There is one word I would like to use to describe this course and that is LUCK. Everything in this class is done by the roll of a stacked die with your odds stacked towards failure. The course starts off with you being placed in teams which is where it will be decided whether you will love or hate this course. Get placed in a lazy group and you will be doing all the work and your mark in this class, as well as others will plummet. Get placed in a tryhard group and you will get points deducted for making the slightest jokes and the projects will feel monotonous and boring. You may even get placed in a group where two out of the six members do not speak English making it impossible for them to do their fair share of the work (lots of this class is writing and speaking). Get just the right gr...read more

Just be lucky. If you are religious pray, if not search up ways to attract good luck. Doing both certainly wont hurt either! Good Luck!

More like Ambiguity 100. Quizzes and especially midterms/exams are loaded with multiple choice questions with virtually the same answer across all choices. You could argue that every answer is correct, but a minute discrepancy based on the prof's "feeling" towards a question would seem you observations invalid. Like others have noted, while the course material is objective, the exams are nothing but subjective opinions from the profs. Proctorio for exams is just plain stupid - imagine staring at a screen for 2 hours without being able to stretch or rest your eyes. Oh, they didn't tell us until the final exam that you could go on washroom breaks, which defeats the damn purpose of proctorio in the first place¿! Group projects are alright provided your teammates are knowledgeable. Projects w...read more

Go through all the screencasts and do the short learning quizzes (not for marks) before attempting the actual quizzes. For the midterm/final, review all concepts learned (especially the little details) and hope for the best.

THE WORST LECTURE AND WORST PROFESSORS

JUST DROP IT

Honestly, it's not as worthless as people say. Its role is to show how engineering isn't purely a technical profession while also putting students in a (simplified) design team scenario. I assume a lot of the haters are those who expected engineering to be an escape from writing, presentations and working with people (which is the bulk of this course). However, the 6ish profs running the course did make some boneheaded decisions, like putting time limits on recorded lectures (for "security" reasons) and they handled student backlash to proctorio very poorly. Overall, its negative reputation is overblown in my opinion, but this course was by no means good, just decent.

They will test literally everything on the midterms and final, so your only real shot at doing well at those is to memorize like crazy, since this isn't like math where many practice questions are available (just one practice test).

absolute shitass course. They need to get rid of it. Only good thing I got out of it was human interaction, and I became friends with some of my group mates :). But don't expect that, you could just as equally get a really bad group. Overall, it was a massive waste of time.

This is easily the hardest course in term 1, and you cant do shit to prepare for it. Half the course is gambling, so good luck. It might not seem like it at first, but this is an extremely difficult course. There was genuinely more reading involved than WRDS 150B. Hardest course in term 1, an absolutely shitass course.

The course was a whole lot of work and frustration which is a very bad combination. The screencasts and labs were enjoyable enough, but some other aspects of the course were not nice at all. Main complaints: - The material for each week is released every Friday (afternoon?) and there is a requirement to finish some assignments related to it before early Sunday morning. Was the intention to try and wreck our weekends? Ended up having to spend my every Saturday morning discussing unproductive multiple choice questions with five other people. - Peer evaluations - These are a great exercise, but having someone unqualified spend 30 seconds to write a one-liner that makes no sense and then decide my final assignment grade is unacceptable. - Peer evaluations - In the public work space, if ...read more

Well, you need to do this course to continue in engineering. Take a nice deep breath, and dive into the opportunity to work on your anger-management skills. Try to focus on learning some teamwork skills, it is the most useful thing to take away.

Previous review was meant to be 1 star oops

I actually took this course in the first year it was offered so 2015 term 1. Honestly a pretty pointless course and should be changed to give us more fundamental engineering skills instead of getting us to make cardboard boxes, excel spreadsheets, 3 lines of arduino code to program a claw and all the other projects. The presentations give us good skills but honestly getting us to dress business formal is kinda stupid

Overall decent course. The group work and projects are quite enjoyable and are a great introduction to Engineering. Much of the other stuff you cover can often be dry and the tests are somewhat ambiguous multiple choice that covers literally anything and everything.

The tests are kind of a crap shoot that just tests your working memory. Taking detailed notes may help with the tests. The best way to boost your mark though comes from working on the group projects.

Pretty wishy washy course. One thing I like about engineering is that there is a straightforward answer and objectivity comes first. In apsc, a lot of answers from the profs came from a place of reason and experience, however there was often gray areas that could be justified where they simply gave an answer with no reason. You'll answer a question then they will give you an unsatisfying answer as to why you are completely wrong. Exams are mostly multiple choice with a negligible differences between the options that they blow out of proportion. They will also nitpick long answer questions down to the last detail on a fairly open ended question without giving a satisfying reason as to why your mode of thinking was not in track. The screencast however are great to rewatch and aren't too d...read more

Lectures are a bit of a waste if time so just focus on screencasts and the big project.

Protorio