Professor
Donald Browne
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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
Winter 2021 - Don't get me wrong: the lectures were boring and the subject probably not super interesting to most people. But when compared to the reviews of the other ethics/writing engineering courses, this seems much, much less painful. The grade was just midterm/final and two papers. The papers were graded pretty generously, and had a lot of time to write them. The tests were incredibly easy because the questions weren't adjusted for the COVID open-book policy, so without ever watching any of the lectures, you could get a decent score just by CTRL-F-ing the textbook or just googling. All-in-all, one of the easiest and lightest courses of the quarter. I advise you take it: the alternates suck worse.
Winter 2021 - Don't get me wrong: the lectures were boring and the subject probably not super interesting to most people. But when compared to the reviews of the other ethics/writing engineering courses, this seems much, much less painful. The grade was just midterm/final and two papers. The papers were graded pretty generously, and had a lot of time to write them. The tests were incredibly easy because the questions weren't adjusted for the COVID open-book policy, so without ever watching any of the lectures, you could get a decent score just by CTRL-F-ing the textbook or just googling. All-in-all, one of the easiest and lightest courses of the quarter. I advise you take it: the alternates suck worse.
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