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 2024 - THERE ARE IN-CLASS QUIZZES NOW. AT 8 AM. NO MAKE UPS. One of the worst courses and professor I have taken at UCLA, as a senior with only one quarter left. Professor Browne is uncommunicative and puts little effort into running the class. First off, he has no syllabus for the class on BruinLearn, so students are left with little to no expectations for the class and nothing to refer back to. His main problem is that he lies to students constantly and never responds to emails. He claims over and over again to email him if you have any problems and he will get back to you, yet despite my many emails to him this quarter, he has never responded to a single one. My section had problems with a missing TA our first section and he said he would email us that night and later in the week with information on what was happening, yet he never emailed us once about it, and the only way I knew what was happening with our section was by having to talk to him in person after class. He has the most boring and bare lecture slides, and his voice is quiet yet he doesn't use a microphone so you can't even hear it. Try not to fall asleep in class challenge, impossible. For this being a class about ethics, he only discussed case studies and almost every time blamed it on the management not the engineers. In a class that's supposed to teach ethics to engineers it feels wrong to just always say its never the engineer at fault and always the management. One time in the quarter, he switched to zoom due to the storms, but posted the wrong zoom link so no students could join the lecture and never addressed the problem. He also promised to post the recording for that lecture and never did. And of course, since he never responded to any emails, I couldn't contact him about the course problems. Another problem with the course this year were the in class quizzes. This was the first quarter with in class quizzes and they went terribly. He said there would be 10 quizzes, and you literally have to bring paper every class for them, he is too lazy to even print them out. By week 7 there had only been 3 quizzes so far, so he basically lied about the number of quizzes and every time you came to class without a quiz you felt like you just wasted your time. Overall the class needs major improvements and the professor needs to put in more effort. Don't know why this class is ever a requirement as I likely lost braincells taking this class.
Winter 2024 - THERE ARE IN-CLASS QUIZZES NOW. AT 8 AM. NO MAKE UPS. One of the worst courses and professor I have taken at UCLA, as a senior with only one quarter left. Professor Browne is uncommunicative and puts little effort into running the class. First off, he has no syllabus for the class on BruinLearn, so students are left with little to no expectations for the class and nothing to refer back to. His main problem is that he lies to students constantly and never responds to emails. He claims over and over again to email him if you have any problems and he will get back to you, yet despite my many emails to him this quarter, he has never responded to a single one. My section had problems with a missing TA our first section and he said he would email us that night and later in the week with information on what was happening, yet he never emailed us once about it, and the only way I knew what was happening with our section was by having to talk to him in person after class. He has the most boring and bare lecture slides, and his voice is quiet yet he doesn't use a microphone so you can't even hear it. Try not to fall asleep in class challenge, impossible. For this being a class about ethics, he only discussed case studies and almost every time blamed it on the management not the engineers. In a class that's supposed to teach ethics to engineers it feels wrong to just always say its never the engineer at fault and always the management. One time in the quarter, he switched to zoom due to the storms, but posted the wrong zoom link so no students could join the lecture and never addressed the problem. He also promised to post the recording for that lecture and never did. And of course, since he never responded to any emails, I couldn't contact him about the course problems. Another problem with the course this year were the in class quizzes. This was the first quarter with in class quizzes and they went terribly. He said there would be 10 quizzes, and you literally have to bring paper every class for them, he is too lazy to even print them out. By week 7 there had only been 3 quizzes so far, so he basically lied about the number of quizzes and every time you came to class without a quiz you felt like you just wasted your time. Overall the class needs major improvements and the professor needs to put in more effort. Don't know why this class is ever a requirement as I likely lost braincells taking this class.
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