Quartile 1

There is no separate study guide, but all the information is available on canvas. The number of ECTS however is not included in the general information. Next time, this can be added to make sure all necessary information is in the study guide. The target group is everyone in the first year of Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences.

The lectures were of good quality and they were nice to follow. Another good aspect was the ability to ask questions in the q&a-sessions after the lectures.
It was great that the seminar part was still possible on campus, even with the COVID-19 measures.

It was very hard to work together on the sketchbook due to the COVID-measures. But compared to the years before this, it has been resolved quite nicely.
The take home exam was a nice alternative to a physical test. However, the total work was more than the mentioned 3-5 hours in the assignment. Then again, compared to the hours of study that would normally be the case, this is a big decrease in hours.
The past few years it was possible to see other students’ work. Unfortunately this was not possible this year.

The workload was just good enough. It is a good starting course that challenges you to think about the what’s and why’s of a building. While the workload was just good enough for most students, some students struggled with the amount of work that had to be put in. This can be due to the fact that this is the first course in their first year, which meant they still had to accommodate to university ways.

As a general idea, the course was enjoyed by most of the students. Information was communicated in clear and straight forward ways, the study guide was complete and the study material was interesting and useful.

The lectures were very enjoyable and they were inviting students to attend them. They were useful and providing students with new and fascinating information. The quality of these is very much appreciated among students.

The seminar part is a good analysis exercise which is appreciated since it teaches students a lot of practical information. Some issues were encountered here mostly regarding the consistency of the feedback sessions. There was a major difference between different tutors so maybe a Rubric table might be useful in this situation to keep certain objectivity upon the assignments. Also, some students did not know how to draw in isometry before this and it was quite difficult for them to provide high-quality 3D drawings, thing which was, of course, not really appreciated by the tutors. A similar situation was encountered at the model making part since it was the first glance into this kind of work for most of the students. However, maybe some more understanding regarding these can be taken into account.

Furthermore, for the seminar part, some tutors expected every model to be white or made of something else than foam which is defeating the purpose of buying the model kit which did not provide the required materials. This might be a situation which has to be discussed with the shop in Vertigo to decide on the proper materials needed for this course to be included in the material kit.

The concept sketchbook is a great idea to make students understand and acquire the meaning of the concepts explained in the lectures.

The exam was at least doable for somebody who actually studied and the information provided by the lecturers was synthesized very well in order to facilitate a proper understanding of the study material. Some people complained, however, that there were only screencasts from one lecturer and they could not understand exactly the slides from the other two. As a result, maybe that is a small improvement that can be done.

The workload was undoubtedly time-consuming but it wasn’t really a problem since the seminar was really engaging and so were the lectures and the sketchbook assignment.

As a general idea, the course was enjoyed and found interesting by most of the students. The course Information was a bit complicated and unknown, but it would be found and known by lecturers and on canvas.

The lectures were entertaining and interesting for a lot of students, lectures motivated students to learn about the subject and participate.

Seminar part is a bit challenging since this is one of the first courses we got. It is designed to teach the basics of modeling and drawing. Most of the students did not know how to draw in isometry or on scale before the course but tutors mostly helped to figure these out during the supervisions. A similar situation was encountered at the model making part since it was the first glance into this kind of work for most of the students. The challenging part would be to figure out most of the things without getting a pre knowledge.

Furthermore, sketchbook, concept book was helpful to study the final exam, but some students had hard time to arrange their scheduling to finish their sketchbooks since all these parts take a lot of time while trying to adjust to the university. Best thing to do would be being organized and try to do concepts throughout the quartile and not last week.

Anyone who had studied, listened to the lectures, and paid attention to the information provided by the lecturers could pass the written exam. There were a few hiccups with the order and organization of the lectures and topics in the seminar section, but it wasn't too difficult to grasp the overall context of the course.

The workload for the year was a little excessive. This course could be described as time-consuming and attention-seeking. This course was mostly in the first quartile and was the most time consuming. It was difficult to stay on track with the other courses, but since most of the students enjoyed it, it wasn't a big deal.

The course was taught by Emiel van Berkum and all of the necessary information was always on canvas and easy to find.

