STS 1500

This class is super easy and as long as you complete the work and put in 50% effort you should get an A. I got an A (96.8%) and spent less than an hour a work doing work. Lectures are dry and discussions are many times not related but you should show up because the weekly quiz questions are picked straight from the lectures.

This class is honestly a snoozefest. “It’s nap time” my friend would always say- they take attendance so roll up and then just nap. The lecture is either a Tuesday or Thursday, and then there’s a discussion section which is smaller and varies from Mon-Fri. This is where you take a majority of the reading quizzes (just do the readings and you’ll do fine) and then 2-ish big group projects so pick a good group in your discussion section. Prof. Carlson is slightly racist and it comes out in one of his lectures about bias. What else can you expect from an old white professor though? Honestly they spend the entire lecture talking about something that could've been condensed to 5-10 minutes. Hopefully soon they will get rid of this requirment for engineers.

The lectures and readings in this class are pretty boring, but there were a couple I actually liked. The writing assignments themselves are graded relatively easy, just don't leave all your design notebook ideas for the last day. Try to make lots of friends in this class because it can help you out. Also make sure you get the bonus quizzes because those can help you out.

It's hard to make engineers interested in a more humanities-focused class. That's why no one really likes taking this class. But, I think some of the readings were actually interesting, and when I wasn't asleep, the lectures made some good points. Fortunately, this class is graded pretty leniently based on if you do the work and follow their grading system.

STS is a weird course. It's split into two parts, lecture and "lab." Lecture is boring, but they take attendance so it's best to go. Just sit in the back and do other homework or watch SportsCenter or something, the time will pass easy enough. Lab is where you'll do most of the actual work--they give you lots of time to do the work during class, so take advantage by getting down to business quickly and you won't have to do much at home. The assignments aren't very interesting (they had us read 30 pages about patent law at one point...), but if you're willing to put the effort in, they don't take long. Overall it's not a bad course, just boring.

Well, I think the idea of teaching engineers about how their work affects society is ok but boy does this class fail in execution. The amount of useless Jargon that comes out of the lecturer's mouth is appalling and I could probably summarise each lecture into about a paragraph in terms of actual takeaways and what we need to know. Anyways, this class is really easy and you have to take it in E School, so just do your best and try not to fall asleep.

Tolu, Ben, Matt, and Peter are great, helpful teachers! Carlson -- less so. He's obviously a smart guy, but his lectures were uninteresting, generally a little scattered, and often confusing. I much preferred it when Ben and Matt gave lectures -- they were funny and interesting!
This class isn't that hard or time-consuming. I feel like I didn't really learn anything particularly useful in lecture -- but lab assigned some projects that may be useful as examples in the future. Grading was fair.

STS 1500 was my favorite course this semester by far. I found the lectures very interesting, and the outside reading enjoyable. The few projects we had this semester did not take up too much time and if you put effort into them your grade reflected that.

This class is super boring but if you get Matt as your grader you're set. He likes to give out A's as long as you try.

This class is not the best, and isn't very interesting to boot. They definitely tried their best to make this class interesting, and you can tell they all really care. They are very nitpicky though, so watch out for that. It's not hard to get a B+ or so in the class, but it becomes quite challenging to get an A.

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.

I was probably one of the ONLY people to get an A in his class, and only because I got a 99 on the technical description. His test questions are confusing and often bias. I hate that we learn from papers that he writes and are tested on his opinions on the subject. They need to majorly revamp this class in order to make it worth students' time.

This is definitely the most useless class I've taken at UVA, and should not be required. I would honestly rather just take an ENWR to fulfill a writing requirement. The readings are helpful for the exams, but if you just do all of them a couple days before the exam you should be ok. For the technical description, just do EXACTLY what the TAs say to do and make sure to submit it as a PDF. Make sure you pick a good group in lab section as you will count on them for the PPA.
Overall, no matter how you work, you will probably get a B+ or maybe an A-. Please do not take this class if you don't have to.

I did about two readings all semester and slept through the lectures and pulled out an A in the class. The videos on collab are more useful that the lectures for the first half of the semester. The final was significantly more difficult that the midterm, so preparing more for that is a good idea. There are two written assignments, which are somewhat informative. Not too bad as long as you follow instructions precisely. They'll take off points just to take off points. They like to make the class harder than it actually is. Overall, boring and dumb class, but it's required!!!! So you can't get out of it!

