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

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!

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. 

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

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!

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-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

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