Spring 2027

United States Congress

Covers principles, procedures, and problems of the legislative process of the United States Congress.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 8

Past student reviews · Barry Burden

Exams required referring to lecture themes not present in the book, and grading was described as tough.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Understand how Congress works, and how laws are really made today.

  • Explain how Congress can serve as a check on presidential and judicial power.

  • Analyze what motivates members of Congress.

  • Explain how legislative rules affect policy outcomes.

  • Explore why money matters in Congress.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Sophomore standing and (POLI SCI 104 or LEGAL ST/​POLI SCI 217)

POLISCI 311

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

BARRY CHRISTOPHER BURDEN is recorded teaching in Spring 2018, Fall 2021. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Barry Burden

Professor Burden's lectures were concise and clear, starting with current events to make the material engaging and fun.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.40 GPA, 77.1% A/AB (n=48 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.74 GPA, 87.5% A/AB (n=48 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.77 GPA, 90.0% A/AB (n=100 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Barry Burden

Exams required referring to lecture themes not present in the book, and grading was described as tough.

Past student reviews · Barry Burden

Students found Burden to be a nice instructor who cared about them, though notes were necessary as slides contained few bullet points.

Topics

  • Legislative process of the United States Congress
  • Congress as a check on presidential and judicial power

Skills

  • Understanding how Congress works and how laws are made
  • Analyzing what motivates members of Congress
  • Explaining how legislative rules affect policy outcomes
  • Exploring why money matters in Congress

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2025— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "22a09fde05d16b88cfb40fa96c0170464335678dcb6751bc12a1f36564d3e2e3",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}