Final Assessment Analysis

 

Some of you may wish to know how the class performed on the final Take Home Assessment.

Below are the results of my analysis of the question scores with the color coded column giving the average class score on the question.  I’ve followed the image with some comments on the red (low scoring) questions, as well as what you wrote about the Best and Worst aspects of the class.

• Learning after Graduation – It’s almost certain that you’re going to need to go on learning throughout your career as an engineer.  Many of you chose answers that indicated your thought there wouldn’t be much later learning.
• Heat Transfer Calculation – this was the same basic question as in Lab #1
• Nested IF Function – This was admittedly a difficult question, but it was directly based on the hydrology lab.  Learning to use this kind of logic will almost certainly be beneficial in your engineering career.
• Gas Concentrations – A key result of the IAQ lab was that you cannot have all things – low ozone and low CO2 merely by ventilating.
• Revit Type – Revit is BIM software.  When I Googled the word Revit the first entry stated that as I did in class.
• EER – EER is a ration of BTU/Watt-Hour – It’s a measure of efficiency of an air conditioning system.  it is NOT dimensionless as it is used. 
• Kinetic Energy Calculation – The trick here was to refer to Prof. Dasaro’s lab, where the weight had to be converted into mass to perform the calculation.
• Member Weight Calculation – It’s surprising that so many had difficulty with this one.  You needed to calculate the volume and multiply by the density, being sure to watch the units of volume to work in either in^3 or ft^3.

Short Essay on Best and Worst Aspect of CAEE-201

As the bright green number shows, most of you were very specific and wrote clearly.  As in past there were comments on many aspects of the course.  Only one person out of 113 chose to focus primarily on the negative aspects – everyone else focused on the positive ones, sometimes with a negative comment as well.  Here are some key ones:

• Most Positive Aspects – In order by number of comments Received
• Site Visits – Tacony-Palmyra Bridge & DAC (70 mentions total)
• Variety of lectures & Labs & Speakers (55 mentions total)
• Clarifying your major focus, including graduate study (36 mentions total)
• Discussions (15 mentions total)
• Overall structure of course and TA and Prof. help (18 mentions total)
• Worst Aspects – the total was only about 10% of the number of positive and not nearly so emphatic
• Discussions – about the same number as made positive comments (this has been true every year – 18 mentions)
• A variety of comments about the labs and grading (15 mentions total)
• Two people stated firmly that 10:00AM is too early for the lecture

Take Home Assessment Results + Final Grade Calculation

Take Home Assessment Grade Calculation

The results of the take home assessment are now posted on the website.  The row that shows is called “TakeHomeAdjusted.”  As the name indicates, the score you see is an adjusted score.  It is the “raw” score adjusted upward by ten points out of 100 total. 

I arrived at this adjustment by a several step process:

• First I reviewed the class grades on all the questions to be sure that there weren’t any errors in the questions causing everyone to miss points.  I found no such problems although the calculation problems (based directly on the labs of the term) caused a number of people difficulties.
• I then decided to add the same amount (10 points) to everyone’s score so that the highest scoring individual (not an outlier) received 100%

 

Final Grade Calculation

The final grade for the course (labeled “Cumulative Grade” in what you see) takes into account the dropping of the lowest discussion and the lowest lab score as well as three “free” attendance misses. 

It may change somewhat between now (Thursday noon) and when I submit the grades because it leaves out of the calculation any items that are not yet graded.  The graders expect to finish all the grading by this evening and will check that all the items submitted have been graded, so the grade should be the stable grade that I’ll submit by Friday.

About the Final Assessment

Where Do I Find It?

• Click on the “Quizzes and Exams” menu item in the course website in BbLearn

When It’s Available

• Opens – Midnight Friday Morning 12/7
• Closes – 11:59 Sunday Evening 12/9

How Much Does It Count?

• 18% of the total grade

What is on it?

• 75% Multiple Choice + True/False + Multiple Answers (more than one answer per question possible)
• 20% – Calculation Questions based on the labs
  • The description and logic for calculating the answer are the same, but each student will see different numbers
• 5% – 200 words or more on the Best or Worst (or Both) Aspects of CAEE-201 – graded on being specific, not on your opinions.

May I take It More than Once?

• Yes, you may take it up to three times – each time you have 2-1/2 hours
• You may not save and resume during one instance of the test.
• Each time you take it the numbers for the calculations and the order of the questions will probably be different.
• You should assume that will grade the last time that you take the assessment.

Term Grade Calculations

Question

“I read on the syllabus that students can miss up to 1 lab report. If all lab reports are completed throughout the term, I was wondering how the grading would work. For example, does the lowest grade get dropped? If you could explain that would be very appreciative. Thank you very much for your time. “

Response

When calculating the final grade for the term we will drop the lowest grade for the discussion and for the lab report.  If you miss a lab or discussion you will have received a “0” for that work and thus it will, in effect, be dropped.

Be aware that this calculation will NOT be performed in BbLearn.  What’s on BbLearn will be the starting point for calculations performed in a spreadsheet afterwards.  The BbLearn grade will be lower than your final grade.

Lab-6–“Site Visit” Grading Criteria

Question:

“What is meant by relation to site visit in the yellow rubric box on the memo worksheet? I mean which specific site, the rec center and how this impacts the school's water usage?”

Response:

In years past we have had the site visit to the Rec Center in the same week as this calculation exercise.  That was the intent of this grading criteria.  Since we haven’t yet visited the Rec Center the graders will ignore this criteria and give everyone who attempts the memo an automatic 6 points.

You are welcome to anticipate the visit and comment on what you expect will be the the connection, but that is not required.

Week 3 Discussion Feedback

Hey class,

Week 3 discussion posts looked better than last week on the average. It was good to see the enthusiasm a lot of students put into their discussion, and it's clear the majority of you really endeavored to learn something new from the assignment. Still a couple technical details to clear up:

• When you're asked to discuss the most confusing aspects of the article, this is not an opportunity to critique the author's writing style. Even if there are grammatical errors in the text, that's not what you should be focusing on. We want you to pick out a certain concept or detail that confused you or made you think, "hmm. I want to know more about this," and then describe how you could have understood it better.
• Week Specific Question: a number of you are still not making it clear what part of your discussion responds to the week specific question. Be sure to look at this each week and answer it with specific details or examples from your chosen articles.

Overall, everybody is doing a great job finding articles and contributing interesting ideas to the discussion.

Keep up the good work!

~Mitch and Taylor

Week 2 Discussion Feedback

Hey all, I just wanted to give back some feedback after grading the first set of discussion posts.  Overall, students did a great job at responding to articles pertaining to geotechnical engineering.  Posts were engaging and thought was put into writing each section of the posts. Here are some bullet points on improving the posts:

• Add more content about what you thought was interesting/confusing.  Often, students only wrote a couple of sentences for each part that pertains to the articles.  Students also summarized the articles instead of answering the questions required for the posts.
• Focus on the week specific question. This week's question was: One aspect of geotechnical engineering they thought was interesting.  I know this question was already one of the deliverables  needed to write the discussion post (one interesting part about the article), but we were  looking for more than a couple sentences that pertained to this aspect.
• Please make sure to post your discussions on time!  This was the one and only time that you received credit for a late discussion post.  The following weeks will be recorded as a zero if submitted late.

Please let us know if you have any questions!
-Taylor & Mitch