ECE-590
ADVANCED TOPICS IN ECE
Offered Fall 2026
Term
Instructor
Overview
This course number is too broad to support one clean judgment. The evidence packet spans many unrelated advanced-topic offerings, and the result is exactly what you would expect: some sections look excellent, some look thin, and the number itself tells you almost nothing.
DepartmentELEC&CMP
Terms offeredFall, Spring
Typical enrollment6–64
Semesters of data5
6.2
Hrs / week
357
Responses
627
Enrollment
57%
Response Rate
Evaluation Scores
Overall quality
Teaching, content, and experience combined.
4.0
Intellectually stimulating
Challenges students to think deeply.
4.1
Instructor effectiveness
Explains concepts and facilitates learning.
4.1
Difficulty
Higher means harder.
3.4
Feedback Analysis
Feedback Analysislow
Analysis based on student evaluations
Based on 523 comments across 23 sections
This course number is too broad to support one clean judgment. The evidence packet spans many unrelated advanced-topic offerings, and the result is exactly what you would expect: some sections look excellent, some look thin, and the number itself tells you almost nothing.
Student Reports
How hard is the A?
A is doable but not automatic
The signal here is more do-the-work-and-you-should-be-fine than easy-A chatter. Students do not describe the A as automatic, but the evidence also does not paint grading as punishing.
Homework Load
Heavy homework load
Homework load is one of the clearest friction points. Students repeatedly describe assignments, readings, or problem sets as time-consuming.
Lecture Load
Lighter lecture burden
Student comments describe this as more discussion-, seminar-, or workshop-driven than lecture-dependent. The lecture burden itself does not sound like the main source of friction.
Strengths
• At its best, ECE-590 sections give students direct exposure to current topics, papers, projects, and specialized technical tools.
• Some offerings appear to support open discussion, independent thinking, and meaningful final projects.
• The course number can clearly produce resume-relevant or field-specific skills when the topic and instructor align.
Tradeoffs
• This is not one coherent class: 23 sections, 12 instructors, and a dominant-instructor share of 0.174 mean the variation is massive.
• Some representative comments describe passive slide-reading, weak lab design, or underdeveloped practical execution.
• Difficulty, usefulness, and teaching quality all appear to depend heavily on the specific topic and instructor.
Best fit for
Students who have already verified the exact subtitle, instructor, and project structure for the specific ECE-590 offering they want.
Watch out for
• Do not choose ECE-590 based on the umbrella number alone.
• Old reviews may be almost useless if they describe a different topic variant.
• If a section promises hands-on work, the packet suggests you should verify that the labs and projects are actually well designed.
Student Responses
how to design a transformer, few shot learning, RLHF
Spring 2024 · Carin, Lawrence
Have a deeper understanding of algorithim.
Fall 2023 · Rahbar, Afsaneh
For a specific algorithm or a program, how to analyze its execution time. For a specific problem, what algorithm should I choose to solve it. How to describle my thought or algorithm in a concrete mathematical way.
Fall 2023 · Rahbar, Afsaneh
algorithm analysis
Fall 2023 · Rahbar, Afsaneh
theory of computation was structured well though these concepts (DFA, RE, TM) might be detached from practice. Actual algorithms (dynamic programming, greedy, graph, etc.) were poorly taught. The instructor was clearly new to this course and course materials were seemingly drawn from random corners of algorithm books. For an introductory algorithms course it is really of no practical use to teach random obsolete algorithms attached to people's last names. General concepts are much more important
Fall 2023 · Rahbar, Afsaneh
Rating History
Rating history
Error bars show \u00B11 std dev
| Term | Instructor | Overall | Difficulty | Hrs/wk | Enrolled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2025 | Rahbar, Afsaneh 1.0Rate My ProfessorsQuality1.0Difficulty4.8Would retake0%Based on 4 ratingsClick to view on RMP → | — | — | 6.6 | 188 |
| Spring 2025 | Boulia, Donald | 4.0 | 3.1 | 5.5 | 143 |
| Fall 2024 | Rahbar, Afsaneh 1.0Rate My ProfessorsQuality1.0Difficulty4.8Would retake0%Based on 4 ratingsClick to view on RMP → | 4.0 | 3.4 | 6.4 | 85 |
| Spring 2024 | Chen, Tingjun 5.0Rate My ProfessorsQuality5.0Difficulty3.0Would retake100%Based on 1 ratingClick to view on RMP → | 4.4 | 3.3 | 6.4 | 130 |
| Fall 2023 | Rahbar, Afsaneh 1.0Rate My ProfessorsQuality1.0Difficulty4.8Would retake0%Based on 4 ratingsClick to view on RMP → | 3.9 | 3.9 | 6.9 | 81 |
Instructor
Rahbar, AfsanehELEC&CMP
Also teaches
ECE-495 SPECIAL TOPICS3.5ECE-496 SPECIAL TOPICS4.8ECE-650 SYSTEMS PROGRAM & ENGINEERING4.1