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Colleen Ho HIST319R Expecting an A Anonymous 05/22/2021	HIST319R with Dr. Ho is an awesome class, the material will definitely change your perception of the Mongols' impact/legacy on World History. Dr. Ho is a great teacher and integrated student questions from discussion posts in lectures to facilitate active class discussion. I learned a lot and genuinely enjoyed attending the synchronous lectures. Like previous reviews have said, there is a substantial amount of reading in the class, but this is an upper-level history class so you should expect to encounter a lot of reading regardless. With these readings come discussion posts that are due twice a week like another review mentioned. To be honest, these discussion posts are totally what you make of them. As long as you contribute questions/comments that are mildly interesting and/or critical, you will be just fine. I've seen people post the most mundane things every week and yet still the average for each discussion assignment was at least a 90%. If there is any criticism for this class, it would probably be the way the final exam was organized; 6 potential exam questions with your eventual exam question being chosen at random during a private meeting with the professor was not my cup of tea. Either you had to work pretty hard to prepare for all questions, or you had to play the odds for a specific question to be chosen. Overall, if the Mongols have ever interested you and you have no problem with dense but manageable readings/discussion posts, then definitely take this class.
Colleen Ho HIST319R Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/12/2021	Dr. Ho is great at teaching. And her class is exceptionally well-organized. HIST319R is a class with very interesting subject matter and Dr. Ho does a good job of making sure it's an enjoyable class. However, it is a lot of reading. The readings get smaller and smaller as the semester goes on, but you'll be reading 80-100 pages a week in the first couple weeks, and 40-60 for a majority of the semester. Only late in the semester do the readings become only 20 or so pages per week. Also, the final exam is a ridiculous amount of work. There are 6 possible questions, and 1 is picked at random when you take the exam. Oh yeah, it's an oral exam, too. That's no good. So you'll need to prepare a response to each of these questions, and all but 1 of them will end up having been a waste of time. I wrote ~1000 words for each response, and I had to do it in the span of a week. Having to read a lot each week isn't that big a deal, it's kind of par for the course for a history class. But the final exam for this class is kind of brutal. The questions aren't even that hard or anything. And despite it being an oral exam, she doesn't grade it based on your speaking skills. So I think I'll get a good grade on it. But the amount of work was insane. I'm still giving Dr. Ho 4 stars because she is a genuinely great teacher. If the final exam were better I'd easily give her 5 stars.
Colleen Ho HIST319R Anonymous 04/22/2021	Professor Ho is a very knowledgeable and helpful professor. However, much of the course structure is very frustrating. Expect for the first 2/3rds of the course to have 100+ pages of reading a week. Lecture quizzes are based on off-hand comments made during them that 90% of the time are not on the lecture slides and factoids that either are not relevant to the material, or you wouldn't think to write down, such as the technically correct pronunciation of her surname (yep, lost a point for getting that wrong since I didn't think to make a note of it), expect to lose many points on lecture quizzes. Attendance for synchronous lectures are mandatory, and they are not posted afterwards so if you miss them you are SOoL. There are 2 discussion posts a week and these are much too intensive for a simple discussion post. Material was interesting and course structure was clear to follow, lectures were also easy to follow. Somewhat of a harsh grader. Good professor but course is often frustrating. I took this and HIST111 and their structures were nearly identical.