Since ethics is required, this is far better than 183, but it's a lot more time consuming than it should be. The majority of the class is a group project where you basically have an invention idea and have to go through the entire process of proof of concept, financial summary, possible areas of failure, and then pitch it to the professors as if you are asking them for kickstarter money. It doesn't have that much to do with ethics to be honest. But, the project is at least moderately interesting. The discussion sections are way too long and they're required. Lectures aren't required but they have random quizzes so you have to show up most of the time. Anyway it's a terrible class and get ready for more work than you probably expect, especially if you don't have the best group. It isn't hard, it's just time consuming

Mostly going to echo the remarks of previous quarter's reviews to illustrate that not much has changed in terms of this course improving.

Don does half the lectures on ethical case studies which are mildly interesting but can often be tough to stay awake through (doesn't help that it's (I think always) 8am). The contents of these lectures don't show up for more than 10% of the exams so I pretty much stopped going to them after the midterm.

On that note, the exams are a bit of a joke... they consist of 40% content from Jon's lectures, 10% content from Don's lectures, and 40% content from the textbook (which is barely, if at all) covered in class. All I needed to do to pass the exams was make a cheatsheet with definitions of the book chapters and notes from Jon's lectures.

As for Jon's lectures, they're highly relevant to the group project that runs throughout the course and are posted online so you can probably get away with not going to those lectures either. The group project itself seems like it has improved a bit from previous quarters but is still generally a hot mess that is confusing and redundant in terms of what needs to be included in the submission and ends in having to print over 100 pages at the end (colossal waste of paper, ink, and money).

TL;DR Don's ethical case study lectures are mildly interesting, exams are super easy, Jon's lectures + group project are cool but still quite disorganized.

I feel bad for Don and Jon when they teach this cluster of a class. The engineering department should be ashamed of making 183 and 185 EW as writing and ethics requirements for engineers. The essays are a joke and can be BS'd very easily depending on if your TA cares enough. The group project only depends on if Jon likes your project or not. We went to office hours every week and used one of Jon's suggested topics. He then went on to praise our final presentation report (probably because it was his idea lol).

Don's lecture was pretty much useless since the philosophy portion was half baked and the engineering case study portion was so boring. He spins this tale that engineering management is corrupt and that engineers are always there to save the day. I would suggest doing work for other classes or shopping online during Don's lectures to save yourself from sleeping. The essays were such BS since one of the essays was literally a summary of a engineering failure with some half assed philosophical analysis. They do not teach you how to write or make a proper essay even though they bring in an english professor to see how the essays are coming along.

Jon's project portion was VERY stressful and probably not worth the extra effort compared to 183EW. However, I learned a lot from this portion sine Jon discussed many important life lessons from industry and the product development cycle. Just follow the instructions and MAKE SURE HE LIKES YOUR IDEA.

Overall, this class is the worst one I have taken at UCLA and I am ashamed to have this as a requirement for all engineering majors. Please fix this SEAS. It just feeds into the idea that engineers shouldn't have interests outside of engineering.

I challenge you to take another writing 2 as a GE to see how to actually write and create a well studied and strong argument about a topic that you find interesting.

His lectures are like story time, which are pretty cool and engaging. Problem is that his slides, which are supposed to accompany his story, have no words on them. As a result, it is extremely difficult to study and understand what the main point of the lecture is and what you should be taking notes on. In addition, his lectures do not cover topics from the textbook, which the midterm and final are comprised of.

This class suuuuucked. Granted, it was during the COVID quarter. However, this was the most disorganized class I have ever been a part of. Browne stopped posting lectures week 2, and didn't tell us why until week 9, leaving us in total confusion for most of the quarter and forcing us to catch up in the two weeks before the final. Jon was a little better, but still not helpful whatsoever. You don't really have a choice in taking this class, though, so good luck. From what I've heard, 185 and 183 are equally bad.

The best worst class to take to fulfill the so-called "ethics" requirement for engineers. Thankfully I took this class when everything was online as it made many aspects of this class tolerable. This class should have just been the lecture material with nothing else. Making us write argumentative essays through a "ethical" perspective creates a redundancy as we already did identical assignments in previous English classes. This doesn't help with a zealous TA who wasted my discussion sections time by spending the full discussion time. This asininity made this class feel like we're taking 2 different classes. But thankfully, we didn't have to do the group project, which again made things more tolerable.
Asides from the essays, there is a midterm and a final. Just search through the textbook or try to get old exams. No homework and attendance isn't mandatory like before. This class really should have just been the lecture without the writing portion. Could have been like a simple GE class, but they just had to shove in more useless padding. Also, I highly highly recommend you take this class during the Summer with your friends. I'm not sure if they'll bring back the group project so, try to get into the same section.

The professor had very engaging presentations. However, I am not really interested in ethics in the first place. He was accomodating.

Easy class but I'd take another prof if possible.
He told us there would be at least 10 participation quizzes. There were only 3, and they were all surprises. We had to bring our own paper to answer them on.
Despite mentioning how he watched his email, prof never responded to any emails throughout the quarter.
Every lecture was exactly the same, a slideshow on an engineering failure that was caused by management prioritizing money over safety or being inept.
There was an easy online midterm and final, 8 writing questions each. We never found out how we did on them.
There were 3 large papers (8-10) pages, two on our own and one group one.

Professor should understand that participation in lectures are earned by having good lectures, rather than enforcing in-class quiz.

Ethics could probably be more interesting, but a large part is that most people don't want to be there, so the class ends up being a drag. More of a history class than anything. Lots of writing, but the bar is low.