As a heads up, this class is taught by both Donald Brown and Jon. I will write this review based on Jon’s class. Also, as a heads up, I took this class during the coronavirus pandemic.

First of all, Jon was miles ahead of Donald in staying on top of things. He actually posted lectures on time and he actually answered questions on the CCLE forum. Next, he listened to us. When we asked him to switch out his powerpoints to videos that could be fast-forwarded, he listened.

Also, Jon’s presentation skills are far better than Don’s. His lectures were also a fraction of the time of Don’s; about 30 minutes of recorded video.

Jon’s Homeworks, however, had unclear instructions. They basically boiled down to rating people’s investment pitches, and your grades was based on how Jon and the rest of the class rated the pitches. In other words, homework usually required you to subjectively rate a subjective pitch.

The homeworks took not too long-for Jon’s portion of the class. However, in normal years the project is a time crunch, and the essays require far too much work.

But at least there are extra credit homeworks to boost one’s grade for Jon’s portion of the class!

Also: For the prisoner dilemma problem, you’ll be asked to select for 10 or 20 extra credit points. Select 10 points; if enough people select 10 points, Jon will give EVERYONE 20 points. This completely trivialized the class.

Jon Fong is the personification of arrogance and idiocy. He thinks that every idea he has is golden, and every word out of his mouth is a gift to everyone around him. If you ever disagree with him or have a different point of view, get ready for him to talk in circles about how he's right and you're wrong.

Context -
This class requires a team project where you essentially build a product (in theory) with your team. Unfortunately, this guy is in charge of the team project aspect. Every 3 weeks you need to present your ideas as a team to him, or meet with him to talk about them (Or atleast that's what we thought). However, in every meeting, my team and I could not say a single word. He spends time criticizing your project, assuming what you meant in certain sections without allowing you to clarify and you have to sit there and take it. If god forbid you try to clear up his misconceptions, and explain your ideas clearly to him, he'll make sure to talk for an extra 10 minutes to justify his criticism.

Fun Note-
His criticism is moronic. This isn't even an understatement. He will literally find ways to criticise you for no reason whatsoever.

Advice on Surviving him- Criticism is going to be a part of the game. Keep your mouth shut and take it when he gives it out, otherwise you'll only prolong your suffering.

On a positive note, the other professor that he teaches the course with, Prof. Browne is extremely nice and actually listens to what you have to say. The course isn't very hard also.

I actually enjoyed EW185. I was wary about taking it initially due to all the criticism this course has gotten in comparison with EW183; however, I don't regret taking EW185. If you take this course and what it has to offer genuinely, then you'll leave with a lot of valuable knowledge and skills. It's hard yes, but Jon and Don both tell you first day of lecture the craziness of putting together 5 random people and asking for a team project in 7 weeks.

Jon is a good lecturer and is incredibly responsive to emails. He talks and communicates like any high level business executive, both electronically and in person. If he sees errors with your project, then he'll point them out. If he thinks you and your team need to pivot, he will be blunt about it. However, in the end, he is ultimately concerned with students learning and pushing them to think about situations that are hard to solve but not impossible.

It's work. Don't get me wrong, and it honestly depends on the group you are placed in. However, Jon and Don both are very professional. If you need to miss lecture due to interviews or have to express concern regarding your group, they handle it very well.

Do I think this class was useful? No. Do I think it was easy? Yes. The only issue is that you rely on your team for a lot of things, so if you have a bad team, you're screwed. Especially because the teams are randomly assigned.

The exams are 50% Jon's material and 50% from Don's/the textbook. Jon's lectures are boring, but he does emphasize everything that's going to be on the tests. The tests are straightforward, just make sure to add stuff from the textbook to your cheatsheet.

Jon acts like he's super particular about the project and it's super important, but honestly as long as you follow the instructions you should be okay. You don't need to take it as seriously as he makes it sound. Just make sure you turn everything in on time, because he's super anal about deadlines.

There are in class quizzes. The papers are honestly a pain. Make sure to listen to your TA's feedback. The 3 hour discussion sections are a joke, but you need to attend them.

It's not as much work as some of the other reviews make it seem. I don't think I spent more than ~2 hours on this class a week until week 8-9 (because the final report does take time - get that done as early as possible).

Personally would argue that he is one of the worst lecturers here at UCLA. Overall, class is unorganized and instructions are unclear.

Jon is kind of a douche. He's super up everyone's ass about being on time with materials for the project, and then he doesn't post the link to turn in the assignment.
The project however was super useful, I learned a lot if I ever decide to make a startup company how to pitch my product. The lectures suck, there are random quizzes so you have to stay the entire lecture; nobody is paying attention.
Overall, the grading is easy, and our final was take home because of the fires, but going to class sucks and the group project is a pain.

Jon Fong should have a 5 point rating. This class is a ton of work if you do it right, but it is all fun and relatively easy. This was my favorite course because I want to start-up someday and Jon Fong is a great resource and teacher to have at UCLA.

In my opinion, Jon was not a bad professor. Despite the flaws that these reviews say about him, he had a lot of characteristics that deserve praise. Jon is always super professional and knows what he's talking about. He's super responsive to emails. Our group would email him on weekends and evenings and most of the time, we'd get a response within an hour or less. He's super open to help during office hours and outside of class, often encouraging us to send him emails and make Zoom meetings with him just to get extra help on our projects. His lectures were pretty engaging, but they could be improved. The stuff we learned was pretty useful and interesting.

As far as attendance, there would be quizzes in only his lectures and not Don's lectures. Some of these quiz questions (4 T/F and 1 MC) were tricky and vague, but this was okay because he offered a few bonus quizzes which were super easy and would replace our lowest quiz scores. I ended up getting full credit on the quiz category because of this. His exam questions are okay. Some are vague and not thoroughly covered. I got an 80% on the midterm, which was slightly below average.

I got an A on my first essay and I never got a score back on my last essay or final, but I got an A in the class. Essays depend on your TA, but at the end of the day, if you have an essay that is as good as the example that they show you, and you go to the writing center for help, it is not that difficult to write an A paper. I suggest going to the writing center and working really hard before your TA conference, then your TA can read your essay as if you were turning it in, and then you'd be able to improve on those comments. The group project is a hit or a miss with your group. If you have a decent group, it is not that hard to get mostly full credit on the project.

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.

This course feels like 3 easy classes combined into one, making it a single very difficult class. The 3 sides of this course are engineering writing, ethics, the group project. Fong is responsible for the group project of this course. For those unaware, the group project is about coming up with an idea for a useful product and then going through the process of introducing that idea to the market. Frankly, it just doesn't fit the subject of this course. The only aspects of engineering writing and ethics that the project encapsulates is "don't lie" and "always fact check". It is an overwhelming amount of work that lasts the entire quarter in addition to the essays and tests from the other 2 sides of this class. Not worth the effort, take EW183 instead.