Despite having little to no real 'content', this unit is just straight up ass. Zero engagement, trying to force-feed you ideas about how to be an effective engineer without any real care in making it something interesting or at least feel useful. Whether you find your prac classes manageable or straight up a snooze fest depends on who you get as your facilitator which for me, was terrible. Written assignments take ages and are tedious (Assignment 2 is not as bad as Assignment 1). Video reflections do nothing to actually get you to reflect on anything and would be miserable if, like most people, you just bullshit it in one take and submit. 3 hour long prac classes suck even if there are only a few. The EWB challenge centred around Saibai island does not garner any support from the majority of students and is more likely to increase antagonism towards Indigenous Australians just because its used as a tedious semester long group project. I've come out of this Unit with nothing learnt as even the work that I did do received minimal constructive feedback despite my facilitator nagging our group to update him with our progress on Teams. This gets a 2/5 stars because all in all, there is nothing difficult about this Unit, it just wastes a lot of your time and I'm sure there are people who think that the EWB challenge and weekly 'compulsory' workshop presentations (which I'm sure everyone definitely attended) was wonderful and engaging. Just from the people I've spoken too, I just must have not met them yet.

What a joke of a unit! This basically feels like a box checking exercise rather than teaching us the skills to be engineers. I have left this unit having learned next to nothing, and I can see how this unit could have turned people off Engineering altogether. Here are some of the 'highlights' you will have the displeasure of experiencing: 1. 'Design Challenges', aka primary school experiments with $1200 of HECS debt. The first being an egg drop challenge and the second being programming a robot car with scratch coding (because nothing says 'future engineer' like a coding app made for 9 year olds). 2. Vaguely worded assignments which take way longer than they deserve to. Get ready to write thousands of words without an inkling of direction or specificity. Maybe we'd know how to write a lit review if we didn't spend a full prac class constructing parachutes for poultry products. 3. Not one, not two, not three but four reflection videos. FOUR! Totaling 30% of your unit grade. Get ready to record 3 minutes of low quality webcam footage reflecting on your life choices that brought you here. Because a simple written reflection isn't awkward or embarrassing enough? 4. The lectures, or 'workshops' as they call them so you think they are mandatory. What started as a full octagon theatre of 500 eager first year engineering students diminished to a pathetic 50 by week 6. The 450 made the correct decision, they missed almost nothing. 5. Last but not least the group project/presentation. Get ready to solve problems for a Saibai Island, in the middle of nowhere in the Torres Strait. Google the Island, you will now know more than your facilitator. Nothing more than an elaborate thought experiment with a few powerpoint slides. Our challenge was sustainable boating to save Saibai Island from rising sea levels, because clearly the biggest contributor to climate change is 300 locals with a few tinnies. I was tempted to just give the islanders oars to row their boats, but then we wouldn't be able to fill 6000 words about the 'engineering method' Overall rating: 1 broken egg out of 5

If you've ever wanted to theorycraft solutions to problems for a far-flung island in the middle of nowhere (aka. Saibai) in a big group project, this unit is for you. Alternatively, if you want to be an engineer, ignore the choice, as you have to do this anyway. The lecturers are genuinely useless, so if you skip them (or better, plan your group meetings then) you will not miss out on much. Assignments are not well worded and confusing, making them extremely time consuming. This is basically a drawn out version of GENG1000 - which is done in a week. At least you'll walk out of the unit knowing how to drop an egg and program and robot car with Scratch coding.

after I had enrolled in this unit, I was being monitored by 4 different government agencies. my wife found out I was doing GENG1010 and left me with my children. in the divorce I lost my house and car. when I phoned my mother and told her my situation she suddenly died due to a stroke. I was then arrested for manslaughter. I am currently in my jail cell as we speak. on the bright side I learnt how to program a robotic car (propaganda).

The group project was so hard and time-consuming, especially if not everyone in the group contributed equally to it. The assignment task sheets and marking keys were always extremely vague, making assignments much harder than they needed to be. Absolutely horrible unit. (would give 0 stars if possible).

My favourite unit in semester 1, ewb challenge was good, partly cause I had a good group, Jack was a legendary tutor

Most useless unit in the world