The material in 141 it itself pretty cool, and I definitely learned alot from it. However, Shoarinejad’s teaching style just wasn’t for me. He prepares super-detailed notes before every class and just reads through them during lecture. This made his lectures run at ultra fast pace. After a while, I stopped attending lecture and just straight up read the notes. There’s so much material he covers in this class I feel like its a semester class squished into a quarter.

The hardest part about his class is the workload. The homework and exam length are absolutely insane. His homework has 5-6 problems, which is normal for an EE class until you find out they have at least e) parts, all the way up to m) parts. It took me more time to do his ultra long HW than to watch the lectures and do the hw and quiz for another EE class. The homework was weekly and we also had a final project which pretty hard and long but kinda cool. His exams tell the same story. He told us it was doable in ~ 3 hours (given 24 hours to finish), but it took me more like 12 hours to do it. The final was even worse, there was 7 questions and one of the questions had a)b)c)d)e)f)g)h)i)j)k)l)m)n) parts.

That said, his grading percentages are pretty good (87.5%+ for A, 81.25%+ for A-… etc) so if you really are willing to put in the hours, you can walk out with probably an A- or A (if you work really really hard). So, should you take this class? If you’re a senior, chilling and looking to take just 3 classes or if you’re seriously considering a career in control systems, absolutely, you will learn a shit ton in this class. However, if you’re looking for an elective to take with 3 other major upper-div classes, I would stay the a million miles away as his homework and project will eat up your time and mental health.

Deep down, Shoarinejad is a good guy (kinda like a cool dad who uses discord) and he really cares about teaching and preparing us for industry. I just wish he wouldn’t try and fit a semester class into a quarter.

Pasting my class evaluation below. I don't actually know if my grade will be higher than a D but I doubt it.

First and most importantly, I think this course is far too broad for a single quarter. Other schools seem to have no problem filling a semester with this topic. The material in this course could easily fill two quarters and allow the instructor to cover each topic in depth, and the course could still be difficult. I still don't have a clue why Routh-Hurwitz stability criterion or Nyquist stability criterion actually work from a mathematical perspective; this course let me down in terms of learning basic theory (something I never expected to happen at UCLA). In general, each topic is covered way too fast for the material to sink in at all. Before I felt familiar with any current idea in the course, I would have something new shoved in my face, sometimes multiple times in a single lecture.

About those lectures, Prof. Shoarinejad's lectures consist of little more than reading off the notes that he prepared beforehand (he does not make permanent annotations on his notes during lecture). This is not inherently bad, but he adds little to no substance over these two-hour lectures, and students still have to attend or watch the entire recording for those little nuggets of helpful info in a sea of repeated crap. His notes aren't good either. There is a lot of vocabulary to learn for this class, and it is very difficult to understand how all the concepts intersect when his notes never remind us of the fundamental reasons and relationships that make new content work. Nor do the notes contain the arithmetic work to simplify things down in more complicated cases (which, of course, he expects us to do on homework and exams).

This brings me to discuss the homework and exams. All assignments in this class were physically and mentally exhausting to complete. There is an insane amount of computation for most of the assignments in this class, and all assignments were generally far too long. Shoarinejad's notes don't contain complex computations as I mentioned before, so I always felt that I was going off track when doing a problem where the menial complex algebra would take an entire page or more. In fact, I was so convinced of this during the midterm that I simply left one of the questions blank because I thought I had made an algebraic expression too complicated to be reasonably put on what the professor said was a "3 hour test". I call BS on that timeframe. Maybe it was a three hour test for him; other students that scored much better reported taking over 12 hours too. The professor stated that engineers obviously aren't doing these computations by hand anymore. Why in the world are we expected to do it outside of simpler cases that are designed to resolve in clean solutions? And if you want us to do computations by hand, let us walk before we run-- assign smaller problems first!

