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21 Ratings
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This is just a class you have to get through. Though some topics were interesting, it boils down to writing your papers according to what the TA wants. You may have to take notes during lecture if Berne says she will collect a journal at the end of the semester. Overall I did not like this class because it took up time I could have dedicated to other classes.
Lectures could be very engaging depending on the day. This is one of the few engineering classes I've taken where discussion is encouraged which was nice.
The writing assignments were very structured and it took me a while to figure out that receiving a good grade meant following the instructions to the letter.
Best part of the class was the writing groups but that certainly depends on who you are placed with.
All in all, I didn't learn much but got to meet people, and Professor Berne has plenty of wild ideas to share.
The class had potential but was disorganized and the grading was unfair. A different TA would grade a student's paper each week which led to fluctuations in grade and limited ability for feedback. The essays were very formulaic and writing papers felt less like intellectual works and more like trying to fill checklists and guess at what the grader wants to see.
There are two parts to this class: the lecture (with Rosalyn Berne) and the discussion (with two other teachers). The lecture isn't bad. Berne is a character so it's pretty interesting to hear her speak. She's a bit of a new age hippie, I guess, so you'll hear a lot about the environment and robots (she has a thing for robot sex I think, the topic will come up more often than you think it would). The sci fi stories and movies are entertaining and its fun to to hear the interpretations of what it means and the implications for our future. Her book is pretty good, although I wouldn't read it of my own accord I was able to finish it in a day.
The discussion is run by two teachers from the college and I would imagine the experience is different depending on who's running it. But across the board, the discussion is where you discuss the sci fi story you read for homework, get your writing assignments, and review your writing with your group. I had Ben Laugelli and Mary French and although the stories and discussion with my group was fun, they were a fiasco. It was all Ben talking and Mary just sat there like a stone. I've maybe heard five words from her and that's just because she was the grader for my group and we had to meet with her for one of the papers. Ben was kind of condescending and basically told us "You're engineers which means you suck at writing" and we had to go over basic grammar and sentence structure which was SO painful. I was offended and after him saying that on the first day, and it sort of set the tone for the rest of the semester. Yes we are engineers which means we like science. But we got in to UVA which means most of us ALSO got excellent scores in AP Literature, AP Language, or the IB equivalents. So that's my rant about Ben. Besides that, don't expect A's on your papers because they do grade it thoughtfully and at a college level based on the strength of your argument and ideas (NOT your ability to put a sentence like "See Jane run." together which is what Ben was teaching us). I ended up hovering around the B-/B range which I thought was fair.
This course sucked, plain and simple. It is a requirement for engineers though so if you are an engineer you're just going to have to bear with it. Now the teacher matters a lot, and Ms. Berne, though a good person, was hopeless as a teacher. I would much prefer the engineering writing requirement that is STS just got replaced with ENWR's altogether for college and e-school kids. Doing well in this course was not well defined at all and Ms. Berne went back on her word of curving the class at the end anyway...
As mentioned by others, this is a pretty standard engineering writing course, on the topic of science fiction. To do well in this class, you just have to follow the format of what they expect from you, which means lots of deep analysis of the text. Just do exactly as the TA's tell you to do, as they are the ones grading the class.
The lectures were very dry, and didn't really seem to pertain to engineering as a whole, despite Professor Berne's best intentions. The reading material borders on engaging to boring, usually the latter.
Terrible class. Always ironic being taught about technology and its downfall by a woman who can't operate a powerpoint and TAs who are history and religious studies graduate studies. Don't expect to learn anything in this class. Also, if you're a great writer, expect to get a B- on every paper, because the TAs make up random reasons to mark you down based on random guidelines that they make on the spot. Have fun!
This is basically the engineering english class. The reading assignments that come from the collection of short stories are pretty good, and the discussion sections were sometimes interesting, but overall this class was not at all enjoyable. Sometimes during discussion the TAs would act like students did not know anything about the english language and act like they are lecturing elementary schoolers. Professor Berne is one of the most ridiculous people I have EVER seen; she is a horse whisperer and her book is absolutely terrible. Waiting in the Silence doesn't just have a bad plot, but is full of plot holes, typos, and grammatical errors. Anyone who has the chance to take this class under a different professor should consider themselves incredibly lucky.
Berne isn't the worst lecturer I have ever had, but she is rather strange at times. Her lectures were mildly interesting, but they don't relate to what we were graded on that well. The most valuable information comes from your discussion groups with your TA.
This class is effectively a first year engineering writing class, and the grading is mostly based on essays written on various reading assignments. The essay structure they want you to use is rather formulaic, and they are graded rather harshly. It helps if you meet with your TA to talk about your essays. The reading assignments come from an anthology of short stories, Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future, and Berne's Waiting in the Silence. I found Kaku and the short stories to be pretty good, but Berne's work wasn't that great. Overall, it's not a very fun class, but it's manageable.
