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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Let's be honest. No one likes this class. It is, however, one of the two classes that satisfy the ethics requirement for engineers--and from what I heard from friends in 183, this class (185) is much better.
I took this class in Fall 2016, which was the first time that Don co-taught with Jon Fong, a guest lecturer of sorts who worked in industry for 30 years. While Don gives half the lectures and talks about ethical case studies (which are an absolute snooze-fest), Jon gives business-type lectures which help immensely with the group project. The group project (5-6 people per group) is a quarter-long project which essentially has you design a consumer product that fulfills an unmet customer need, and go through all the technicalities of it as if you were part of a start-up (feasibility, detailed specs, financials, risks, etc). Although this group project is a pain in the arse because Don and Jon give little to no direction on how to do it or even what they want, by the end of the quarter, I felt that I had learned something from it. That's the difference between 183 and 185; 183 is ALL ethics stuff, while 185 is half ethics and half business for engineers. Jon and Don are still working on their partnership and I think by next quarter or the quarter after, it has the potential to be a pretty neat class (well, Jon's business lectures at least). For now, it's an absolute disaster, with no concrete deadlines, no guidance as to what exactly they want, assignments getting submitted into the black hole of CCLE without ever getting a grade or feedback, and other annoying events.
One important point: TAKE NOTES. Our final was a (surprise) open note final, and I had stopped taking notes early in the quarter, so I regretted that. Don posts most of his lecture slides but there are hardly any words on them, so write down what he says.

TL;DR: frustrating class, and Don is an extremely boring lecturer, but it's better than the 183 alternative and you might actually learn something about business.