Overall, i would not recommend to anyone to take this course unless it is required for your major (it was for me). Horribly organized, the professor barely teaches anything but expects you to know 500+ terms and concepts for 5 hard midterm exams and a final (of which our class average was consistently between a 68-71 and she did not curve). you get one drop if you do the meditation assignment which she claims accounts for any curve on exams but it does not. I did end up with an A in the class but that was because i taught myself all of the material, did around 6 hours of work a week, and studied for 15-20hrs for each exam.

Please do not let previous reviews scare you! I took this class over the summer while studying for the MCAT and it was totally manageable and I got an A. I wouldn’t say I did that much studying as a lot of the information overlapped with the MCAT especially in the beginning but it only took about 3 hours out of my day if you put the videos in 2x speed. Make sure you take good notes in the textbook and lecture. Also for exams for the online section you must show up on a zoom call with cameras on, so don’t try to cheat. Overall, I kind of enjoyed this class and Dr. Clabough is very nice. I thinks she finally implemented some changes to make the class better from previous years but definitely not as hard as some of the reviews are saying. Good luck!

This class is one of the hardest classes I have ever taken at UVA. I wish that Professor Clabough was open to constructive criticism about this course, because there are constantly complaints year after year, yet the course stays the same. It is online asynchronous plus a weekly meeting session each week. You do absolutely nothing in the weekly sessions. She usually has a game or activity planned that focuses on only one concept from the whole unit with no time for explanations or help on other topics. They are are a total waste of time, but go, because it is an easy way to get points. The online lectures were filmed in 2020 and she has not updated them since, so they are totally out of synch with the textbook, which was updated in 2022. Clabough jumps around to different topics during lecture without warning, so your notes will be totally out of order and you NEED to read the textbook to understand. I put in probably 10 hours a week on this class, and if there was an exam, probably 20. This should be 4 credits. There are 4 exams and a final– you get one drop but it is a replacement with a meditation assignment so make sure you do it. I got an A- in the class but I put in an absurd amount of work and had to put my other classes on the backburner to get through this. This class literally shortened my lifespan.

tl;dr do not take this class unless you have to, set aside a lot of dedicated time for this

Full disclosure: I took this course as a BACS integration elective, which was a mistake on my part since this class benefits from a strong psychology and biology background (of which I have none). That being said, while the class is extremely difficult, it is not the fault of Professor Clabough, who made the class as accessible as possible considering the material. The professor and TA's all know how hard this class can be, so if you need help, ask right away and they'll usually be happy to.

The asynchronous lectures themselves were released every Wednesday and Friday, so I recommend setting aside a consistent time and place to watch them and take thorough notes as if it were in-person. The lecture checks are open note and have unlimited time as long as you complete them before your section, so that wasn't a problem. Similarly, the active learning assignments were very easy 100s if you came to them. The main problem is the exams since it relies a lot on memorizing a hefty chunk of content, which is why you should start the meditation assignment ASAP to replace the lowest exam grade.

#tCFF24

The 4 week summer session was jam packed with lecture, but Prof Clabough does everything she can to communicate the essentials in a fun and engaging manner. Discussion homework can be long, but, in my opinion, it's better to make students engage with the content than have everything be generatable via LLM. Exams felt fair and tested knowledge of the class rather than xyz specific study with xyz specific author and xyz specific year.

I took this course in the summer and from what I hear Prof. Clabough changes the organization of her class very often - the way she taught now is different than 2 semesters ago and is different from 4 semesters ago.. You get the point. This session though I felt she was very fair, daily lectures either 45min or ~1hr15min which is pretty good for an accelerated summer course with daily knowledge checks with straightforward questions. If you took decent notes during the lecture, they're a breeze. Course grade was based on 4 discussion board posts which were pretty easy, 5 exams (one each week plus a final), daily knowledge checks and an optional meditation assignment. I thought her lectures were well organized for the questions she had on the exams and I found the material interesting. Especially for it being an asynchronous class, I enjoyed having the daily checks to force me to stay up to date with the lectures.

This class will take up a lot of your time. The lectures are all recorded from when the course was entirely virtual (pandemic days), and you will only meet in person once a week for "lab" time. I put lab in quotations as you do nothing that feels very scientific or helpful in learning the content. Instead, time is spent playing games, writing plays, going through escape rooms, and using playdough (Clabough's favorite, as we did this twice). I found the setup of this course to feel lazy and poorly structured, especially as the lectures themselves were often disorganized and focused on seemingly insignificant details that did not come up on exams. On the topic of exams, Clabough does not even write her test questions, including on the final. The exams are tough and do not always focus on lecture content. Instead, they often throw questions at you that relate to anything from the 100+ pages of reading you were assigned in that module. Do not only study the lectures; read the text carefully and pay close attention to the experiments and the names of researchers. Do not forget or miss out on the meditation assignment opportunity. This optional assignment is your only chance of getting any points back, as there is no chance of rounding/curving on any exams. Clabough will not allow exam retakes or rescheduling under any circumstance, as the meditation assignment enables you to drop one exam grade if completed. Participation is a large part of your grade, but this is very easy as long as you show up to class every day (you can only miss one, or it tanks your grade) and are friendly to your TA. Overall, this class is much more difficult than it should be, but it contains some very interesting content, and I was disappointed in the teaching style. #tCFF23

While I've heard bad things about this class in the past, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Professor Clabough is extremely nice, and the class is still asynchronous, so all the lectures are just online videos you need to watch. The weekly active learning activities are the only in person part, and they are basically just graded on attendance/completion. They are actually pretty fun. The exams are on canvas but are in person now, which makes it a bit harder as this class has a lot of content to memorize. She lets you complete a meditation assignment that basically replaces the grade for one of your exam scores, which is also nice. I ended up with an A- in this class and I would say I only put in half effort. #tCFF23

I want to say first and foremost that this is still a difficult class. I would not recommend taking it unless it’s for your major or something you’re 100% sure you’re interested in and want to put the work in for. It’s apparent she’s very dedicated to the field, and I personally thought she tried her best to keep everyone engaged and successful even though it’s a difficult subject.
Dr. Clabough has made some important changes to the curriculum. Here is the new course layout:
62% of the final grade is exams (5 exams, 12% each). However, she offered an optional meditation assignment that’s a very easy A, as long as you follow the directions, that can stand in place of one of these exam grades. The exams in my opinion aren’t bad as long as you take/ study effective notes (which means write down what she says in the lectures exactly as she says it, bc she is tricky with the wording sometimes). People in other reviews warn that she takes random things from the textbook. She only questions about experiments from the textbook. Just make sure to remember the results of these experiments bc that’s likely the answer to these exam questions.
Warning: the second exam sucks.
23% of the grade is active learning sessions. DO NOT SKIP THESE. There are 10 of them and there’s only 1 drop. There are makeup assignments but they’re a hassle. These are easy 100s if you participate and be friendly to the TA.
The remaining grade is the knowledge checks at the end of the lectures. If you pay attention and take effective notes these are easy to do well on, as long as you make sure to actually do them.
Overall I don’t think it’s difficult to achieve a decent grade in this class, IF you’re dedicated to the work. There’s lots of specific information- you either know it or you don’t. I spent about 5 hours a week working for this class and earned an A. It’s hard, yes, but achievable, so don’t get scared from previous reviews!

Was a little bit scared about taking this class because of past reviews, but I ended up not even having to take the final-- it's definitely easier to get a good grade than it used to be. Unfortunately, the lectures were pretty dry, and I honestly did not enjoy it very much despite going into it wanting to major in neuroscience (cool content, painful to get through lectures).

#tCFfall22