Take-Home Assessment – Comments

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

The Process

• I graded all the essay questions myself – almost everyone was careful and received full credit
• I reviewed the “item analysis” provided by BbLearn.  It looks at the performance on each question to see if there problems because they were poorly written or possibly required material that was not presented in class.
  • As a result of that review I decided to add 8.2 points to each person’s raw score to make allowance for possible lack of clarity, although I found no questions that I felt were wrongly stated.
  • The result of this increase in the exam is reflected in the column –CAEE-201 TakeHomeAdj

Some comments on questions where there were difficulties.

• 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 ratio 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 or Worst Aspect of CAEE-201

I covered this in a separate post

Final Grades

The final grades have been submitted to Banner.  Below are some notes that may be of interest.

Percentages for Components

The percentages used for the components were:

• Assignments 43%
• Discussions 23%
• Attendance 16%
• Take Home Assessment 18%

Attendance

• Each student was allowed three “free” attendance misses without affecting your grade.

Discussion Grade

• The lowest discussion grade was not included in the calculation.

Laboratory Grades

• The lowest two laboratory grades were not included in the calculation
• Note that we dropped one additional lab grade beyond what was promised.  This was in recognition of the delayed return of labs.  It raised some student’s term grades significantly.

Letter Grades

• The assignment of a letter grade followed the syllabus.
• We rounded upwards

Grade Distribution

The grade distribution overall was:

Range	Count	Letter Grades
90-100	50	A’s
80-89	33	B’s
70-79	10	C’s
55-69	8	D’s
<55	1	F

 

Why a grade may have dropped from the “Cumulative Grade” shown during the term.

The cumulative grade during the term was a “running total” that did not include in calculations items that had not yet been graded, or turned in at all.  At the end of the term any missing grades (labs or discussions or the final assessment not submitted) turned to a zero and was included in the calculation of the term grade.

Student who turned in everything will probably have seen an increase in their term grade because the two lowest labs were dropped in that calculation, whereas only one was dropped in the “Cumulative Grade”.

Best and Worst Aspects of Course–Your Opinions

I’ve just completed grading the essay question that each of you completed on the exam.  I’m happy to say that all of you took it seriously and thus almost everyone received a “5 out of 5”.  Only a few people had entries that were too short or not read for grammar, thus losing portions of a point.  One or two, sadly, did not complete the question at all and thus received no points.

Since I use this question as a prime way of learning what’s good about the course and what needs improvement I keep a tally while grading of “Best” things and Worst things.  Here’s a summary of what I learned.

Choice of Best or Worst to Discuss

• 46 people chose to write exclusively about the Best
• No one chose to write exclusively about the Worst
• 48 chose to write about the best and worst

Best Aspects of the Course – by number of mentions

• The lectures – mostly for their variety and enthusiasm – 46
• Site Visits – 31
• Course helped solidify the student’s understanding or choice of major – 28
• Discussions – 22
• Variety of topics in the course – 21
• Well structured/balanced class –17
• Helpful TAs – 11
• There were quite a variety of aspects with fewer than 10 mentions including specific lecturers, specific labs, aspects of the administration

Worst (or problematic) Aspects of the course

• Delayed feedback/grading of the labs – 19
• This was a big change from prior years due to the lack of grading help.  I apologize to all once again.
• A variety of aspects with less than 10 mentions including: Discussions, lab instructions, dull lecturers, specific labs.

Some Statistics

• Average length of your essays – 254 words
• Longest essay – 455 words

To get a sense of your overall satisfaction with the course I rated each essay on a 1-to-7 scale with one being “intense dislike” and seven being “best course of the term” – a four being neutral.  Using that scale your rating was 5.9 out of 7 overall.  I will look at the course evaluations when you complete them to see how they match this rating.

Kinetic Energy Units–Final Assessment Calculation Question

Question

“Somewhat confused on my last question for the final in your CAEE-201 class.  It asks for kinetic energy in "( in ft lbs).  I assume this parentheses is off but not sure how to calculate KE without having a unit of time?:

Response

The units are correct if the weight (NOT mass) of the truck is given in lbs. Prof. Dasaro’s lecture notes on the tanker colliding with the bridge address this issue.

BbLearn Grading Status as of 12/5/2013 Noon

Attendance

All attendance records have been updated including your attendance at the final class meeting on 12/4/2013.  The attendance now includes the allowance for two missed lectures and one missed lab.  There were 29 possible events so everyone with 26 or more will see a 29 in the Attendance column.

Labs and Discussions

The graders are completing the discussion and lab grading..  By early next week you should see a grade for everything you’ve submitted including the Senior Design lab.

Cumulative Grade Calculation

As I stated in class, the cumulative grade currently shown in BbLearn could decrease when calculating the final course grade.  That is because at the moment what BbLearn shows does not include in the calculation any labs or discussions that you did not submit.  When calculating the final grade any missed discussion or lab will be assigned a “0” grade and will be included in the calculation.

Your lowest (e.g. one “0” for a missed lab) will be dropped in the final grade calculation. If you turn in all the labs your lowest grade will be dropped.

Senior Design–Identifying Information

Question:

“I have a question about the write-up format for the senior design presentations. The project description is in paragraph form, but what about the identifying information? Should I just include it as a list in the memo, or is there a particular format for including that information?”

Response:

It’s a good idea to present the identifying information as a list.  There are no specific requirements.