This is by far the most pointless class that I have ever taken. Dr. Carlson is the most narcissistic person that I have ever met-- a significant number of readings are written by him and he even cites himself in the readings. The TAs worship Carlson and quote him in lab. The readings are often long and not very interesting, and the lectures are pretty much a summary of the lectures. However, do not let this fool you-- the readings are necessary because the midterm and final will have nitpicky questions from the readings. Attendance is mandatory, and you are not allowed to use technology during class because you "need to absorb on Dr. Carlson's word" (actual quote from a TA on the first day of class). However, if you do well on the technical description and Patent Application by making sure you religiously follow the rubric, do all of the readings before the tests and learn the PowerPoints you should come out with a B+/A-. Don't take this class if you are not required to, but if you are an engineer there is no way of getting out of this class so you will need to buckle down and tolerate the BS that is this class.

So this class is pretty terrible. But that being said, it's not a difficult class. The midterms aren't too hard if you review the powerpoints and videos beforehand. The technical description and patent application aren't hard either, just follow the rubric. The most annoying part for me was the idea notebook, but they care more about quantity not quality, so as long as you're consistent you'll get a good grade. The class is not a very big time commitment so as long as you put in effort, you can get an A.

This class is useless. But you have to take it, like many other useless classes, so prepare yourself. STS 1500 is what you get when diarrhea and piss amalgamate.

OK so everyone hates on this class, but I don't think its too horrible. To start with, Carlson has many opinions, and he does test on them, but I don't think there is anything wrong with that, because he is a leader in the STS field. Furthermore, the exams are difficult because they do ask trick questions, but if you put your time in, it isn't that bad. Everyone says Carlson is bad, and he is a pretty average lecturer, but you barely deal with him, the people you get to know are the TAs: Ben, Pete and the other dude (forgot his name, didn't have him). All the TA's are great, and they are really nice people. Although they can grade harshly on the papers you have (technical description and PPA), the assignments teach valuable skills. In fact, I applied for a provisional patent, and had it not been for this class, I would have no idea how. Also, I strongly encourage people to go to office hours. They are very lenient on what they give back. I went and reason through why I should get points back here or there, and I came out of the office with a letter grade higher on my exam and technical deception. Getting an A is difficult, as you probably saw by the graph, but I managed to do it, and I really did nothing extraordinary. Just keep up with your work, and as a pro tip, do not leave the idea notebook to the last minute (if you do, try to take inspiration from things around you, and add something to them!).

As all the other reviews have said, Carlson is narcissistic and this class pretty much revolves around his own opinions/interpretations on historical events and inventions. He will have quotes of himself on his own lecture slides, and you will be tested on his opinions as well.

Albeit a bad lecturer (he's boring as hell), Carlson presents some interesting arguments that are at the very least worth considering. The class definitely has good intentions and can be kind of valuable - it teaches engineers how technologies impact societies, and this contextualization of engineering is supposed to give you a broader outlook. The major assignments - idea notebook, PPA and technical description - are useless but shouldn't be too time-consuming depending on your group members and your grader. I would HIGHLY recommend keeping up with the idea notebook (1 journal entry every day for the semester); coming up with a 100 bullshit ideas during the last week of the semester is an absolute nightmare, trust me, I've been there and so has most of the E-school. Even though they specifically tell you the tests aren't designed to trick you, the midterm and final are pretty much all trick questions. Despite that, they still aren't bad if you thoroughly study the notes and videos a few days beforehand.

Honestly, it's just something all first-year engineers have to go through - so try to keep an open mind as you approach the class. Don't buy in to everything Carlson says, but since there's really no way to get out of taking the class, you might as well try to get the most out of it. It's also MUCH less stressful than the other first-year E-school subjects like Chem and Calc, so I wouldn't really complain about it. As long as you keep up with the work, it shouldn't be difficult to get a B or B+, and if you put in some extra effort, an A- is definitely achievable.

What a terrible course. It's just one of the classes you have to take as an engineer, and unfortunately there's only one professor to take it with. Lectures are boring; labs have nothing to do with lectures. Two midterms, one technical description, one groupwork patent, and an idea notebook is all the class is, but the grading is poor and seems subjective to what the professor thinks. Overall a bad class, but do the assignments and you can come out with an A-.

