I absolutely love GIS, especially cartography, so in terms of content alone, this class is one of the best I’ve had in UCLA. The assignments were not too long or too difficult; they were actually pretty fun to do. However, I did find that my TA wasn’t very generous with scores. Thankfully, my final project was good enough to bring my grade up to an A.
My main issue with this class was Professor Shin. Unfortunately, he was the only one offering the course, and he taught me Geog7 and is teaching me Geog168 next quarter. I feel like there’s no escaping him. Prior to taking his classes, I read reviews that he’s extremely unhelpful: (SPOILER ALERT) they’re sooo true. Thankfully, in Geog7, we actually had discussions and my TA would always help me out. This class, on the other hand, has no discussion. We had to place any questions on an online forum. And I tell you, the ONLY time I ever had an issue I couldn’t figure out myself, I posted it on the forum only for Professor Shin to “remind” me that Google is my friend. Ps. I had actually checked Google, but couldn’t find an answer.
Anyway, the class is awesome, so take it. Just know that if you face any issues (which you probably will because the software is super faulty), you shouldn’t expect to get any help from Professor Shin.

After doing well in Geog 7, I decided to take this class. It was very similar, but I found it a more difficult. Apparently I am not the best judge of basic design principles like which font looks best, and which two colors go best together, so I was never able to get above a low A on any of the assignments. I'm still very glad that I took this class though. I have been doing much better on my Geog 168 assignments because of what I learned in this class. It is very little spatial analysis, and mostly just design, but overall it is still a good course .The format is exactly the same as Geog 7, and the workload is also the same.

Absolutely horrible. I'm sure Shin as the ability to be a good teacher, but AVOID taking Cartography until they figure out what they're doing the curriculum. Shin is trying to make this an online class, which means several things:

1) The focus is on WEB mapping. NOT cartography. I have learned NOTHING about cartography in this class apart from the blatantly obvious. Most of the class is on HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Not at all what I signed up for, and a complete waste of my interest in the subject. We covered ONE word of the course description, if that gives you a better idea.

2) Class time is spent quietly figuring out the new lab, as you likely finished the previous one the night before. There was NO instruction. Everything was done independently. Shin's excuse for the lack of instruction: "in the real world, you'll need to figure things out on your own."
...we know that, Shin. That's why we pay money to take classes BEFORE we enter the professional world.

3) The curriculum is a disaster. I know that many professors/teachers work on the curriculum during the quarter, based on the progress the class makes, etc. That said, there was NO plan for this course, and without any obvious goals, it was extremely difficult to accumulate a skillset that you could draw upon as the quarter progressed. "Everything is important" and "I can't say what you'll need to know in the future" are complete lies, and nobody appreciated being fed those lines over and over. A good teacher is willing to put effort into curriculum development, ESPECIALLY when exposing students to experimental curriculum. Shin put no thought whatsoever into the curriculum of this course, and when he did, it was too little too late. Although Shin made himself available outside of class hours, his "concern for student learning" should have manifested itself in hours spent making the class time valuable before the quarter started.

4) You WILL spend hours and hours working on the projects outside of class. This time commitment is to be expected when taking a procedures course. However, there were many "lab working hours" scheduled outside of class time, which (I heard) were more useful than actual class hours. Unfortunately for the students busy with work or families, they were impossible to attend. If Shin was going to be useful, it would have been more effective to be so during scheduled class hours.

Overall, I was incredibly disappointed with Shin and with Geography 167. If I could, I would ask for a refund on the money I spent to take this course. I feel like Shin completely neglected his duties as a professor and I'm exceedingly annoyed that my interest in the subject had to suffer for it.

**This class did have one redeeming element, and that was the TA, Nick Burkhart. He was wonderful and if you get the chance to work with him, do it!

Shin is a great professor. He makes an otherwise semi-boring subject pretty interesting and expalins the material well. Grading is fair and consistent with effort; if you put some time into the projects then you can do well. Also go to office hours, if you meet with him outside of class he tells you exactly what you need to do to do well. Basically this class was worthwhile and great for 6 units.