This class was very challenging after having an easy Professor for Intermediate GIS but with help from the TA & classmates, I was able to do well and I definitely walked away feeling like a GIS expert. Sheng is a very sweet professor who makes lectures decently interesting. The weekly projects are intense and take time but there's no midterm or final. Push yourself and take this class!

As a final required class for a GIS minor, it is definitely challenging. Apart from the first paper review assignment, the rest is project-based on various topics. The course covers many useful spatial analysis and geoprocessing tools. You should have a good basis for using GIS for vector data before taking this class, so I would recommend you refresh some GIS skills learned in the intermediate class.

The workload is quite a bit for this class. I spent at least 6 hours per project up to 14 hours (per individual project). In the end, you are required to conduct a group project on any topic using the tools that we learned in class in an in-class presentation and a report. In the first few weeks, it may be a little challenging to adjust to the pace of the class. But after week 4, I feel much better about the class structure. You should start working on the assignment early in the week (right after you get the task) and drop by during office hours as much as possible. Warning: the 3D model can take SO LONG to process (the last individual project), which I spent almost 6 hours running on Computer Lab's PC (very intensive processing). The grading was quite strict, but it depends on your TA. To get the full score, you need to go "above and beyond," which is very unclear in terms of guidelines. So, I would recommend you to ask TA about their expectations.

Overall, in hindsight, I enjoyed the class even though sometimes the workload was overwhelming. I have learned something valuable and improved my GIS skills a lot. Professor Sheng is a pretty nice person, but his lectures can be a little boring. However, I still recommend taking this class if you are planning to work on GIS after graduation. If you want to spice up your quarter a bit with some interesting and challenging classes, Advanced GIS is the right choice for you.

Course structure: Labs every week (with ArcGIS software after week 4) are 30% of your grade. Patrick is an awesome TA and will help you with anything you do not understand about the software.
Midterm and Final are each worth 35% of your grade and are administered during lab on weeks 5 and 10. No lectures are held those weeks.
Sheng is good as a lecturer and it takes (at least for me it did) about a week to get used to his accent. He is very knowledge and wants everyone to learn as much as they can. He is deeply passionate about the material.

Sheng is hard to understand, but he cares about the topic. My main gripe with the class was the grading structure of weekly labs. You cannot get above an 80% with out going above and beyond. While I understand this is advanced gis there is little to no instruction on lab projects. I would get remarks on labs saying 'missing two maps and charts,' but I wasn't aware those were necessary. A. Madson was my TA and he is not helpful at all.

I'm taking Geography 7 this quarter with Professor Sheng and the class isn't too bad. My advice is to go to the TA's office hours for doing your labs, they are really helpful. I attended lecture but by the end of the quarter I realized I always just took notes on his powerpoints( which he basically read out loud) but his accent is very thick and hard to understand. If you actually look over his slides and study for the midterm, its super easy. Just basically memorization of info (raster vs. vector data, definition of GIS etc.)

Professor Sheng is my least favorite professor I have taken at UCLA. He turned a course that was supposed to be on Geographic Information Systems (which is about interpreting geographical data to solve real-world problems) into a course on cartography (different types of map projections, how to stylize a map legend, etc.) He spent a lot of time in lecture covering new terms and vocabulary, none of which we ever applied to anything other than test questions. In fact, I found his tests to be more about memorization of terms that about any sort of understanding of the purpose of GIS. I am glad that the reviewer below found his class engaging and enlightening. That was simply not my experience.

Professor Sheng’s class is known to be one of the most challenging GIS classes in the Geography Department, and this class is no different. However, even though I have no experience in Python, I found this class not impossible to tackle. If you have any coding experience, life would be easier for you. The first few weeks of the class were fast-paced, but the intense lectures lasted until week 7. Afterward, we mainly focused on the group project. The primary portion of the grade was from the lab assignments, which were much more complex than the concepts you learned in the lecture. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting, and I highly recommend you go to office hours, especially the TA one. I would not survive without Chen’s help. The group project setting is not ideal for coding class, but I have learned much from it. All in all, I believe that this class is beneficial, especially for people pursuing a GIS career, but I would warn those who do not have any coding experience to work harder in the first few weeks so they can keep up with the pace of the class. This class is worth taking since it could be a hard skill you earned from your college degree, and you will thank yourself in the future.

Good professor with some clarity issues or confusing instructions. The first weeks will feel really hard as you realize that it is actually an advanced class. However, once you get going the workload is reasonable with one assignment per week. Make sure to work in groups to ask each other questions.