Final Exam & Final Grades

The graders have graded all the labs and made adjustments for any outstanding issues that have been brought to our attention. 

I personally graded all the Least/Most Valuable questions and reviewed the class averages on each question on the exam.

I’ve also made all the promised adjustments to the scores and calculated the final grade in the class. 

These notes give you more information on all of this.

Final Exam Questions

Even though there were some questions (below) on which there were low class averages my review of the question content against what was said and done in the course didn’t find any errors. 

Exam Adjustment

Nonetheless I decided that there were some questions that were unintentionally “tricky”.  To address this I added 5 points (out of 100 possible) to everyone’s score, thus “curving” the exam upward by 5% to a cap of 100 points.  The number used in the grade calculation includes this adjustment although the one on VistaBB is the “raw” unadjusted number. 

Exam Questions With Which People Had Difficulty

• Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) – If you think you’ll realize it’s not dimensionless.  Its calculated as the ratio of heat moved to electrical power used.  I decided this was a bit tricky.
• Nested IF  Statement – I decided this was tricky even though you’d done a lab that required its use.  Learning the logic of this kind of statement will be useful in your career.
• Senior Design Advisor – In my lecture and the notes for it I stated quite specifically that different advisors have different approaches.  You may think, as many did, that there is a “right way” to do it, but in fact you’ll find considerable variation.
• Soil Mechanics – A number of you chose “interesting” as not being true of soil mechanics.  That may be true for you, but certainly Dr. Sjoblom found it interesting and emphasized how imprecise it is.
• Water Pollution Time – As one student pointed out, the lab you performed varied explicitly only the velocity.  In fact the explanation and the fundamental equations show that the diffusion is happening, which is factored into the equations.  I decided this was “tricky” which led to the adjustment mentioned above.

 

Final Grade Calculation

I calculated your final grades by downloading the data from VistaBB and performing all the promised adjustments (all in your favor) in an Excel spreadsheet.  Those adjustments were:

• Dropped the lowest lab score
• Dropped the lowest discussion score
• Allowed one missed attendance for lecture
• Allowed one missed attendance for lab
• Adjusted the final exam score as indicated above
• Weighted the ingredients as shown in the syllabus
• Rounded numeric percentages to the nearest percent before calculating the letter grade

Jim Mitchell

Course Least and Most Valuable Aspects

I’ve just completed reading all your responses to the two free-form questions on the Take-Home assessment.  While each of you had a different view of the course there were some observations that may interest you.

Serious Responses

The great majority gave serious responses of adequate length with good detail.  Thank you!

Overall Opinions About the Course

While there were certainly critiques (see below), the overall tone was very positive about the benefits of the course.  Two people were fairly explicit that they found it unrewarding, and several found it the most valuable they’d taken at Drexel.

Lectures

Most of you found the lectures valuable for several reasons:

• The variety of subjects covered gave a good sense of the discipliens
• The enthusiasm of the faculty members was much appreciated.

Some of you critiqued some of the lectures for the following reasons:

• Some faculty were too detailed in what they discussed
• Some faculty were rushed and didn’t prepare you fully for the labs

The panel discussion at the end of the term was much appreciated by many for its honesty and what the faculty and graduate students shared about how they studied and what they experienced.

Labs

There were both positive and negative views about the labs.

• Many appreciated the variety of labs and the opportunity to perform calculations in the field
• A smaller number felt the labs were “plug and chug” without any meaning.
• A few felt that some of them, particularly the first, were too elementary, while others appreciated the progression through the term.
• Some disliked having to use Excel so much.  A larger number appreciated the opportunity to gain more experience with it’s capabilities
• The instructions for some labs were lauded while others were criticized as being inadequate.
• The TA’s who provided detailed help were particularly appreciated.
• The Senior Design presentations were applauded by quite a few as giving them a sense of their future at Drexel.
• A few were critical that the language was too technical and also that

Site Visits

The vast majority of you appreciated the site visits to both the Tacony-Palmyra bridge and the Recreation Center.  Within that appreciation there were specific complaints:

• The organization of the visit to the Tacony-Palmyra wasn’t what it could have been, particularly in terms of preparing you for the measurements and calculations.
• Some people wanted more time in the Recreation Center spent on the Basketball court and Air Handlers since they were the subject of the calculations in one lab.

Discussions

The weekly discussions provoked the strongest opposing views.  Overall the positive ones outnumbered the negative ones.

Positive views:

• Quite a few enjoyed the chance to explore their chosen field
• Others enjoyed the opportunity to see what others in their discipline had found, and even to enter into dialogue.
• Several remarked on how they found it prepared them well for the lectures
• Several others found that it opened their eyes to possibilities they hadn’t realized existed (also true about the lectures).

