a student may get a longer question that makes them select multiple answers at the beginning of their quiz and they may skip through this because they do not think they have the time to answer it, when it ends up that the remaining questions are shorter. It is disappointing to end a quiz, knowing you could have done better if the questions were in a different order. I think that keeping the time limit but allowing students to go back to certain answers would be beneficial and alleviate some stress during the quizzes. Lastly, although I understand that with a course this large grading is difficult, adding a paper in the middle of the quarter or even a group project to even out the grading and make quizzes worth less would be extremely beneficial, or even a participation grade if this course were to have sections. Besides this, I greatly appreciate the work you put into the course this semester, despite the online format, and thank you for helping spread such an important message to so many students! I had a great time in class this quarter!
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Change the video structure and deep dives. No one time or attention span worth to spare every week listening to a 2 hour long deep dive videos where Hiltner scrambles on and no on is sure on what notes to take. Not efficient or educational.
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I felt like the class was surrounded and based more on Kens life than the actual material. It took me a lot of effort to watch these lectures since a lot of the material covered and some quiz questions were about his life instead of on the actual material
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N/a
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The quiz questions were sometimes way too specific and a couple were even irrelevant to the course entirely. However, overall the different order. I think that keeping the time limit but allowing students to go back to certain answers would be beneficial and alleviate some stress during the quizzes. Lastly, although I understand that with a course this large grading is difficult, adding a paper in the middle of the quarter or even a group project to even out the grading and make quizzes worth less would be extremely beneficial, or even a participation grade if this course were to have sections. Besides this, I greatly appreciate the work you put into the course this semester, despite the online format, and thank you for helping spread such an important message to so many students! I had a great time in class this quarter!
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Change the video structure and deep dives. No one time or attention span worth to spare every week listening to a 2 hour long deep dive videos where Hiltner scrambles on and no on is sure on what notes to take. Not efficient or educational.
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I felt like the class was surrounded and based more on Kens life than the actual material. It took me a lot of effort to watch these lectures since a lot of the material covered and some quiz questions were about his life instead of on the actual material
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N/a
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The quiz questions were sometimes way too specific and a couple were even irrelevant to the course entirely. However, overall the quizzes were quite fair and tested us adequately yet challenged us still.
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The quizzes have very number-specific questions. I really enjoy the topics that Ken talks about, but I would enjoy the lectures more if I wasn’t taking notes on every specific quantified fact he mentions. People who watch all of the lectures and take notes still struggle to get good scores on the quizzes. I would appreciate more concept-based questions for the quizzes.
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The deep dives feel unnecessary. The by posting videos instead of having a class meeting, it isn’t actually a discussion, just a response to a few paragraphs by three kids out of a thousand. Not everybody is able to participate and engage with the professor because he just selects a few, and then pretty much just repeats the same thing over and over. It’s boring and redundant and useless.
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No deep dives
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easier quizzes and midterms
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Not sure. Seemed ideal for online learning situation
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I believe the course was taught very well and the material was presented exceptionally. I only wish I could have taken this class in person and that there was a section-time with fellow students to discuss the topics of the week.
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Give student extra time on quizzes. 10 minutes for 10 questions is far too little time.
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maybe we can talk not only about the USA, but also about how other countries deal with climate change
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None. Great job!
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The course could be improved by having shorter deep dive lectures.
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I do think the quizzes are way too specific. Throughout the course, I learned how to study for them, so they did not end up being a huge problem, however I have to spend a lot of time and energy on it and I think the things we have been quizzed on are not really the important things in the course. I like the comments, those allow us to really talk about things and explore how the content is affecting us. But I just really don’t think I will need to know how many acres burned in a specific fire or tiny little nit-picky things like that. I understand wanting to check if we did the reading/lecture/film, but these are just not the types of things I naturally remember. It takes a lot of work and stress. I did love this course, but I think the quizzes are something to think about altering a bit.
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Honestly I believe its a great class, the professor knows exactly what he is discussing and likes to make the class as if it was a classroom environment.
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None. Great job!
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The course could be improved by having shorter deep dive lectures.
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I do think the quizzes are way too specific. Throughout the course, I learned how to study for them, so they did not end up being a huge problem, however I have to spend a lot of time and energy on it and I think the things we have been quizzed on are not really the important things in the course. I like the comments, those allow us to really talk about things and explore how the content is affecting us. But I just really don’t think I will need to know how many acres burned in a specific fire or tiny little nit-picky things like that. I understand wanting to check if we did the reading/lecture/film, but these are just not the types of things I naturally remember. It takes a lot of work and stress. I did love this course, but I think the quizzes are something to think about altering a bit.
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Honestly I believe its a great class, the professor knows exactly what he is discussing and likes to make the class as if it was a classroom environment.
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Deep dive lectures were pretty repetitive and the most boring part of the class. Maybe combine them or shorten them.
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Professor Hiltner’s way of speaking in lectures is very monotone and slow which makes me bored easily and tired. Although. he is passionate, I wish he had a bit more energy to make more students and I engaged in the lectures. I absolutely dreaded the weekly quizzes. 10 specific questions in 10 minutes based on 6+ hours of work. This was awful because there were questions where I had to answer without even reading every answer choice, leading to an incorrect answer (also .5% of our grade per incorrect answer). My suggestion is to give us more time or make the quizzes based on less material!!
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Heavy reading and lecture. The quiz question too deep, too many things need to remember. Quiz too hard and time too short. I may not pass this class.
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I think maybe a section where people would discuss the material in zoom would be a really great addition. Once or twice during the course would really engage me.
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I think making the assignments all on Gauchospace instead of some on youtube and some GS would make it easier to follow. I personally enjoy having everything on one portal and think it could help with organization.
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Mandatory weekly TA sections so we could discuss materials.
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I found the deep dives to be hard to get through because of their length. However, I understood why they had to be so long, as it mimics an actual lecture hall. It was just a bit tougher to get through with online class.
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When giving your weekly lectures, I feel like it would be helpful to have a few bullet-points up on the screen (like in ENGL 22) because it highlighted the most important pieces of information and allowed me to organize my thoughts on each topic a bit better, as opposed to when you are just speaking to the camera for 20 minutes, which I don’t mind for the deep dives, but for lectures, I feel like it could be really helpful. Lastly, it would be really helpful if you could double-check that the Closed Captions are able to be turned on for all of your YouTube videos because for some of them it was not an option and I know a lot of people, like myself, retain the information much better when we can read and hear the information at the same time.
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Although I understand the need to have up to 4 hours of lecture time, it seemed really unnecessary solely because many other professors were taking into account the circumstances we were in. Many had bigger responsibilities other than school so it was deemed pretty unfair for a majority of the class.
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I think more interaction would be interesting. I never talked to a TA, professor, or my peers in class.
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No offense, but the deep dives seem excessive, and in my opinion, hardly present any supplementary information for the course.
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I think the course is fairly streamlined and fine-tuned the way it is now.
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because it highlighted the most important pieces of information and allowed me to organize my thoughts on each topic a bit better, as opposed to when you are just speaking to the camera for 20 minutes, which I don’t mind for the deep dives, but for lectures, I feel like it could be really helpful. Lastly, it would be really helpful if you could double-check that the Closed Captions are able to be turned on for all of your YouTube videos because for some of them it was not an option and I know a lot of people, like myself, retain the information much better when we can read and hear the information at the same time.
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Although I understand the need to have up to 4 hours of lecture time, it seemed really unnecessary solely because many other professors were taking into account the circumstances we were in. Many had bigger responsibilities other than school so it was deemed pretty unfair for a majority of the class.
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I think more interaction would be interesting. I never talked to a TA, professor, or my peers in class.
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No offense, but the deep dives seem excessive, and in my opinion, hardly present any supplementary information for the course.
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I think the course is fairly streamlined and fine-tuned the way it is now.
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Sometimes the quiz questions seemed a little unreasonable because it would be the most tedious detail that was barely talked about that did not seem to have a high value to the course information. However, every quiz after the midterm and the midterm itself seemed very fair if not easy.
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I found this course to be very straightforward and clear. I loved the structure and professor. Possibly dropping one of the quizzes could be helpful in order to decrease stress, but overall this is the best course I have taken at UCSB.
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The quizzes are difficult and do not help with mastering the course content. Since it’s an English class, I wish there were more writing and ways to improve my writing skills. Also, ditch the deep dives and do synchronous zoom lectures. Having to watch Ken speak for two hours was nice, but they tend to get boring and are not at all engaging. Being in a live lecture will give them purpose. Overall, I loved the class and I can’t wait to take another course with Ken.
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If I had to change one thing it would be the Deep Dives, sometimes they are very repetitive and can be summarized in about a half hour. Other then that this course is enjoyable.
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Each week we are required to take a mini quiz on the lectures and readings, while I think this is a good way to keep the material fresh in our minds, a lot of the questions (mostly in the beginning weeks of the course,) the questions asked were extremely specific it was as if we had to remember every single detail from the readings and lectures. In no way did I think this course was overwhelming challenging besides the first half of the quizzes as it required you to remember the minorest of details.
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The quizzes should be another format, questions about small details mentioned once are less effective than big picture or comprehension questions.
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If there was less material covered on the weekly quizzes.
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Deep dive lectures too long and mostly just a repetition of the same material
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None
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I think the only thing that needs improve is that we need to copy and paste first and second half of comments twice in a quarter. I don’t know if it’s ok but I think TA can just grade them every week . It seems to have less work for both TA and the students.
