BSCI334 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Katerina Thompson BSCI334 Anonymous 05/19/2024	I have no complaints about Dr. Thompson, she's kind and explains the content well, and she even let me take the class despite not meeting one of the prerequisites. The content itself isn't particularly difficult to learn, she makes the outlines of the lectures available, which includes important terms and pictures but not the explanations that she gives in class. Luckily she also has her pandemic recorded videos available for you to watch too incase you missed a class. This class has pretty frequent assignments that requires you to read a paper and answer a question about it as well as unit quizzes, but the TAs don't grade harsh and you get three attempts per quiz. Where I kind of stumbled at first is that the exams are pretty close ended and they look for very specific things, but its outweighed by the fact that she gives you 6 questions that you pick 5 from and she makes the questions available for you to look at before the actual exam (this is crazy, I've never had a prof that does this and it's super refreshing). If you're looking for a class that's got some interesting content and isn't too difficult, then I'd recommend this one for sure
Katerina Thompson BSCI334 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2023	I thought the class was easy enough. Dr. Thompson was very good at clarifying questions. We also got to watch a lot of cute mammal videos. She teaches off of her website, which is a little bit of a strange format but it surprisingly works well. Theres a lot of hyperlinks to videos, websites, and photos that better explain what is on the website, which makes taking notes a breeze. Additionally, she also provides the exact questions that will be on the exam prior to the exam itself so that you can prepare. I found this very helpful because the topics can be a bit tricky to wrap your mind around at times.
Katerina Thompson BSCI334 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/22/2022	Dr. Thompson is a great professor and carries an extensive knowledge on mammals. There may be a lot of information on the outline, but Dr. Thompson wants you to focus on the essential details rather than memorizing everything. I really enjoyed the in-class group activities: worksheets and jigsaw (we would be assigned to read an article for homework and discuss with a group during class). The quizzes are great as long as you carefully review the lecture material (which is recorded). The challenging part of this class are exams which contain six short answer questions, and you are required to answer only 5 of them. Here's the thing, the exam questions are fine but to do well you have to make sure that your answer is almost identical to her answer key. So, these are not really open-ended questions but very closed ended questions. Even if your answer is right, if you miss a detail or two you could lose a lot of points. She did end up curving the class due to our low exam averages. I did learn a lot from this class. The most surprising thing that I learned from this class was that rabbits are not rodents but in fact are lagomorphs lol.
Katerina Thompson BSCI334 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/31/2012	This professor is one of the best I've ever had. She actually cares about teaching a class and is passionate about the material. Lectures can be tedious sometimes (what ones aren't?), but she mixes it up with videos and pictures. Exams are appropriately difficult but do-able if you have studied hard. Like most zoology (mammalology, herp, ornithology) courses, this class requires a lot of memorization. However, the exams are not tricky, don't have questions on topics that weren't covered in class, and draw HEAVILY on old exams.
Katerina Thompson BSCI334 Anonymous 05/22/2012	Her exams are obtuse and the wording is vague so when in doubt, just fill the page up with everything you seem to know about the topic or else you'd lose points. (And you'd lose points for saying the wrong thing too.) multiple choice seems easy enough, but the questions are tricky to say the least. there was one question that was word for word taken from one of the practice finals and she changed ONE option in the selection and all of the sudden, she nailed you on that one because you chose the same answer as the practice exam. the topic is not difficult, its just a lot of memorization which means flash cards and tables everybodyyyyy... brush up on your latin and maybe you'll be able to remember Order names for more than 12 hours. I'd say it'd probably be beneficial to take her lab to study the specimens because she'd ask minutia about that too and its hard to remember every stinkin detail about skulls in lecture alone. But in the end, she is a very nice person and gave us freebies for the final. :)

Katerina Thompson
BSCI334

Anonymous
05/19/2024

I have no complaints about Dr. Thompson, she's kind and explains the content well, and she even let me take the class despite not meeting one of the prerequisites. The content itself isn't particularly difficult to learn, she makes the outlines of the lectures available, which includes important terms and pictures but not the explanations that she gives in class. Luckily she also has her pandemic recorded videos available for you to watch too incase you missed a class. This class has pretty frequent assignments that requires you to read a paper and answer a question about it as well as unit quizzes, but the TAs don't grade harsh and you get three attempts per quiz. Where I kind of stumbled at first is that the exams are pretty close ended and they look for very specific things, but its outweighed by the fact that she gives you 6 questions that you pick 5 from and she makes the questions available for you to look at before the actual exam (this is crazy, I've never had a prof that does this and it's super refreshing). If you're looking for a class that's got some interesting content and isn't too difficult, then I'd recommend this one for sure

Katerina Thompson
BSCI334

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/10/2023

I thought the class was easy enough. Dr. Thompson was very good at clarifying questions. We also got to watch a lot of cute mammal videos. She teaches off of her website, which is a little bit of a strange format but it surprisingly works well. Theres a lot of hyperlinks to videos, websites, and photos that better explain what is on the website, which makes taking notes a breeze. Additionally, she also provides the exact questions that will be on the exam prior to the exam itself so that you can prepare. I found this very helpful because the topics can be a bit tricky to wrap your mind around at times.

Katerina Thompson
BSCI334

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/22/2022

Dr. Thompson is a great professor and carries an extensive knowledge on mammals. There may be a lot of information on the outline, but Dr. Thompson wants you to focus on the essential details rather than memorizing everything. I really enjoyed the in-class group activities: worksheets and jigsaw (we would be assigned to read an article for homework and discuss with a group during class). The quizzes are great as long as you carefully review the lecture material (which is recorded). The challenging part of this class are exams which contain six short answer questions, and you are required to answer only 5 of them. Here's the thing, the exam questions are fine but to do well you have to make sure that your answer is almost identical to her answer key. So, these are not really open-ended questions but very closed ended questions. Even if your answer is right, if you miss a detail or two you could lose a lot of points. She did end up curving the class due to our low exam averages. I did learn a lot from this class. The most surprising thing that I learned from this class was that rabbits are not rodents but in fact are lagomorphs lol.

Katerina Thompson
BSCI334

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/31/2012

This professor is one of the best I've ever had. She actually cares about teaching a class and is passionate about the material. Lectures can be tedious sometimes (what ones aren't?), but she mixes it up with videos and pictures. Exams are appropriately difficult but do-able if you have studied hard. Like most zoology (mammalology, herp, ornithology) courses, this class requires a lot of memorization. However, the exams are not tricky, don't have questions on topics that weren't covered in class, and draw HEAVILY on old exams.

Katerina Thompson
BSCI334

Anonymous
05/22/2012

Her exams are obtuse and the wording is vague so when in doubt, just fill the page up with everything you seem to know about the topic or else you'd lose points. (And you'd lose points for saying the wrong thing too.) multiple choice seems easy enough, but the questions are tricky to say the least. there was one question that was word for word taken from one of the practice finals and she changed ONE option in the selection and all of the sudden, she nailed you on that one because you chose the same answer as the practice exam. the topic is not difficult, its just a lot of memorization which means flash cards and tables everybodyyyyy... brush up on your latin and maybe you'll be able to remember Order names for more than 12 hours. I'd say it'd probably be beneficial to take her lab to study the specimens because she'd ask minutia about that too and its hard to remember every stinkin detail about skulls in lecture alone. But in the end, she is a very nice person and gave us freebies for the final. :)

Reviews for BSCI334