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!