<p>Have any of you taken this course before? If so, what did you think? I signed up with Harkness - how difficult you would rate the course and professor?</p>
<p>I thought about signing up for it, ended up not. This might encourage you:</p>
<p>Deborah</a> Harkness - University of Southern California - RateMyProfessors.com</p>
<p>It's a handy tool, but a lot of the professors aren't on it. The Senate Course Guide is way better but it seems to be down. I have a theory that they do this around registration so that people aren't totally influenced by it.</p>
<p>:) This is what I wrote in a previous topic:</p>
<p>I definitely enjoyed the class last fall, and I took another class with Harkness in the spring. A lot of 103 seemed like review for me, but that's probably because I took AP Euro in high school (and I'm a history major). Her specialty is in, I believe, England from 1400-1800(?), but she covers most European countries pretty evenly.</p>
<p>She is funny, extremely friendly, and very accessible, and her exams are definitely reasonable if you study for them; you just need to study terms and brush up on essay topics she provides. Class participation is pretty important in her classes (1/5 of the class grade, I think), and is calculated in discussion sessions. The class has discussion once a week, and the more you attend/talk, the higher your grade. I don't think the discussion actually accomplished very much though, a lot of people seemed to be too tired to keep their eyes open, let alone discuss Montesquieu, at 8 in the morning.</p>
<p>I only have two complaints about the class... one, the discussions were a bit too early in the mornings for my taste, but I really like sleeping in. If you're an early bird, that shouldn't be an issue for you. Also, the discussion times might have changed from the 8/9 AM slots they used to occupy.</p>
<p>Secondly, the course books aren't too captivating. She seems to favor books that are basically collections of a bunch of documents. While normally I don't mind reading documents on topics that I am really interested in, reading a book full of dry treatises/letters on one topic isn't exactly my cup of tea. I couldn't bring myself to actually finish Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, though if you're really interested in the sciences you might enjoy it. She did mention to me in passing though that there were some book changes in 103, so perhaps some things have been removed/added.</p>
<p>So all in all, I definitely recommend the class! The issues I had with the course are minor in comparison to how wonderful the professor and course are.</p>
<p>Senate Course Guide was updated by the Student Senate and senatecourseguide.com no longer exists. They took it down and replaced it with a more secure website where you have to login to submit and view reviews. The problem with the site is that no one is writing reviews and only a handful of professors and classes have been reviewed. </p>
<p>Thank you everyone for your response. </p>
<p>The USC Undergraduate Student Government reviews are nearly pointless since there's barely any. The Senate Course Guide was amazing but now its gone. I think everyone should stick with ratemyprofessor and continue writing reviews on that site.</p>