Negative views

• A number of you felt the discussions were make-work and essentially worthless
• Several felt Access-Science was too restrictive and didn’t have sufficient depth.

Personal Observation

I have made notes about what worked and what didn’t this term based on what you’ve said.  For your successors:

• I’ll do my best to improve the lab organization and instructions
• I’ll scratch my head on how to reduce the varying experiences with the discussions, particularly the grading criteria (“confusing” was particularly criticized).

Thanks for your efforts throughout the term.  It’s been a pleasure to be part of the experience with you.

Jim Mitchell

Mitchell Last Lecture Notes Posted

I’ve posted in the “Lecture Notes” folders a PDF of my last lecture slides.

Jim Mitchell

Last Week of Classes Notice

 

The following is posted as an announcement in VistaBB, but is repeated here.

• The last lecture in CAEE-201 will be Monday, the 29th of November.
• NO LECTURE on Wednesday
  
• Lab this week is to attend Senior Design presentations with write up due by Sunday evening just before midnight 12/5
  
• Take-Home Final Opens 6AM Friday 12/3 - closes Sunday evening just before midnight 12/5

Jim Mitchell

Calculated Grade Updated

As of 11/27/2010 at 5PM I updated the calculated grade.  It is now based on:

• Attendance – 26 sessions
• Labs – L1-L7 (note that not all were graded as of this release date – they will be soon)
• Discussions – D2-D9

As before these are “raw” grades without corrections for the “free” attendance and dropped lowest grades.

Jim Mitchell

Final Discussion Topic

Question

The final discussion topic is to write on something we learned relating to our major. Since I am a B&E studying operations management the material has not directly related to this course. Any suggestions for those in the "other" category?

 

Response

If you think there hasn’t been anything that relates to your major you might want to write about what you think your major could offer to Civil, Architectural or Environmental engineers.

Jim Mitchell

Lab-9 Typo

Question

“I noticed in cell F36 of the results tab has the amount of CO2 in tons but in cell F37 it divides cell H27 over F36. This would be incorrect because in cell F36 the units are in tons and not Megatons like in cell H27. So I changed the units in cell F36 to Megatons. Am I right by doing this or was it just some kind of typo with the units that were labeled.? “

Response from Mr. Rostad

There is a typo for the units for cell F36.  Dr. Spatari meant metric tons.  The results from the eio-lca model are given in metric tons (not megatons). 

L8 Question on Energy Balance

Question

I am having problems with question two in the lab.  the equation for Ecooling is E-cooling.=,E-heatgain.+,E-ventilationair.−,E-exhaustionair.  The problem with this is Qe and Qv are always equal to each other. Therefore, when you find their mass by multiplying by density their are always equal. Then when you find their energies by multiplying each by their masses then they are equal again.  So, E-ventilationair ends up being equal to E-exhaustionair end up being equal to each other and cancel each other out when calculating for Ecooling and Ecooling ends up being equal to E-heatgain.  When calculating utility cost you multiply the E-lectricty by the Electricity price. So, the electricity consumed and the utility cost ends up not being dependent on a change in Qe or Qv.  Please let me know if I have some part of this equation wrong because when I am changing my Qv nothing is happening to the utility cost or the electricity consumed.

 

Answer

The difficulty you’re having stems almost certainly from the fact that you’re not incorporating the fact that the temperature coming in is not the same as the temperature leaving.  If you use those temperatures the energy is different and you’ll have meaningful numbers.

Jim Mitchell

Lab-8–Two Questions

Question 1:

In Question 2, are you assuming that the ventilation airflow rate, Qv, is equal to the total airflow rate, Qt? And then again, similiar to Question 1, assuming that Qv is equal to Qe?

 

Answer:

The total air flow rate is defined in the problem definition to be a constant, 7,200 m^3/h.  As the ventilation (and therefore exhaust since they are equal) increases the recirculated air must therefore decrease.

 

Question 2:

In the instructions sheet, you gave us an equation for the energy carried by airflow which I understand. But what do the T and W in the equation stand for?

 

Answer

T is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit

W is the air humidity in lb-water/lb-dry-air

Lecture Monday 11/22–YES

Yes, there will be a lecture on Monday 11/22.  A panel of faculty and graduate students, led by the department head Dr. Haas, will discuss graduate study and research.