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if the deep dive can have a script
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Personally, I found professor Ken’s testing style horrible in that most of the questions usually tended to ask very specific questions mentioned briefly in articles and in lecture instead of being questions which really should’ve been more related to overall topics and themes we had discussed in the class (Seeing that I really don’t see the point in memorizing random facts when what we really should be doing is learning what the most important information we can get from the course is). With also having only a minute per question, I personally hated this in that a minute per question just in general is never enough time to answer a If there was less material covered on the weekly quizzes.
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Deep dive lectures too long and mostly just a repetition of the same material
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None
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I think the only thing that needs improve is that we need to copy and paste first and second half of comments twice in a quarter. I don’t know if it’s ok but I think TA can just grade them every week . It seems to have less work for both TA and the students.
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if the deep dive can have a script
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Personally, I found professor Ken’s testing style horrible in that most of the questions usually tended to ask very specific questions mentioned briefly in articles and in lecture instead of being questions which really should’ve been more related to overall topics and themes we had discussed in the class (Seeing that I really don’t see the point in memorizing random facts when what we really should be doing is learning what the most important information we can get from the course is). With also having only a minute per question, I personally hated this in that a minute per question just in general is never enough time to answer a question since it typically takes anyone at least 1 minute to process a question with others such as myself who ADHD & Asburgers even longer to do so ( I also personally hated how we only got an extra 15 minutes on test even with being in the DSP program). I know the professor has had difficulties in the past with other students cheating, I just believe that this whole situation could have been avoided and the course itself could’ve been overall greatly improved if professor Ken would’ve just instead had prioritized more project based learning instead of just relying heavily on tests such as quizzes and exams (Seeing that they’re not a great judge of someone’s knowledge, only their memorization skills). Tests in general, should’ve been much more relatively easier and should have allowed at least two tries to take quizzes with similar questions, the highest grade of which being the one which would have had be recorded. If Professor Ken would’ve done this, not only would we have had been constantly been exposed to the same material frequently, it would be further had increased our retention rates on overall important topics covered in the class as well as would’ve likely have not caused students to cheat in the first place. This is since professor Ken has currently made his test to the point where passing is nearly impossible without purely being blessed with having overall easy randomly generated questions as composed to just having bad luck and having to be stuck frantically hoping that you wrote down that one specific number facts that was mentioned in class once and has since been mentioned only briefly if not as all. I think professor Ken cares about the topic itself a lot and the shows, but his overall teaching style as it currently stands leaves much to be desired. I really think he could learn from adopting a more project-based approach in terms of assignments as composed to just weekly quizzes. That and by also making his exams more focused on important overall topics covered throughout the course and not just relating them to specific one time random facts that while although important and add to the overall topic, aren’t necessarily needed to get the point across of what the course is really teaching us on a weekly basis regarding the climate crisis.
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N/A
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The formatting of the course and engagement
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I really don’t think much could be done, surely a small review of topics covered to refresh material before the quizes would be nice, but not at all necessary. This course is extremely fair (except for the students that tried to cheat on the midterm, which was quickly resolved by Ken), and allows students to accurately relay the knowledge they gained from this course. I absolutely loved this class!
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This course can be improved by not having so much lectures because sometimes it can get overwhelming especially if taking more important classes. Also, the exams were kind of hard because the time limit went by so fast and only forward so it was very hard. The exams were also very detailed and precise so it was difficult to transition from courses that require you to learn the overall concept and apply it to scenarios to this course which required you to learn precise details rather than the overall concepts.
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A more organized structure would be helpful for this course. It was hard to manage the variety of different videos each week. The deep dive lectures were also kind of hard to watch because they were so long and packed with small bits of information that were hard to keep track of. The quizzes also asked very specific questions that I found hard to answer at times even though I watched all of the videos and did the readings because they included such intricate information.
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The difficulty with this course is that there are too many lectures held weekly with reading that is stretched out instead of a I really don’t think much could be done, surely a small review of topics covered to refresh material before the quizes would be nice, but not at all necessary. This course is extremely fair (except for the students that tried to cheat on the midterm, which was quickly resolved by Ken), and allows students to accurately relay the knowledge they gained from this course. I absolutely loved this class!
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This course can be improved by not having so much lectures because sometimes it can get overwhelming especially if taking more important classes. Also, the exams were kind of hard because the time limit went by so fast and only forward so it was very hard. The exams were also very detailed and precise so it was difficult to transition from courses that require you to learn the overall concept and apply it to scenarios to this course which required you to learn precise details rather than the overall concepts.
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A more organized structure would be helpful for this course. It was hard to manage the variety of different videos each week. The deep dive lectures were also kind of hard to watch because they were so long and packed with small bits of information that were hard to keep track of. The quizzes also asked very specific questions that I found hard to answer at times even though I watched all of the videos and did the readings because they included such intricate information.
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The difficulty with this course is that there are too many lectures held weekly with reading that is stretched out instead of a 10-12 page summary. The movies required to watch are quite long but it is fine. I still find a problem with the quizzes as I accidentally misclick and continue making the questions answered incorrectly. The ability to go back and fix your mistakes on your exam allows you to fix your misclick. Due to this I usually get 1-3 questions wrong in each quiz. Please allow students to go back and fix their mistakes before submitting the exam/quiz.
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Thought it was all great!
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This is a bit far-fetched (not exactly a note on how to improve) but once class is in person, I think it’d be really cool if the instructor offered extra credit or substituted some assignments with volunteering or involvement opportunities such as attending protests or maybe even starting a vegetable garden on campus! I would love to learn how to grow my own produce. I’m not sure if these things were already implemented before COVID because I’m a freshman.
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I believe that the tests could be more generalized so that the students could enjoy what they are reading rather than taking notes on percentages and numbers that are not necessarily as important as a concept.
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Less reading and shorter lectures
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The course could be improved through less replicated material.
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I think this class is already very effective during this hard time. It could be better if there are discussion sessions via zoom.
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I would have appreciated more interactive components than just the comments on videos. If this course had sections, I would have enjoyed discussing the materials with other students directly.
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it would be nice to have powerpoints or study guide to look at
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The professor was wayyyyyy too wordy in the lectures- a lot of repetitive stuff said in an overly academic way and stretched out way longer than it needed to be. The Deep Dives definitely need to be condensed. The same amount of information I absorbed in those hour-long videos could have been said equally with no information missing in under 40 minutes. And I am not saying this because I was too lazy and wanted this course to be easier than it already was. I truly believe that the time cut from repetitive information could easily be filled with more content and informative material.
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I can’t think of anything. I thought this was a really interesting course and made me reevaluate my choices as a consumer.
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I understand it’s hard in a class of 1000 students, but I think having discussion sections live (on zoom) would be more helpful than Professor Hiltner going through youtube comments and discussing them.
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I feel that there should be fewer tests and more engaging homework assignments. I also felt that the lectures often didn’t have much of a point and I felt that I could learn a lot more than I did within the 1hr+ of Ken talking.
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it would be nice to have powerpoints or study guide to look at
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The professor was wayyyyyy too wordy in the lectures- a lot of repetitive stuff said in an overly academic way and stretched out way longer than it needed to be. The Deep Dives definitely need to be condensed. The same amount of information I absorbed in those hour-long videos could have been said equally with no information missing in under 40 minutes. And I am not saying this because I was too lazy and wanted this course to be easier than it already was. I truly believe that the time cut from repetitive information could easily be filled with more content and informative material.
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I can’t think of anything. I thought this was a really interesting course and made me reevaluate my choices as a consumer.
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I understand it’s hard in a class of 1000 students, but I think having discussion sections live (on zoom) would be more helpful than Professor Hiltner going through youtube comments and discussing them.
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I feel that there should be fewer tests and more engaging homework assignments. I also felt that the lectures often didn’t have much of a point and I felt that I could learn a lot more than I did within the 1hr+ of Ken talking.
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The YouTube comments were not a discussion, but instead simply a response for points. Some quiz questions were way too specific.
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Content was often repetitive.
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I think that quizzes that either have more time or the ability to go back would be nice. Both would give a student a little more time to process rather then last second panicked answers.
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he was the best! no improvement
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Less/shorter readings
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None, this course is excellent.
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While the sheer breadth of the course was interesting, it also made it difficult to really learn alot about a specific subject. I often found myself forgetting around half of the week’s course content by the time I was focusing on the next new idea. So, I think it would be beneficial to focus on slightly less topics for a longer duration of time.
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The questions to not be too specific about certain facts, and let the quiz grades less worth because some of us do study but since the questions are too specific they lower our grades.
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Instead of having comments to show that you are learning, instead do something like a creative writing project where you can talk about everything you have learned in the course. Something like, what do you think is the best course of action? And have this due twice (like the comments) instead of having to submit comments once a week.(still have comments be optional as something fun to do but that way the comments will be less forced)
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the deep-dive lectures seemed excessive. They would be easier to follow if slides or a presentation were made.
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The Deep Dives are interesting as a way to learn the opinions of other peers but the lectures for it feel long and repetitive with comments generally pointing in the same direction.
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Emit the reading and film intro videos
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I enjoyed the layout and content of this course.
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There are certain lectures where it kind of seems like endless percentages and facts are being thrown at us. It’s good to include enough to establish a solid understanding with comparative numbers, but excessive amounts can grow tiresome especially since they can appear on quizzes. This one is more understandable, but for those who are not as passionate about the climate crisis, long articles can be a turn off and end up making the student skip the entire thing altogether. twice (like the comments) instead of having to submit comments once a week.(still have comments be optional as something fun to do but that way the comments will be less forced)
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the deep-dive lectures seemed excessive. They would be easier to follow if slides or a presentation were made.
