ENGR 185EW
Art of Engineering Endeavors
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, three hours; outside study, five hours. Enforced requisite: English Composition 3 or 3H or English as a Second Language 36. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 183EW. Designed for junior/senior engineering students. Nontechnical skills and experiences necessary for engineering career success. Importance of group dynamics in engineering practice. Teamwork and effective group skills in engineering environments. Organization and control of multidisciplinary complex engineering projects. Forms of leadership and qualities and characteristics of effective leaders. How engineering, computer sciences, and technology relate to major ethical and social issues. Societal demands on practice of engineering. Emphasis on research and writing in engineering environments. Satisfies engineering writing requirement. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - As a heads up, this class is taught by both Don and another person, Jon J Fong. This review will be about Don’s part of this class. Also, I took this class during the coronavirus pandemic, and poor Don was sick for about half of the quarter. His first 3 lectures weren't very good. He talked slowly in a monotone, and the powerpoint audio could not be sped up. Then, there was radio silence. We were given vague instructions of "Reach chapter 3 and 1 chapter per week." We had no idea we were supposed to read the ENTIRE book. That said, he did listen, and he changed the presentations to audio format which could be sped up. The ethics portion of the class seemed half-baked. Basically, the method of learning actual ethics was through reading the book. I literally had no clue what to read, by the way. Then EIGHT DAYS BEFORE THE FINAL, he drops THREE lectures and the WHOLE textbook as a portion of a final. Basically, we had a week to teach ourselves a quarter worth of materials for the final. That said, he let us take the final open everything, and the final itself was straightforward. Just abuse the Ctrl+F key, and you should be good. The final had an average in the upper 80s/90s, and was normalized in our favor (the top grade was set to 100%). Next, the essays had pretty unclear instructions to say the least. Even worse, it was up to the TAs to guide you through the essays. So basically the TAs teach you to write, and they determine what you have to hand in. The essays took forever to write, and had an overly tight deadline. For the second essay, we had to write a rough draft in just one week.
Spring 2020 - As a heads up, this class is taught by both Don and another person, Jon J Fong. This review will be about Don’s part of this class. Also, I took this class during the coronavirus pandemic, and poor Don was sick for about half of the quarter. His first 3 lectures weren't very good. He talked slowly in a monotone, and the powerpoint audio could not be sped up. Then, there was radio silence. We were given vague instructions of "Reach chapter 3 and 1 chapter per week." We had no idea we were supposed to read the ENTIRE book. That said, he did listen, and he changed the presentations to audio format which could be sped up. The ethics portion of the class seemed half-baked. Basically, the method of learning actual ethics was through reading the book. I literally had no clue what to read, by the way. Then EIGHT DAYS BEFORE THE FINAL, he drops THREE lectures and the WHOLE textbook as a portion of a final. Basically, we had a week to teach ourselves a quarter worth of materials for the final. That said, he let us take the final open everything, and the final itself was straightforward. Just abuse the Ctrl+F key, and you should be good. The final had an average in the upper 80s/90s, and was normalized in our favor (the top grade was set to 100%). Next, the essays had pretty unclear instructions to say the least. Even worse, it was up to the TAs to guide you through the essays. So basically the TAs teach you to write, and they determine what you have to hand in. The essays took forever to write, and had an overly tight deadline. For the second essay, we had to write a rough draft in just one week.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - As a heads up, this class is taught by both Donald Brown and Jon. I will write this review based on Jon’s class. Also, as a heads up, I took this class during the coronavirus pandemic. First of all, Jon was miles ahead of Donald in staying on top of things. He actually posted lectures on time and he actually answered questions on the CCLE forum. Next, he listened to us. When we asked him to switch out his powerpoints to videos that could be fast-forwarded, he listened. Also, Jon’s presentation skills are far better than Don’s. His lectures were also a fraction of the time of Don’s; about 30 minutes of recorded video. Jon’s Homeworks, however, had unclear instructions. They basically boiled down to rating people’s investment pitches, and your grades was based on how Jon and the rest of the class rated the pitches. In other words, homework usually required you to subjectively rate a subjective pitch. The homeworks took not too long-for Jon’s portion of the class. However, in normal years the project is a time crunch, and the essays require far too much work. But at least there are extra credit homeworks to boost one’s grade for Jon’s portion of the class! Also: For the prisoner dilemma problem, you’ll be asked to select for 10 or 20 extra credit points. Select 10 points; if enough people select 10 points, Jon will give EVERYONE 20 points. This completely trivialized the class.