Jim Mitchell

Hard Hats Available $10

If you’d like to have your own hard hat (with a CAEE logo I believe), they are available for $10 from Dr. Robert Brehm in his office - Alumni Engineering 273G

Email – rfb23@drexel.edu

Jim Mitchell

Lab-8 Units of ECO2

Question

“What is the unit for the emission rate of CO2, the hand out stated it is 15 ppm-h/people, but for quest 1, when I have to calculate Number of people *(E CO2/ V), the unit for the result is ppm/h.  I cannot understand how the unit for ppm-h/people * people is ppm/h, not ppm-h.”

Answer

Kinman Leung has sharp eyes and has learned to check units – bravo!  He caught a typo.  The correct units are indeed ppm/h*people.

Lab-7 Site Visit Relation

Question

“One of the grading criteria in lab 7 for the memo is "Relation to site visit", however we never visited the site as apart of the lab? Are you asking how does this relate when we go to the recreation center on our own time? Thanks for your time.”

 

Answer

Oops.  When we did this last spring we matched the site visit to the hydrology computation.  This fall we pushed it back a week.  You may ignore that question.  Apologies.

Gradebook Update as of 11/8/2010

I’ve updated the gradebook calculation and made the all the graded discussions and assignments to date visible.  The calculated grade (unadjusted for allowed misses) is composed of:

• Discussions 2-7
• Labs 1-5
• Attendance through today 11/8/2010

Jim Mitchell

Lab-3 Friday 10-12 Regraded

The lab 3 for Friday 10am-12pm session has been re-graded. Points have been added back for question 4 and 5 for following the correct approach. Let Jingjie know if anyone still has questions.

Revit Question

Question

“There are three things in the requirements that I cannot figure out how to do.  They are: Shading on of the perspective views, 'Mark' width and height of door, and 'Family' information.”

Answer

Shading

One of the properties of a view is how it appears. It’s named “Visual Style”.  Changing that will change how the view is shaded.

 

Door (and Window) Information

“Mark” and “height” and “Family” are all properties of a door that are listed as possible items to include in the schedule.

Jim Mitchell

Cumulative Grades Updated

The cumulative grade calculation was updated today (10/25/2010 at 11:45AM) to reflect the following ingredients using the weights in the syllabus:

• Attendance – 15 sessions through 10/25/2010
• Discussions – D2, 3, 4
• Labs – L1, 2, 3

As before remember that this is a “raw” score that does not make the allowance for dropping low scores and missed attendance.

Jim Mitchell

Revit Lab–Lessons from the labs 10/22/2010

 

Below are some suggestions that I gathered during the four sessions today.

• Read the Assignment – Not just the Tutorial

• The assignment has specific requirements

• The tutorial actually covers more material than is required for the assignment.

• Save Early, Save Often

• Several people lost most of the work because they hadn’t saved

• Don’t be afraid to start over

• We all make mistakes when starting.  It’s often easiest to just do it again

• Save to the desktop

• You can then copy the file to a flash drive or email it home.

• When drawing a floor (or roof)

• Be sure the sketch is totally “closed”

• Click on the green checkmark

• Constrain the wall top to the 2nd Level

• It’s best to do so when drawing your first wall element. Thereafter all walls will be so constrained.

• Print-to-PDF depends on having Adobe Acrobat

• It creates a “printer” that produces a file instead of a physical page.

• All the machines in the CadLab have Acrobat

• There are free substitutes available that you can install on your own machine

• Put a dimension on your longest wall

• That will help the graders and ensure you meet that requirement.

• The dimension tool is the top mini-ribbon

 

Jim Mitchell

Understanding Drawing Information

Question

“My Group is having a difficult time identifying the cross sectional dimensions from the TP Bridge Sketch that you provided us. We found the width and the height from the given drawing, also we have all of our measurements we made of the width, height, and cross sectional dimensions. Are there any tips you can provide us for figuring out how to read the cross sectional dimensions from the TP bridge PDF you supplied us? Thanks for your time.”

Response

You should be able to read the dimensions of the elements of the bridge on the drawings that are contained in the resources folder.  One particularly helpful drawing is the one entitled “Continuous Truss Details.

On that drawing and elsewhere a typical notation is 4 Ls  6 x 4 x 3/8.  This translates into a statement that member contains four angle pieces (in cross section) with the length of the two legs being 6” and 4”, and a thickness of 3/8”.  From that kind of information for each component of the member and an estimate of the length of the member you can calculate its volume and thus its weight.

If you cannot find specific information about a member it’s OK to extrapolate from what you already know – just identify the extrapolation.

Remember that this is an estimate.  We expect you to have considerable uncertainty in your results, but still be a plausible to an order of magnitude.

PS.  If I were doing this assignment I’d make use of Excel to keep all my parts and pieces orderly.