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The Deep Dives are interesting as a way to learn the opinions of other peers but the lectures for it feel long and repetitive with comments generally pointing in the same direction.
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Emit the reading and film intro videos
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I enjoyed the layout and content of this course.
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There are certain lectures where it kind of seems like endless percentages and facts are being thrown at us. It’s good to include enough to establish a solid understanding with comparative numbers, but excessive amounts can grow tiresome especially since they can appear on quizzes. This one is more understandable, but for those who are not as passionate about the climate crisis, long articles can be a turn off and end up making the student skip the entire thing altogether.
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use sections to analyze documentaries and readings instead of just summarizing again
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I believe the way this course can be improved is by allowing more time on the weekly quizzes. One minute per question gives a sense of anxiety on the students, including me, and that anxiety simply makes us want to finish the quizzes on time more than actually being able to process each detailed question and detailed answers. Two minutes per question may be a lot more helpful with test anxiety- which a lot of us struggle with- and improving test scores.
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I found it a little difficult to be engaged without having any sort of live lectures, especially during the deep dives. I got used to it around midterms, but the first few weeks were really difficult for me
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I don’t mind the timer on the quizzes or the fact that everyone has a different quiz because the questions are pulled from a random pool; I actually thought this was very smart to stop cheating. However, I didn’t like not being able to go back to a question once I answered it. It would have been nice to be able to go back and change my answers, especially when I have time left over at the end of the quiz.
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I think the reading documents of every week should be narrowed down because I found it’s a huge content to be selected for our quiz, which is hard and time-wasting.
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The time limits for quizzes and exams were short considering the amount of content there is each week. The time limit should maybe be lengthened an extra two minutes because some questions and answers are long and take up time to fully read.
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I wish we had a little more time to take quizzes and tests, so maybe 15 min instead of 10, or 45 min to an hour for the main exams. It just gives me a little anxiety because the time goes by so fast.
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I actually think that this course should be expanded and merged with other courses as well,I don’t think my generation is learning enough about it.
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His assessments are largely based on things he said, verbatim, which is tough. Would be nice if there was a focus on how to create content about the climate crisis and not just watching and reading about it
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The quizzes seemed to be a little too hard. I think it would be better if the questions weren’t so specific but more broad
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I can’t think of any way that the course could be drastically improved.
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Ken can be pretty long winded. Some points are worth repeating, but I don’t know if they should take up an entire syllabus or course landing page. (I don’t think this applies to the deep dives though, I think those tangents are extremely valuable). A nitpick for the YouTube lectures: they don’t have to be one take! When reading from a script it’s expected that you’d stumble over your words occasionally, but leaving those instances in the final cut of what looks like a nicely produced video can make the It just gives me a little anxiety because the time goes by so fast.
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I actually think that this course should be expanded and merged with other courses as well,I don’t think my generation is learning enough about it.
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His assessments are largely based on things he said, verbatim, which is tough. Would be nice if there was a focus on how to create content about the climate crisis and not just watching and reading about it
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The quizzes seemed to be a little too hard. I think it would be better if the questions weren’t so specific but more broad
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I can’t think of any way that the course could be drastically improved.
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Ken can be pretty long winded. Some points are worth repeating, but I don’t know if they should take up an entire syllabus or course landing page. (I don’t think this applies to the deep dives though, I think those tangents are extremely valuable). A nitpick for the YouTube lectures: they don’t have to be one take! When reading from a script it’s expected that you’d stumble over your words occasionally, but leaving those instances in the final cut of what looks like a nicely produced video can make the viewing experience a bit awkward.
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Improved comment system, specifically, turn in.
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There was delayed feedback from the TA’s, I had a had an emergency situation but the TA responded a week later. I do not fault the TA’s for this, I just think that for such a large class (of over 1000 students) that there needs to be more than two TA’s. My work from the midterm still hasn’t been graded, I can imagine that the TA’s probably feel overwhelmed dealing with so many students especially since the professor relies heavily on them to answer student questions. This class does have a heavy workload and can get monotonous with hours of lectures, I understand the requirement to have so many hours of lecture in the course but these are not normal circumstances. I think professors should be especially patient with their students during this time, as COVID has been detrimental to many of us. Though the course is somewhat more accessible through Youtube transcripts and captions, the auto generated ones are often unreliable and some of the older videos don’t have captions. The quizzes and tests are way too oddly specific, like what did Ken get a notification for during lecture or having students remember the year professor Ken was born as a quiz question. Additionally, because these questions are very specific it is hard to recall them from memory and it is increasingly more difficult as the test is timed. While I think it’s fine to have the test timed, allotting an extra 30 seconds to a minute per question would give students more time to reflect. I don’t really understand the point of not being able to go back on a question you have answered, as the questions are different for every student and the test is timed. Finally, professor has not updated the ‘extremely important’ course updates info on GauchoSpace since the first day of class, though he does send an email occasionally.
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The quiz questions and test questions are a little too specific for the amount of content that we are given.
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45 minute lectures. We have short attention spans.
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Similar to ENGL 22, I feel like time allowed for sections meetings can go a long way in having a deeper understanding of some of the topics that aren’t able to be discussed during the lectures.
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I know this isn’t possible now, but after COVID, maybe making the class smaller and taking students to practice a lot of what is being taught could make a larger impact on them.
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The course could be improved by having the deep dive lectures live so the class can be more interactive.
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I think it was great how it was.
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I loved the layout, no complaints from me
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The quizzes are too fast sometimes and I felt rushed even though I understood the questions. Slower test takers may have some trouble although the questions are pretty straight-forward.
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Maybe just have more interaction with the students via a section Similar to ENGL 22, I feel like time allowed for sections meetings can go a long way in having a deeper understanding of some of the topics that aren’t able to be discussed during the lectures.
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I know this isn’t possible now, but after COVID, maybe making the class smaller and taking students to practice a lot of what is being taught could make a larger impact on them.
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The course could be improved by having the deep dive lectures live so the class can be more interactive.
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I think it was great how it was.
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I loved the layout, no complaints from me
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The quizzes are too fast sometimes and I felt rushed even though I understood the questions. Slower test takers may have some trouble although the questions are pretty straight-forward.
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Maybe just have more interaction with the students via a section
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Having a bit less assignments given in a short amount of time, but its not really a big problem
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I found the quizzes to be a bit challenging as they are very specific. Doing all the assignments, taking notes, and reviewing still left me worried at times about getting the right answer. Other than that, I really enjoyed how knowledgeable Ken was, and how excited he was to share this information was. I also appreciated that lectures were straight to the point and they didn’t drag on for so long.
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I wish that the quizzes wouldnt focus on the little things. They focus alot on memorization instead of learning the actual material.
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The quiz questions were sometimes very unhelpful and unnecessary. I’ll give a specific example. One question asked about solar panels, and the answers were between they pay themselves off in 5 years, or in 3 years. How is that helpful information when fighting the climate crisis? Why should I have memorized that answer? Please pick better questions next time. A better question would have been Is it better for the environment to live in a warm or cold climate? That question would’ve been much better cause it isn’t strictly memorization, yet it was still in the lectures and deep dives. The quiz questions were the most annoying parts, along with the sequential navigation. Also, I didn’t get any benefit out of replying to other people’s comments, yet I felt much more creatively restricted when doing so. Otherwise, the course was very helpful.
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I really enjoyed the structure for this class. The weekly quizzes is what pushed me to getting my work done on time/keeping up with lectures, readings, and films. I think that the only thing that I noticed (for me at least) is that I enjoyed more the fast fashion week, because the NetflixIsAJoke video was very entertaining since they used comedy to bring our attention to the issue. I think more films/videos like that would have been more fun, but I did enjoy the films we saw aside from that one.
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The class was handled great.
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Ken’s Deep Dive lectures tend to get a little bit long-winded and it’s hard to not lose interest. I would suggest shortening them if possible to make it easier to keep focus. His quizzes also tend to be a little hyper-specific for most folks.
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The deep dives often had very repetitive information that would make them hard to get through at times. I appreciated Ken’s comments on other students’ comments but I wished his videos focused more on responding to the comments and less on telling us the same information over and over again.
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I would like different communication, posts on GauchoSpace with questions I think is good in theory but for me personally wasn’t great in practice. I just didn’t find myself looking at it enough to be beneficial to me. Personally I deal with emails better because of the notification through my phone and going through it almost daily. I like that the videos are online, it is hard for me to sit still for long so I am able to speed them up which kept me more engaged
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The quizzes and exams were more difficult for the fact that you could not go back and forth between questions. I believe this has
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The class was handled great.
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Ken’s Deep Dive lectures tend to get a little bit long-winded and it’s hard to not lose interest. I would suggest shortening them if possible to make it easier to keep focus. His quizzes also tend to be a little hyper-specific for most folks.
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The deep dives often had very repetitive information that would make them hard to get through at times. I appreciated Ken’s comments on other students’ comments but I wished his videos focused more on responding to the comments and less on telling us the same information over and over again.
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I would like different communication, posts on GauchoSpace with questions I think is good in theory but for me personally wasn’t great in practice. I just didn’t find myself looking at it enough to be beneficial to me. Personally I deal with emails better because of the notification through my phone and going through it almost daily. I like that the videos are online, it is hard for me to sit still for long so I am able to speed them up which kept me more engaged
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The quizzes and exams were more difficult for the fact that you could not go back and forth between questions. I believe this has definitely lowered my test and quiz averages.
