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