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.