None of this is helped by Prof. Shoarinejad himself, who for some strange reason prefers to use Discord to communicate with students instead of Piazza. Discord is a great software-- if you want to play video games and hang out with your friends. It is TERRIBLE for trying to search for a specific answer or view different topics separately. Even if you make separate channels for each assignment, all questions for different problems on that assignment are competing for attention in that channel, and it gets ridiculously hard to read (like an early 2000's forum) as the channel populates. He also tends to answer student questions in a very demeaning manner, almost as if he can't understand that we don't see the topic at the same level of mastery as he does. Here is an excerpt from the Discord server:

(student name omitted)
"can our Ic/Va also have Va or Ic in it? I am having trouble factorizing either Ic or Va out due to the FTS dynamics"
Cambyses — 02/28/2021
"No. You are finding the TF from Va to Ic? So how can it still have Va or Ic in it?! This shouldn’t be too difficult."

He goes on to explain the solution in detail. While the student's question demonstrated a lack of understanding, I don't think the professor's tone was appropriate for any correspondence with a student. This is not the only case either. Maybe all that's needed is to tell the professor that this is improper.

Perhaps the only saving grace of this class is the super generous grading scale. My performance on the midterm and homeworks alone guarantees me a non-failing grade (D). With how this class went, all I want is to not have to repeat it. I hope Professor Shoarinejad is happy with how he taught the course, because I genuinely thought I was going to love this class and enter a strongly related career. I won't touch control systems again, at least not for a long time, and certainly not at UCLA.

Let me first start off by saying that I am expecting an A in the course, so take what I have to say with that context. The thing is I'm not some systems genius or anything; to get an A/A- in this class, the professor asks simply that you put in the effort. I'm not trying to be "that guy" but I'm not sure what people are talking about when they say this class had too much material or was too quickly paced. For an upper division Electrical Engineering class at UCLA, this is kind of what I would expect. I'm not too sure if this is the result of a bunch of civil engineers doing their tech breath in this class, but the students surprised by the course load clearly haven't taken the grueling EE classes UCLA has to offer yet. This was honestly like a medium load course.

Now on a more positive note: Contrary to other reviews, I really enjoyed his lectures. Yes they were a bit dry at times but they're systems control lectures not action adventure movies so I'm not sure what people were looking for. The information in them was really great and inspired me to go view all the supporting materials which were uploaded to CCLE frequently.

The Professor gave us a lot of support whether in the form of of extra slides, notes from other professors, or the discord he set up where he was almost always online. Even with a day job and a busy schedule he almost immediately answers questions and in great detail— just from that alone I'm not too sure why anybody would feel in the dark in this class. If you are struggling in this class, it's probably because you're not using the vast amount of resources he offered, including himself. He is very knowledgeable and approachable!

The exams were challenging— they definitely took me the whole 24 hour window we had. However he clarified them greatly in the discord and allowed us to use any notes or solvers like wolfram, MATLAB, etc. they still took a huge amount of effort but I feel a great sense of accomplishment having done them. The exams are structured so that you learn something from the exam itself. The problems are broken up into a lot of sub parts so that you're "guided" along your solution. Many sub parts are solvable without previous parts too, so blanking on 3a doesn't mean you're hopeless to earn credit for 3a-3f. I think this was the biggest point of contention in the class, but personally I didn't have too much of an issue with it, because the professor looks at the exams as "if you put in the work for this class, you should do well".

The final project was also pretty fun! It took me a bit to do because I was typesetting everything on LaTeX, so it would look nice, but the actual project was honestly equivalent to a homework but with two weeks to do it rather than one. It definitely felt good complete it using all the skills we gained throughout the course. The homework's themselves were also long at times but I feel they tested my week-to-week mastery of the course, which helps in the long run!

This course has inspired me to pursue systems control classes as part of my graduate degree, with the 241 series of classes. I'm appreciative of Professor Shoarinejad's efforts this quarter and I would recommend this class to others!

TLDR: Engaged/Knowledgeable professor, insightful lectures, challenging exams, time consuming homework, awesome information, and a satisfying project.

I am coming back to say do not take this class with Prof. Shaorinejad UNLESS you have taken ECE110, even though it is not an official requisite.

