This class was definitely a fun class with a reasonable workload. The labs were sometimes confusing but I had absolutely no trouble at all flagging down the TA to get my questions answered during lab. The TA, Dan was super chill and very helpful. Dr. Gillespie is very passionate about the course material and you can tell. With that being said, I do not like remote sensing and will refrain from entering a career or such in the future that has anything to do with it. The final project/final seems to change pretty often. This quarter, we had just done the final project as opposed to an actual final so that was very nice. I am not sure the extent of ENVI so I cannot really tell the scope of what this class covers.

Professor Gillespie tries to often be funny which he is not, but this is my own opinion. The labs in this class would not have been hard if he and the TA had communicated what would be on the labs. I really did not learn anything useful, he just runs through slides and does not explain much . Even during office hours he is reluctant to explain not sure as to why.

Lol the person who wrote the review below seems pissed but I agree 100% with everything he/she/they said. I learned practically nothing in this class. I took this class because it’s mandatory for my minor, not because I’m interested in Remote Sensing. But somehow, I left this class with even less interest than I had when I came in. The first couple of weeks, all Gillespie did was show us all these slides and go “Isn’t that cool!” And when we got our first lab assignment, it was so difficult!! We hadn’t learned anything and he gave us hard homework! Rémi (the TA) was extremely helpful though. He was also a really nice grader. So this class is technically an easy A (the midterm was easy too). However, *I* don’t think it’s worth it. A GPA boost is not worth 10 weeks of feeling completely confused, in my honest opinion. Also, Gillespie doesn’t help at all during office hours; he just avoids whatever questions you have and gives you a fist bump. Funny guy though.

Do NOT take this class if you actually want even the slightest understanding of how to use ENVI and how to perform remote sensing. This is by far the most USELESS class I've taken at UCLA. Two hour long sessions where I sat there and wondered with my friend what we were supposed to be getting out of this.
For several lectures he taught us random facts about remote sensing that we needed to know for the midterm, but they could easily have been reviewed in an hour, MAX.
We had weekly 'labs' to teach us how to use ENVI, however we only ended up doing two throughout the whole quarter and each lab only required us to use at most 2 operations in ENVI.
The end result is that no one comes out of the class being able to say that they have even a basic familiarity with ENVI. If this class was structured like UCLA's GIS classes, this remote sensing class would be pretty solid. It unfortunately isn't and we're all stuck pretending like a class is worth it just because Gillespie is teaching it.

As always, Professor Gillespie made a potentially boring topic super interesting. His lectures were very fun & entertaining and the course involved lots of hands-on work in a computer program called ENVI. The course was a very simple midterm, weekly projects, & a final project. I definitely gained an appreciation for remote sensing technology and it was a good complement to other GIS courses which all use ArcGIS. I would definitely be sure to take this with him; I've heard other professors teaching this class are much more difficult and boring.

Right after Jared Diamond, Gillespie is the jewel of the department. He is an amazing professor. If you are in any geography program (major or minor) you must take him before you leave ucla.

There was a midterm and a final project. The labs were just busy work you did not have to turn in. I got an 80 on the midterm and sill got an A in the class because of the project. After he sends the projects to certain comapnies and government agencies, and some people even get employment and internships.

I was very disappointed by this class (Fall 2010). While Professor Gillespie did teach us how to do very basic analysis in ENVI (density slice, contour lines, and a few other things), he didn't teach us enough about the software to be able to effectively use even a small percentage of its options. This is of course the introductory class, so I didn't expect to learn complex analysis processes, but when it came time to do my final project for his class I had to figure out how to do it myself.
In office hours, the professor was positive and encouraging, but not very helpful- I brought him my project to show the problems I was having, and he loaded it, played with the settings for ten minutes, and then told me it was a difficult project (which it really wasn't at all) and that I would just have to spend time trying to figure out the best way to do it. I really got the impression that he didn't know much about remote sensing and probably shouldn't have been teaching the class. Doing my project was stressful because while I knew that I should use certain bands to do certain things, I didn't really understand why and had trouble analyzing my results without a full understanding of the process.

He did a very sketchy job of explaining how remote sensing works, how NDVIs work (and why) and the basic mechanics of which band to choose for which remote sensing task. He pretty much told us things I already knew (Satellites record multiple bands, the bands are blue, green, red, NIR, etc...) but not the things relevant to the class, like which bands do a good job of mapping water, bare earth, silt, etc, and why. He went over it briefly, wrote things on the board with a lot of exclamation points, and recommended that we read the (very/overly technical) textbook. In fifteen minutes in my Geography 2 class, the TA explained what each band shows and why. All of this information is pretty readily available on the internet, but when I take a class to learn how to use remote sensing, I expect that the basics be explained to me.

The professor also tended to leave class immediately after finishing his lecture for the day for some "important meeting"(s), (though I don't know why he would be scheduling things while he is supposed to be in class), leaving the TA to deal with fifty-some questions and problems.

He is very enthusiastic and very positive (he sent me an email during winter break telling me that my project was really great, and he sent several emails to the class telling us he was proud of our projects/work), which I really appreciated, but I wanted to learn as well as be encouraged.

It's an easy class, I got an A+ and he weighted the midterm (which a lot of people failed) to be about 10%. However, it wasn't a class that was valuable for my education, and definitely hasn't prepared me to take the next remote sensing class.

I have heard that he is really great in his Forest Ecosystems class, and I was hoping to take that and get a better impression, since trees, not remote sensing as a discipline, are obviously more in his interest area. Unfortunately, he isn't teaching this class next quarter so 169 is all I have to go on.

Gillespie is absolutely amazing. He puts exclamation points after every word! He's incredibly passionate about his subject. He has absolutely transformed my UCLA experience. I have taken Geog 5, 111, and 169 with him, and would definitely take any class that he offered. He is the best professor at UCLA, and perhaps the best professor in the world. You would be crazy to miss the opportunity to take a class with him.

Prof. Gillespie has the energy of a barely controlled nuclear explosion, and as he himself admits, he is LOUD. The man has passion to burn for remote sensing: he loves, loves it. He does like to keep solid control of his class, and does walk around while he lectures. He will not hesitate to call someone on looking at crap on their computer or having materials on their desk unrelated to class. He is in fact so loud and energetic that he can be tiring during a long class.

He is considerably more interested in getting you fired up about remote sensing than he is about sticking to a particular schedule, and did in fact blow off our final, allowing us to focus on our group projects.

A very good introduction to remote sensing including a large amount of history, but do not expect to spend much time at all learning or using the expensive remote sensing software. The bulk of the software use was Google Earth and Google Maps.

Great guy, poor teacher or perhaps its just the class format. Take him if you have self discipline and are willing to make it work for you outside of class. His lectures outline everything you need to know for the exam, which is all basically random information you'll forget anyway.

Remote Sensing is really about getting to know the software and as a class geog 169 fails miserably. Too much time is spent going over the basics of remote sensing theory when all one really needs is a real hands on tutorial of how to get things done.

I'm not here to spend hours in the lab figuring things out myself, I'm here for the grade and eventually the UCLA diploma. If you're a performance based person who wants to get out of college with good grades and wants to learn stuff too, give this class a miss. You will not be graded for the effort you put into learning the software outside of class so, simply, you will not do it.

There are other good practical geog classes out there where you can get the grade and actually learn something. Go find them.

Just my two cents.