Wesley Lawson

School: University of Maryland
Department: Engineering
Location: College Park, MD
Overall Rating
rated by 9 students
Helpfulness
Clarity
Easiness
Rating Comment
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Easiness
Pros: Easy class
Had a really chill TA
Barely did any work. Just show up and listen to his lectures.
Had a really chill TA named Kristie. If you have her, you pretty much will get an A.
Overall
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Pros: Easy labs that make up a good portion of your grade.
Homeworks although somewhat difficult are only worth 5% of your grade and graded lightly.
Doesn't give a lot of work overall.
Lectures are quite helpful.
Provides lots of practice for exams.
He usually gets very good TAs.
Exams are very fair, they test your knowledge of content without throwing in some trick question or complex multi-part problem.
Cons: Quizzes are worth 15% and are sometimes quite difficult.
Not very approachable.
Book is terrible.
Don't get the book. It significantly over complicates the class and everything you need to learn for the class can be learned through the lectures, wikipedia, and practice problems. When you need the book for homework problems get them from someone else, or don't do them. He usually only gives a few problems from the book if any for each assignment.
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Pros: Relatively interesting class. He can be entertaining and uses sarcasm. He tries to approach the non-technical class in an objective way, though I would personally say he fails. Gives a good amount of good grades, though absolutely hates curving.
Cons: Assignments vague and pretty arbitrarily graded. Class is a lot of non productive work. He really gets tiring on you. Very harsh grader.
One of those professors that really tires you out as the class progresses. In agreement with some other reviews, writing prompts and group projects are too vague. He ends up looking for certain things that are not clearly described, and the grades end up being very arbitrary. I was overall fortunate, and this didn't affect me, but looking at other's grades for exams and group projects, they seemed random at times. In the end, you might need a bit of luck to get the grade you want, which is especially annoying considering he is practically closed to regrades. He seems to think he is extremely generous on grading, when really, he's one of the harsher graders I've come upon.
He keeps a fairly interesting class, and is sarcastic at times. Sometimes he starts talking way too quietly for a class of our size. I would probably recommend the winter session, as other people on this page. However, do NOT expect it to be much easier; it's about the same level of difficulty I would guess.
Reading the book is not completely necessary, but it certainly helps. He has chapter summaries which are theoretically enough. The case studies are crucial for discussion though.
All in all, I would say he does a bad job of teaching this specific course. In my opinion, he fails to catch the heart of the issue of engineering ethics, and further fails to get people interested. I do not regret taking it over the winter, but it was a pain.
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Pros: sadf
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Pros: This class is very interesting. You will not get bored during this class
Cons: He gives a lot of homework that takes an extremely long time to do.
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Pros: good
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Pros: No textbook
Laid back
Nice guy
Knows his stuff
Cons: Dry lectures sometimes
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Cons: Way too much work for a 3 credit class
The content of the class is bullcrap. But if you read the book, understand the terms, read the case studies, and participate heavily in discussion, you will do alright.
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Pros: funny
Cons: can get boring
Good teacher. Seems kind of spacey sometimes. My friends were convinced he came to class high, but I just think that's how he is.

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