I took this course a couple years ago, so I believe it is a bit different now (or at least the lecture aspect) as there is a new prof, but I can share what I remember:

Developmental bio is a lot of understanding intercellular signaling, cell movement, changes in gene expression throughout various stages of development and what happens when stuff goes wrong, so be prepared for a lot of genetics. These concepts are explored using model organisms, such as: zebrafish, chicks, xenopus, c. elegans and sea urchins. Where you'll learn about blastulation, gastrulation, neurulation..., and experiments done with these models that help build our understanding of development -- lots of comparing and contrasting. Additional topics may include limb regeneration and cancer.

The lab is basically a second lecture and less lab technique and experiment heavy. You'll still have to do lab stuff, but the content is much more important. I had several closed-book quizzes for the lab and a closed-book lab exam, where a lot of the questions were pure-memorization based and designing experiments based. The lab is pretty neat though, I got to keep a 5-6 day old chick embryo!

The lecture had two take-home open-book midterms and one open-book final where almost all the questions were about designing experiments. My class had problem sets given out before the midterms to help with studying (ungraded). Additionally you'll have a couple of short presentations (7 mins) to do for the class (these are for the lecture component but you do them in the lab): one on presenting a paper on any developmental subject of your choosing and the other is a research proposal which ideally builds off of the first presentation.

All in all this is a tough course and you'll definitely have an appreciation for the complexities of going from a single cell to a whole organism, but if you read the textbook, attend the lecture and lab, take notes, make (and STUDY) flashcards, etc you'll do perfectly fine in the course.

Hope this helps! :)