Final Grades Notes

After the final exam was graded I processed all the course grades as described in the syllabus.  They are now posted.  Here are the adjustments I made – all in your favor:

• Attendance was adjusted to allow two misses without penalty
• Discussion scores were adjusted so that the lowest score was dropped
• Lab scores were adjusted so that the lowest score was dropped
• Scores were rounded when determining the letter grade

Overall the class did very well.

Notes on reading your “Most” & “Least successful” answers

• Most of you found much to like in the course, though the specifics varied.  Some liked the labs, some the reading/discussion.  And almost everyone liked the field trips, especially the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge Trip.
• Some of you, especially environmental engineers, felt that the environmental portion of the course was too separate from the rest.
• Some didn’t like the discussions, though others found them most helpful.
• One person was strong in their criticism of Access Science as having little they found worthwhile
• Many liked meeting the department faculty
• Several felt that the lab periods could be better used
• One person wanted physical experiments – you’ll get them in CAE-210.

Thank you all for a good term, and thanks especially to the Shamia, Lauren and Jonathan for making the course flow so well.

Jim Mitchell

Take-Home Exam – Grading Notes

We’ve completed the grading of the Take-Home exam.  There were a number of corrections to the raw scores that were appropriate on review of the exam results and also several emails from students.  All increased your score.  They are as follows:

Calculated Questions

• VistaBb had a bug that marked a number of your answers wrong when it shouldn’t have.   All these were corrected manually.
• For the soil pressure calculation the wording wasn’t clear whether there was water in the ground.  I therefore allowed the calculation with and without water.
• I also reviewed all the answers for the full set of calculated questions and gave partial credit in a number of cases for answers close to the acceptable range.

Multiple Choice Questions

The questions noted below had ambiguities in their phrasing or used information that may not have been available everyone.  In these cases everyone who didn’t get the “right” answer received 90% credit (2.0 out of 2.2).  The questions were:

• EER- Energy Efficiency Ratio
• Revit Features
• Revit Type
• Role of Senior Design Advisor
• Tacony-Palmyra Bridge Opening
• Use of Energy in Buildings

Paragraph Answer Questions

I went through and ensured that you got the maximum credit for all your attempts as on the highest-marked answer.

Jim Mitchell

Exam Grading Status

As of 5:30 on Tuesday (6/8/2010) we’ve completed the first pass on grading the exams.  The grades there ARE NOT YET FINAL.

We are very much in the process of reviewing the grades for difficulties that we’ll resolve over the next 24 hours.  Several students have written that apparently correct answers have been marked as wrong by VistaBB.  I’ll be working with IRT on Wednesday to figure out the source of the problem and to resolve it.

In the meantime I’m glad to hear about specific difficulties that you identify so I can include them in my review.

Jim Mitchell

Lab-9 – Grader Comments

• The vast majority of you did an excellent job on Lab 9. 
• Limited confusion using the excel functions was noticed. 
• If you are unsure of anything, please ask for help.  This serves as advice for future classes as well.
• The majority of the memos were professional and of sufficient length. 

Lab-8 – Grader Comments

• The most common points lost were from not including a proper memo format when it wasn't already provided to you in a template. 
• A memo requires To, From, Subject and Date and Microsoft Word provides templates that you can use for future organization. 
• The other major points lost were for not following the directions and including the information about the group: group number, group member names and advisor, project title, etc.
• When writing a maximum 2 page memo make sure to make your statements meaningful and realize that a paragraph is composed of 3 or more sentences.  
• Otherwise the memos seemed extremely well-written and a great improvement from the beginning of the term, keep it up!

Wording Error in Online Take-Home Exam

I’ve corrected an error on the exam that one alert student brought to my attention.  In the question addressing the significant digits in a multi-story concrete building I initially asked for the “volume” of concrete.  I’ve now corrected that to “weight” of concrete.  I’ve also alerted the only two students who had completed the exam.  No one taking it after about 8:30 on Thursday should see the erroneous version.

Week-10 Discussions – Grader Comments

The discussions this week were excellent!  Most of you wrote some really well thought out and meaningful responses to your week 2 discussions.  It was great to read how your opinions have or have not changed towards your intended major, and they were very well written.  