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N/A
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Some of the quizzes were too detailed. The majority were fine tho.
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i don’t really enjoy the 10 question 10 minute quizzes without being able to go back and forth between questions because with covid and being at home, there’s a lot of distractions that I can’t control and so I didn’t do as well in a couple quizzes
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N/A
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Less cumulative lecture hours: when I watch the lectures I have to keep pausing to take notes and get a full understanding of what Ken is discussing, and it turns 2, 1 hour deep dives into 4 hours worth of lectures. Along with the video introductions to the readings and the films, and the additional lecture(s), this turns into a huge amount of my weekly time spent watching lecture videos for this class, far more than any other class I’m taking.
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I think the format of the deep dive lectures could be improved. Maybe there could be a forum with comments and replies rather than several long videos.
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I think the only thing I would try to improve is the readings. I found some a little boring and difficult to understand.
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The quiz questions sometimes felt too specific. I actually read, watched the films and the lectures and sometimes just didn’t know the questions because they were so specific. It makes it difficult to study because I genuinely didn’t know what to expect on each quiz or exam.
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Perhaps the lectures could go beyond the stream of consciousness, I think it would be useful to put text in when making an important point. It’s easy to miss things that end up on the quiz.
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N/A
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I might prefer a live section discussion over weekly comments because I feel that conversation is more meaningful that reading responses.
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n/a
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In the beginning, we had to watch three very long videos that Ken made about the course. There was so much information consolidated in those videos that after watching them, I felt overwhelmed and a little confused about the format of this course. I think that if Ken simply made a shorter video that went through the basic things we need to do each week, that would be more helpful.
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quiz or exam.
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Perhaps the lectures could go beyond the stream of consciousness, I think it would be useful to put text in when making an important point. It’s easy to miss things that end up on the quiz.
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N/A
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I might prefer a live section discussion over weekly comments because I feel that conversation is more meaningful that reading responses.
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n/a
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In the beginning, we had to watch three very long videos that Ken made about the course. There was so much information consolidated in those videos that after watching them, I felt overwhelmed and a little confused about the format of this course. I think that if Ken simply made a shorter video that went through the basic things we need to do each week, that would be more helpful.
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I think maybe it would be helpful if we were given a more in depth section of this course on diet. We talk a lot about how diet affects the climate crisis, but it could be useful to learn a little bit more about specific diet options we have available to us for maybe just one week of the course. Overall, I think the course is lined up greatly with a really neat process of forming hope in students after seeing how serious the climate crisis is.
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I believe the course is good as it is
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The length of the deep dive videos were a bit overwhelming for online learning. Every week, we had two deep dive lecture videos each over an hour long. We also had several shorter lecture videos/introductions on top of readings, quizzes, comments, and documentaries. We also still had a quiz and comments due during the week of the midterm. I would recommend shortening the deep dives into more concise videos. With this much content, it was hard to memorize/write notes on so many statistics and information that we might be quizzed on.
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Great Job
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Personally, I thought for an online course this class was formatted in a very accessible way. My least favorite thing were the deep dives, but I understand that in a usual year they would take the form of sections, which I understand.
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Switch the quiz formatting back to two 5-question quizzes like English 22.
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I think live discussions on zoom would be very interesting to have. I’m not sure if that would be possible given the current situation, but I think being able to talk about the material with classmates would be a good addition to the course.
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the deep dives are a bit overwhelming to start just because of how long they are
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N/A.
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N/A
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nothing
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N/A
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open quizzes alll week, not just starting on Thursday
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Needs to switch up the structure of the class, it seems to be repetitive and by week 9 I’m getting pretty restless with hearing the same information in the same format. Variation would be amazing.
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n/a
the deep dives are a bit overwhelming to start just because of how long they are
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N/A.
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N/A
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nothing
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N/A
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open quizzes alll week, not just starting on Thursday
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Needs to switch up the structure of the class, it seems to be repetitive and by week 9 I’m getting pretty restless with hearing the same information in the same format. Variation would be amazing.
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n/a
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I feel like this class would be great if it wasn’t all asynchronous. I understand this is a big class but maybe live sections can allow for more conversation among peers, rather than discussion posts. Also, maybe more lecture than reading over comments? or maybe shorter deep dives? I feel like I consumed way more time for this class than most of other 4 unit courses I’ve taken at UCSB
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Have more TA’s because I had to email my TA like 5 times before I got a reposes and also my midterm still hasn’t been graded and finals is next week.
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Some of the questions on the quizzes seem very specific, for example one of the questions was to complete a quote from from a reading we had, even after reading and taking notes it can be very hard to recall specific lines from a reading. Especially with only 1 minute per question this can make certain quizzes overly hard.
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Honestly, I genuinely really enjoyed this course. This is coming from a person who thought they wouldn’t like it at first, this course was amazing and not much you can do to improve it besides continuing to do what you guys are already doing.
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Make the deep dives a little bit shorter. They are interesting I just feel like its a little bit too long for me to sit through
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Sometimes the quiz questions seem unnecesarily detail-oriented (asking about very specific numbers, or specific quotes). But overall the quiz questions were fair, assuming that the student actually did all the reading and listened to all lectures!
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I wish Ken would not simply rip things from his website and paste it to GS, I wish he would have embedded material into gauchospace like most other teachers do as it was extremely difficult to find content and course material initially. Not to mention the syllabus which is a large word blob that is hard to navigate and find answers in.
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Don’t punish people who didn’t cheat just because of a few who did choose to cheat. It would also be nice to shorten the amount of work. It takes MINIMUM 5 hours to complete all of the required material and that does not include the amount of time used to study for weekly quizzes. The sheer amount of time for a class that is an undergrad GE seems unreasonable as yeah there is an expectation that people will take the course hoping to clear GE areas and don’t have the time nor enthusiasm to put in as much work as a major class. On that note, the amount of work in the first week should have been the same amount as all the other weeks as to not be so deceptive about the work load. Thinking future weeks were going to be the same as week 1, I didn’t mind staying. Only after realizing the professor omitted approximately 2 hours of additional work a week did I think the class was way too time consuming. I have no problem learning about the environment and honestly think it is important that people do so. That being said, in this case less is more. I feel that I would be more appreciative and understanding of the material if I didn’t feel like the course was a gigantic weight on my back that I had to carry along with my other major classes + sick members due to COVID + 2 jobs to support my family. But, hey maybe its just me and my terrible situation am I right? Honestly though I hope some of my feedback is taken into consideration as opposed to the others who will simply applaud the class without realizing how fortunate they are to not have such a burden.
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so many quizzes and videos.
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Don’t punish people who didn’t cheat just because of a few who did choose to cheat. It would also be nice to shorten the amount of work. It takes MINIMUM 5 hours to complete all of the required material and that does not include the amount of time used to study for weekly quizzes. The sheer amount of time for a class that is an undergrad GE seems unreasonable as yeah there is an expectation that people will take the course hoping to clear GE areas and don’t have the time nor enthusiasm to put in as much work as a major class. On that note, the amount of work in the first week should have been the same amount as all the other weeks as to not be so deceptive about the work load. Thinking future weeks were going to be the same as week 1, I didn’t mind staying. Only after realizing the professor omitted approximately 2 hours of additional work a week did I think the class was way too time consuming. I have no problem learning about the environment and honestly think it is important that people do so. That being said, in this case less is more. I feel that I would be more appreciative and understanding of the material if I didn’t feel like the course was a gigantic weight on my back that I had to carry along with my other major classes + sick members due to COVID + 2 jobs to support my family. But, hey maybe its just me and my terrible situation am I right? Honestly though I hope some of my feedback is taken into consideration as opposed to the others who will simply applaud the class without realizing how fortunate they are to not have such a burden.
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so many quizzes and videos.
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I think this course has too much work to do. I know that Ken might want us to learn as much as possible on the issue, but this course has so much reading and really really long lectures to watch that it takes up too much of my time for my other class. Therefore, I had to change it PNP. Ken is a great professor though who definitely knows a lot about the topic and is very passionate in teaching it.
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talking more concisely, especially in a youtube video
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Work load is very much considering this class being a GE, quizzes were a bit harsh
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less work each week, change quiz rules, more solutions
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N/A
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I would definitely want a discussion section with a TA each week. Without it, I felt very detached from the class, the whole time wondering how much better it would be if we could talk live amongst peers and teachers/TA’s. Otherwise, I loved the content and the format of the class!
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I know Ken said that the amount of time (videos, reading, etc..) was measured to fit the actual hours it would normally take even if the course was not online. But I do not think he realizes that it takes A LOT longer than what he says if you want to get a decent grade. You do not only have to watch the videos but take notes which makes the one-hour videos take double the time. He also mentions all the time adds up with the. 4 hours of videos, but does not consider that we also have to take the quizzes and write the comments (well thought out comments) which also take a lot of time .. it all adds up to a LOT more time that he mentions. Also, the quizzes ask such specific questions I get amazed… Are we supposed to memorize every single little thing? It’s literally impossible.
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I would have liked to have more interaction when it comes to my ideas, the weekly comments (especially when replying to others) felt like I was just fulfilling a requirement rather than having any type of discussion. I know this course has many many students, but it really doesn’t allow us to discuss much and I think that’s the worse part.
