JONATHAN RENSHON

Not worth your time. Final consists of things we went over once. He had to re tally my grade because they screwed it up.

Professor Renschon is a great lecturer and always connects the material to interesting concepts and ideas. Although the class can be challenging, Renschon was very receptive to feedback and implemented many extra credit opportunities throughout the semester. My only criticism is that the readings were often redundant or completely unnecessary.

I did not love PS170 lectures were quite boring and there were lots of readings (like 80 pages a week) He also chooses not to put the grades tab on canvas so if you want to know your grade you have to personally ask. The class also had flipped lectures pretty often that he just reused online lectures from summer for which was a bit annoying.

You'll succeed in this class only if you are already good at conducting research. The in class assignments were the most stressful because you are given no information about their content before the class when they are due, and you are not allowed to pick your own research topic. I would never take this class again.

I've switched majors so I've taken research methods in both SOC and JOURN (both 600 level), but PS170 was so much harder. Horrible explanation of topics, makes artificial/incorrect distinctions that don't aid understanding, incoherent grading (not salty 94 final), can't imagine the impression of the PS dept. freshmen are getting from this class

You'll be fine in this class if you took statistics before because this class uses statistical concepts w/o the math, however, you'd be fine without prior stats. The lectures were fine, all the information you need for the assignments and the exams is provided in the slides that he presents and posts. Attendance is mandatory, he accepts late work.