A few students lost points for not including a source from access science, so my advice is to always make sure to read each assignment's grading criteria carefully before you begin each assignment to make sure you will get full credit. 

Lab-9 Percent Reduction

I was asked:

“In question 3 there are two fields which are labeled Pct reduction, what does this mean/ stand for?”

The first one wants you to calculate the percentage reduction in water purchased as a result of the reused rain water.

The second wants you to calculate the precentage reduction in rain that goes into the sewers as result of the reused rain water.

Jim Mitchell

L7 – Grader Comments

• Memos are an extremely important form of communication in the engineering industry.  They serve as as means of information exchange and also as legal documents.  It is very important that you follow a standard memo format when writing.  Microsoft office has many pre-loaded templates that you can use as a starting point.
• Avoid saying "plugging these values into the equation".  A better way to say this is "through engineering analysis, it was determined....".  Furthermore, the person reading your memo may not have engineering training and is most likely just looking for your expert opinion on the situation.  It is important to be direct and know your audience when writing memos.
• Many of you have shown significant improvement in calculation procedures, complete engineering analysis and writing a corresponding memo to support your findings.  Keep up the good work.
• Please don't hesitate to ask questions if you are confused about the lab.  It is advisable to attempt the lab a few days before it is due to avoid roadblocks at the due date.
• Use the spell check option for reviewing the memo before submitting, simple errors can be avoided easily.
• Before solving an equation such as this in excel it is easier to break it down into components and solving it by parts. That way errors can easily be traced and corrected

Week-9 Discussions – Grader Comments

* The majority of discussions this week were excellent.  It seems as though many of you are benefiting from doing your own research and writing a discussion about it.  There were also several comments which linked what you read during research to the senior design presentations you attended.

* Many of you used transitions in your discussions which adds quality to your writing.  Good work!
* Drexel has a superior engineering librarian in Jay Bhatt.  Please keep Jay in mind as you advance through Drexel for all research inquiries. 

* Jay Bhatt
Librarian for Engineering
Hours M-F: 9am-6pm
Hagerty Library, Room 132
bhattjj@drexel.edu
* Please continue to put effort into your labs and discussions as the term comes to a close. 

L6 – Grader’s Comments

• The labs this week were exceptional!  The most common place students lost points were for Question 2 when calculating the electricity consumed by the chiller where a conversion factor was not needed because it was already taken care of within the EER value.  Make sure to pay attention in class and lab for key information like this. 
• Another place students lost point was when plotting many switched the data between CO2 and O3 and did not even notice the difference. Before submitting anything please go over your work and make sure what you are turning in makes sense.
• There was no memo required this week; however, a few students decided to write one anyway, which is a great habit to get into and also a great way to improve your writing skills, keep it up!

Week-8 Discussions – Grader Comments

• While each week the discussion grades are improving, I would still recommend putting a little more thought into the "most confusing" and "most interesting" sections.  Make sure to expand upon what you found interesting and confusing in both your primary and secondary source.  This section should be 2-4 paragraphs, as opposed to one sentence each, and is meant to be a thought provoking process.

• Most people have been taking advantage of the preview button BBVista allows and the organization of the articles has much improved, for which I thank you.  Keep up the great work!

Week-7 Discussions – Grader Comments

The discussions this week were excellent. 

• The majority of the class discussed specific examples from their articles and supported them with personal experiences. 
• Furthermore, the majority specifically stated what was most interesting and most confusing in the articles. 
• There is a noticeable improvement in grammar and spelling which dictates professionalism in your writing. 
  
• Lastly, transitions are a great way to keep the readers attention and establish connections to previous statements in your posts.  Please click here to learn more about how transitions can improve your writing.

Please continue the heightened level of effort as you will truly benefit from

Lab-4 Grader Comments

1. Organize your lab reports into an easy to read progression without   jumping around so much, especially with calculations. Refrain from submitting multiple files to grade, instead organize everything into one file, preferably a PDF for this type of assignment.  If you would like to utilize excel's capabilities with equations it is fine to submit an excel file.
2. Make sure to carefully read what you earn points for, especially in the memo, and make sure to address all of those points completely, i.e. expand upon one sentence.
3. After writing read over what you have written carefully. Sentences ending with words such as ‘like’ or having ‘amuse’ instead of ‘amaze’ indicate complete carelessness on the part of the writer.
4. Scaled drawings mean ‘scaled drawings’, not scanned pages of hand drawn figures.

