Professor: Appel Course format: Lecture w/section Number of respondents: 132 Total Enrollment: 144 Class Composition: Froshs: 99 Sophs: 14 Jrs: 13 Srs: 17 Concs: 3 Non-Concs: 106 Don't Know: 15

Instructor Average: 1.26 Course Average: 1.39

Having a hard time deciding how you feel about contemporary moral issues that pervade our society? Perhaps you should take “Hard Choices”. This university course is a lecture that has no prerequisites. The main goal of the course is to force students to take a side on contemporary moral problems by providing them with the reasoning ability and vocabulary to defend their decisions. The course also explores legal precedents that provide the bases for the way we think about problems such as individual rights, race relations, and biomedical ethics.

Professor Appel is a passionate, enthusiastic lecturer who can even make property rights interesting through his artistic representations on the chalkboard and humorous hypothetical situations. Professor Appel starts every class with a joke, which may or may not be funny, but will relate somehow to the material of the lecture in some way. Students praised his ability to illustrate points in a number of ways, but also found his reluctance to use definitions rather than examples frustrating when trying to understand terms. Professor Appel was very open to students’ needs, but since the class was so large, the TAs were responsible in many cases for handling concerns.

The course requirements were reading and exams. The most relevant reading was found in the tremendous course packet. The supplementary books were often interesting, but not always too relevant. Many students found the cases long and tedious, but essential for the course. There were no papers assigned in the class, but there were three exams which forced students to apply their knowledge and connect concepts from different parts of the course.

Most students agreed that this course required between 3 and 6 hours of reading a week, which met expectations. Hard Choices received a lot of positive feedback. This course is a must for people who hope to sharpen their reasoning skills and learn a lot about conflicts that plague our society. Despite its ridiculous name, this course should be on everyone’s transcript.

View UC/0011 in the Brown Online Course Announcement.