A2–Grader’s Comments

Hi all, congratulations on another good assignment. The class as a whole performed very well. I was impressed with the depth of analysis many of the groups performed.

A few things to note,

• when providing calculations, keep in mind the goal of this is to be able to present them in such a way that your audience can easily interpret and understand your assumptions, process, and results. Many of the groups did this well, keep doing what you're doing.
• When organizing drawings, however, some groups did not clearly title what was being shown. For example, calling a drawing "North Section" or "Ground Floor Plan" as oppose to "Section" or "Floor Plan" tells a lot more about what is being shown.
• Significant Digits -  a noticeable number of groups neglected to keep their significant figures, providing load calculations and dollar amounts to the nearest cent.
• As usual, some groups did not include all of the requirements (ie. Drawings or certain calculated results). This is probably due to the fact that they were not careful in reading the instructions.

These are all just little things that will make your work better though, as I said before, the work as a whole is excellent. Keep up the good work everyone! 

 

JEM Note on Teamwork

There were two teamwork issues raised, not to the level of needing grade adjustment, but we will be watching to ensure that they don’t happen again.  Both appeared to arise from not understanding the project expectations fully.  I urge each group to discuss those expectations at the beginning of each project, including reviewing the assignment requirements carefully.

A1a (Revit)–Grader Comment

Once again, everyone did really well for the most part. It is critical however, to read all of the instructions carefully, the rubric AND the directions. The instructions ask for very certain specifics of how to present your work. In my experience, when sending plans out it was necessary to ensure that the plans were scaled correctly and printed to PDF on the correct size paper, typically 30" x 42". We would never send a Revit model and expect the receiver to decipher through them because this could create unnecessary ambiguities. The great thing about this class is that it prepares us for real world aspects of engineering jobs besides analyzing a truss or calculating HVAC loads. It also teaches us how to deliver our work.

 

JEM Note – We apologize for the delay on the grading.  Adrian, as you know, was competing in the national AEI competition in Omaha.  Final preparation and the actual competition took their toll.  He’s catching up.

A1–Grader’s General Comments for the students:

Overall the submissions were well organized and contained well thought out responses. A critique I have to offer would be to make use of the organizational tools google sites have to offer. This could be as simple as making a heading underlined with a larger font size to laying out information in a table. A significant number of students did not proofread their work. Keep in mind that this is a good practice to keep as misspelling something in the professional world will seriously discredit what you have to say. Also, be sure to read the directions carefully, delivering all necessary criteria of the assignment. Again, overall the submissions were done very well. You all seem to have picked up how to use Google Sites easily.

 

JEM Note:

A number of you suggested that I email students before the start of the term to give you time for the assignment.  I’ve done that in past and had no comments about the benefits, but I’ll definitely keep it in mind for the next time I teach AE-390.