GEOG 181Designing Effective Maps

75% liked it65% easy72% useful

From 174 ratings and 45 comments on UW Flow. The most helpful comments, quoted as written, without names. Read them all on UW Flow.

• Genuinely despised this course. The assignments are so incredibly irritating to do, I literally punched one of the soap dispensers off the wall in my residence because these assignments are such a god damn waste of time. The assignments are not difficult other than that they will test your patience and make you want to break something. The midterm and exams are just memorising random garbage like who invented what type of map or whatever. Actual shitter course, the only thing I learned was that it is possible to make me angry enough to punch a soap dispenser.

  Dec 2024 · didn’t like it · 3 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• The labs have very little to do with the lectures and you are not taught how to make the maps. The grade you receive for a lab is entirely based on the TA, and often they give mixed advice and will mark you wrong for something they told you to do last time. This is also backed by the professor himself who admitted to this being an issue.
  The worst thing about this class is the fact that the VERY LAST LECTURE BEFORE THE FINAL EXAM WAS AN ENTIRE LECTURE ON EXACTLY HOW TO MAKE A GOOD MAP!! This taught everyone exactly how to make a proper map that would help us know what to actually do in the labs. The fact that this wasn't the very first lecture is completely beyond me.
  The exams were really…

  Jul 2025 · didn’t like it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• Is it useful? very. Is it engaging, easy, or enjoyable? Not at all. Sitting through prof. Deadmans voice helped me go to bed at night instead of taking my melatonin. This course can be a lot of work and the software can be tricky but Prof. Deadman does a good job (albeit talks to you like he's reading a bedtime story) teaching the content and showing you how to use GIS. Although Im still not fully sure how to use it.

  Nov 2020 · didn’t like it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• I'm in aviation and this course is only slightly useful, it makes you appreciate the maps you see in aviation a little bit more. My guess is that 1/4th of the class was aviation, so it was a great place to make some friends. I found the midterm easy but friends found it challenging despite lots of studying. Su Yin Tan is nothing special, but she knows her stuff. You can get through the course without going to lectures and just reading posted slides.

  Jan 2026 · liked it · 1 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• The course is very theory heavy, if you don't like theory based subject this class is not for you. Labs and exams test completely different content; huge disconnect. Instructional videos don't work for all learning styles; I relied heavily on external resources (written guides, AI help) to complete assignments. TAs sometimes approved work during tutorials that was later marked wrong. Office hours just repeated lecture content without offering alternative explanations. If you take this course: start labs early, find external tutorials, and don't assume TA approval during tutorials means your work is actually correct.

  Nov 2025 · didn’t like it · 1 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this