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I do not think there is any room for improvement
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I don’t have any suggestions.
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remove the comment requirement
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Although the deep dive lectures are important and packed with information, I think they could be a little shorter. I, along with other students in the course I have spoken to say they sometimes can get a little restless and bored while watching. Otherwise, everything is perfect! Also, the quizzes ask such specific questions I get amazed… Are we supposed to memorize every single little thing? It’s literally impossible.
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I would have liked to have more interaction when it comes to my ideas, the weekly comments (especially when replying to others) felt like I was just fulfilling a requirement rather than having any type of discussion. I know this course has many many students, but it really doesn’t allow us to discuss much and I think that’s the worse part.
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I do not think there is any room for improvement
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remove the comment requirement
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Although the deep dive lectures are important and packed with information, I think they could be a little shorter. I, along with other students in the course I have spoken to say they sometimes can get a little restless and bored while watching. Otherwise, everything is perfect!
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While I understand cheating is a large issue in this class, I think that the sequential feature not allowing you to go back to previous questions makes the quizzes very difficult on top of the 10 min time limit. While the questions are not very hard, the lack of ability to return to previous questions makes it stressful to take these quizzes. May consider just having the 10 min limit? Thanks.
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The deep dive seem to be a lot of tangent and discussion, I think having those 2 hours each week devoted to learning new material would be useful
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The deep dives seem extremely long for a recap of last weeks info. It made quizzes harder because you were trying to remember one thing Ken would say and feel bad if you missed it or didn’t remember a very specific fact.
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Shorter deep dive videos would be helpful. Although Ken mentions that these videos are supposed to emulate a seminar, they are quite time consuming and not as engaging as some of the other material he goes over. Something that other professors have been accommodating with is understanding that we are not only online during a pandemic, but that we are all under different circumstances. Learning online makes it hard to manage all of our classes, while maintaining a structured schedule when things can be unpredictable. So maybe instead of some of time consuming methods, Ken can get more hands on experience from his students. For example, students can share a picture on guachospace or someplace else showing something they did that was sustainable or helpful to advocating the climate crisis while others can comment on it and get ideas. Students can post articles they read, podcasts heard, vegan recipes, gardening hacks, or video of them talking to someone about the material. This will allow students to apply the material they are learning that week and keep get them to talk about their experiences with the climate crisis. It’s creating change and getting students to talk and participate at the same time. This is equally or can possibly more engaging than a deep dive and gives people the opportunity to work around their circumstances. The quizzes are also very detailed. I understand it makes sure people are paying attention, but some of the questions can be misleading. For example, knowing specific numbers and Ken’s birthday are hard to keep track of. Other than that I enjoyed learning about the climate crisis and solutions and I am glad that Ken gets to share his knowledge with us.
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It was an amazing class, I just wish it could have been in person.
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I wish that there were more slides put on the screen during the lectures. Alot of the valuable and quizzable information is statistics that are only read aloud very quickly, and I almost always have to pause and rewind and keep rewatching over and over again in order to write them all down. If there were slides or captions with these statistics, I feel as though that would be very helpful.
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I think some more live interaction would have helped; I didn’t talk to students other than the couple that I knew before the course started. It would have been nice to have live discussions rather than just forum posts.
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I think the course is taught very well already and I wouldn’t recommend any changes to the instruction method. However, I think it would be more fair if we could go back to questions for the quizzes and tests that we are required to take in the class. makes sure people are paying attention, but some of the questions can be misleading. For example, knowing specific numbers and
Ken’s birthday are hard to keep track of. Other than that I enjoyed learning about the climate crisis and solutions and I am glad that Ken gets to share his knowledge with us.
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It was an amazing class, I just wish it could have been in person.
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I wish that there were more slides put on the screen during the lectures. Alot of the valuable and quizzable information is statistics that are only read aloud very quickly, and I almost always have to pause and rewind and keep rewatching over and over again in order to write them all down. If there were slides or captions with these statistics, I feel as though that would be very helpful.
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I think some more live interaction would have helped; I didn’t talk to students other than the couple that I knew before the course started. It would have been nice to have live discussions rather than just forum posts.
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I think the course is taught very well already and I wouldn’t recommend any changes to the instruction method. However, I think it would be more fair if we could go back to questions for the quizzes and tests that we are required to take in the class.
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His tests and quizzes in my opinion are very stupid. He tests on the minutia of the course and random quotes and who said what and rarely is he asking in his questions about the bugger picture that his questions focus on. Also it is nearly impossible to take notes. His teaching style does not provide much emphasis on things that he tests on such as who said what and specific quotes, it is especially hard because everything involving the climate crisis is so important it often feels as if I should write everything down. My biggest complaint are his test questions that are seemingly on random tidbits I remember one of the questions asked Which of these is Al Gore not and considering all of the important grand big idea topics we had gone over that week I was more than frustrated that Hiltner was testing on whether we remembered if Al Gore had been to law school. I believe this could be rectified by adding visual writing cues in his power points to provide greater emphasis during lecture or by changing the test questions.
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grading comments took a long time
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I honestly wasn’t too fond of the deep dives
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Deep dive lectures were a bit too easy to lose my attention. Maybe make it a but more interactive or shorter.
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using slideshows for lecture videos
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The class was taught very well
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synchronous lectures
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Preparation for quizzes and what to expect would be useful.
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Being able to go back and forth on quiz questions, or have a longer time period
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The Deep Dives were sometimes somewhat repetitive.
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Assuming things stay online maybe have only one deep dive that incorporates both the film and reading that takes around the same amount of time as one deep dive.
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more time to take quiz, even 15 mins instead of 10 minutes would really help – same for midterm and final
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Less lectures.
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I would have enjoyed some synchronous lectures, as I would have been inclined to ask him some questions about himself and more in depth questions about his experiences and knowledge. In short, I want to pick this mans brain on the world and our climate, as I feel like he would be an outstanding source of knowledge.
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Being able to go back and forth on quiz questions, or have a longer time period
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The Deep Dives were sometimes somewhat repetitive.
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Assuming things stay online maybe have only one deep dive that incorporates both the film and reading that takes around the same amount of time as one deep dive.’
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more time to take quiz, even 15 mins instead of 10 minutes would really help – same for midterm and final
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Less lectures.
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I would have enjoyed some synchronous lectures, as I would have been inclined to ask him some questions about himself and more in depth questions about his experiences and knowledge. In short, I want to pick this mans brain on the world and our climate, as I feel like he would be an outstanding source of knowledge.
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I think the amount the course asks in the span of everything else was a bit much- I spent a lot of time on this week and would often fall behind. Very interesting but very time consuming coursework.’
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Having discussion sections would be amazing
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Shorter deep dive videos.
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I don’t have any recommendations
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I think the questions on the quizzes could be less specific, or the lectures could emphasize things that would be on the quiz. Other than that, I really enjoyed the course and learned a lot.
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N/A
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n/a
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This course had interesting material, however, Professor Hiltner makes it difficult to enjoy the class because he assigns a very large amount of work that seems pointless. I think he should reduce the amount of lectures because it requires a lot of time, yet most of the information is not relevant to the class. Additionally, I do not like weekly comments on Youtube, I do not think they are helpful to understanding the course material. I like the idea of an async section, however, I wish that it was done through a few short forum posts rather than watching a video and making a relatively long response. The major aspect of this course that could be improved is how Professor Hiltner sets up his weekly quizzes and exams. The questions are ridiculously specific and since he assigns such heavy reading and long lectures, it is nearly impossible to get a perfect score. The content on his quizzes is often not even related to the class or focuses on minor details. I think he should focus the quizzes and exams more on the big ideas rather than specific dates or quotes.
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I think the deep dive lectures were sometimes a bit too long. Sometimes other topics were discussed that did not pertain to the main subject of the deep dive (the film or reading of the prior week). This made it difficult to follow along at some points and get a sense of what the takeaway was. However, I do understand that these deep dives were made as a replacement of the discussion sections we would have if we were in person. But with online learning, it can be hard to pay attention to very long lectures, so if they could be broken up or shortened it could help students retain the information better.
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I think the deep dive lectures would benefit from more slides pertaining to the facts and figures presented throughout the lecture.
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This course is extremely valuable. But, the workload is intimidating and as proved this semester by the midterm, it makes many students engage in academic dishonesty. With a course this important, it is not necessary to watch 4+ hours worth of videos in order to communicate the overall message. I fear that with this course, students are no longer retaining information and instead are choosing to quickly go through the work. Instead of being a valuable class it became an inconvenience. I really hope this course can be reworked so that it is less demanding of time, especially during a global pandemic where many people are struggling often not even related to the class or focuses on minor details. I think he should focus the quizzes and exams more on the big ideas rather than specific dates or quotes.
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I think the deep dive lectures were sometimes a bit too long. Sometimes other topics were discussed that did not pertain to the main subject of the deep dive (the film or reading of the prior week). This made it difficult to follow along at some points and get a sense of what the takeaway was. However, I do understand that these deep dives were made as a replacement of the discussion sections we would have if we were in person. But with online learning, it can be hard to pay attention to very long lectures, so if they could be broken up or shortened it could help students retain the information better.
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I think the deep dive lectures would benefit from more slides pertaining to the facts and figures presented throughout the lecture.
