It’s clear that Professor Tian cares about her students. While she might not be the most clear professor (she loves to read off of the slides), she consistently takes feedback to make sure the class is following. I’d say it’s one of the best classes where you as a class can determine what you learn. This class is pretty special in that regard.

Other than that, you won’t learn very much from the professor. Most I learned was from the TA, Benson Liu, who ran the lab sections. Unfortunately, the assignments are also hit or miss. They were created by the TA, but were not polished at all. Sometimes, the assignments came 2 days before the deadline. Luckily, they shortened it significantly and made it so that the extra part was extra credit. Nonetheless, a bit annoying.

The course project was very interesting if you choose to do something novel. However, most students opted to do some not-so-interesting ML project or a web security audit that audited practically nothing.

Overall, I’d recommend that you take this class maybe in a few years. It needs a lot of fine-tuning.

Grading:

• 3 Quizzes (Web, Software, Mobile/ML security) — 15%, 5% each
• 3 Assignments (same topics) — 30%, 10% each
• Group Project — 50%
  • Introduction Presentation — 5%, on completion
  • Midterm “ — 5%, on completion
  • Final “ — 15%, evaluation by Professor and peers
  • Midterm Report — 5%
  • Final Report — 10%
  • Evaluation from teammates — 10%

Will Shand is honestly such an odd guy. During midterm presentations, he proceeded to flame every presentation. Also, he’s not that great at quiz writing—he’d get a lot of questions wrong.