Spring 2020 - As a heads up, this class is taught by both Donald Brown and Jon. I will write this review based on Jon’s class. Also, as a heads up, I took this class during the coronavirus pandemic. First of all, Jon was miles ahead of Donald in staying on top of things. He actually posted lectures on time and he actually answered questions on the CCLE forum. Next, he listened to us. When we asked him to switch out his powerpoints to videos that could be fast-forwarded, he listened. Also, Jon’s presentation skills are far better than Don’s. His lectures were also a fraction of the time of Don’s; about 30 minutes of recorded video. Jon’s Homeworks, however, had unclear instructions. They basically boiled down to rating people’s investment pitches, and your grades was based on how Jon and the rest of the class rated the pitches. In other words, homework usually required you to subjectively rate a subjective pitch. The homeworks took not too long-for Jon’s portion of the class. However, in normal years the project is a time crunch, and the essays require far too much work. But at least there are extra credit homeworks to boost one’s grade for Jon’s portion of the class! Also: For the prisoner dilemma problem, you’ll be asked to select for 10 or 20 extra credit points. Select 10 points; if enough people select 10 points, Jon will give EVERYONE 20 points. This completely trivialized the class.
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Most Helpful Review
This course has a split personality-- the bad kind. Professor Silverstein lectures 4hr/wk about careers in engineering (mainly centering around his own star-studded career which will occupy 4-6 hours of class) while the TAs and Professor Browne cover the vast majority of the writing and ethics material in the 3hr Friday discussion. The result is an incredibly disorganized course that consumed a shocking amount of my time. I am a relatively high-scoring student and was able to get an A in the class without learning much beyond the case studies presented in discussion. Note that case studies and two eight page papers represent approximately 20% of this "Ethics and Writing" course's effort. The rest is consumed (as is your soul) by gadget project in which you and your randomly assigned team must create a business plan around a consumer gadget with minimal relevant in-class instruction. Success requires office hours (i.e. more time)! In truth, Professor Silverstein needs his own class which should be incorporated in the management technical breadth. His portion of the course is an inadequate core curriculum for an "Ethics and Writing" class. However, his information is useful to any student looking into engineering careers(and looking for an EXTREMELY optimistic outlook thereof). If you want to learn the career material, take Engr98 and stop there. As a final note, many friends asked me which class to take (183EW vs 185EW)and I hope I succeeded in sending them all toward 183EW because their time is valuable, as is yours. Case in point: Silverstein takes attendance daily. If the lectures were worth your time, wouldn't you attend voluntarily?
This course has a split personality-- the bad kind. Professor Silverstein lectures 4hr/wk about careers in engineering (mainly centering around his own star-studded career which will occupy 4-6 hours of class) while the TAs and Professor Browne cover the vast majority of the writing and ethics material in the 3hr Friday discussion. The result is an incredibly disorganized course that consumed a shocking amount of my time. I am a relatively high-scoring student and was able to get an A in the class without learning much beyond the case studies presented in discussion. Note that case studies and two eight page papers represent approximately 20% of this "Ethics and Writing" course's effort. The rest is consumed (as is your soul) by gadget project in which you and your randomly assigned team must create a business plan around a consumer gadget with minimal relevant in-class instruction. Success requires office hours (i.e. more time)! In truth, Professor Silverstein needs his own class which should be incorporated in the management technical breadth. His portion of the course is an inadequate core curriculum for an "Ethics and Writing" class. However, his information is useful to any student looking into engineering careers(and looking for an EXTREMELY optimistic outlook thereof). If you want to learn the career material, take Engr98 and stop there. As a final note, many friends asked me which class to take (183EW vs 185EW)and I hope I succeeded in sending them all toward 183EW because their time is valuable, as is yours. Case in point: Silverstein takes attendance daily. If the lectures were worth your time, wouldn't you attend voluntarily?
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