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This course is extremely valuable. But, the workload is intimidating and as proved this semester by the midterm, it makes many students engage in academic dishonesty. With a course this important, it is not necessary to watch 4+ hours worth of videos in order to communicate the overall message. I fear that with this course, students are no longer retaining information and instead are choosing to quickly go through the work. Instead of being a valuable class it became an inconvenience. I really hope this course can be reworked so that it is less demanding of time, especially during a global pandemic where many people are struggling mentally. The earth is precious and people need to be educated on how to fix the climate crisis, but the structure of this course is limiting the knowledge retained.
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The lectures and deep dive are a little too long
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I think the deep dives could be more interesting and relevant.
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The course website’s intro page and syllabus are extremely long, maybe a little table of contents thing with links to the different sections of these pages would be helpful, rather than having to scroll all the way down.
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This is pretty unavoidable, since the climate crisis is very black and white as an issue, but it can get a bit tiresome because it feels like the same thing is being said over and over again, and that a majority of everyone’s political opinions are the same. This is to be expected because of UCSB’s student demographics, and the demographics of colleges politically in general, but after a while it gets kind of old/bothersome. I understand that there isn’t really anything based around the curriculum that could lead to this being changed, but I guess that was the only thing I had an issue with, it felt sort of like I was being talked down to by other students or the course films/readings, even though I shared the same perspective as them.
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I have no comment.
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Not so specific quiz questions, maybe 5 more minutes!
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An additional 1-2 minutes on the quiz would help a lot. The short amount of time causes a lot of stress and makes it harder to focus on the material because you are stressing about the time. The information was very specific so you did have to check your notes and often times trying to find the answer takes about a minute. I know the short time limit is to ensure no cheating takes place but 1-2 minutes extra is not enough time to cheat, it’s just enough time to relax. The midterm was almost impossible to look through your notes because if you take to long finding one answer then you’re already behind by like three questions. That forces the test more to be about how well you remember specific details then how well you remember the actual material. So if you cannot lengthen the time then maybe making the test questions based on memorable information instead of small details, unless they’re really important. Other then the short quiz time (which should very much be considered) the rest of the course was very enjoyable.
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I would have loved to attend this class in person, however, there is no need for improvement.
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n/a
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I am glad we are calculating our carbon footprints now, and I wish we could have done this earlier in the quarter. I really like the use of documentaries in this class, I feel they were informative and interesting.
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I think there was a lot of video lectures to watch, which could have been condensed a little bit.
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notes and often times trying to find the answer takes about a minute. I know the short time limit is to ensure no cheating takes place but 1-2 minutes extra is not enough time to cheat, it’s just enough time to relax. The midterm was almost impossible to look through your notes because if you take to long finding one answer then you’re already behind by like three questions. That forces the test more to be about how well you remember specific details then how well you remember the actual material. So if you cannot lengthen the time then maybe making the test questions based on memorable information instead of small details, unless they’re really important. Other then the short quiz time (which should very much be considered) the rest of the course was very enjoyable.
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I would have loved to attend this class in person, however, there is no need for improvement.
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n/a
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I am glad we are calculating our carbon footprints now, and I wish we could have done this earlier in the quarter. I really like the use of documentaries in this class, I feel they were informative and interesting.
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I think there was a lot of video lectures to watch, which could have been condensed a little bit.
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Quizzes are tooooooo hard and weigh a little bit too much in the total score counting. Be nicer to next quarter’s students, please.
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zoom meetings with the professor and/or the T.A. would be very helpful because then we can discuss the content as a group
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I think the deep dive lectures were a little long and it was sometimes hard to stay focused throughout it.
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Initially, the quizzes were very specific and difficult to answer given the volume of the reading/movies. However it is generally fair, but I would have liked to have more general and relevant questions for each quiz.
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Maybe holding a discussion once a week synchronously to add student interaction and participation but overall – this class was amazing. I would take it over and over if I could.
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Some kind of assignment besides the comments and various tests would have been nice, like a paper or something. But I understand that the nature of the class makes this tough.
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I just didn’t find the deep dives to be helpful
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This class requires that you watch a documentary in addition to about 2.5 hours worth of lectures every week. I personally find it difficult and draining to stare at a screen for that long. But then again, I’m not sure what alternatives could be implemented that would get the information across effectively.
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Sometimes it felt like the videos responding to the comments could be cut a little short. It is interesting to hear what people say but it seems like the core information could be shared in a more succinct manner.
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A live section would be so much fun for discussions.
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One thing I think can definitely be improved are the questions on the quizzes and tests. I heard on the first quiz, some students even received a question about the professor’s birthday. No offense to the professor, but knowing the professor’s birthday doesn’t strike me as climatically significant. Furthermore, certain questions did not seem to question how well we understood the course but how well we memorized or looked back on the material in a fast amount of time. I was looking forward to learning more about the climate crisis and understanding it better, but the extremely long readings really pushed me to think otherwise. Additionally, there was the incident with the midterm; while I understand that the integrity of the midterm had been compromised by a couple of students, it did feel unfair that we had to expect a entirely new set of specific questions. While I did feel this way, I do not blame the professor for creating an entirely new midterm nor expect any other professor to do differently; I just feel that this situation could have been avoided if the questions were about the content and key details rather than specific, minute details not even important or sometimes relevant to the climate crisis. This GE class genuinely stressed me out more than my two major classes. I just wish that students leave a course about climate change feeling enlightened and changed rather than exhausted and relieved to be out of class.
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A live section would be so much fun for discussions.
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One thing I think can definitely be improved are the questions on the quizzes and tests. I heard on the first quiz, some students even received a question about the professor’s birthday. No offense to the professor, but knowing the professor’s birthday doesn’t strike me as climatically significant. Furthermore, certain questions did not seem to question how well we understood the course but how well we memorized or looked back on the material in a fast amount of time. I was looking forward to learning more about the climate crisis and understanding it better, but the extremely long readings really pushed me to think otherwise. Additionally, there was the incident with the midterm; while I understand that the integrity of the midterm had been compromised by a couple of students, it did feel unfair that we had to expect a entirely new set of specific questions. While I did feel this way, I do not blame the professor for creating an entirely new midterm nor expect any other professor to do differently; I just feel that this situation could have been avoided if the questions were about the content and key details rather than specific, minute details not even important or sometimes relevant to the climate crisis. This GE class genuinely stressed me out more than my two major classes. I just wish that students leave a course about climate change feeling enlightened and changed rather than exhausted and relieved to be out of class.
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More time on tests/quizzes. I am still reading all the answers by the time I need to move on to the next question. I feel extremely rushed and under a lot of pressure and never have enough time to think things through on the quizzes.
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This course is a LOT of time – I’ve never spent more time on a GE. While I enjoyed the work because I was learning a lot, the amount alone is enough to turn a student off from the class. Ken always says how he likes teaching big classes bc he gets to spread climate change awareness to as many people as possible, but i think if this class was slightly less time, more people would be inclined to enroll and follow through on all the work. Had the course been slightly less time intensive, i would recommend it to all my friends, but unfortunately most of my friends cannot bear this in addition to their major courses. Additionally, the deep dives felt exhausting and were too long – if they had been around 45 mins I would have enjoyed them a lot more.
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It was frustrating not being able to look back at our quiz answers before we submitted it. I would have liked to be able to review my answers and make sure I felt confident about my response before submitting.
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I realize that videos are a good way of teaching in the current situation, but by the end of the quarter, watching them was a very monotonous task. Making videos more engaging would help
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It would be helpful if a template for uploading comments can be provided in the beginning of the class. So I can directly write in the document in the desired format.
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It could be a lot more interactive as well as hands-on but the professor would rather focus on his youtube videos.
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The 10-minute limit on the quizzes (with sequential navigation only) was at first, difficult to adjust to, but I believe that ultimately, it was a fair way of assessing students that while challenging, made students make an effort to engage with the material.
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Please keep it up! Thank you again
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Course got a bit repetitive at the end
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The course was great, I loved it! I think something that would make it even more interesting would be about talking about career paths that we could take if we are interested in the issue, maybe guest speakers talking about their careers!
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I wish there were written assignments. I thought that we would be able to engage with the material via live lectures or essays.
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the quiz format could be changed in order for us to double check our answers especially because if your internet is not good it can freeze and you can accidentally tap the next question button more than once and when your internet finally loads again you already skipped a few questions
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I am not sure how valuable the deep dives are in this course material.
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Please keep it up! Thank you again
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Course got a bit repetitive at the end
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The course was great, I loved it! I think something that would make it even more interesting would be about talking about career paths that we could take if we are interested in the issue, maybe guest speakers talking about their careers!
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I wish there were written assignments. I thought that we would be able to engage with the material via live lectures or essays.
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the quiz format could be changed in order for us to double check our answers especially because if your internet is not good it can freeze and you can accidentally tap the next question button more than once and when your internet finally loads again you already skipped a few questions
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I am not sure how valuable the deep dives are in this course.
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This class was well put together and I personally do not have any reason to change it. The content was great as was the teaching. As long as you truly put in the time and effort, it’ll be well worth it.
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Breaking up the lectures into smaller pieces. Not necessarily less lecture, but maybe more, shorter lectures, as sitting through 1+ hour long lectures with little visual stimulus or engagement can be very difficult.
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maybe homework to prepare for the weeks quizzes. also more quiz time, its quite unfair for those with test-anxiety.
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I wasn’t so sure about the deep dive lectures. I would’ve rather just had a regular lecture by Ken without going back and forth between comments. There weren’t implemented in the quizzes, only the information we needed to know surrounding them.
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This course can be improved by not assigning an entire movie to watch every week since many are just for entertainment purposes.