L5 Revit – Questions on Files

We’ve had several questions on the “output” for Lab-5.  Hopefully the following will make clear what we expect and how to achieve it.

Three Output files

We expect three files to be submitted.

• Revit File – the file that Revit creates that has your entire model.  The suffix is “.rvt”.  It’s a big file of probably 2-3MB size
• PDF of “sheet” – This is a PDF file that you create by “printing” your sheet (with plan, section, elevation etc all displayed on it) to a PDF file.
• Printing to a PDF requires that you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat installed on the computer your using (I’m pretty certain). 
• Acrobat is on all the machines in the CadLab
• You can download it from the Drexel Software site for your own machine (I’m pretty certain about this too, but cannot check the student version of the download site)
• Word Document - addressing the questions about the lab.

Jim Mitchell

Correcting Lab Submissions before the Due Date

The assignments in VistaBB are set up so that you may change what you’ve submitted up to the due date.  How to do so isn’t inherently obvious.  The following steps are suggested by Pete Falk of this class – our thanks to him!

1. 1n bbvista click on "assignments" in the sidebar
2. click on the tab "submitted"
3. click on the downward facing arrows next to the lab
4. a drop down menu will appear, select "edit" - this step will return you to the submission page

Jim Mitchell

Discussion Week-6 Grader’s Comments

• Overall the discussions have improved greatly.  It makes it a lot easier to read them now that people are taking advantage of the preview function and spacing their posts nicely.
• Also, make sure to address the week-specific question in a thoughtful and meaningful manner. 
• Finally, people are making more of an effort to specifically state interesting and confusing aspects of both articles they read.  A few people lost points for incomplete or inadequate interesting or confusing aspects for both articles, but that was a lot less common than in past weeks.  Keep up the great work!

Revit and the CadLab – Suggestions for Working with it

First, our apologies for the difficulties of running Revit on the machines in the CadLab. We are in the process of replacing a number of them, but we hadn’t realized how problematic the current ones are for running Revit (it seems that Revit is the program that stresses them the most - most other programs run fine).

Revit

What follows are some suggestions (mostly from Jonathan Eboli) about how to work with Revit. We hope that they help.

• Be sure to read the Lab instructions given on VistaBB.  You must follow these directions for full credit. 
  • People with short last names are welcome to use 100 + 10 x LettersOfLastName as the length of the longest side.
• Save often!  As noted above we realize there are issues with running Revit in the CAD Lab.  For now please remember to save every few minutes while working in the lab.
• Some had issues with the viewports (the views of your model that you drag onto the “sheet”) being too large after you placed them on a new sheet.  There are several ways of addressing this,
  • A suggestion would be to move the elevation symbols on your "level 1 plan" closer to the building.  Then when you drag level 1 back onto the new sheet, the viewport will be much smaller. 
  • You can change the scale and thus the size of your viewport by
    • right clicking the viewport
    • Selecting element properties
    • selecting a different “view scale” from the drop-down box.
  • You can change the “cropping” of the viewport several ways
    • Most likely to work without problems is to change the size of the viewport by specifying its dimensions on the sheet. To do this:
      • Select the viewport by clicking on it – this should change the tab on the ribbon bar (top of Revit window) to the “Modify Viewports
      • Click on “Size Crop” in the crop subsection of the ribbon
      • Now put in your desired dimensions. Play till you get it as you want.
    • You are supposed to be able to drag “handles” on the edge of the viewport to do the same thing, but how to make those handles appear is not well documented – we couldn’t find it – sometimes they appear and sometimes they don’t. Here are some posts from the user sites on the web that did not work for Jim Mitchell, but may for you.
      • According to RevitCity.com: if you want to  "resize the viewport in the window go to VP, turn on annotation crop and pull the grips in to your model limits." 
      • Furthermore, another post states: "If you need to adjust the limits of your views, get into the view & right click to choose view properties.  From there you can adjust your view crop regions."
• To make drawings look professional, you may want to use guidegrids.  These help you line up elevations, plans, sections and schedules on your sheet.  See this video tutorial for more info.  Note this is not required but could help with arranging your sheet.
• In order to plot a PDF, select file, print, and then select adobe PDF.  You need Adobe Pro on your computer to do this.  Each computer at the Lab has this feature already downloaded. 
  • I believe Drexel has a site license that includes students so you should be able to download it from – software.drexel.edu
• We suggest uploading your revit model to google docs as another method of transferring your model from back and forth between your PC and the Lab computers.  This is a good alternative to using a flash drive.  To learn more about this, watch the google docs upload tutorial.
• Lastly, Jonathan Eboli will be available all weekend should you have any questions about your lab.  Please email me at jae46@drexel.edu to set up a time to meet in the CAD Lab.  If you don't have time to meet, I will do my best to answer your questions via email.

