Swider is a good communicator but a bad teacher. For a class that has homeworks and exams based entirely on solving math problems, he never does a single example in class. His lecture slides are highly convoluted with complex math that 1. he never explains and always skims over, 2. are so detailed in their derivations we dont even use them in the homeworks or exams. He provides a good high level background of reliability engineering and why it is important, but none of this knowledge is applied in the homework or exams you will do for the class. Basically, the lectures are entirely useless if you don't care about the field (which was the case for me, because I was a CS major).

The class would be easy but because the professor never explained the problems, you are left to figure it out on your own and try to decipher his convoluted slides.

We didn't have a TA until about two weeks into the class. He was helpful because he was able to help us with the homework problems, but half the time pretended to know the topics better than he actually did.