I am currently taking 110 and it would have saved me a lot of pain if I had learned about Sinusoidal excitation and phasors, AC steady state analysis, AC steady state power, network functions, poles and zeros, frequency response, mutual inductance, bode plots, application of Laplace transforms to circuit analysis BEFORE taking this class.

I wish I could go back and relearn those concepts from 141 with my new background knowledge..

Not gonna lie but he's one the most organized and best lecturer in ECE department but he's exams are far from being fair and easy. For this class there are 5-6 hws (20%), 1 final project (15%), a midterm and final (30%, 35%). He's gradings is pretty fair where for A you need 87.5 but don't let all these grading fool you. As he mentioned it few times, since there is only one feedback control class in ECE department, he tried to squeeze 4-5 different textbook in 10 week course which is really helpful if you're interested but not worth to spend every day studying for it. Lastly, he gave us 24 hrs to submit our midterm and final and he literally meant we need 24hr to work on as I spend 12hr for midterm and 16 for final and I still wasn't able to finish my exams. Overall if you have a light schedule and you wont mind working on the exams for 24hrs take him, unless avoid him at all costs.

When I signed up for this class and heard how hard Professor Shoarinejad was rumored to be, I expected to pull out an A- or A, so I was pleasantly surprised to get an A+. In this spirit: don't let the negative reviews daunt you!

As a side note, in case it's relevant: I am an Electrical Engineering major, but I'm also registered with CAE, so keep in mind that I may be more sensitive to a heavy course load than most people in this major due to my medical disability.

I have long been interested in communications theory and signal processing, but I really had no exposure to control theory and expected to find it somewhat interesting but not fascinating. This course changed my mind. While - as other reviewers have testified - the homework and exams really do take a long time, I also felt as though I learned more from them in this one class than I have learned in any other class I've taken at UCLA thus far. I found myself, especially on the design portions of the exams and the design project, enjoying myself so much I literally smiled as I was working.

However, the work load is definitely heavy, so beware. If you're ready to put in a lot of time and effort, you will do well. Professor Shoarinejad cares a lot about his students and his teaching, and he is very helpful in answering questions. But I don't recommend taking this alongside more than one other very heavy class. For example, this quarter I took 121B with Emaminejad, 132A with Ahmed, 133A with Lorenzelli, and 141; Ahmed assigns a lot for 132A and 133A is a fairly difficult class in my opinion, so I definitely felt the course load.

I would say expect to spend at least 10 hours a week studying and on homework if you really want to do well. The exams were 24-hour take-homes this quarter, and much of the class reported taking 14-15 hours on the midterm and as long as the full 24 hours on the final. Professor Shoarinejad said these exams were 3 hour exams, but I have not talked to anyone in the class that took nearly that short. If you're really good at learning fast, or have already had exposure to the material, you could probably do them in much shorter time, but realistically that did not seem to be most of the class's experience.

This class makes me want to go into control theory, to be quite honest. I ended up geeking out over the phone to my parents (who were unfortunately lost) about all the material I'd learned in the class.

TL;DR: if you're willing to put in a lot of time and effort and learn a LOT in just one quarter, 100% take this class. The curve is great and Professor Shoarinejad really cares. If you're already taking a lot of hard classes, maybe put this off to a lighter course load quarter.

TL;DR: For those that have taken ECE 2, and ECE121b, I would consider those course (control systems & feedback)to be analogous to if you are a new student with no semiconductor knowledge going into ECE 121b before having fleshed through fundamentals and less in depth examples in ECE 2.