I actually really liked this class. There wasn't a final last semester, so you didn't have to worry about taking notes. You could just listen. And the teaching team seems pretty responsive to student feedback. I switched into the engineering school from CLAS, so I took this as un upperclassmen. I think a lot of the negative reviews here are people who aren't really use to what writing classes in college are like. It is true that they are definitely looking for you to use the structure they taught at the beginning of class, but that the structure isn't something they made up out of whole cloth, and there is still plenty of flexibility in how you express yourself. There are a couple group papers that can be a little frustrating if you haven't written a group paper before.
tl;dr It's not as bad as everyone says. You should enjoy it, because you probably have to take it.
Ok so Berne is absolutely nuts (she thinks she talked to TJ and stuff) but the TAs kind of know this. Suck up to your TA and go to office hours. Write to what they want and you'll do ok. Not a fun or interesting or in any way good class but its a requirement for the eschool so just something you have to deal with.
Absolutely loved the curriculum, professor, and TA's, but hated the format. Thought it was such a shame for a class with such great potential to be ruined by bad structure.
How one could potentially discuss and even begin to think critically about science and society in the brutally narrow constraints of "argument-based writing formats" in which a formulaic rubric subjectively evaluates one's writing skills? Not to mention the big disconnect of an impersonal lecture for such an intimate topic. Despite having incredible curriculum, resources, readings, and educators, the structure of this class was weak, and I believe that the majority of students enrolled would say they hated the class as a result. Not to mention the fact that they walked away with only a formulaic writing style and a distaste for the science and society classes.
Solution: get rid of the little red schoolhouse system, give feedback on rough drafts and give points back for how much one improves their writing based on the feedback, get rid of the lecture component and make it all discussion/seminar based, don't make the class mandatory for all students, work towards smaller class sizes, continue to encourage student feedback, and always look for ways to improve.
Extremely boring class. The lectures are pointless and are barley even lectures- it's just Berne reading straight off of a Word document. Grading often seems unfair. You can get the same grade whether you spend 5 hours or 1 hours on an assignment. The class doesn't require that much work, but if you are uninterested in the topic (almost always Sci. Fi.), it is hard to get motivated to do the work.
This class is required, so everyone has to take it, but it's awful. Berne mentions absolutely nothing relevant to really anything in her lectures and you watch sci-fi movies half of the time. Also, with the exception of her crazy lectures, you'll never see Professor Berne and she does little to no grading. The grade you receive in this class is purely based on who you have as your TA. You have weekly, boring reading that you write a paper on every week. I wrote the same paper practically every week and got different grades every time because of the TA's. Figure out what your TA wants in a paper, and you should do fine. Otherwise, be prepared to be confused as to why you are taking the class and writing more than your friends in the College. Push through, and you'll have some pretty funny stories to tell about the breathing exercises, the pointless lectures, and Berne's truly mind boggling book about robot sex.
This is basically an "Engineering English" course. Your typical week consists of reading a book chapter or short story and writing a paper on it. Sometimes interesting, sometimes not. Usually you only spend one week on a given topic, which is disappointing because you don't always get to discuss them to extent that you might like.
The same thing happens during lectures: Berne is a little... out there. She comes across as a bit of a hippie at times and likes to "be aware" of things more than actually analyze them, so most of what she says collapses into a vague sort of "technology is going to overrun us" argument.
The whole course seems really scripted. The TA's ask questions that sound like they were taken straight from a textbook and pretty much keep letting the class discuss it until someone says a few buzzwords that they really like. Then you move on. Honestly, it's not so much of a discussion as it is searching for what they want to hear.
Another thing I didn't like was that the TA's didn't grade consistently; you'll be able to tell who grades your paper on a given week. I don't think you have any control over that, so just do your best work (meaning follow the rubric, since they seem to grade more on that than actual content...)
You have to take this class... my advice is just deal with it and get it over with.
This class is okay. A lot of my peers seem to really dislike the class. The lectures can be dull, and some of the topics covered are kind of silly. The short stories tend to be pretty good, but I didn't really like the professor's book and I think that sentiment was shared by many. The grades seem to be pretty dependent on which TA you get and whether or not your writing style resonates with them. Go to office hours and ask your TA for advice on your essays, then follow their advice exactly, and while you'll still probably lose a bunch of points on your essays, you'll lose fewer.
Miserable class. Misses the mark on so many levels. It's supposed to be a first year writing seminar for engineering students, but it gets terribly sidetracked by dumb questions like "Isn't email horrible?" The professor's lectures don't make any sense or follow any coherent structure. It's supposed to make you think but the only thing you can think about is the clock.
One good note though: the TAs are very effective.
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