Quartile 4

Overall, this course is graded with a 6. The students experienced the course as interesting and promising, however, the first part is qualified as too basic and too elaborated. The workload of this course is equally distributed through the quartile. For next year, the course can be improved by making a more elaborate study guide and improve the level of English.

The studyguide was clear, all information was present. The course had to deal with online lectures, the first lectures had bad quality, however this was solved in a really good way by pre-recording the lectures and have them as a live stream. Due to the pre-recorded lectures, the teachers could already answer the questions in the chat,
so there were no interruptions. Also the set up with the Q&A sessions afterwards was nice and useful for the students.

The start of the project was very chaotic, with making the groups. The idea was good, but students were thinking why we did not make groups in canvas, which works much faster. It seems like we lost quite some time by making only the groups. It was not clear to students what the idea was of the course at the beginning. It was not clear what was expected from us and it felt like ‘’you just did something what might be ok?’’ The ‘quizzes’ asking for feedback were nice because the project became a bit more clear afterwards. But a lot of students think that they would have done the project much better when everything was clear from the beginning. Now, it was more about ‘finding out what we have to do this week’ than focusing on the quality of the project itself. Next year, showing an example at the beginning of the course would be helpful.
The planning of first lectures and afterwards tutoring was good. The time schedule was mostly followed well, however, at the beginning, the tutor sessions started with a little ‘small talk’ which was unnecessary since there was already very little time to discuss both groups. Due to this, also some groups experienced less feedback since they were the second group which received feedback in a session. It might be good to have in the 20min schedule also something of a planning so both groups get equal time for receiving feedback.
The feedback given by the different tutors was also changing every week. This makes the process of a group difficult since they have to change things twice. It would be nice to have one clear vision of the tutors which they follow, so they all give us the same information.
The final presentations were scheduled outside the hours reserved for this course, this is not how it should be. The presentations could be on two days or the first part of the final presentations, with the guest lecture, could be removed. It was also mentioned many times that we had to follow a strict schedule and keep in mind the
time, however, the first part already started with a lot of delay. This was because of technical problems but it feels chaotic to students, mainly for the ones that were scheduled after the lunchbreak.

Writing a paper was something that was not done before for many students (especially the students focusing on architecture) so it was nice to do this since it is a skill you need to have when finishing your bachelor. Maybe a tip, there was in the second year a PRV ‘writing skills’, a lot of students found the PRV weird or unnecessary since they never wrote something in this way and you had to look closely to something that you wrote before. Could it be possible to connect the PRV of writing skills to this course? It would be really helpful to read your own paper as we did during the PRV and make the corresponding assignments.

The course is in general graded with a 7. The Pecha Kucha event is experienced as very nice and a refreshing way of presenting. The study guide is complete and supported with extra files including an elaboration on the different steps.

For the tutoring, some groups did not experience a high and sufficient level of feedback from the tutor (Muxi). The feedback was very basic and not constructive. Also, the English was sometimes hard to follow and this made communicating hard. However, on the other hand, the peer reviews from the others students are experienced as very useful and you learned a lot from each other.

The workload was experienced quite high. You needed to plan a lot of meetings together with your group members and worked together on the literature grid or paper. This was sometimes hard to achieve because 5 group members all follow different courses in different timeslots.

Overall, students liked the course and thought the layout of the course was interesting, because it was different then other courses. it is a good course for people that want to explore in a more artistic way architectonic/urban spaces.
A lot of freedom which some liked and for some it was hard. Other people thought that because of the matrix, the quotes, the expression means as drawing and sculpture, the freedom was reduced. This was on the other hand needed for the structure of the course.

Unclear connection between different assessments.
Group: essay
It seemed to be a separate part of the project but later on it got clear how you could use that information in the project.
Individual: themes and objects
The movie was for some a bit vague but also the purpose was not always clear for students as nothing was done with it after the grading. Better communication about the themes and the final object was needed.
Pandemic should have influenced the street image according to the explanation but the outcome of students differed a lot
Presentations
No assessment, which did not motivate and report was more important

Other faculties weren't working very well.
Quite a vague course sometimes but very educational to have that much freedom in a project.
Literature was not related to the other parts of the course

+ not that much criticism from the students!
+ A lovely, interesting course, and most of it was well-aranged.

+ It is very open and free what to make, so it really becomes your work with your own style expression.
- There was a bit of lack of a guideline about what has to be finished on the end. This is actually extra important during this working-at-home era, to point out what the most important parts of the project are. Furthermore, the information of the study guide was not always completely correct, what made it a bit extra unclear.
- It is a bit of a shame that you only get feedback of one person, this is of course due to the work-at-home situation. Perhaps more feedback sessions in which students had to react on each other could have been integrated. It was really helpful that for example Deasy started to add feedback and involved the students in this process.
- Building the models at home was quite difficult because a lack of tools, and quite expensive compared to doing this at the workspace.

