A6 Comments

Grader Comments on The Assignment

At this point it seems like most have gotten the hang of this class and are performing very well. I would like to point out that an explanation of what a chart or graph or program output represents and means and how it was obtained is of equal or greater importance than the actual graphic. Anyone can throw a bunch of garbage numbers and parameters into a program and obtain a beautiful graphic. I want to know that you put some thought into it and genuinely tried to figure it out and in the process actually learned something.

 

Grader Comments on Your Suggestions for Improvements

John Braley made these comments to me, but I thought you’d find them instructive.

Reading through these suggestions, it seems many students are just uncomfortable not having a clear problem with all of the constraints clearly laid out for them. They want to know how big the building sizes are; they want to have each member’s contribution mandatory (inconceivable, I know), they want to know just how to use excel and eQuest. Instead you make them approximate and guess and research and use intuition and judgment. I think many are still not realizing this class is not about the final answers and numbers on their webpages, it’s about the experience, because it is far more important that an engineer can use his or her brain to find creative solutions, not simply follow directions and crank numbers. In senior design and even much more in the real world, very little will be spelled out, they need to be comfortable making decisions about how to get work done.

Also, as always, there is a suggestion to provide more time. At this point, I just find that humorous.