Jim Mitchell

Tributary Area Calculation

Question

“My team and I were wondering what exactly tributary area was and how to implement it.  We have been attempting to do it, but we do not feel comfortable that we are going about it the right way in question 6.  If at all possible, could you provide us some information as to how to calculate the tributary area and perform the calculations for question 6.”

Response

The tributary area is the portion of the bridge that contributes to the load on the pier.  In a symmetrical situation such as this it’s everything that’s from the centerline to the outer edge of the bridge, and everything to halfway to the next pier on each side.  In plan it’s a big rectangle, and in elevation it includes everything that is carried by the pier.

Jim Mitchell

Calculating the Weight + Report Structure

Question

“We are having trouble with the lab that is due this week. We know the length, width and thickness of the members which connect to U9 because we measured them. Do we use the area of the length*height in our calculations or something else? Also, do we multiply the weight by 2 because there are 2 beams per member? I was wondering about the structure of the lab too. Does a structure that has an abstract, introduction, data and calculation, and results/conclusion sound like everything we need? Thank you for your time.”

Calculations

The goal of the lab is to estimate the “dead load” on a given pier.  Essentially you need to decide what members (including the bridge deck) contribute to the load on that pier.  The assumption is that you’ll calculate the volume of those members using the information on the drawings as verified by your field and then calculate the weight using the information provided in the lab report on densities.

Lab Report Format and organization

Your overall format for the report is fine.  I’d recommend realizing that there are seven specific tasks identified.  You’ll probably help the grader, and yourselves, if you break the report down by those tasks.

 

Jim Mitchell

Drawing Program for Lab L4

 

Question

“I have a question concerning the Lab Report #4. For the drawings that are required for question 2 of the report, what program are we supposed use to develop them and how are they supposed to approximately look?

Any program that you want that achieves the result:

• Autocad is fine
• So is the drawing program within MS Word or Excel.
• A good candidate is the free Inkscape

There are also many free websites that can produce images – such as Gliffy

Jim Mitchell

Discussions–Late Submissions

The course website wasn’t clear about whether we would accept late submissions for Discussions.  Since the point of the discussions is to prepare you for the topic of the week our general intent was not to accept late discussions.  In light of the lack of explicit statement of that policy up till now here is what I’ve advised the graders:

• Starting next week (Week-6) we will not accept late Discussion submissions
• For late submissions up to now we will allow them if they were submitted by the start of class on Wednesday of the week the discussion was due.
• A penalty of approximately 2 points will be applied to those that meet this criteria.

Jim Mitchell

Cumulative Grades as of 10/17/2010

I turned on the Grade Calc column in VistaBB today and made sure that the columns for all the assignments so far are visible.  The following notes should help you interpret what you see there.

What’s included in the calculation

• Attendance – 11 possible
• Discussion D2, D3
• Note that some grades have been issued for D4, but it is not included in the calculation at this time – it will be when I update it.
• Labs L1, L2

Notes on the Calculation

• This is a “raw” calculation that does NOT yet take into account the allowance for missed attendance.  Nor does it drop your lowest discussion and lab.
• We will make that adjustment before calculating the final grade, but for now you’re seeing the score without those adjustments.
• If you wish to calculate your own grade as a check, the grade calculation uses the “weights” show on the “Assignment Weights” page in the syllabus.

Dealing with errors in the calculation

If you believe there is an error in the calculation (e.g. missing grade that should be present, you should email me soon, NOT at the end of the term.

Jim Mitchell – James.Mitchell@Drexel.edu

Lab-1 Grader’s Comments

• Significant digits for the answers are determined by the input with LEAST number of significant digits.
• Use scientific notation for very small and very large numbers.
• Name variables to make your calculation easy-to-follow.
• Take advantage of the yellow box for grading criteria on each spreadsheet, in order to make the correct and complete answer.
• Don’t forget to work on your memo, which weighs more than some questions!

Grader’s Suggestions for Discussion Posts

The following suggestions come from one of the graders after reading the first week’s discussion posts.

• Make sure that you post in the right category.  "Civil Engineering" doesn't mean that the topic is about civil engineering, it means that you ARE a civil engineer.  If your major is not Civil/Architectural or Environmental Engineering, you post in the "Other" category.
• Make sure to include what is most interesting and most confusing in your discussion.
• Include citations for both articles that you read.

Jim Mitchell

About this Blog

We'll use this blog to post announcements and answer questions that are raised throughout this term related to CAEE-201.  We advise you to subscribe to it via an RSS reader such as Google Reader.  That way you won't have to go into VistaBB to see any changes.  There are many, many blogs available on interesting topics.  A good place to search for others that may interest you is Technorati.