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Some more interactive activities in relation to climate change rather than just reading or watching. Maybe like creating hypothetical climate control laws and writing on the pros and cons of implementing them in our economy and society.
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Though I wish there were more interactions between the instructors and the students. It’s kinda hard when everything is completed online. And sometimes there was too much material to cover, especially since this wasn’t my only asynchronous class. the work kinda piles up too fast for me to catch up. :’)
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The last few weeks seemed to touch on a lot of the same stuff which made it kind of hard for me to stay engaged. The two pieces of media by Peter kalmus were slightly different but still incredible similar.
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maybe the deep dives could have been 45 minutes haha
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A different variation to the way the quizzes and midterms/finals are laid out would be extremely helpful. They are almost impossible.
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This class MUST have a unit (at MINIMUM) on imperialism, the Cause of climate change. Every single week you described things that came about as a result of imperialism and did not say the word or edge around it even once. Most of the information presented is not particularly useful for most people; this class really discusses climate change 101 for rich or white people. I also feel like capitalism was not emphasized enough – it wasn’t even directly presented with the unit on consumerism. I don’t really get your obsession with Bengalis, but please at least pronounce Bangladesh correctly (BUNG-la-theysh). There is a lot of romanticizing poverty, especially global poverty, rather than addressing the root causes of the issue. I’m glad for the emphasis on personal action, but personal action alone is not enough and I don’t think that point really came across at all. I’m not sure why I’m writing this, as when you received negative reviews after being forced to alter the midterm, rather than addressing the valid concerns, you basically said you know what is best and shut down any suggestions for improvement. I would suggest giving a point of extra credit to people whose comments you reply to. The tests and quizzes didn’t test our knowledge of the material. By using
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maybe the deep dives could have been 45 minutes haha
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A different variation to the way the quizzes and midterms/finals are laid out would be extremely helpful. They are almost impossible.
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This class MUST have a unit (at MINIMUM) on imperialism, the Cause of climate change. Every single week you described things that came about as a result of imperialism and did not say the word or edge around it even once. Most of the information presented is not particularly useful for most people; this class really discusses climate change 101 for rich or white people. I also feel like capitalism was not emphasized enough – it wasn’t even directly presented with the unit on consumerism. I don’t really get your obsession with Bengalis, but please at least pronounce Bangladesh correctly (BUNG-la-theysh). There is a lot of romanticizing poverty, especially global poverty, rather than addressing the root causes of the issue. I’m glad for the emphasis on personal action, but personal action alone is not enough and I don’t think that point really came across at all. I’m not sure why I’m writing this, as when you received negative reviews after being forced to alter the midterm, rather than addressing the valid concerns, you basically said you know what is best and shut down any suggestions for improvement. I would suggest giving a point of extra credit to people whose comments you reply to. The tests and quizzes didn’t test our knowledge of the material. By using obscure information, you may think you are forcing students to read more closely, but it actually allows us to ignore the readings and control-f keywords because there is no way to answer the questions in the allotted time without doing so, so there’s little point in having done the reading closely in the first place. You should definitely be asking about bigger-picture ideas than what an arbitrary obscure quote was made in reference to. It would be helpful to see your scores immediately after taking the quiz rather than having to move pages to the gradebook, especially because we should be able to see the questions we missed while they are still relevant in our minds. If we see the missed questions after five weeks when reviewing for the midterm, it has little value. Also please stop praising the white savior films. We can still note their value while being critical thinkers.
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I believe that the course could be improved by implementing more ways to interact with classmates. While the YouTube comments can allow students to discuss specific ideas, films, or readings, I feel like it would be more constructive to have opportunities to facilitate discussions in real time, such as through zoom meetings.
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N/A
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Get feedback on the grades we received for comments
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the ability to go back and forth on quiz questions
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I would say create something to go in conjunction with deep dives, even if that meant a little more work i.e. seeking out an article or story relevant climate change or related to the subject of the week.
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Quizzes each week are a little bit difficult this semester, I hope that quizzes can be easier.
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I understand that this was the result of previous incidences with cheating, but it would be nice if we could look over our previous questions and answers for the quizzes. Even the most meticulous students make simple mistakes sometimes, and I feel like it would help a lot of us if we could at least check our answers with the limited time already provided. Since there isn’t much time to answer each question the first time around, I don’t think that there would be enough left over for students to cheat (especially as these quizzes and exams are already open note).
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I think the course did an excellent job in assigning a doable amount of work, but I still think the Deep Dives Lectures could be a little more concise (like 30 mins for one lecture would be great).
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This course is entirely too much work, and all of it being due at the same time every week is absolutely ridiculous. I feel very strongly that you need to space out when assignments are due each week, and to be honest there shouldn’t be multiple weekly assignments anyway, especially not in the middle of a pandemic when every single professor is already piling on the work. The fact that there were some weeks were I had nearly SIX hours of lecture/video for this course is not ok. Online class is not an excuse to assign that much for students to watch each week. I took this course as a GE and it was at least 3 times the amount of work I had to put in for all the classes I took for my major. Additionally, if you change one thing about this class PLEASE change the fact that you make film comments, reading comments, and a quiz all due at about the same time as the midterm and final. Having any I understand that this was the result of previous incidences with cheating, but it would be nice if we could look over our previous questions and answers for the quizzes. Even the most meticulous students make simple mistakes sometimes, and I feel like it would help a lot of us if we could at least check our answers with the limited time already provided. Since there isn’t much time to answer each question the first time around, I don’t think that there would be enough left over for students to cheat (especially as these quizzes and exams are already open note).
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I think the course did an excellent job in assigning a doable amount of work, but I still think the Deep Dives Lectures could be a little more concise (like 30 mins for one lecture would be great).
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This course is entirely too much work, and all of it being due at the same time every week is absolutely ridiculous. I feel very strongly that you need to space out when assignments are due each week, and to be honest there shouldn’t be multiple weekly assignments anyway, especially not in the middle of a pandemic when every single professor is already piling on the work. The fact that there were some weeks were I had nearly SIX hours of lecture/video for this course is not ok. Online class is not an excuse to assign that much for students to watch each week. I took this course as a GE and it was at least 3 times the amount of work I had to put in for all the classes I took for my major. Additionally, if you change one thing about this class PLEASE change the fact that you make film comments, reading comments, and a quiz all due at about the same time as the midterm and final. Having any assignment due the day before/of a final is already ridiculous for any class, but making multiple things due is cruel and it is a blatant disregard for students’ time. I know you justify this by saying that the quiz will help us study for the tests, but it absolutely does not. It just means that we have to get through another 4-6 hours of videos, a long reading, write about both those things, all while trying to study for exams worth large portions of our grades. It is unfair to ask students to review all the old material while they are still trying to learn new material. If the quizzed material is going to be on the test, make the midterm later or at least try and change SOMETHING. I know you get a number of complaints about this and over the span of the quarter I have never once seen you respond to criticism with the maturity and self-reflection that a professor needs to have. If multiple students have a complaint about something, you should work to find a solution to that problem – you should not immediately get defensive and start talking about how many students actually like the way you do things. It doesn’t matter if many students do like the way your class runs – many of them make it clear that they do not and you should work on trying to fix that. I know that being a teacher must be very difficult and there will always be complaints, but I think students would really appreciate it in the future if you made it clear to them that you were making an effort to improve the course.
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There could be more detail about the true statistics around cowspiracy and emphasis on them for a bit longer so people are not turned off my the misinformation. Potentially also one deep dive rather than two over both of the previous week’s materials.
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When the class is asynchronous, maybe it would be useful to have a suggested schedule for the material so that students who have difficulty managing time could have some direction. At first, the quizzes seemed unreasonably specific / difficult, but after taking good notes and engaging with all the materials assigned, they became much easier!
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The quizzes were quite difficult and had a lot of trick questions.
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not have 50% of the class be based on quizzes
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This class was ASYNC and overall I did not feel like I was being listened to. The lectures were on youtube rather than Gauchospace, making it seem that the professor was trying to gain things for himself rather than for his students. He did not take criticism very well and complained over email rather than take under consideration what students were struggling with. I thought the format of the course was not accessible for students and did not test my knowledge on the subject, but how many views his youtube videos would get. He is clearly interested in the topic but seems to preach rather than teach the subject.
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N/A
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The quizzes were really hard and although I personally didn’t (and it caused my grade to suffer) many kids cheated and affected the curve
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Perhaps with more student interaction, or a small sense of community. I love the way the class was set up and all of the material that was taught, however it would have been nice to have smaller group discussions in a section setting or something like that.
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Significantly less material to cover. There is an overwhelming amount of content that has to be done, and while the tests are fair
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This class was ASYNC and overall I did not feel like I was being listened to. The lectures were on youtube rather than Gauchospace, making it seem that the professor was trying to gain things for himself rather than for his students. He did not take criticism very well and complained over email rather than take under consideration what students were struggling with. I thought the format of the course was not accessible for students and did not test my knowledge on the subject, but how many views his youtube videos would get. He is clearly interested in the topic but seems to preach rather than teach the subject.
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N/A
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The quizzes were really hard and although I personally didn’t (and it caused my grade to suffer) many kids cheated and affected the curve
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Perhaps with more student interaction, or a small sense of community. I love the way the class was set up and all of the material that was taught, however it would have been nice to have smaller group discussions in a section setting or something like that.