Jonathan Eboli & Jim Mitchell

Lab-3 – Bridge Collision – Grader’s Comments

• Specifically state "this was an implication of the lab" or "this was a limitation of the lab" in your memos. 
• Many used the height of the wall =8' instead of the length of the bridge =520' for question 4 when calculating the bending moment.  You needed to use the bridge length instead of wall height for Q4.  This changes your bending moment.  Partial credit was given for this question.
• Please put your first and last name in the title when you save the document.
• Be sure to follow the formatting instructions already in the lab: "Example of making formulas visible - We want you to display the formula for calculating the momentum. We show each of the ingredients. Then we show the formula - highlighted in pink. Then we actually calculate the result. Note that we used named variables to make the actual cells read readily."
• Part of being an engineer involves professional calculations and writing.  Your calculations may need to be checked by other engineers at a later date and thus you should be neat and organized.  If you are completing the labs via hand calculations, please be neat and organized. 
• Instead of only stating what numbers were obtained during the calculations, try to think if the numbers make sense and why.
• If you are scanning in calculations, please combine them into a single PDF. 

Discussion-5 – AE – Grader Comments

• The most common place for students to lose points was in the "most interesting" or "most confusing" categories.  
• A few posts lacked sufficient length.  Please dedicate more time to your posts and reference your articles more.
• Overall, most discussions were very thorough, organized and informative.  Keep up the good work.

Discussion-3 – Bridges – Grader Comments

• As with the past 2 weeks, the most common place for students to lose points was in the "most interesting" or "most confusing" categories, although substantially less points were lost in this discussion.  
• However, the course information available on VistaBB states that the "most interesting" and "most confusing" sections of the post should be one to two paragraphs.  So expand upon one sentence, which typically cannot sufficiently describe the most interesting aspect of an article.
• Simply listing dimensions of a particular bridge should not be the most interesting part of an article.  While the facts are good to include in your post, talk about something new you learned about the bridge or actually found interesting, in addition to their dimensions.  And again, if nothing was confusing, simply state that.
• I had a comment about how VistaBB won't let you indent, if you want to clean up your post so it's easier to read add an extra return between paragraphs to space them out nicer.  And still take advantage of the "preview" function associated with the discussion posts and make sure to proofread and spellcheck! 

Discussion-2 Grader Comments - Materials

• The term "material" seems to have been loosely interpreted. No points were taken off for choice of material, but for future discussions, it would be wise to select a material typically used in the field you are studying.
• Make sure to post your discussion reply under the thread that most closely relates to the topic of your discussion post.  Many students wrote on the same material and used the same sources, but few referred to the posts of other students. Do not be afraid to change the title of the post to represent the topic of your discussion.
• The most common areas that students lost points was in the "most important" and "most confusing" categories.  As previously said, each student should talk about what they found to be the most important and confusing things about both their primary and secondary articles.  If the article was straightforward and not confusing, simply state that.
• The rest of the comments are minor. 
• Take advantage of the "Preview" function associated with the discussion posts.  This way the post can look exactly as you want it to, in an organized fashion and easy to read. 
• Finally, make sure to proofread your discussion before submitting it.

Lab-2 Grader Comments

• Fill in the "Assignment #" on the top of the "Summary" sheet
• Explicitly state the implications and limitations of the lab.  And expand upon these more than just one sentence.
• State the objective of the lab clearly and discuss the results obtained or the trends of the graphs plotted.

