Course Final Grades

The TA’s finished grading the final labs today.  That allowed me to calculate and enter the final grades for the course.  I’ve left the course open through the end of the first week of the summer term for you to review for any significant errors since we were unfortunately late in returning your final labs.

Below are the statistics for the overall grades.  You’ll see that we had a high percentage of A’s and a number of A+’s.

These grades take into account:

• Dropping the lowest lab and discussion grade
• Using the adjusted grade for the final take-home assessment
• Allowing a total of three missed lectures and labs for the attendance grade

Four individual had their final grade drop from the “running” grade displayed during the term.  This occurred because they hadn’t turned in required work.  This wasn’t taken into account by the “running” grade.  I warned about this earlier in the term.

Related Posts

• Take Home Assessment – Comments
• Best and Worst of CAEE-201 – Your Comments

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. My comments on the essay are in a separate post.
• 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 3.6 points to each person’s raw score to make allowance for possible lack of clarity, although I found only two questions that I felt had some ambiguity (see below).
  • The result of this increase in the exam is reflected in the column –CAEE-201 AdjustedAsses.  This was used in computing the final grade.

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.
• 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, not a sketching or drafting tool.  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. 
• Member Weight Calculation – It’s surprising that a number 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.
• Issues of Concern to Engineers – Four of the five options are likely to be important to engineers.  Only the analysis of lives of great engineers is unlikely to important.
• Practice Requirements – Almost everyone recognized that our disciplines are interactive with and affected by disciplines and issues outside our department and outside our country.
• Controlling Storm Water – My “correct” answers were that it’s a problem in older cities and it’s required by EPA.  A number of you chose that it’s politically popular to control storm water.  I decided to award a makeup point to everyone since denying this was questionable:  Few politicians want to vote to pay for cleaning up storm water (and few taxpayers want to pay for it), but all want to claim credit.
• Foundation Types – I awarded another makeup point because a mat foundation can indeed be used for large buildings, but that may not have been clear from the lectures and from Google searches.

Best and Worst of CAEE-201–Your Comments

I’ve completed grading the essays on the final assessment and thought you’d like to have some statistics about what you said – and what I learned.  While grading them I kept track of your comments in a variety of categories suggested by what you wrote (see below) to get a sense of what worked and what needs to be improved.

I’ll use these results to try and improve what we do when next we offer CAEE-201.

What Worked

Overall you were very positive about CAEE-201.  You liked the variety of speakers, the discussions, the labs, the exposure to what the CAEE majors consist of, and the site visits.

The breakdown of the comments overall was

• 81 Students completed the essay – 1 did not
  • 42 wrote only positive comments
  • 37 wrote both positive and negative comments
  • No one wrote only a negative comment
• 194 Positive/Best comments
• 55 Negative/Worst/Needs Improvement comments

What Needs Improvement

As you’ll see in looking at the details the biggest area you felt needs improvement is the instructions for the labs (22 comments).  There were 48 “worst” comments addressing some aspect of the labs (please note that there were 70 positive comments as well).  There’s considerable variety in the specifics of what you felt was problematic.

Detailed Comment Breakdown

• The groups of comments are organized alphabetically within “Best” or “Worst”
• In some cases I included specific issues as well

About the Online 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 – LAST WEEK OF CLASSES – NOT EXAM PERIOD

• Opens – Midnight Thursday Morning  6/4 
• Closes – 11:59PM Sunday Evening 6/7
• There is NO exam during exam week.
• There is NO class meeting on Monday of exam week.

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)
  • These are drawn from the lectures and the labs in the course.
  • A few require you to be careful in your thinking, but most are straightforward.
• 15% – Calculation Questions based on the labs
  • The description and logic for calculating the answer are the same, but each student will see different numbers
• 10% – 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 3 hours
• You will not receive your score after taking the assessment– not until I have graded the essays after the assessment closes
• 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.
• We will use the highest score you achieve from multiple attempts.

Update on Class DIscussions

Hey Folks,

As we enter the last week of class, you have one discussion post left to complete.  I hope that you have all learned something from these discussions.  Please remember that the more you put into your education, the more you will get out of it.  These posts are not meant to be difficult, they are meant to give you the opportunity to learn something you otherwise wouldn't.  Overall, I am very pleased with the way they are going,  Please just remember that part of your grade for these discussions is to read and review 3 of your classmate's posts.  Good job, and good luck with the rest of this term!

-Brad

Tacony-Palmyra Bridge Visit–Thursday 5/28

This Thursday we’ll visit the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. 

• The visit will take the entire lab period for each lab section
• We’ll be traveling by Drexel bus, walking across the bridge making observations and then returning to Drexel, all within the two hour lab period. 
• Below are the key facts for this visit.

Timing

• We will leave PMOMPTLY on the hour at the start of each lab - 9:00 and 11:00.  We really will leave on time.
• To ensure that the bus has sufficient capacity stick with your assigned lab section.
• We expect to be back by 10:50 and 12:50 respectively.  If there’s a traffic problem we could be delayed, but at that time of day it should be OK.

Location

• The bus will leave from in front of the main building on Chestnut street, probably on the south side of the street.
  • Sometimes for traffic reasons the bus goes to Market street.  If that’s the case we’ll alert you by having someone on Chestnut to direct you.  That person will leave Chestnut at 9:00 or 11:00
• If you’re a commuter you can meet us at the Tacony Palmyra bridge.
  • The easiest parking lot is on the NJ side
  • We’ll be starting our walk from the PA side so you’ll want to walk across the bridge to meet us.
  • We’ll probably start walking from the PA side about 10:25 or 12:25

Wearing Apparel

• Wear a windbreaker (raingear if the weather threatens)
  • The bridge is always markedly cooler and windier than on the ground
• Wear flat shoes – heels will be a problem on some of the sidewalks.

Safety

• The bridge is a dangerous place, particularly if you lean into the traffic lanes – it’s extraordinarily tight.
• LISTEN TO THE SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS WHEN WE’RE THERE

Tanker Collision with Bridge Lab–Question

Question

• Could you explain to me how to do question 14 on this week's lab? …. I know I have to work backwards to find the mass, but I am not sure how to do this. Could you please guide me in the right direction for how to complete this problem?

Response

Prof. Dasaro set this question to challenge you to think about the physics of what’s happening.  As he noted, in most respects it’s a matter of working backwards through the same steps that you followed in Q1-13.  Below are some hints that may assist.

• A key thing to note is that in calculating the bending moment we’re pushing on the pier with the maximum the DRPA allows.  In essence, we’re ignoring what happens in the “plastic” region when addressing bending.
• To work backwards to the allowable tanker mass/weight you need to check whether the maximum stress specified in the question occurs in the elastic range, which includes the DRPA maximum.  You can do this by comparing the moment that occurs with this stress in each pier leg to the maximum moment.  If that moment is less then you can proceed assuming that you’re working exclusively in the elastic range – which simplifies the calculations.