By far the stupidest class I've ever taken. The fact that this class is required for engineers makes me want to transfer to Tech. Carlson is so full of himself. The class isn't designed to teach you about universal material like math, history, or sciences..... this class literally teaches you Carlson's own opinions. The structure of the class is extremely stupid and the grading is horribly unfair. It's nearly impossible to get a good grade, but at the same time, it's difficult to fail as well. (that's why the avg. gpa is skewed) I have not learned anything in this class. Most of it is common sense in addition to Carlson's stupid opinions. Nobody has time for all the readings and work he assigns. Some of the assignments like the Idea Notebook and PPA sound good, but end up being horrible. Idea Notebooks are meant to be kept for IDEAS, but Carlson forces you to write an 'idea' or two EVERYDAY. That defeats the purpose of an idea notebook because you're forcing yourself to spit out stupid thoughts. The Patent Application sounds cool and useful, but they literally teach you nothing. You have to figure everything out by yourself. I don't need to pay $30,000 a year for this.... I can fucking figure out how to write a patent application myself.
Overall, completely useless class. Avoid at all costs. If you're an engineer and you're required to take this class, my advice is that you treat this class as a joke and focus on your other classes like Chem, Physics, or CS. As I said, it's difficult to do poorly in this class.... so you can easily sit around and get a B or B+. The amount of work to get an A- is unreal. Getting an A is impossible. Less than 1% of the class finishes with an A. Engineers love to calculate. Calculate the most efficient way to use your time. You'll find that in order to maximize your overall GPA, you should focus on classes like Chem, Physics, or CS so you can see results in your grade and knowledge.

Studying for this class makes you dumber.

This course. Unfortunately, it's required for all first-year engineering majors. If you do not have to take this class...then don't. There's a reading every week (a few of which are actually written by him where he also cites his own work). Some are really long while others are manageable. You only need to read the readings for the exams. His lectures are basically the readings themselves. Make sure you read the readings though. The midterm & final both ask a lot of specific and nitpicky questions on the readings. As a warning, he is probably the most narcissistic professor ever. He makes you read articles written by him, some of the articles he actually cites himself, all of his lectures are basically based on his opinions, the TAs quote him on a daily basis, and the exams revolve around the lectures and readings. Make sure you closely follow all the directions when turning work in! Good luck...you'll need it.

Professor Carlson may be the strangest professor I have ever had. The fact that he quotes himself in his required readings, and assigns lecture videos of himself turned me off. I would not have taken this class if it wasn't required. The content can be interesting, just not the way that Carlson teaches it. Neither the midterm nor the final are particularly challenging, but do the readings when assigned if you want an A. The patent application project is not that bad, but stay on top of due dates and little nitpicky rules that are in the syllabus.

A required class that manages to sneak in more of one man's ego than I ever thought possible.
The lectures (on the off chance they happen) are decent enough, although quite boring and pointless in most cases - they prep one for the tests and the tests are walks in the park if one goes over the slides and skims the readings.
The "labs" are basically times to prep for groupwork and associated writing assignments, which are graded arbitrarily by TAs who know very little of the actual subjects in question besides that they love their man Carlson - they never waste an opportunity to refer to "Dr. Carlson's opinion". Preparation for the writing assignments constitutes the majority of the time spent dealing with this course.
Speaking of which, that opinion is overzealous and sometimes quite noticeably inaccurate. The professor somehow manages to draw simple yet absurdly overreaching conclusions about how things turned out the way they did, chalking up the causes behind the complexities of history to the simple decisions of a few. He knows very little about how much of this technology he discusses actually works and how it impacts the lives we live today.
What he does somewhat know is business, and the lectures/videos that incorporate those principles are far and away the most enjoyable and rewarding.
Keep your idea notebook neat and up to date.

Carlson is just the worst. Far and away the worst class I've ever taken. I wanted to switch out of this class after the first 20 minutes of the first lecture, but couldn't because it is a first year requirement. The assignments seemed to be graded on a random scale and the rubric/lab "discussions" don't do much to help you with them. The readings are generally pretty boring and are regurgitated onto Carlson's lecture slides every week. Carlson's lectures reminded me of a high school student giving a presentation that he/she had just put together at the last minute before class. I have to admit that he is a pretty good writer, but it is easy to tell that he's a terrible professor. If you can figure out any way whatsoever to avoid taking this class (e.g. take a similar class during the summer at another university, find something similar you took in high school, etc.), do not hesitate to do so. That being said: if you do take this class, dedicate ample time to the few assignments, and keep up with your idea notebook and it's pretty easy to get a B+ or A-.