Lab 1 – Grader Comments

Overall, the submissions for Lab 1 were good, but there are few things that I would like to stress to the students:

• Please fully read the entire assignment before completing and submitting your solution. There were a few instances of incomplete assignments. Partial credit can not be given if a question is not attempted.
• Students should be careful about using significant figures and scientific notation appropriately and applicably. Answers should not be submitted with multiple decimal places shown and there is no reason to represent 180 cm in scientific notation. 
• Because of the amount of difficulty students had with properly using significant figures, the suggestion of having a tutorial/refresher on significant figures will be contemplated by the teaching team.

My last comment is a suggestion for how the students could help the graders. If the students were to include their first and last name in the title of the file they submit, it would make the grading process easier.

Jim Mitchell for the Graders

L3 Bridge-Tanker Lab Questions #1

Here are answers to some questions I’ve been asked about Lab-3

“In lab 3, should we convert all the measurements to SI units or can we use them the way they are?”

• Please work in US (Imperial) units.  A good guide would be to use the same units that Prof. Dasaro used in his lecture example.

“Is it necessary to 'name' each data cell?  I have found that for this lab it makes it somewhat difficult, since each name is specific to to one cell, and we have many cells throughout the lab referring to the same data.”

• If you reuse the same named cell you can just insert its name.  If, for instance, you’ve named cell A3 “Kinetic_Energy”, then if you want that value to appear in cell g5 (on the same or another sheet) all you need to do is put in that cell ‘=Kinetic_Energy’ and the value from A3 will appear.  You can use that name in formulas just as easily.
• Note that if you start typing Excel will offer a list that includes your named variable.  In this case, just typing ‘=k’ will produce a list of two items, the first of which is Kinetic_Energy.  With the item you want selected hit the Tab key and that value will be entered.
• You are not required to use named variables in this exercise.  I just recommend it.  It’s an easy way to generate the required display formula by creating the actual formula and then copying everything but the “=” sign and pasting it in a cell beginning with an apostrophe.

Jim Mitchell

Cumulative Grade Calculations

There is now a cumulative grade for the course showing in VistaBB, labeled Grade Calc.  I plan to update it every week or two.  It shows your numeric grade (out of 100) including all of the graded elements so far, which are the ones that will be visible to you.

Notes about the Grading Calculation

• Allowance for the “free” (ie. you can miss without penalty) items will be made only at the end of the term.  That means that you will see an increase in your numeric grade at that point if you’ve missed something.  I’ll make that calculation in a separate spreadsheet so the final exact grade will probably not appear in VistaBB, but it will be the same as or higher than what shows in VistaBB.
• Att – stands for Attendance.  What’s shown is the number recorded for you by counting the signatures on the sign-in sheet. This total is multiplied by “5” in computing the cumulative grade.  There are 3/week.
• You can see the weighting of the various components in the “Assignment Weights” page of the syllabus.
  • Note that the Labs were originally going to be 20 points each with a weight of 5.  We changed that to 100 points each with a weight of 0.4.  There is no overall change in the contribution of the labs to your cumulative grade.
• The cumulative grade column may be hidden for periods while we input grades and update the calculation.  Check back the next day it it will probably show again.

Jim Mitchell

Discussion Note – Special Topic

A student asked if for Week-4 they should be writing about a specific bridge type or a particular bridge. My response, whose principle will apply in future weeks is:

“If you can find an entry in AccessScience on a specific bridge you are welcome to use that bridge as the subject for your primary and secondary resources. I had imagined that you would look first at the general topic of bridges and then find a specific one with your secondary resource, but that’s not required.”

Jim Mitchell

Seeing Graded Comments

It’s not intuitively evident how to see what the grader has provided to explain how they graded your lab.  This post explains how.  The issue lies with VistaBB’s idiosyncrasies.

Graded Labs (Assignments)

The grader creates an attachment file that explains their grading.  That file may well be a copy of the file you originally submitted with a different name.

To see that file you need to go to “Assignments” on the left hand menu, and within that click on the “graded” tab.  You’ll then see the files that are related to the assignment, both your own original and the one returned by the grader.

Graded Discussion Posts

For reasons known only to the VistaBB designers you have to click on the “My Grades” menu item on the left.  Now you’ll see a button entitled “View Graded Grading Form” that will show you the grading form with whatever comment the grader made.

Jim Mitchell

Discussion-1 – Grader Comments

Here are the comments the grader made on the first discussion.

