This may be the most boring class I've ever taken. Bouncing from seemingly random topics left me feeling confused and so spread out that I didn't learn anything sufficient about any of the topics. The actual assignments were mostly unrelated to the lecture and were crammed into a week, with weeks on end of no homework before and after. The lecture is a complete waste of time, but they took attendance. In my opinion, any class that takes attendance is sure to be boring.

This class generally has a few professors going in and out (Carlson, Laugelli, Odumosu, Westin) and all of them take turns lecturing. The lectures for me were interesting and I didn't mind listening once a week. The workshop taught some practical skills but was less fun to me overall. Don't worry about teachers and just get whatever times work best.

UGH - Carlson is a crappy teacher and at best, his lectures are wikipedia entries with a thin layer of social commentary. That said, you can still make the best out of this situation. The idea notebook is a great way to grow your creativity and write down cool ideas. Take advantage of this, because creativity is good. The patent project may be relevant to you one day, so pay attention. Take time to talk with and befriend your fellow engineers - it's rare to see everyone in one place.

Could've had more than double the content for only $320.
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/understanding-the-inventions-that-changed-the-world.html

Also, check out the reviews through that site. They're fantastic.

UVA had good intentions requiring us to take this course. However, with Carlson teaching it, you get nothing out of it. Carlson tries to be engaging, but this falls flat and you’ll end up wanting to sleep in that class. He also made is do something called an idea notebook and you had to write at least 100 entries in it by the end of the semester. You’ll need to keep up with it otherwise you’ll be spending pretty much every waking minute catching up with what you missed near the end of the semester. For written assignments, make sure to follow the rubric exactly because they will take points off for small things. The tests aren’t that bad though as long as you pay attention in class and skim through the readings.

This class is am E-school mandatory course and indeed has some issues in my opinion For one, this class has basically few grades in the grade book where messing up on one or two assignments destroys your grade. Not to mention that your grade on written assignments ( a large portion of your grade) depends on your TA, which really puts some at a disadvantage compared to others. The readings are sometimes unnecessarily lengthy, although supplemental to the material Carlson lectures on. Now my biggest problem with this course is the tests. Both the midterm and final don't really test your knowledge of the content, but rather your understanding of Carlson's viewpoint, which sometimes can be tricky to grasp fully. And the TAs say the exams are not supposed to trick you, but they do indeed trick you very easily! Now this is not to say that Carlson is a bad lecturer, because at times during the course, he made some very interesting points. Its only the structure of the course that irritates me. But from personal experience, doing the readings (even the long ones), studying in advance for the tests, doing the Tech Description & PPA way before the deadline, and keeping up with the idea notebook as frequently as possible is the surest way to get an A in the course. If you put in minimal effort, you can get a B/B+. But like any other course, you need to run the extra mile to get an A-/A.

While the engineering school has good intentions in requiring students to take this course, the execution is quite poor. There really isn't much of a point to it, students would be much better off taking courses with more substance to them. As to grading, I do not think it is as impossible to get an A as some say... I had the so-called hardest TA grader, and I still ended up with an A without putting in an extreme amount of effort and not performing that well on the midterm or final. Study at least two days in advance for the exams, work hard on the technical description and PPA, and you should fairly easily come out with a B+ to an A.

This class really isn't that bad. Professor Carlson provides thoughtful insights that yield true in today's society. Don't do the readings; it really is just busywork and only several specific questions from the readings will show up on the exams. For the exams, just review the lectures. The TechDescription and PPA are assignments that test if you know how to follow a rubric. The IdeaNotebook is hell, but not too bad. Overall, I put the MINIMUM amount of work into this class and got a B+. I studied the day before each exam and did the TechDescription and PPA the day before. Just chill and focus on your other classes.

As with everyone else - this is a very poor course, but its mandatory. None of the information will be used in engineering. All the TA's love Carlson so much, for some reason. You can see from the course forum that very few people are able to get a full A in the course. That is not because it is hard, but because this course is SO easy to neglect. That being said, you can basically do little to nothing in the course (except the TD/idea notebook - be sure to divy notebook up at least a little. Most people end up doing it last minute and suffer.) and end up with a B+, easy. Only recommendation if you want to try to stretch for the A: follow ALL the rubrics to the point. For the few written assignments, they basically follow the rubric and take off unnecessary points.

This class is terrible. Your entire grade is based on the group you pick on the first day of class. It's virtually impossible to get an A. You can work extremely hard or not at all and you will get an A- or B+. Its not hard at all but it's just a pain.