Since there is generally only one STS 1500 course offered a semester/year, you probably won't take this class as a choice. However, if you have ANY choice, I would highly recommend staying away from it. The exams test your knowledge of extremely specific details while the lectures are focused on broad themes and the readings are often lengthy and for the most part essentially unrelated. The grading of papers is arbitrary, and I would say just pay attention in lab as much as you can to do better on these. Overall, I found this class extremely boring and useless, but it is an engineering school requirement so there was really no way out of it

This class sucks. Carlson sucks. Makes it impossible to get an A, and he doesn't teach. He demands respect but doesn't guve it

I genuinely did not like this class. The lectures were painfully boring (even if Carlson did his best to be entertaining) and the labs were even worse. The grading by the TAs is pretty inconsistent, making it difficult to do well on the bigger writing assignments. The assigned readings are basically directly copied onto the lectures slides, making it unnecessary to do both. This is simply a class you have to buckle down and get through. There's no way I would have taken this if it wasn't a requirement.

This class is led by a professor who has no intention to educate students at all. You will be taught and graded by TA s that has zero knowledge on what they are doing and only cares about getting Carlson’s attention. This class is a crucial class for engineers, yet UVA has let it become a complete garbage that you are forced to go through. Professor will copy and paste the wikipedia page for his lecture slides or just give you the link if he doesn't even feel like doing that. By the end of the first lecture, you will learn everything you will learn at the end of the semester.

Carlson treats this class like a joke but then has an absurd standard for grading. Over a five week stretch Carlson missed four out of five lectures and assigned video lectures instead.The themes of the course could be established and supported within three weeks but the rest of the course is fluff that does little to expand upon the overall argument of the course.

Carlson is obsessed with himself. You'll see more "According to prof. Carlson" than you'd expect. His lectures can have potential on occasion, but generally are a total letdown. Very little of what you learn is actually relevant to anything you do. The discussions are a different matter. They're actually fairly informative and you learn quite a bit about writing technical descriptions, the patent process, the library system, and a bunch of other fairly relevant topics.

This class is required, but isn't too bad. Just make sure you put in effort to the group project at the end and your technical description. The exams are all multiple choice and pretty easy.

The class itself is boring sometimes, and kinda cool the next. Just gotta live with it.

Overall the professor isn't too bad but the class itself just seems like a waste of time.

Carlson's lectures were interesting. Loved that he brought Oliver in to talk to us. He's arrogant though. Tests were easy; study material from the lecture slides. All questions are multiple choice. I thought the writing was hard and weird for this class. Got some off-put feedback from my TAs but they were all very nice. I enjoyed the projects we did in lab.

This is a required first year engineering course. I suppose it is worth noting that the TA's are responsible for all grading of about 300-350 students and there are only three of them, so that may be a reason why I didn't enjoy the course at all.

Carlson is a pretty well known professor (head of the STS department, engineering business minor, etc.) and is kind of a big deal and he definitely knows it. I've never seen a professor excessively quote himself on exams and lecture slides or give lectures completely based on his own conjecture rather than a more objective perspective, but Carlson managed to do both. Be ready for a TON of blanket statements and iffy generalizations, because that's what most lectures are based upon.

Perhaps my biggest problem with the class was a lack of transparency in terms of grading. The class wasn't particularly hard in terms of weekly reading (though some were EXTREMELY long, like about 60 pages), but the grading was very annoying. There are several written assignments, like the idea notebook, PPA, tech description, etc. Be sure to follow the rubric 100%. The grades appear to be given pretty randomly, in that it's more of box-checking than actually reading for substance and going above and beyond. The TA's do all the grading and you have a much better shot of going to them for help/questions than Carlson.

Overall, I know plenty of people who were frustrated by this course. If you put in a lot of work, you should be able to get at least a B/B+, but I still haven't met anyone who got an A. It's required, so do your best, but don't expect too much.

This class was not that bad but the readings were useless for what we were learning, but we had to do them for the test. The T.As matter a lot. Not hard at all to get at least a B or B plus, however depending on your T.A getting a flat A may be impossible. Somewhat interesting but some of the stuff we were supposed to read really made me want to throw my computer at a wall and ask if our professor himself read it

Readings assigned before lecture period weren't useful until tests. Lab period consisted of a lot of group work and writing projects. Required to keep an idea notebook with 100 entries by the end of the semester, highly advise keeping it up to date.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed this class very much. The lectures were rarely interesting and you learn to realize that there's no need to take notes because the only tests are the midterm and the final -- which are based off of readings, videos, and the powerpoints.

He doesn't add anything substantive to the powerpoints so you really don't have to pay attention. There are some outside writing assignments that are either individual or group based and your grade really depends on your TA. However, the midterm and final are very easy if you just read through the readings/powerpoints and watch all the videos.

Very hit or miss with the excitement of lectures. Some are interesting and then the next you can't wait to get out of the class. Carlson is knowledgeable about the subject but it was just a requirement. The outside writing assignments weren't that hard but they were decently time consuming.