• From what I found, most students took the assignment seriously.  There were some really great posts about why they chose the major they chose.  And when people talked about the journal articles and what they found interesting and confusing their responses were serious and appropriate.  From what I could tell people found the readings worthwhile and really related it back to why they chose their major, and things they hadn't thought about in regards to their major. 
• The most common areas that students lost points was in the "most important" and "most confusing" categories.  I'd like to reiterate that each student should talk about what they found to be the most important and confusing things about both their primary and secondary articles.  If the article was straightforward and not confusing, simply state that. 
• The rest of my comments are minor.  Make sure to post your discussion reply under the thread that most closely relates to your major.  Also, take advantage of the "Preview" function associated with the discussion posts.  This way the post can look exactly as you want it to, in an organized fashion.  Finally, make sure to proofread your discussion before submitting it.

Memo for Lab

A student emailed a question wanting to know what should be in the “Memo” for this lab. They said:

Do you want us to present the final calculations or also explain how we calculated it, how we did did the conversions and the data that was given to us? For now I just put, for example,
frontal area = xx sqin = xx sqft = xx sqm = xx sqkm = = xx sqcm = xx sqmi

What the instructions in the lab say is:

Summarize the laboratory and your understanding of its implications and limitations.  Do so in the textbox below, including as many specific numbers and details as possible to support your argument

The emphasis for the memo, therefore, is on your interpretation of the lab rather than the methods used.  Those methods should be evident on the sheets for the individual questions.  The kinds of things that you might discuss on the memo are:

• The US unit system
• The issues relating to unit conversion
• Significant digits
• The relevance of these calculations to professional life – positive or negative
• Why did we choose this lab for the first of the term?
• Are some or all of the calculations oversimplified?
• Does what we calculated here make sense in terms of your experience in CoOp or prior school experience
• The role of Excel as a tool – with specific comments on Excel techniques.
• etc……

Jim Mitchell

Advice & Notes about Lab-1

The following issues came up during the labs.  We’re noting them here for everyone’s benefit.

Use your own dimensions & Name-Length

Remember that even if you worked on a sheet together and shared it you must use your own dimensions and name-length in the appropriate sections of the lab.

Named Variables

We will only be checking that you have created a named variable in the section of the lab that identifies them as a grading criteria.

We urge you to consider using them elsewhere because they’re helpful, but it’s not required.

Memos Are Individual

Remember that each person is to write their own memo.  We will treat copying in this portion as plagiarism.

Rounding

You may round the answers to the appropriate significant digits two ways

• one way would be rounding off each “answer” within a question – from the beginning of the specific question to the end or
• rounding off only the last “answer” in question.
  Both methods will merit full credit.

Note that the “correct” method is not to round until you have “the answer”.  If there are multiple “answers” then each should maintain full accuracy (meaning go back to the source data) until you round the “final” one for each portion.  We’re not insisting on that here.

Question-6 Legend

For question 6 it states in the grading criteria that a legend is required . However for this question the fact that there is only a single “data series” means that a legend is not a requirement so there will be no penalty if a student does not include legend in the graph. A title is required.

Typo in Question-3

Several of you noticed that it should say “volume” instead of area in Question-3.  This comes from not fully checking a “copy and paste” – shame on me.

Jim Mitchell

Clarifying the Discussion Requirements

The goal of the discussions is to have you look at the professional literature and also at your fellow student’s work. 

Primary Source

The requirement that everyone in a group read the “Primary Source” (at least using AccessScience as the starting point) is to ensure that there is a common ground.

Secondary Source

The secondary source may be any of those that you’re led to from the library’s reference page.  I would hope that it will in some way amplify or contradict or otherwise supplement what you have read in the primary source, but we won’t enforce that strictly, at least not initially till we see how the discussions develop in the first few weeks.  I’d certainly encourage you to link the two in what you write.

Jim Mitchell

Welcome to the CAEE-201 Blog - Spring AY 2009-10

About this Blog
We'll use this blog to post announcements and answer questions that are raised throughout this term related to CAEE-201.  I advise you to subscribe to it via an RSS reader such as Google Reader.  That way you won't have to go into VistaBB to see any changes.  There are many, many blogs available on interesting topics.  A good place to search for others that may interest you is Technorati.