- it would be great to have a kind of mid-term grade, as in a lot of other seminars, so people are aware that they are on the right track or not. - It could have been told a bit earlier that the midterm was shifted towards a week earlier.
- The midterm was not mentioned in Osiris.

- The workload was quite high, for in other years, people had to make these models in groups of 4. Now they have to do this on their own.

The course is graded with an 8. Students found it a very interesting course and learned a lot, the course is very open minded and you can really make it your own project. The course takes a different point of view than other ‘regular’ courses. It approaches urbanism from the rather subjective and personal experience-based side, rather than from a technical side.

The tutor explains everything very elaborated and she knows what she wants to see as results, but this does not take away that you have to come up with your own idea’s to achieve this. Besides this, the schedule for the afternoon was also appreciated among the students. One meeting per week was enough.

The workload of this course was quite significant because the course consisted of 4 different parts that needed to be combined in 1 matrix. Also, the finished materials needed to be improved each week. However, when all team members worked together on the course in an efficient way, most students did not experience a high deadline stress.

At the beginning it was not 100% clear what to do in Antwerp. Therefore, students needed to visit the city twice. For next year, maybe it is possible to choose for a Dutch city. This makes it easier to travel.

In general, students are enthusiastic about the course. They like being creative but sometimes it appears to be ad bit “vague” but this is due to the freedom that you have this course. There is a lot of freedom to do research and be creative.

All information about the assignments should be in the same media/document. Now it was hard to find or confusing. This will be better when the tutoring can be physical again. For now, a lot of information is undecided for creative freedom.
The communication about the courses went via Announcements, which gives a good overview for students.

Not all students like the approach with all students in one online meeting to show all products. Otherwise, some products of students can be selected to get feedback but then not everybody gets feedback. Another timeslot was reserved by the teachers but maybe afterwards this was not necessary.

Good assignments, most students liked it a lot. Also with eye on COVID, it were nice assignments. Even though they had to be made from home, the results were good and interesting and different materials were used. Maybe that is the reason why some projects are really good, because students have to think it more through in the COVID situation.

A little bit unclarity occurred of the submission of the reports.
Interesting literature.

Workload was fine, good division.

The course was in general evaluated positive. Students learned to think in a creative but defined way.
The start of the course could go better. Both assignments could be explained better, as some students did not know how to start or what was expected from them. Although it is understandable the teachers do not want to wipe out the creativity right away by giving some examples, some more defined set of guidelines good be given.
Another issue was the studyguide. The course did not have a file with all information but had everything on CANVAS itself. Because most courses still use a single file for the studyguide, every course uses CANVAS in a different way and the fact that students were not used to using CANVAs as a studyguide made information sometimes hard to find.

The guidance hours were experienced as very useful. Critical and useful feedback was given by the tutors. It was nice that at the guidance hours of the second assignment you could also see the work of others and learn from the feedback they got. Perhaps this is also a good idea for the first assignment.

For both assignments it was clear what needed to be handed in. The deadlines given were doable, as the workload was not too high (but also not to low). One improvement point is that the grades for the first assignment were not given. The meant that students did not know how they performed.

In general, it was a nicely structured course to follow. It was clear from the beginning what needed to be done and when the deadlines were. Additionally, forming groups went smoothly. It was nice that the group slots to subscribe to were open from the start.

On Canvas, there were very nice tables which were handy and easy to find. It was a nice difference from a pdf version with a lot of pages. On Canvas, you could scroll easily. It was nicely structured.

The one minute paper was mainly to serve as a summary for yourself of a lecture. A small con was that students liked to watch the recordings of the lectures. This caused the one minute papers not to be filled in eventually. A solution for this might be to place the deadline later.

In general the concepts scripts were well received. It was nice to be able to work on the concept scripts together with another student. Sometimes the questioning was a bit vague In the slides an answer was not always clearly given to the questions asked. People wondered whether they should google the answer after all or try to think of an answer themselves. Another difficulty was the answers to the AB question. It was not completely clear what was expected here. Tutors said that people had freedom, however, this also made the assignment a bit vague. They also explained that students were meant to start a discussion about the answers to AB. However, this was sometimes difficult because the answers could differ very much between the 2 students.

The first three assignments were simulation related. These were nice assignments, though several students did struggle with them. This was likely due to unexperience in the programs. For these students there was good tutoring.
Lecture 5 and 6 were more related to data. These were experienced more difficult by some. An idea would be to add also tutor moments for Excel and Matlab.
It was also nice that the assignments were approximately equally long. The workload was distributed well across the weeks.

The course was well taken care of and everything fitted well to each other. It was nice that practical assignments were the examination. During an exam fewer things can be done with programs like Sefaira.

When done properly, students would divide the work equally across the weeks. Depending on how well the student had planned this, this was experienced well. Especially if the student already had experience with the programs.