Before I mention anything, I think I'm somewhere around an A- maybe higher maybe lower not how much partial credit I will get on the final...
Overall, from the perspective of course material I though this course was quite interesting and from a higher level the techniques were covered quite well, however as other's have already mentioned the fundamentals that the Professor expects us to quickly catch on hinder a lot of the deep level learning as to why certain techniques and methodologies are being used. That being said the homework although time consuming and difficult did force students to review their material that was covered very quickly during the lectures. I think a big part of this has to do with the fact that the Professor had already pre-written notes and was simply reading through material and going from line to line which didn't give student's enough time to mull things over in their head before a new topic or idea was introduced. I hold nothing against the Professor regarding all the material that was covered as he seems very passionate and knowledgeable but from the lens of this being someone's first exposure to control systems it was very fast paced. Most of the true learning was done while doing the homework and that's where things truly began to click in my head at least. As for the midterm once again with new problems being thrown at us, many students had to go back and refresh themselves which is what I believe led to the exam taking well over 12 hours for many students. The project itself albeit difficult and time consuming I think was still fair but as other people have mentioned the Professor could behave a bit condescending once again as he expects us to understand the foundational things when only mentioning them once and/or skipping them in his lecture notes during class. And as many students were spending a lot of the last two weeks finishing up on the project the addition of new material in the form of LQR mainly but also discretization with the Z-domain and not being able to fully flesh out that knowledge through homework (there was optional hw assigned, but I feel people mainly just reviewed the solutions and didn't have time to spend on that as they were working on the project). With this sentiment being held by another review I also feel that if some of those new topics were omitted and instead we spent more time focusing on fundamental concepts and stretched the 8 weeks of material into 10, we could still have a very insightful view while also slowing down the pace making things clearer for students and more manageable.

I found this course to be very difficult, though I admit that it was hard for me to stay on pace with the virtual setting. The homeworks, midterm, and final were very time consuming and difficult to complete each week. I would say this was one of my heaviest classes I've taken in terms of amount of material. I think it was clear that Professor Shoarinejad is very dedicated to teaching the material and is always available to answer questions on discord. He will seriously respond to questions late into the night which is very nice. Though I do usually prefer Piazza for questions, Discord gave off a nice casual vibe and talking to the professor almost felt like talking to a peer who could answer any questions you could think of. I was a little disappointed by the course material. I came into the class expecting it to be about one thing and it just wasn't really what I was imagining. This led me to lose some interest and fall behind. Overall, I wasn't a huge fan of the class material but I think the professors dedication goes a long way. I wish I got to learn from prof Shoarinejad in person because I think he obviously knows the topic well

Overall, the main thing I didn't like about this class was how boring the material was. The homework was difficult but still doable. The midterm was insane - not sure how anyone could've done that test in three hours. The lecture style could definitely have been improved. It felt like Professor Shoarinejad was reading a textbook in class. I could never get through an entire class, meaning I had to rewatch lectures and review them multiple times which took up way too long. I think the professor expected a lot more out of us than I was prepared to give to this class, but to be fair the grade scale was way lower than any class I have ever taken so I do believe he wanted us to learn more than worry about grades or anything.

All of that being said, Professor Shoarinejad is definitely one of the most helpful professors I've had at UCLA. He gave us an option to choose our preferred method of communication in the first class and nobody objected to discord. He answered all questions almost immediately with detailed explanations. He was available every single day from early in the morning to late at night. He answered emails quickly and he effectively explained the things I needed clarification on. Although I don't agree with his method of lecturing and exams, he was extremely dedicated to us and the class and I appreciated that very much.

Overall, if you are interested in controls and want a challenge, I would recommend taking this class with Professor Shoarinejad. If you think studying controls isn't for you (like I do now), taking this class won't be the end of the world but it may be draining. Luckily there are a lot of videos/articles/helpful websites out there on the fundamentals so it's not too difficult to find methods for solving problems outside of what we learn from lecture.

While I found this class very difficult, I believe that is in large part due to the current virtual learning environment. Professor was (in my opinion) incredibly helpful. I did enjoy the material but I do agree with the previous comment that the workload is a bit heavy. This is more due to the sheer quantity of material covered rather the individual assignments. Typically after reviewing notes and lectures I was able to do the homeworks without too much difficulty, but it often took a while to review all the necessary notes because there are a lot. If the course started with the material of week 2 (week 1 i believe had mostly been covered in previous courses) and ended before LQR topics I think the workload would have been significantly improved. The last few topics were a very complicated addition to the course to learn just before the final.

Overall I'd say if the scope of the class could be lessened a little, and if the notes could be condensed some to make room for more detailed examples the course would be significantly improved. I believe that given the circumstances professor did a pretty good job.