The lectures were livestreamed on Canvas. The contents were explained quite well but there were multiple connection issues, both when watching live and when watching the recordings, due to too many people watching at once. This is mostly the university’s fault however, as they claimed that they were ready to have entire classes online when in fact they weren’t. They did however manage to fix this eventually so it shouldn’t be an issue for future courses.

While the online tests and the midterm exam were well received, most people found the final exam to be too difficult, especially compared to exams from previous years and to the exam for calculus variant 2. However the class average for the final exam (4.1) didn’t stray much from last year’s (4.2). Furthermore both the first and the last open questions were standard questions for their respective topics, while the second question should have been recognized from the homework.
Many students also found that the final exam didn’t accurately represent the course since there was a heavy focus on integration but the lecturer reminded us that integration occupied almost one third of the entire course.
We brought up providing more difficult exercises in preparation for the exam as a possible solution. The lecturer stated that that was the purpose of putting the previous exams on canvas but, since the answers were also given, it’s probable that students only understood the answers to a specific question without fully understanding how to solve it.
A common issue with the online tests was that, along with the lengthy exercises, setting up proctorio had too much of an impact on time constraints. We mentioned that it would be better if we could do it outside of the time dedicated to the exam. While this is currently being discussed by the people responsible, it is not yet possible to do on ANS at the moment. Another solution to manage time better is to allow copying and pasting with LaTeX, since this format is very much encouraged but also takes a lot of time to type out. Since copying and pasting to cheat would be picked up by Proctorio this shouldn’t be a concern and will therefore be taken into consideration for future exams.

On average the amount of time students dedicated to the course lined up with the number of credits (140 hours) and the workload was manageable and helpful for the course.

The overall structure of the course and the setup of the Canvas page received general praise.
The tutors were approachable and knowledgeable about the subject but in the end didn’t provide much help with mastering the subject. We therefore spent some time discussing how the tutor meetings should proceed. The group sessions usually worked because students would help each other but this didn’t always translate well online where many people would switch their webcams off for the duration of the meeting. The conclusion was that keeping the webcams on should be more encouraged without being pushed too much.

The course was taught by Sander Dommers and is one of the mandatory courses in Year 1. It is well structured and everything is nicely organized and accessible on Canvas.

In 2021 the lectures were livestreamed on Teams. They were well-structured, but no explicit information was said. In the lectures the professor was mainly reading the text from slides and no extra information or explanations were given. Without any interaction between the students and the lecturer, the students become easily distracted and the lectures harder and harder to follow. Therefore, many students stopped watching the lectures and as they considered as more sufficient studying on their own from the uploaded slides afterwards. This led to many students slacking behind and not being able to catch up with all of the material until the examination date.
A conclusion that can be drawn from many talks with students, is that the lectures should be more interactive and engaging with the viewer. Different forms of (graded) quizzes can be added, which may also contribute to higher students’ attendance. Moreover, offline lectures will be more appropriate for this course, due to the need of direct communication between student-teacher in problem-solving cases.

The weekly online tests were a nice exercise of the material and relatively easy for most of the students. A disadvantage that they had was that they were not always accepting true answers as correct and a person had to solve a task a couple of times till the program accepts his/her answer.
However, many people considered the final exam harder and not comparable with exams from previous years that were given as an example. Similar for the midterm examination, many students were surprised of the level of difficulty, compared to the homework and the online tests, which were easier.
The homework that the students were given could be optionally sent to their tutor, but it was not graded. Hence, due to the lack of grade weight, many students were not sending their solutions for a check. However, this method of weekly test of knowledge of students proved helpful in many other courses.

The workload of the course is overall manageable. In the beginning of the course some basic information from high school is revised, which is misleading the students about the course difficulty. The material from week 3/4 till the end of the quarter gets harder and harder.

The concept of having tutor hours is very good, but for many students it do not turns out as helpful as it sounds. The reason for this is that many people do not take part in the discussions and some of the tutor does not talk about anything till they are asked a question. Maybe mandatory presence and turned on cameras would improve the effectiveness of these meetings. Moreover, there was lack of coherence between the discussed theme in the tutor hours and the deadlines of homework. In many cases, the homework was explained after it was already submitted. As most effective method of introducing new information was an explanation of the subject followed by a short example, which explains the basics.