This is a mandatory class for IA and is supposed to be the first one you take. I expected it to be a lot easier but the workload is a lot without a week of break. The homework can get crazy sometimes, especially when you have to balance your other classes while this is just two credits. The Fusion and Arduino can get annoying having to do it every week and you still do not know what you are doing. The group projects can get tiring after doing them 3 times.

Slightly useful if you are majoring in something that involves this content. After a while the constant work and routine gets annoying and you can tell that no one else really cares for it either.

She is nice as long as you communicate with her and shows some care. She can overcomplicate things and not care for people who may need some extra time or are very stressed out because of the class. I do not suggest her but really none of the professors are that amazing in this course.

Any spare time that you have, I suggest doing the work for this course. Get ahead early because some of it takes a long time. Go to office hours when you can. You will be annoyed with this course by week 10. Just push through it until the end.

So IDS1940 in person classes are pretty fun and engaging, you spend most of the class presenting or doing group work. However, the homework and larger assignments are a nightmare. The Fusion 360 tutorials are completely outdated so you have to guess half the time where certain functions are and it gets real frustrating real quick. Arduino is a bit easier but still pretty hard. The way the course is set up is pretty slow paced considering you do like maybe 4 big projects the whole semester.

You spend a large majority doing Fusion 360, Arduino and group projects that take multiple weeks. If you're an engineering major you'll probably like this class a lot more than your peers regarding HW but the presentations can be brutal.

I absolutely adore professor Pollard. She is so nice and loves to handout extra credit when deserved. There was a day I received 5 exc points just for showing up. She is a tough grader but if you follow the instructions to a tee it isn't nearly as bad. All of the HW is complete or incompletely so as long as you do the work (even if it is multiple weeks late) you'll get full credit.

Do the HW, go to class, and collaborate with your group members as much as possible.

It's pretty much a useless class. It makes you try to innovate things (As the class suggests), which is something you can do on your own without paying the class. The only thing nice about this class is that you learn to use Autodesk Fusion 360 (a 3D design app) but again, you have access to the program through your UFL email, so you can do that on your own time without the class.

Basically, your just trying to create new stuff according to the theme, you need to design it and give a pitch about it.

If you are taking this class DONT GET Charlie, he is a professor for 'fun', in other words, he is an awful teacher. He doesn't care about the students and don't respect students that much. He can be funny sometimes tho.

Innovation Academy is pretty useless, try to opt out from it if you can. If you are applying for a job and the interviewer asks what is an Innovation minor, it means that the minor has no value to the outside.