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Significantly less material to cover. There is an overwhelming amount of content that has to be done, and while the tests are fair in difficulty it requires one to have read every single piece of material, which isn’t easy. Furthermore, it would be nice to have a cleaner UI on gauchospace. See Professor Silke Werth’s organization of online classes for an ideal example of what an online course Gauchospace page should be.
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It would be more helpful if the course was more focused on the material rather than other’s comments. I think talking about the comments is helpful but we could spend less time focusing on the and more time having a discussion on the topics covered that week.
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This course could be improved by giving the students more time in their exams.
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Shorter deep dives so that more knowledge can be retained.
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Couldn’t be.
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I think this course is structured well where I felt I learned the material and it was presented in an engaging way. I think the amount of homework is perfect and this class is structured very well.
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I think the class is well formatted.
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The way quizzes and the midterm/final are formatted should be changed! It is incredibly frustrating to complete weekly assignments expecting to be prepared for quizzes and then not be. Quizzes ask extremely specific questions. For example, I’m not going to remember what kind of text Ken received or the first person interviewed in a film… I’m not taking notes on such frivolous things, I’m taking notes on the climate crisis since that’s what this course is about. The time limit on quizzes doesn’t help, it’s anxiety inducing and just forces students to rush through it at some points.
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For online class, I don’t think Ken can do much more. He really does the most that he can.
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Making the Deep Dives shorter, it felt like there was too little of the important information, and maybe about 30 minutes of non related material.
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I love this class the way it is, just wish I got to have it in person.
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Some of the lectures were very repetitive.
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The class is very well organized and I have no complaints
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I realize that Professor Hiltner read last year’s Rate My Professors comments saying that his quizzes were easy, and that is why he made them difficult this year. I did not find the questions too difficult, but I think his change in the type of questions he asked made the quizzes less valuable. Some of the questions were about minute details in the readings and lectures that do not actually demonstrate whether or not we grasp the important information about the climate crisis. I think it would be much more helpful if
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For online class, I don’t think Ken can do much more. He really does the most that he can.
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Making the Deep Dives shorter, it felt like there was too little of the important information, and maybe about 30 minutes of non related material.
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I love this class the way it is, just wish I got to have it in person.
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Some of the lectures were very repetitive.
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The class is very well organized and I have no complaints
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I realize that Professor Hiltner read last year’s Rate My Professors comments saying that his quizzes were easy, and that is why he made them difficult this year. I did not find the questions too difficult, but I think his change in the type of questions he asked made the quizzes less valuable. Some of the questions were about minute details in the readings and lectures that do not actually demonstrate whether or not we grasp the important information about the climate crisis. I think it would be much more helpful if the questions were less about memorization and more about whether or not we understand the course concepts.
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more time on quizzes i felt it was quite unfair the way they were done and questions were way too specific even if you did do all the material also quizzes held way too much weight for what they were i think there is way too much assigned work and i took english 22 and it was just fine it was really overwhelming and discouraging when you put so much effort and continue to score low on quizzes
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The material was not difficult, but the way he structures his assignments and course information made this quarter so much harder than it had to be. In his attempt to make the class more engaging, I think he failed to understand that much of the weekly assignments ended up being just fluff that was hard to keep up with. He could focus on cutting down the number of lectures or at least consolidate everything into one or two long lectures. Having 5 or 6 different mini-lectures per week was incredibly unreasonable and hard to keep track of.
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I think a more upbeat approach could be inspiring to students
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One improvement to this course could potentially be adding a breakout room segment so that we as students may converse with each other about the material presented in class. I understand this is substituted by the comments on Ken’s videos, but I feel like a breakout room may be better.
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I think the course was very flexible and full of resources and materials to help learn and understand it.
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The due dates/times of assignments were really weird, I personally think midnight would be better.
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I did not think the deep dive lectures were a very good use of time, I felt like it was a lot of repetition of the previous week’s content. I also felt that 10 minutes for a 10 question quiz with sequential navigation was quite stressful and too short of an amount of time to complete the quiz. It caused me a lot of anxiety and real quizzes do not exist like this, so it bothered me a lot.
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I feel that more active discussion amongst students, beyond the comment responses, would help promote more ideas and understanding.
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On gauchospace some of the links open in the same tab rather than a new tab, which can be a bit frustrating when I need to navigate both the link and the GS page. It would be nice to receive our grades for Batch 1 comments before week 9.
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The website could be organized a bit better in my opinion! Having a bunch of text on one page was kind of a hassle to scroll up and down.
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I think that deep dives should be shorter and not be over an hour. However, I do appreciate how all materials were either free or provided on GauchoCast.
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I did not think the deep dive lectures were a very good use of time, I felt like it was a lot of repetition of the previous week’s content. I also felt that 10 minutes for a 10 question quiz with sequential navigation was quite stressful and too short of an amount of time to complete the quiz. It caused me a lot of anxiety and real quizzes do not exist like this, so it bothered me a lot.
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I feel that more active discussion amongst students, beyond the comment responses, would help promote more ideas and understanding.
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On gauchospace some of the links open in the same tab rather than a new tab, which can be a bit frustrating when I need to navigate both the link and the GS page. It would be nice to receive our grades for Batch 1 comments before week 9.
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The website could be organized a bit better in my opinion! Having a bunch of text on one page was kind of a hassle to scroll up and down.
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I think that deep dives should be shorter and not be over an hour. However, I do appreciate how all materials were either free or provided on GauchoCast.
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I think some of the documentaries that we watched could be changed. I liked the minimalism youtube videos much more than the documentary we watched that week, so I rather that those were the primary materials instead.
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personally I don’t like thoreau that much,I think his writing style is overly difficult for his time and there must be better texts :). I do wish there were more diverse films and writers- it seems like white men where the dominant theme. I wish we talked more about how wealth impacts the carbon footprint of people in the US bc some of the solutions were targeted towards students from upper class standings, and I wasn’t sure if it was because they are they ones that pollute more or because it was assumed they are the main demographic. I also felt there was a lot of repetition in the lectures- it was rare to find new information as the course progressed. I also struggled with taking notes for the deep dives and lectures because the information on the quizzes seems a bit arbitrary, so I wish there was more clarification and more intention with the quizzes.
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I would greatly appreciate if the lectures had slides or words on them, especially the statistics or data points. For me it was difficult to watch the lectures and try to choose which information was most important. I also think that although the reading was interesting, many of the initial ones were way too long and made me lose interest.
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I felt that the deep dives added a lot to the workload. While I do understand why the professor made them and enjoy watching them, there were two a week both about an hour a long to add on to the weekly documentary usually also an hour long as well as the other assignments. I don’t think the professor should get rid of the deep dives, but perhaps shorten them a bit. I also felt at times, some of the quiz questions were oddly very specific which can be difficult.
Are all the ratings here in their entirety? Yes, the good, the bad, and the ungrammatical, they are all here. They have not been edited in any way.
Are the ratings anonymous? Yes, students do not put their names on the evaluations. Moreover, instructors are not given access to the evaluations until after they have posted all of the grades for the course.
How do these ratings compare with RateMyProfessor.com? RateMyProfessor.com and UCSB are attempting similar evaluations. UCSB asks students to “rate the overall quality of the instructor’s teaching”; RateMyProfessor.com evaluates the “overall quality” of a professor based on their clarity and helpfulness. Since both use a scale of 1-5, ratings should be somewhat comparable. However, because just a handful of students post ratings on RateMyProfessor.com – often only those that feel strongly about a course (either positively or negatively) – the results can potentially be skewed. In contrast, because every student in the class is asked by UCSB for their ratings and comments, the ESCI data provides a much larger, and potentially more accurate, sampling. As noted above, there are thousands of reviews here.
How does the rating scale work? It is a five-point scale: (a) excellent, (b) very good, (c) good, (d) fair, and (e) poor. However, unlike nearly every other similar rating system in existence, at UCSB 1 is “excellent” and 5 is “poor.” To avoid confusion and bring this in line with the rest of the world, I have taken the liberty of inverting the scale, so that 5 is excellent.
Who administers the ratings & what is “ESCI”? The rating system, which is officially known as ESCI (Evaluation System for Courses and Instruction), is administered by the UCSB Office of Instructional Development. Ratings are typically refered to as “ESCI scores” or “ESCI data.”
How long has UCSB been conducting the ratings? The UCSB Office of Instructional Development began the system in the 1970s. Which leads to the next obvious question…
Why doesn’t UCSB publish these ratings? I just don’t know. Other schools, such as Harvard University, have for decades made similar material, known as their Course Unit Evaluations (CUEs) available to students, who annually published the ratings and comments in their CUE Guide. In my opinion, UCSB needs to make this data public. This leads to the next question…
Are you permitted to make this information public? According to the Office of Instructional Development in 2019, “Faculty members own their individual ESCI data. ESCI data are collected as an aid to individual faculty members for use as summative feedback on their courses and instruction. As such, individual ESCI results are the property of the faculty member.” I interpret this to mean that, as my property, ESCI data is mine to do with as I see fit – including posting online.
Do all departments ask students for ratings? Yes, the ESCI program is university-wide at UCSB.
Do you respond to the feedback? In fact, I do. Since the reviews are anonymous, I cannot respond to the student who made the comment, but I take the comments to heart and act upon them when creating and refining courses. For example, my Intro to Literature and the Environment course, which I have been teaching since the first term that I arrived at UCSB and which I have taught at least once a year on average ever since, has been much improved over the years by my responding to the feedback given to me by students. I – along with subsequent students that have taken the class – owe each of the students that provided feedback a debt of thanks, as it is in part a much better course because of them.